Peter

Is it a matter of casting pearls before swine?

Perhaps it is time to wipe the dust from the feet and move on. Keep writing but do not engage in dialogue with them.

Your thoughts do act as a catalyst for others and I do appreciate your reference to the source of ideas and perspectives you build on.

Best wishes

The tragic thing about Christ is that man has always thought he could be put him into a bottle and market him in a particular way depending on the limited precepts of that sect, class, ideology through the ages. The genie is too big for the bottle and for most the message is just as elusive. The ideas brought by Christ are metaphysical, simple but complex, paradoxical but plain and both insightful and seemingly stupid.

The message is a elusive as a perfume one cannot see but only smell. That is why the church in the modern world is so incapable of communicating to modern men and women any more than a concoction of a message...dummed down, digestible, maleable and politically acceptable.

Jesus always stood outside the square and not inside it. He was an opponent of religiosity and a man with an unique vision of the human condition and what it had the potential to be in life. He went against the grain and inspires us to do so too. His existence is a summary of the human condition. Ask anyone who has lived long on this planet. Hence his universal identification.

He also was a realist and did not see his message as universally acceptable. However it has hit the mark in the lives of all people around the globe and throughout the ages, in all different ways. It is indefinable a bit like the sound of one hand clapping...and therefore is complete nonsense to most people. Buddha and Christ overlap in so many ways. You can see it only when one's eyes are open and the minute one is spiritually arrogant or exclusive the perfume evaporates and spoils. It was folly to his people and to us now.

So Ontotheology is about the God we cannot prove or disprove because it’s a relationship category, but we can infer exists from existence –contradiction-and through the fact there is an objective relationship, experienced through a subjective experience, we come to experience it's truth, which BTW other faiths mistakenly think they achieve as well.

Truly Sells this is just dressing up the fundie ‘open your heart and you will believe’ in fancy philosophical language.

How do you expect to have a mature rational discussion when all you are saying is you’re right, there is no evidence to prove or disprove it, nor can we use rational arguments to analyze it, just accept that I’m right? What is there to discuss?

If this is the result of the last hundred years of theological scholarship they might as well go back to discussing angels on pin heads.
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Duec let’s do Fundie mantra 101.

God did it, the Bible said it, I believe it. God did it, the Bible said it, I believe it. God did it, the Bible said it, I believe it, God did it, the Bible said it, I believe it. God did it, the Bible said it, I believe it. God did it, the Bible said it, I believe it. God did it, the Bible said it, I believe it, God did it, the Bible said it I believe it………

Then we can rationalize like MJB does.

Peter,

I noticed few comments on whether God exists.
Don’t mean to stir things but I believe the theological debate should be the other way around: prove to me that God doesn’t exist!

Science and material facts are proving to us every day that everything around us follows very specific laws: planets, stars, animals, geology, etc..

Spiritual field is becoming more and more perplexing: years of medical research on why a mother rabbit in a lab in Seattle panics and get depressed when her baby dies in an animal test lab in Switzerland is proving more and more there is a connection or ‘laws’ that defines spirituality as well.

What I don’t understand about atheism is this: it is harder and harder to deny the presence of all these laws that guide everything around us (and inside us) in a manner that is so random and yet so perfect. How can you be so DEFINITE that this energy (or God) does not exist? Or at least, isn’t it too early to be so definite? :)

Well done Ash, your approach at least requires some to think outside the norm. As to proving that god doesn't exist, that is typical of religious people, find something that can't be proven then take it onboard and run with it. Atheists don't discount the natural laws of the universe, they believe in these powers but not in a metaphysical way. God, well that is just for those that aren't prepared to take repsonsibility for their own existance. The religious are scared to death of being wrong because if they are, then there is nowhere for them to go, whilst non beleivers have as many places to go with their minds as there is possibilities. Historical facts show us that it is the religious movements of the world that create the problems we face. Most fascists are religious and at least their debauchery is out in the open. The religious movement trys to hide its evil in a cloke of stealth and deception. Any so called superior being who stands around and allows the destruction of the things he/she created can't be good. To say that we have free choice is also a con, if that were so, then why don't the religious allow us to have free choice rather than try to convert us to their illusions with violence. Then saying that if you don't beleive, or you will go to hell. Sounds fine to me, if all those that beleive in god go to heaven, then I would prefer hell, as heaven would be full of wars and destruction because the vast majority of the religous are that way inclined. In hell would be all the atheists and non believers and we would have a great time discussing reality, whilst the religious would be in heaven fighting over whose form of religion is right. I am sure that their god would put up with that as he has put up with them destroying this planet and all of their gods creatures for their own self indulgence.

Alchemist, you miss the bit that according to most god centered faiths only those who believe in their particular version of God will go to heaven. If there is a hell we will be stuck with all the ones who believed in god but got the detail wrong. I suspect that if that occurs most will not let a trivial detail like being in hell sway them from their brand of belief.

Ash, it is very true that there are lots of things in the world athiests and agnostics don't understand. Things happen which are not easily explained. None of that necessarily points to the concept of god or a particular version of god, it may point to aspects of quantum physics or something entirely different.

At the end of the day the equation for me is do the claims of a particular god (as conveyed by his followers) match what I can observe or test. It is not a proof of the non existance of god, rather a means of filtering out the irrelevant rubbish.

Certainly all the mainstream well known faiths appear to fail the test and if the truth about god is that hard to find then it's unlikely that god has much interest in our knowledge or belief. If god cares so little about my knowledge or belief then I don't see that it can be a very important topic.

R0bert