Dear Cossomby,

The question of existence, of anything, is a material question - not a spiritual one.

Say a child believes that if he behaves well (speaks politely, doesn't hit his little sister, sit straight properly and eat everything on his plate), then Santa will give him a present. If AS A RESULT he behaves as expected, then there is nothing spiritual about it, then he is just a shrewd little merchant who believes he's making a good business deal.

Now the said child still gains good habits which will serve him well later in life, and meanwhile also he consumed nutritious food, his spine developed well, people respect him and he doesn't carry a baggage of guilt for hitting his sister. Great - this possibly prepared him for spirituality, but in itself it was not yet spiritual.

Now if he did the same, exactly the same, not because he wanted a gift, but because he loved Santa, then he is into the spiritual already.

Now you can see how a belief that God exists can be toxic. It is far better to believe in God and sing His glories than to believe in His existence (which is a logical impossibility, but let's avoid this digression). My love of God is all I care, while if I thought that He existed, that would reduce Him in my eyes to the level of a mere object, thus could detract my respect and lead me astray, into materialism.

Hi there DAVID F & A.J.PHILIPS...

Between the two of you I'd have no hope of maintaining my point of view because you're both intellectual heavyweights when it comes to arguing a case.

The only point I'd like to make - if someone derives some comfort, whether it's in their hour of need, or otherwise - why not let them have that comfort. Some people like to believe they have some supernatural unity in their corner, why not? Just because I don't believe in it. People like me have no right to go around trying to dismiss those beliefs. You would've seen men in the US Army DAVID F, who harboured Christian beliefs I sure? Likewise you would seen those who previously had those beliefs, completely jettison them as well. I lost ALL my Christian convictions, in an oppressively hot, wet country, called South Vietnam, back in the late 1960's.

I recall years later we had to do a building entry (police), in order to arrest a known fugitive who we'd suspected of being armed. My No, 2 on 'the key' (copper speak) always without fail, crossed himself like a Catholic, moments before he 'swung' the key. The whole squad had frequently seen him do this, but were not of a mind to ask him (privacy and his 'short fuse') because it was considered deeply personal.

Some time later, after 'stand-down' from another job, and over a beer I decided to enquire why he did it. He astounded me with his quiet, even gentle answer, he simply stated, he believed in God. Even though I was his sergeant, I wasn't going to encourage him to elaborate any further with his answer, otherwise I might find myself flat on my face sucking up concrete, or worse. The 36 months I did with the squad, this S/C continued to persevere with this practice. And why not? I don't believe in any of his Christian beliefs, but that's me - Let's live and let live I say.

Hi there NOT_NOW.SOON...

Thank you for your kind remarks, albeit undeserved. As you've no doubt discovered I'm not the 'sharpest tool in the shed' so I can't very well mount a case either way, 'for' or 'against' the existence of a God. My position has always been - 'Live and let live'. The only real departure to that, is these Muslims who seek to cloak their terrorist activities in their Islamic religion. To me that's utterly untenable in my view.

AJP,

"The classical omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent god is easy to discredit using logic."

I say proven/disproven, you say discredited. I guess this subtle re-framing of the discussion usually works for you since you do it so often. But it never works with me, so why do it? No plan B I guess.

Anyway….how do you discredit something that doesn't exist? And/or how do you discredit an omniscient being? . You can use our criteria but they probably don't apply to such a being.

"Just out of curiosity, what do you mean by “ultimate” mind?"

NNS and believers like him think they are talking to the creator, the omniscient being, the intelligence that created all, knows all, controls all. The ultimate mind.

"Mind pointing out which ones apply to whom, and providing some examples?"

A whiff of paranoia there, AJ? I noticed the same thing t'other day when I wrote a general post that you assumed was directed specifically at you.
Again…. look back through the posts here which are liberally sprinkled with words like "idiot", superstition", "nonsense", requests for "objective evidence" etc. As I said, there are some (many?) who'll treat unproven theories (eg AGW, DarkMatter/Energy, Big Bang and a host of other best-guesses) as though they are established fact, while belittling others who adhere to other unproven theories (eg the deity).

"That sounds like a rather bold, board, and presumptuous claim, especially given that you would have little idea of what Not.Now_Soon actually believes".

Well I'm a bold guy (but rarely board).What NNS believes in detail is not really my concern or point. My point was that we need Christians to continue to be Christian and to act in a Christian manner, and advocate for Christianity and we need those who aren't Christian to act in a Christian manner.

In this regard I was talking about individuals such as NNS, not the various organisations that claim to speak for Christians and the Christian God. What the churches think about stem cells is an entirely separate issue to what NNS did in the opening post on this thread.

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Equally your oft repeated assertions about the churches being dragged into the Enlightenment, misses the point. The churches, like most hierarchical organisations, were resistant to change, particularly change that threatened their leader’s power-base. But the church isn't the same as Christianity. And you should never forget that those doing the dragging were also Christian (Locke, Rousseau etc). And you should never forget that the Enlightenment happened in, and only in, Christian societies. Not in China. Not (and still not) in Islam. The Christian church might have opposed it, but Christianity enabled it.

"Furthermore, how have you determined what exactly civilisation requires now, and what it will require in the future, given that our needs are constantly changing? What worked in the past does not necessarily work now, and will not necessarily work in the future."

I've spoken before about "chronological snobbery", the notion that we live in special times such that the old rules don't apply. My impression is that your historical understanding is rather limited and not a little jaundiced so I don't know how much I can explain since a certain level of pre-requisite knowledge is needed.
I was talking about our civilisation - basically western civilisation. The civilisation we inherited from the mixing of Greek empiricism, rationalism and science, Roman rule of law, work ethic and individuality and Christian values.

If we lose those we no longer have a Western Civilisation but something different. I've seen from the past that you just don't want to credit any of the Western civilisation’s positive attributes to Christianity but I think that's wrong. As we start to lose the Christian leg to the pillars of western civilisation, we start to lose western civilisation. The civilisation won't cease to exist but it will become something different.

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And since I think that, on balance, western civilisation has been the most advanced and beneficial in human history and will continue to be so for as long as it exists, the loss of those values will be to the detriment of humankind. Whatismore, all the replacement candidates seen so far will be a backward step.

Now I can't KNOW this with any degree of certainty. But if you look back over the 10000 or so years of human civilisation (in my view there were no civilisations in pre-history) and see what caused the decline and disappearance of past civilisations, it’s rather easy to see that these losses occurred because fundamental aspects of the civilisation fell into disrepute and/or disuse.
So much of what the west the west is under threat with attacks on free speech, the rule of law, the idiocy of postmodernism and identity politics among others. Included in that is the apparent decline in Christian values which in turn feeds into the other problems. Each of these issues has to be addressed individually and severally if this civilisation is to salvaged.
So, while not being a Christian, I continue to barrack for its retention.