I think in my previous post I sounded anti christian - not true. I just have a problem with smugness and arrogance.

i am very interested in differing POV's when presented in a reasonable and friendly manner, such as the following:

"THE BISHOP'S VOICE
If I Have Seen the Future of the Church, I Do Not Like it

by John Shelby Spong

There are people who think that Europe or North America are the most secular parts of the world.

But I would submit that this "honor" is held by New Zealand and Australia.

Recent polls in New Zealand indicate that 84 percent of the population of this nation claims no affiliation with any organized religious body. Specific estimates for Australia were not available, but educated guesses by competent observers suggest Australia is not significantly different. So the reality is that a majority of the citizens of these nations has moved beyond the boundaries of the traditional religious frame of reference. They are citizens of what Harvey Cox once called "The Secular City." That, however, is only half of the problem. The other half becomes obvious when one analyzes the make up of that decreasing minority who still do claim religious attachment. They are overwhelmingly of the evangelical, fundamentalist Protestant or the conservative Roman Catholic tradition. They are basically ghettoized religious enclaves out of touch with the world in which they live."

Read on at http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/vox21297.html

Now I can relate to Spong - don't necessarily agree, being an atheist, but I find him very accessible.

Sells, has Spong got it wrong?

Philo>In Christianity these are based in the nature of God. Christian faith is not believing in a past record of history, it is believing in the interpretation of history that opens ones future to greater experiences.

Hi Philo thanks for the reply. I don’t think many would argue against a ethical accommodative approach to pluralism I just wanted to see if you believed the discredited all roads to God or by default only Christianity is true and one must infer that the others are human constructs.

At least you hit it on the nail it’s not about facts or history it is revelation through myth and while you would not see it as such “blind faith’.

Back to what I said in an earlier post if Christianity is TRUE all the other faiths are by default are human constructs.

If these sincere spiritual people cannot tell the difference-if there is one- between a true belief and a human construct then to be honest you would have to concede that it is possible for Christianity. Similar that people if they know what they are talking about must concede we could be deceived by a evil spirit or along the lines of the Matrix that the world around us is not real.

The trouble with you and Sells you see something that is possible –Divine Christian creator- but deny other accounts either naturalistic or other faiths which are also possible scenarios.

An intellectually honest Christian would indeed take the line you took in your last post but concede that you do so on Faith and that you cannot know or think that it is conclusively the one true faith, and indeed Christianity may in fact be a human construct with nothing to verify its meta-physical/theological foundations.

Gw an atheist may acknowlege that even though while the natural world operates quite fine without needing to postualte a 'God' there in fact may be one. Having said that there is no indication it has to be the Christian God nor do you escape by definitional tautalogy where God came from.

I wait with baited breath to Sells definition of what "truly human is". The introduction of Spong is a welcome change as with trinity, I am amiable to his understanding of the christian church. Philo's statement, "I spent time yesterday with a wonderful educated Papuan man whose father was a head hunter in the jungles of West Papua before he became a Christian. He is here in Australia educating Australian people on his training Colleges in Java and West Papua. Ask him is his life is better today than farming pigs, sweet potato and fighting wars with his neighbors on the next ridge.” So only christians are well educated. Having spent time in that country, I object to the put down of their way of life. Who is more educated, the christian who walks around the jungle in their long clothes and shoes, destroying the environment and way of life that has sustained the country for thousands of years. Or the papuan who wears no clothes, lives of the land, never gets lost can describe to you every plant, animal and insect there is and how to utilise it for every day life. Wasn't it the so called educated christians who brought the European diseases to this country that have wiped out so many. So who is more educated, I will stand beside the naked papuan any day and dig sweet potato's, something I have never seen from missionaries anywhere. As said earlier, religion is for those that refuse to take responsibility for their lives and can't even equate their beliefs to current scientific research. So if a christian god is real, wouldn't it be logical that it, (god) is aware and keeps abreast of our scientific evolution, Isn't your god progressive, or just sits firmly in the past with all other illusionary relics. Then again, the big bang may be the result of your god over inflating his ego. If this were true, then god is amongst us in big bits and little bits ever expanding to infinity. But wait, his next message to us may be, burp.

The alchemist,
Your world-view is so ridiculous it does not even deserve a reply. I cannot understand why you prefer to use modern technology rather than return to live in trees. Obviously you also contribute to the destruction of pure aboriginal culture. I have myself lived in the primitive bush, and grown sweet potato, and raised pigs. My post was to make a contrast of his life, not to degrade a people who are my dear and close friends. I have many close friends in the highlands of West New Guinea, and threes families now attend the same church in Australia. Several have lived with me here in Australia while gaining education at their own desire. Indonesian is transmigrating Muslims into their area and occupying their land. They are bringing with them Philippino AIDS infected prostitutes in an endeavour to cause racial genocide. Fortunately many of them are university educated and are able to take their place in a modern world.

The alchemist,
Your arrogance, ignorance and irelavence defines you.

Quote "I will stand beside the naked papuan any day and dig sweet potato's, something I have never seen from missionaries anywhere."

You obviously have never worked with missionaries in West Papua as the current head of Evangelical missions in West Papua is that very same man. All the villages currently survive on pork and sweet potato and introduced fruit and vegetables. My Church supports a trained farmer assisting them to develop a more diverse diet. One of the boys who lived here is establishing the exporting of native timber and importing of dairy products because they want to participate in a our world.

One of the girls from New Guinea with 3 University Degrees after her name and Masters in microbiology dealing with bacteria in health medicine has higher intelligence than most people I know, is proof that the evolution of the human genome is a falsehood. In one generation these people assumed to be primitive are our intellectual equals

Gw
Our problem with the creation narratives is that we cannot help but see them through the eyes of natural science. This is to impose on them a world view completely strange to them since the writers did not see nature as mechanism. This is obvious from biblical research that reveals the circumstances in which they were written. They were the culture wars of the time. The first narrative, the creation in seven days was written while in exile in Babylon and were composed in response to the Babylonian creation myths that would have it that the world was created out of the dead bits of Gods. Most good books on Genesis will deal with this, the best being Westermann Gen 1-11. Without going into the details here, my point is that the creation stories were never written as a description of how the world came to be in the way modern cosmology attempts but a theological natural history whose aim is to delineate the relationships between God and the creation. Whereas the Babylonian myths would have the world as remnants of the God, Israel would have it that the world was completely devoid of spirit i.e natural. Israel thus separates out spirit and nature leaving the way open for the development of natural science. For how could we investigate the nature of the sun if it was really a god?

It is completely misleading to think of these narratives as a natural cosmology written 500 years BC when Europeans only began to think of the cosmos as mechanism in the 16th century. The creation narratives are theological documents and are essential to how the Judeo/Christian tradition understands the world. They are true not as scientific explanation but as legend. Unfortunately, the immense success of natural science and the technology that it has produced has removed from us how legend may also carry truth.