A pretty accurate summary of the disease, Mr Sellick. Although I cannot (of course) agree with your concept of a cure.

"I have the feeling that something new and awful is on the horizon the likes of which have never been seen before. There is unpitying violence that is beyond the bounds of what we can imagine."

You could well be correct, in that the upsurge of bread-and-circus pointlessness in our popular culture has its roots in the loosening of religion's traditional hold over us. Not forgetting, of course, that the same religion was an extremely powerful tool of the State, wherever it was sufficiently strong.

The inability of governments to impose their will through religion is a factor absent from your musings, though also significant in my view. During the Elizabethan era in England, for example, you could be branded a criminal and punished, simply for failing to attend church.

Whichever way you address it, the absence of religion has created a licence for us to act and think for ourselves. And the result - that we turn out to be imperfect specimens with collectively poor judgment - is less than pretty.

But as the cliche tells us, the genie cannot be returned to the bottle.

"The missionary activity of the church must be an activity of retrieval of orthodoxy and a cleansing of the ruins of modernity and the false piety that it inspired."

Re-inventing God for public consumption (which is what I imagine missiology to be) will not work, simply because telling lies has never formed a stable foundation for any society for any length of time.

I genuinely sympathize with those who still believe that a return to the blindness of faith will somehow cure society's ills. Regrettably, the only real choice remains either electing to live in a cocoon of well-meaning fabrication, or accepting that living with the truth of nihilism is not particularly nice, and simply getting on with it by ourselves.

Altogether a clear-eyed summary of the existential realities, though, even if the evangelistic nostrum is doomed to fail.

Dear Peter,

A large part of the world has not found it necessary to subscribe to any form of Christianity. When we think that there are possibly billions of planets capable of supporting intelligent life we can also realise that it is improbable that any of the other planets have adopted the Christian mumbojumbo.

You wrote: In other words late modern man, unlike his predecessors cannot see order in nature, cannot see it as the work of an intentional creator. Nature is now pure mechanism. This makes any quest for meaning in nature impossible. It also means that we can no longer talk about nature as the good creation of a benign God; talk about God's plan in this respect is now no longer possible.

There is great order in nature. Nature follows the laws of physics and chemistry. Organisms have very complicated reactions, and the power of the human mind has found out much about that order through science.

Belief in miracles, in eternal life, in human virgin births and the other mumbojumbo associated with Christianity denies order. Somehow the natural order of the universe is not enough and we must also have a big Daddy in the sky who must set things right by denying death for the followers of mumbojumbo and ignoring the natural laws by causing an occasional miracle which is contrary to them.

There is no meaning in nature if by meaning you mean that there must must be a creation story like that in the Bible, the Rainbow Serpent and other creation of tribal minds. However, we can love each other, care for each and appreciate being alive without your mumbojumbo.

Dear Peter

Have you heard of Neville Goddard? His understanding of the Bible sheds light on the 'mumbojumbo' we hear in the churches today.

Nothing is what it appears to be and everything is not what it seems to be. :-) Enjoy!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Goddard>

Lily McRobert

Dear John or Lily,

The following reminds me of your remark.

Whenever all the world declares fair "fair,"
There is foul.
Whenever all the world declares good "good,"
There is ill.

The above is attributed to Lao-tzu. It's from a book called "World Poetry" which has verse from antiquity to the present.

I was unable to access the url you cited.

Looks like Goddard was wrong when he said, “To desire a state is to have it.”, david f...

URLs don't work with carets at the ends, try:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Goddard

"In other words late modern man, unlike his predecessors cannot see order in nature, "

No, unlike religion, science has revealed the true order in nature, which was incomprehensible to earlier generations, so they resorted to religion.

"When Christianity spread across the ancient world the old idols and gods were easily toppled because they were exposed as projections of human fear and desire."

No, Christianity, like Communism, spread across the world because of the totalitarian institutions that supported and proselytised the religion, the pagans who were essentially tolerant, had no defence against theocracy. Also many 'pagans' held more rational views of the Cosmos than the fairy tale nonsense promoted by the so-called "Abrahamic Religions".

Pericles,

Agreed, the product is well past its 'use by date'.

Thanks Peter, for one of your more thought-provoking pieces.

If we can’t offer miracles, "intelligent design", life after death, or the eco-worship that passes so often for modern spirituality - and I agree we can’t – then what is our mission?

I agree with some of your analysis of modernity, but I think it would be helpful if you spent less time describing what we need to ditch as Christians, and more on what can replace it. A return to orthodoxy is all very well, but I suspect what you call orthodoxy is far removed from how the average pew dweller perceives it: as accepting the authority of the church, the historical accuracy of the bible, and a single unquestioned Christian position on issues like homosexuality and the status of women.

And the trinity is a hard doctrine to take in, except at the literal (and absurd) level. We can’t stand on street corners proclaiming “perichoresis”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perichoresis

It seems to me the church hasn’t yet come to a coherent view, so it can’t properly articulate one. Thinkers like you are important in prodding us on that journey.

Those of us in churches following the lectionary are hearing a lot of John’s gospel at the moment. This Sunday’s text will be the man born blind. It’s a relevant story and quite an encouraging one, I think, for our current situation. The gospel remains, indeed!

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%209

Dear Peter,

At one time many people accepted and believed in the various pantheons of the Romans, the Greeks, the Norse, the ancient Egyptians etc. At one time Manichaeism extended from Spain to China. Manicheism lasted for 15 centuries. At one time the religions of the Aztecs and the Incas thrived. All of these religions were invented, came and went. They were all human inventions and all were eventually discarded.

The Abrahamic religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism and all other religions that exist today are also human inventions. They too will be discarded in time. They will be replaced by other superstitions.

However, be of good cheer. Eventually our universe will end. Science and philosophy along with all the humanities will also disappear as humanity and all other life disappears in the heat death which ends all we know. Your particular superstition will have disappeared long before that. Meanwhile let us enjoy life.

Thank you for another great article, Peter.

Proverbs 26:27 says:
"Whoever digs a pit will fall into it; if someone rolls a stone, it will roll back on them"

The church knew all along that there is no meaning in nature, but so long as it was profitable, the church, like Aaron, went along with the worship of the golden-calf of material science for some centuries of early modernity, so long as it brought the church power and wealth. It even cooperated with the materialistic state so long as it was filling the churches and their coffers. But then the calf kicked back, proving there is no material God and leaving the church empty and embarrassed. Ultimately, Moses descends from the mountain and... doesn't like what he sees...

The future of the church is in quality rather than quantity. Instead of evangelising with false-promises of material success, the church should simply be there to nourish those weary of the world and its false lights, as the prophet Isaiah declared (chapter 55):

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;
and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.
...
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
...
You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord’s renown,
for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever.

Amen.

Some good points but essentially just a confession of Peter's own muddle-headedness or his usual dim-witted Christian nonsense. Even more so because Christian-ISM as a power-and-control-seeking ideology is well and truly past its useful use by date.
It just aint true and never was.
http://www.aboutadidam.org/articles/secret_identity/beyond_hidden.html
It is interesting that David Bentley-Hart recently published a well received book with the title Being Consciousness and Bliss. This is interesting because hardly any (even none) of the usual dreadfully sane Christian apologists, including Sells, use the words Consciousness with a capital C, and they certainly do not use the word Bliss or Ananda. Nor for that matter do they really talk or write about Indestructible Being with a capital B.
You certainly wont find any being Consciousness and Bliss at First Things - just right-wing "catholic" clerical fascism.

What then of Consciousness and Light which is the Energy of Consciousness - Love-Bliss-Radiance
http://www.consciousnessitself.org
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/there_is_a_way_EDIT.html
http://www.dabase.org/Reality_Itself_Is_Not_In_The_Middle.htm

Christians are of course by self-definition sinners.
To be a sinner is to actively dissociate from Being, Consciousness and Bliss.
It is to be thoroughly convicted of the mortal meat-body condition, just like atheists and secular humanists.
It is to be thoroughly Godless!
This reference describes the origins of the materialist "culture" of death that now patterns the entire world.
http://www.aboutadidam.org/newsletters/toc-february2004.html

This essay including the footnotes describes the origins and all-the-way-down-the-line cultural consequences of the profound shift in human consciousness that began with the European Renaissance. A period in history which also produced Protestant Christianity, a religion that is entirely exoteric, and which reduces human beings to the fear saturated mortal meat body scale ONLY - thus producing the "culture" of death as described in the above essay.
http://www.adidaupclose.org/Art_and_Photography/rebirth_of_sacred_art.html

Where does the Teaching and Culture of Truth come from?
It certainly does not come from theologians or religious philosophers.

http://global.adidam.org/books/gift-of-truth-itself
http://www.dabase.org/up-4-1.htm

david f,

I counted four mumbojumbos in your post, referring apparently to certain models of reality, however only in their naive (fundamentalist) forms that you, and most of us, cannot accept. I failed to see it as a justified reaction to Peter’s article. After all, as Pericles seems to suggest, one can share Peter’s (Nietzschean?) pessimistic outlook without believing in the desirability or even workability of his solution.

>>However, be of good cheer. Eventually our universe will end. Science and philosophy along with all the humanities will also disappear as humanity and all other life disappears in the heat death which ends all we know … Meanwhile let us enjoy life. <<

Perhaps this is to be understood as something to be offered as an alternative to the existential hope offered by religions, some more some less naive. It somehow reminds me of “(Life) is a tale told by an idiot, … signifying nothing." (Mackbeth)

It really is all about you, isn't it, Peter? Never mind that 'modernity' has educated, clothed, fed and lifted out of poverty billions of people. Never mind that it's revealing new and exciting ways to achieve goals that we could never have dreamed of. Never mind that it's spared an increasing number of us the need to earn our bread through hard physical labour. No, it's all about 'nihilism', and denying God, and everything else is immaterial. Why don't you grow up and stop trying to make out the details of the world through your God-coloured glasses? Surely you can't sustain this toppling tower of nonsense much longer?

And I had to chuckle when you recommended studying the Trinity as a cure for doubts about the meaningfulness of God. That's like recommending Dostoievski for people who are struggling with Chekhov. Three in one! One in three! Which thimble is the pea under this time?

George, you know what happens to people when they mention the name of that Scottish play...

>>It somehow reminds me of “(Life) is a tale told by an idiot, … signifying nothing." (Mackbeth)<<

Thank goodness you spelt the name of the play incorrectly, and failed to credit the author - I think you might have got away with it this time.

But it is indeed interesting that Shakespeare, who was very much aware of the power of the State when crafting his plays, was brave enough to give his main character such an extremely non-religious thought-pattern. Did he perhaps figure that, since he had committed the supreme sacrilege of regicide, "Mackbeth" had license to articulate such a nihilistic view?

Shakespeare lived in Elizabethan England, where openly-practising Catholics were guilty of treason, and were accordingly hung, drawn and quartered. At the same time, everyone - lords and peasants - were required to attend church on Sunday, or be fined a shilling for each non-attendance. With workman's wages at fourpence a day - excluding food - this was a substantial incentive to piety. It lends the entire scene a most powerful aspect, and would have given audiences a particular frisson to hear these words spoken aloud, and in public too.

Now, you know what you have to do...

"you must utter the words 'Angels and ministers of grace defend us!' Then the offender must leave the house, turn around widdershins (counterclockwise) three times, swear and knock to be readmitted."

>>George, you know what happens to people when they mention the name of that Scottish play...<<

Yes, they get a silly response irrelevant to the topic in the context of which the name of the play was misspelled.

Dear Jon,

You wrote to Peter:

<<Never mind that it's revealing new and exciting ways to achieve goals that we could never have dreamed of.>>

So you admit that modernity brought new goals into people's minds - now they have to work double-hard to achieve them. Happiness is achieved by eliminating goals not by multiplying them.

<<Never mind that it's spared an increasing number of us the need to earn our bread through hard physical labour.>>

So instead, most of us do meaningless sedentary jobs, unrelated to bread, in order to achieve the above new goals. The amount of rest, free and family time we get has actually decreased by modernity.

<<No, it's all about 'nihilism', and denying God, and everything else is immaterial.>>

Rather, everything else is material. The problem with material things is that they are all temporary.

<<Why don't you grow up and stop trying to make out the details of the world through your God-coloured glasses?>>

But that's exactly what Peter is already doing - this and all his other articles are addressing Christians (and only Christians: he won't even reply to me because I'm not a Christian), telling them to STOP trying to make out the details the world through God-coloured glasses, as the church has wrongly done for centuries.

If you want to make out the details of the world - use science, but better still why even bother about the details of this fleeting world?

@Yuyutsu -- I certainly don't work as hard as my father did at my age -- or indeed any other. Do you? And at 55 I've already outlived two of my grandparents and my mother. Are you seriously claiming that modern life ISN'T better than it was in, say, 1960?

There's nothing 'meaningless' about my sedentary job. I work as a freelancer from home, taking on jobs I enjoy and rejecting those that I don't, in far more comfort than any factory labourer churning out five hundred widgets a day. Let the robots do that -- they're welcome to it.

If material things are temporary, that's OK -- so am I. As long as my material possessions last me until I'm ready to kick off, then they can fall apart immediately afterwards -- so what? And I 'bother about the details of the fleeting world' because they give me pleasure -- what better reason could there possibly be?

Making up imaginary verities simply for the sake of my self-esteem never appealed to me, but if that's what turns you on, fine. Just don't pretend they give you exclusive access to the moral high ground.

Peter Sellick is either ignorant of history and religion or distorts what we know of the past.:

Peter Sellick wrote: "It also means that we can no longer talk about nature as the good creation of a benign God; talk about God's plan in this respect is now no longer possible."

Benign God? Peter’s god near as I can see is the God of the Bible. He is a vindictive, arbitrary, vengeful and sadistic entity. He destroys most of the life of the world in the Flood. He commands a man to show devotion by murdering his son. He incited the armies of Joshua to to commit genocide on the Canaanites. In the New Testament he condemns his own son to torture and death. Perhaps Peter is confusing the myth of deity with the myth of Santa Claus.

He also wrote: "These assumptions about God are based on the view from nature and as such are foreign to the original Hebrew and Christian traditions that existed before "nature" became a description of the world."

Peter, you have turned history on its head. To the best of our knowledge the early gods invented by humans were all connected with nature. There were spirits in both animate and inanimate objects. Later the Greek and Roman gods embodied aspects of nature. As examples Poseidon was god of the sea, and Boreas was god of the winds.

He also wrote: When Christianity spread across the ancient world the old idols and gods were easily toppled because they were exposed as projections of human fear and desire.

The pagan gods were not easily toppled. They were eliminated by Christian persecution of their adherents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius_I

The Christian persecution of Roman religion under Theodosius I began in 381, after the first couple of years of his reign in the Eastern Empire. In the 380s, Theodosius I reiterated Constantine's ban on former customs of Roman religion, prohibited haruspicy on pain of death, pioneered the criminalization of Magistrates who did not enforce laws against polytheism, broke up some pagan associations and tolerated attacks on Roman temples.

continued

continued

Between 389–392 he promulgated the "Theodosian decrees" (instituting a major change in his religious policies), which removed non-Nicene Christians from church office and abolished the last remaining expressions of Roman religion by making its holidays into workdays, banned blood sacrifices, closed Roman temples, and disbanded the Vestal Virgins. The practices of taking auspices and witchcraft were punished. Theodosius refused to restore the Altar of Victory in the Senate House, as asked by non-Christian senators.

In 392 he became sole Emperor (the last one to claim sole and effective rule over an Empire including the Western provinces). From this moment till the end of his reign in 395, while non-Christians continued to request toleration, he ordered, authorized, or at least failed to punish, the closure or destruction of many temples, holy sites, images and objects of piety throughout the Empire.”

After Theodosius Christian rulers continued to impose Christianity on the pagan world by persecution and violence. Charlemagne gave the pagan Gauls the choice of Christianity or beheading. Olaf, patron saint of Norway gave the pagan Norse more options: Christianity, exile or the blood eagle. The blood eagle involved staking the subject spreading his or her lungs on each side of the body.

For the history of the violence by which Christianity has been imposed on non-Christian peoples in Europe read Richard Fletcher’s “The Conversion of Europe from Paganism to Christianity: 371-1386, London: Fontana (HarperCollins), 1998”.

THE PAGAN GODS WERE NOT EASILY TOPPLED. THEY WERE TOPPLED BY CHRISTIAN VIOLENCE.

Dear George,

A model is an attempt to abstract certain parameters which describe a system or entity and, using those parameters, describe a part of the system. Religions are not models of reality. They add elements that are not present in reality or for which there is no evidence of existence. Mumbo-jumbo is an appropriate term.

However, although religions are not models of reality they offer comfort, community and explanations to their adherents. The explanations in general don't stand up to critical analysis, but comfort and community are still worthwhile. I find great comfort in contact with others, experience, books, the net, food, shelter, love, family, mathematics and reflection. If, in addition, one can find comfort in religion, I do not object as long as others are not compelled to accept the mumbo-jumbo.

RHIAN/Quoted john..<<>39 Jesus said,

“For judgment I came into this world,
..that those who do not see may see, and those
who see may..become blind.”>>

THUS..JUDGMENT..reveals the seeing..for the blind
just as those seeing the judgment..RISK Becoming blind

[i see not my brothers nakedness?

<<.40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things,
and said to him, “Are we also blind?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt;[d] but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.>>

WHY/HOW..CAN THIS BE SO
SEPPERATION OF CHURCH/STATE//IS IMPOSABLE..as long as we need beg govt for charity status..[GREATER DOTH NOT BEG LICENCE..nor warrent..OF A FICTION][fictions cannot rule over reality/THE STATE CREATED SATAns paper realm/where law overrulES COMMON SENSE/VIA THE lie of a statuted 'person'..under the act/that entraps anyONE PUTTING THEIR 'MARK'..on their demonic paper/forms[LOL]..SWEARING TRUE DETAILS OF BIRTH/NOT FIRST HAND WITNESS/THUS NOT BY INFORMED CONCENT

you deaf dumb guides you strain for a gnat/swalLOW A CAMMEL
haddock..2;18/19

MATTHEW
7;1
23;2-25
5;14-45

JAMES..2;4-22
3;ALL
4;ALl
5;all

advance token..TO REV 20;..4,8-12

Dear david f,

I think it all depends on what one understands by model. I think your definition is too restrictive even as models of physical reality, which religious models are obviously not.

For instance, there is a difference between a mathematical model’s practical (to solve some problem) and epistemological functions. The latter means that they allow us to mathematically “visualise” some physical concept or situation by relating it to concepts from mathematics that are self-explanatory (albeit to a mathematically literate) even when that model only helps to explain, without necessarily solving problems.

The adequacy, i.e. “truth value”, of the mathematical model (and the physical theory it is part of), is a different matter.

The term model is being used in other than theoretical physics contexts. For instance, the anthropologist Clifford Geertz distinguishes between “models for” and “models of”, a distinction perhaps not unlike the one for mathematical models.

I have taken my understanding of models from Ian G. Barbour’s “Myths, Models and Paradigms, the Nature of Scientific and Religious Language (SCM Press1974). He develops his notion of religious models along that of models used in science.

Models in science:

“A theoretical models is an imagined mechanism or process, postulated by analogy with familiar mechanisms or processes and used to construct a theory to correlate a set of observations” (p. 30). Here “familiar” apparently includes mathematical concepts, but he does not elaborate much on that.

On religious models:

“Models summarise the structural elements of a set of myths. They can represent aspect of the cosmic order, including nature and history, which are dramatised in in myth … Like mythes models offer ways of ordering experience and of interpreting the world. They are neither literal pictures of reality nor useful fictions They lead to conceptually formulated systematic, coherent, religious beliefs … (and their) cognitive functions … in the interpretation of experience present a number of parallels with the function of theoretical models in science (pp. 27-28).

Again, the “truth value” of such models, however understood, is a different thing.

Dear George,

You are correct. The word, model, has more than one meaning. I was using a different one from you. We also were using different definitions of reality. I implicitly restrict meanings to apply to the phenomenological world. I have the opinion there is no other one.

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." is Wittgenstein's dictum. I applied it to 'model' and 'reality.'

I can argue with what Sellick presents as fact since he is careless with them. However, I cannot argue with your opinions. You are scrupulous about facts.

Have I got this right?

"The church would be advised to recognize the truth of some of the conclusions of the modern project... These assumptions about God are based on the view from nature and as such are foreign to the original Hebrew and Christian traditions that existed before "nature" became a description of the world. Rejecting them is no loss and will allow a new theology to arise that is more faithful to the ancient traditions of the Church."

So this new theology which is more faithful to the ancient traditions of the Church believes God was not a being who existed, was not the first or any cause at all, whose spirit had no material influence and who lacks a divine plan?

"Nay, nay, thrice nay", to reference Saint Peter, or was it Frankie Howerd?

Maybe I misunderstand to which ancient traditions you refer, after all there were many in the proto-orthodox era. Although trinitarianism tended not be amongst them, not even Justin Martyr's.

Missiology in late modern modernity could prove a missiology impossible.

"The recovery of a fully functional doctrine of the Trinity is the only way Christianity will be able to speak into the void of nihilism..."

You seem to mean 'your' version of a fully functional doctrine and saying 'the only way' smacks of overconfidence. Still, it is impressive how flexible the 'Christianity' tag has proven despite the ever present doctrinal contradictions. I can't even follow whether theophany is part of your Trinity.

wm/quote..<..So this new theology which is more faithful to the ancient traditions of the Church..>>

IE bound to rite ritual/creed GREED RATHEr than meeting of need?

<<..believes God was not a being who existed>>

GOD AS WE KNOW THE COncept..is the sun
the sun clearly exists..all life living on this earth[itself an ejectualtion/from the sun]..is all sustained to living by virtue of the light emmision the UNSEN HEAD RADIATIONS/THE ULTRA SHORT waves as much as the long wabes /released by the sun

god AS WE 'TAlk'..of god..is more aimed at the holysPIRIT
JESUS WAS A SOIN..of the sun..[a son of men..borne of woman..JUST LIKE THE EARTH MOTHER IS AN EJECTUALTE FROM THE FERTILE SUN..[GOD IS The sun]

look up se the sun..[gOD SUSTAINING LIFE BY LOGIC LOVE And his light]

go ahead..be as sons of the LIGHt,..sun
YE SHALT BE AS GODS..[sun-gods]..and YET SHALL THE HOLY SPIRIT..BE ONE

see THE TRINITY
REFLECTED IN THEE/IN HE..IN SHE..in you..in me
SURE GOD..LIES WITHOUT..BUT THE HOLY SPIRIT/DWELLS WITHIN.
everyone..from jesus to budda to god and gods and..every living thing

where life is the holy sp[irit sustains it iTS LIVING
YEP..EVEN 'GOD'

DAMM CAPS..<<..was not the first..or any cause at all,
whose spirit had no material influence..and who lacks a divine plan?>>

please do not taint higher than angels unaware's
JESUS became a suN..[god]..JUST AS OUR FATHEr sun.
[THE 1..TRUE/..OUR 1..GOD]...first begun..UNDER THE GOD..OF ANOTHER sun..[God]

but of truth..only the holy SPIRIT..IS ONE
THE REST OF US MAY..'BE AS ONE'..but not as much as the 1 is at 1 with everyone.[so the new religION RECOGNISES THAT GREATER THAN GOD..THE TRUE GOOd.

[FROM the wholly holy SPIRIT=1]
FROM *ONE/UNDER*THE/HOLY_SPIRIT..[OR..'O-U*T/H_S..]
grandious GREAT GOOD GLORIOUS GOD OATHS..FOR SHORT]

Dear Jon,

We're on the same boat because access to moral-high-ground is reserved for those who (unlike myself), actually comply with their moral ideals, rather than those who merely hold them. Failing to follow one's ideals can only lower one's self-esteem.

Factory-Labor is a modern-feature and 1960 is well-within modern times. We certainly have more today, but we also want more, expect more, so overall we're not happier. Your father for example wouldn't have worried about the quality/speed of his internet-connection. If he wanted to express a view, he would write a letter-to-the-editor, place it in an envelope, affix a stamp and hope to find it printed in the following week. We however require instant-gratification and get concerned if our response fails to appear within a couple of seconds.

You say that you find meaning in your job -where does this meaning come from? Surely not from material nature because science never detected or even hinted at some 'meaning-particle'. I claim that you created that meaning yourself, but how could that be if you were a finite and temporary part-of-nature?

Your body is temporary. Unfortunately you seem to believe that you are that body, thus temporary yourself. Subsequently what's left for you is to seek pleasure in the details of the world, but seeking pleasure is an indication of displeasure.

Dear David,

Of course religions aren't models of reality, nor designed to be. Religions are sets of methods designed to come closer to God. Some religions may include providing explanations about reality to their adherents and/or a community experience and/or the offer of comfort. None of those three elements, however, is strictly required.

Now when explanations about reality are provided, their value is measured not by their ability to describe reality itself, but by the extent they help or encourage the devotees to come closer to God. Any other claims about them are mumbo-jumbo.

Dear Trevor,

What's wrong with being flexible? If a different theology works better, helping and inspiring more people and more deeply to come closer to God, then one would be a fool not to use it.

Dear Yuyutsu,

You wrote: “Religions are sets of methods designed to come closer to God.”

You have repeated this statement or variants of it, and it is not true. No matter how many times you repeat it will still be false. There are non-theistic religions such as Buddhism which do not have the concept of a God. This is it, and I am not going to discuss it further. You prefer to ignore facts. Sobeit.

Dear David,

<<There are non-theistic religions such as Buddhism which do not have the concept of a God.>>

You are bursting into an open door:

Not only do I agree, but I even just wrote exactly the same in my last post, saying: "None of those three elements, however, is strictly required.", the first of those three being "providing explanations about reality".

A concept of God would come as part of such an explanation about reality, thus a concept of God is not a requisite for religion.

(although IMHO, many find the concept of God useful along their religious journey)

I am well aware of the sad fact that some people attribute the noun "religion" and/or the adjective "religious" to undeserving organisations: I am not willing to go along with their ignorant assumptions. A church may have billions of followers, trillions of dollars and powerful connections with governments, but if it doesn't lead its followers towards God, then it is not a religion.

Would you care to tell me which facts I ignore?

At last it seems that Sells has come to his senses and realises that God is but an illusion, born in the minds of men who in the case of the Abrahamic religions seek to control the lives of others.

David

Dear Other David (VK3AUU),

If God were an illusion, would you also say that an illusion created heaven and earth?

A concept of God, regardless how brilliant or otherwise, regardless whether born in healthy or in sick minds, benign or aggressive, is necessarily limited, hence cannot be called God, only ... a concept.

As God cannot be described, imagined or captured by the mind in any other way, humans developed various representations of God which can aid them in His worship.

Early representations were material: it could be either man-made idols of wood, stone or metal, or natural objects or even Mother Nature Herself. These however were excluded by the biblical second-commandment and that Jewish taboo then extended to the rest of the western civilisation.

In place of the ancient material representations of God came abstract mental concepts, which in the West lasted for millennia, but are currently in the process of falling out of fashion. At the same time, Buddhism often represents God as emptiness (Shunyata).

So which is the 'correct' way?

There is no such universal 'correctness': choose whichever representation of God you are more attracted to, that would tend to inspire you into coming closer to Him - be it a physical object, one you make yourself or one you find in nature; or be it a natural element; or be it Nature itself; be it a star or be it an historical person; or be it an imagined mental concept, including "Father" or "Trinity" if so inclined; or an illusion; or emptiness; or no representation at all: what personally works for you most in reducing your attachment to your body/mind and their limitations, that is the best.