I have read this article a number of times before posting here.

I feel sorry for Mark Christensen in his loss.

Not because of his fathers death - everyone dies and we have to accept that, in the natural order of things, parents will die to be buried and mourned by their children.

However, when someone dies at their own hand, that is a greater tragedy. A person taking their own life is abandoning and leaving a scar on their family and their friends. They are failing those who lookup to them as role models and disrespecting those who love them.

To the matter of secularism.

I turned away from organised religion when I heard a pastor talking through his backside about something he had no idea about and then ordained his view with the authority of his vestments.

If the difference between a secular society and a religious one is to be found in the authority and power of the churches and the clergy - Then keep us secular!

The credibility issues alone show too many of the clergy to be a bunch of self-serving hypocrits who have split their time between lining their own pockets and either perpetuating the greatest travesties and abonimations on innocent children - or worse - covering up for those who did.

So secular - yes and keep it that way. Society has moved on from the "authority of the church" just it has moved on from the "divine right of kings".

As for God -

God is there - I believe that he believes in a hands off policy - knowing that he gave us freewill and ingenuity. He does get involved - selectively when he needs to but does not make life "Easy" because - if it were easy then, where would be the challenge or the opportunity for spiritual growth which we all need to experience to become complete individuals?

COL good, now I have an idea of your inner workings, thoughts and personal history, and something positive might actually come out of it.
Your comments about the 'organized' religion echo my own feelings believe it or not, but in spite of how my views may have appeared, I am in now way suggesting that the 'authority' of an organized church should be the answer to all our social and political woes.
The power and abuses .. all that u mentioned.. I concur with completely.
I'll try to respond more later.. am under pressure with an urgent job at the moment.
Regards
BOAZ

There is an unofficial agreement amongst internet bloggers and others who conduct discussions in this medium, that an argument comes to an end the moment one party compares the other to Hitler. This is a well-observed convention, to the point that it has a name - Godwin's Law.

Similarly, all intelligent discussion on religion comes to a grinding halt when someone - yes you, Percy - tries to support his contention that God exists by defying non-believers to disprove his existence.

"I challenged you to come up with facts and logic to support your ridiculous religious (faith-based) mythology that there is no god.

The response? Nil. Cat got your tongue? Surely you can give a logical facts based answer? Maybe you can't! "

The best argument that I have found - in both logic and "faith-based" argumentataion - I discovered on Razorskiss.net, and goes like this:

"Mission: Prove a negative, absolute statement.

The task is to state that there is absolutely no god, and that the concept of god is absolutely false -then, to prove this statement: NO GOD =1

First, we have to make a couple definitions. A CANNOT be A and NOT A, at the same time.

To say there is NO God is an absolute statement. So, if you say that there is NO God, No God = NOT A. If you say that there IS a God, God = A. A cannot be A, and NOT A at the same time, remember. So, the mission is to prove that A =/= A - but A = NOT A.

If A = god, and NOT A = No god

A cannot be A, but MUST be NOT A, in order for NOT A to be true.

NOT A and A are not equal, and cannot have the same value - so, we must accept that NOT A =/= A.

In order for NOT A to be a true statement. A MUST be false. In order for NOT A to be accepted true, the axiom of "A =/= NOT A" MUST be accepted - thus, absolutes must be accepted, in order for there to be NO god. No is an ABSOLUTE statement - thus, A MUST be false, and it MUST be accompanied by a proof, for the statements GOD = A , and NO GOD = NOT A, to be logically true.

So, it is established that "No God", and "God" are mutually exclusive.

"No God" is a negative value - so, the mission is to prove a negative. God cannot exist, and there must be proof of God's non-existence - or there is still a possibility of A equaling A.

To prove that A = A, however, is still pretty hard. It's an axiom, like 0=0, or 1=1. To prove that God = A, requires that Not A also be proven false. So, on the other side, we're also stuck.

But, we've proven that it's impossible to "prove" God's existence, or non-existence - and, we HAVE proven the existence of absolutes. So, it's now possible to use absolutes in our argument,s henceforth. A, forever after, CANNOT also be NOT A - thus, unless you invalidate absolutes altogether, and thus, any scientific method, you're stuck with absolutes as an axiom. So to accept that A cannot be NOT A did absolutely nothing but prove absolute exist.

So, if a statement is unprovable - how can it be absolute?

It can't.

So, the basic statement Atheism is founded upon is based upon belief, to put it bluntly - yet contains an absolute statement - which, in order to be undeniably correct, would have to prove a negative - something which has NEVER been done in the history of logical thought.

So, in order to back up that absolute statement saying there is NO god, you would have to prove a negative - but, how do you prove that the negative of something which you say does not exist, does NOT exist - without recognizing it's existence?

On the other hand, any Religion has only the burden of evidence to bear - not the burden of proof - because all religions are based upon faith in the unprovable - not an absolute statement of fact. If you believe something, you believe IN something. You have no need to prove the non-existence of a thing - you just have to prove a thing exists. Also impossible, but not because of logical impossibility - but factual impossibilty. Noone, but the God believed in, can know ALL the facts - so, it's unprovable. There is evidence, of course - which an Atheist can never have - there CAN be no evidence of the NON existence of something - because there would be nothing to see, if the thing which does not exist - doesn't exist.

Existence is either believed, or disbelieved - but it is never known, with complete certainly."

Hope this helps

I think our beliefs are very much determined by our experiences. It then becomes a question of what experiences we allow ourselves to become subject to, what we will in essence submit to, and what we become convinced of.

I also think that the manner in which we express our beliefs, 'walk the talk', as it were is critical to persuasion more than any apparently neat logic.

Jesus did not first and foremost come to deliver a proof of God's existence. He came to deliver proof of God's love.

Life-changing belief really has to be just that - life-changing.

Pericles.. man..I just about needed to take some heavy duty tablets of ANY kind to stumble my way through all that logic :)

Story time: I was down at the rubbity the other day, n me shop steward mate Paul dropped by, we were having Kareoke, but no one could sing real well.
So, Paul, being the character that he is, jumped up and said a few words. The builders laborers just want less work and more money. Those Bosses only want more work and less to pay, but I told em all to rip down to Trades hall and we can sort this out, I gave em a real good serve about justice and being fair.

First letter to the Corinthians
22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Story is not well connected to the verse, but I can't imagine Paul standing there in the Areopogus at Athens mumbling on about A and "not A" :) After all, the guy was involved in the first version of the 'final solution' until he got zapped with a light and a voice.
I guess thats why he didn't worry too much about the logic of it all.
He just knew he had been called.
BOAZ

Boaz, sir, you protest too much.

Your response clearly shows that you followed the logic entirely, you old fox you. But the piece was in fact directed at dear old Percy, who had earlier - and I might add, quite charmlessly - demanded precisely this kind of logical "proof".

You either "believe", or you don't. As it happens, I don't. But I have many friends who do, and I consider them sane and intelligent people. Mostly, they accord me the same courtesy.

What concerns me is the attempts by believers and atheists alike to use a natural world event as evidence either for or against the existence of a god. If even the most elementary (and I am led to believe that all that A... NotA stuff is very elementary) logic fails to either prove or disprove the existence of, well, anything really, is it not blindingly obvious here that we are dealing with beliefs, and not "facts". Whatever they may be.

It seems to me that the stance taken - for or against the existence of a god, using the tsunami as evidence - says more about the fears and doubts of the arguer, be he believer or atheist, than it contributes to sound argumentation. Poor Rowan Williams, for one, seems to have the sort of faith that is shaken by events, a rather odd trait for one in his position, I would have thought. While on the other side of the fence sit atheists who seem to feel it necessary to use the disaster as evidence to support their case, when all it does is to illuminate their uncertainty.

But please, don't let your faith make you smug. It's not a good look.