Oh goodie, Peter is back talking teddy (god) again which should bring a lot of fun comments. We certainly see that there is no end to the many different teddies out and about but in effect they always seem to operate from an irrational distrust of others, exhibit a disorder of perception and have delusions that are highly manipulative and troubled. There are all mighty powerful creator teddies, vengeful jack-in-the-box teddies, some particularly virulent forms with wild apocalyptic and messianic visions and even teddies with a real estate focus.

From Peter's article it seems he is attempting to again describe the residual perpetuation of a teddy mind virus. i.e. a teddy as a piece of software existing, that somehow "takes up residence in the human heart and mind". However, unfortunately this cannot be seen as anything special, other than this reverse notion of the mind or intelligence first concept which, however one looks at it is a social construct developed out of the superstitious understanding of a pattern of events.

This teddy of the mind is essentially materialist although it vainly seeks to transcend all manner of unwanted and confusing noise. However, to be concerned with events and happenings, its very existence cannot deny the actuality of matter. There are simply no objective moral laws existing independently of sentient beings in the way that laws of nature exist.

Peter,
Thanks for your two earlier articles, which I thoroughly read through. I think I would still summarize http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5101 as an argument for restricting God to what classically would be only His/Its only immanent aspect. As to http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=439 advocating a strict divorce of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob from the God of philosophers and scientists, I noticed that it brought out only one comment. So I think this forum is not an appropriate place for dissecting it in detail, almost sentence after sentence. Let me just say, that my understanding of, and approach to, the two great books, the Bible and the Book of Nature (written in the language of mathematics, as Galileo put it), is more balanced.

I know, I have no theological qualification, but I think I do not need them necessarily for my faith (and I believe neither do most Christians). However, my faith in the 21st century needs to admit interpretations compatible with certain (of course, not all) interpretations of the findings of contemporary physics, biology, neuroscience, psychology etc.

My favourite joke is that I can understand Russell but do not agree with him, whereas I agree with Whitehead but do not understand him. Perhaps i should also say that I understand Dawkins but do not agree with him, whereas I agree with the Christian perspective of Peter Sellick but do not understand him (in the sense that some of your statements sound to me - in my theological ignorance or pre-postmodernist thinking - as contradicting each other).

Perhaps this is one reason why I prefer to be a Catholic: I can shop around for many interpretations of the Gospel and its metaphysical underpinnings, but it is only the version advocated by the pope where I have to worry if I cannot understand it. And his version, as I already mentioned, is compatible with the way scientists/theologians see it (which, of course, was not always so), and hence is easy to understand even for a mathematician (ignoring here some controversial positions on sexual morals).

relda,
Thank for your info. I have to admit, I did some reading about Altizer on the internet. Of course, not nearly enough to understand him.

<<On the surface, the theology of Altizer may appear as rather depressing or sad with his apocalyptic visioning.>>

If his intention was not to sound sad or depressing, why does he speak of the “death of God”? If you were told your loved one was dead, would you not expect the explanation of circumstances, whatever they were, to be sad, depressing? Also ‘apocalypse‘ in my dictionary means “an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale”, and I do not know of any other meaning of the word. So how can apocalyptic visioning, or even apocalyptic hope make any sense?

As I understand your interpretation of Newton and Spinoza, it does not contradict the complementarity of immanent an transcendent ways of looking at God, that I referred to in my response to Peter.

“Altizer ... has never been interested in what things are in and for themselves apart from human experience. ... The reality with which he has concerned himself is humanly experienced reality and that alone ”[http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=1105&C=1152].

So my first impression is that before one can understand Altizer, one must understand his (post-modernist?) philosophy. Perhaps something like in order to understand Rudolf Bultmann one has to be familiar with Heidegger‘s existentialist philosophy.

I might be completely wrong with my first impressions, but the controversy around whether/how God exists, what is the truth about Him etc. reminds me of the “science wars” triggered by Sokal’s hoax [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair], where working scientists - atheist or not - defended their search for “objective truth“ against post-modernists and social constructivists of science. One could find some merit in the debate, often just parallel monologues, if one was able to look at the problem from a philosophy of science perspective.

As I said, these are just my very superficial impressions, and I am certainly thankful to you for calling my attention to Altizer.

George.
The meaning of apocalypse in the NT is not simply the destruction of all things but a revelation that carries all before it.
I have a problem with the two books in that it confirms that our knowledge is fragmented. I offer this piece out of my embryonic thesis as an aide to what I mean.

“The binding together of Father, Son and Holy Spirit sets the stage for the unity of all knowledge and potentially defeats all dualism. If the Father, the truth of all things, cannot be separated from the Son, His revealing of Himself in the man Jesus, and if, further, our knowledge of both Father and Son can only occur in the power of the Spirit then all knowledge of both heavenly and earthly things is an indissoluble unity. Jenson (1995) “The Triunity of Truth” argues that all knowledge is a unity on the basis that all knowledge points to a truthful narrative of the world.

The incarnation of the Son dissolves the separation of earthly and the heavenly that was established in Platonism in which the soul was imprisoned in the body and in Aristotle in the separation between the earthly and the celestial carried forward in Ptolemaic cosmology.
Platonism tends to hold that the mind is continuous in some respect with the divine, while the bodily and material is at best irrelevant. While for Platonism the forms, with which our souls were acquainted before we were imprisoned in our material bodies, are the mediators of our knowledge of God, Christian theology, lacking such a view of the divinity of the mind, must be taught by the Holy Spirit. (Gunton 1998)

The mistake that the church, both Protestant and Catholic, made in the 16th C in response to the accumulation of scientific knowledge of the solar system courtesy of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler was to cling to the authority of the bible as the unifying centre of all knowledge and not to the unification of all knowledge in the most holy and undivided Trinity.”

AJ Philips,

You know as well as I do that their are many scientist who believe in a young earth. They interpret the facts differently from the evolutionist and come up with completely different answers. You also know that those questioning evolution are likely to be failed at university (and schools) because many of the scientist are insecure about their dogmas which have to continually change. I have met a number of geologist who believe in a young earth. In university they play the game (not questioning dating methods) in order to get qualified. Far from making it up you are obviously blinded to the fact that many scientist believe in a young earth. Simply google to find that out. Attached is a list of every kind of scientist you can think of who believe in Creation and many of them a young earth.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/bios/default.asp

Sells,
In 'How does God exist' you express , 'Christian atheism consists in a retrieval of the God of the Bible who is identified in the events of the particular nation Israel and etc….' The atheism, however, as found in the death of God offers a contradiction . A Theistic Christianity is 'close' to Atheism in terms of its dualism as is light and day but Christian atheism is not a mysterious paradox but rather an unmistakably clear contradiction

If it is impossible biblically, philosophically, and theologically to accept a literal interpretation of the death of God in his own being, there remain two possible alternatives: either God exists now, always has and always will or he never did exist, does not now and never will. These alternatives make it plain that whatever Christian atheism may be, it cannot consistently claim to be both Christian and atheistic at one and the same time. In so far as it is Christian it cannot be atheist, and in so far as it is atheist it cannot be Christian. Christian atheism, far from reconciling the two doctrines, becomes neither.

If there are those who would be come atheists and, at the same time, avoid this obvious contradiction, they must look elsewhere for their theoretical models.

Jean-Paul Satre and Albert Camus are note worthy of the atheistic existentialist persuasion where the starting point was with the Nietzschean slogan "God is dead. But for atheistic existentialism, unlike Christian atheism, the death of God does not mean that God once actually existed, but rather that a supreme being or God never has existed and never wilL

As a theologian, Sells, my guess is you realise the existentialist thought encompassing the uncompromising atheism of Nietzsche and Sartre and the agnosticism of Heidegger - originating from the intensely religious philosophies of Pascal and Kierkegaard. Despite your differing theology, I gather your common ground with Protestant theologians Tillich and Bultmann, Roman Catholic theologian Gabriel Marcel and Jewish philosopher Buber, is a personal sense of authenticity and commitment - beyond a love of theology