One of the great oxymorons of our time: "The Skeptical Theist"

Not at all with so many counterfeit faiths out there, some even claiming to be Christian.  It pays for an inquirer to be a skeptic.  Every convert I met in the Orthodox Church came from a variety of backgrounds ranging from atheism to Roman Catholicism.  They do all have a common thread in that they are all well educated and have had a sincere search for the truth and the stories they tell are all miraculous in the way God responded to there longing and brought them home.   

So HM what is your reaction to the article? 

The problem with most Christians is that they believe everybody elses's version of Christianity is the counterfeit one.

Mathematically speaking, at least 99% of them are mistaken to believe that their version is the right one. 

When a bunch of sheep herders got  tired of sheep stealing, they set up laws from a higher authority. Thus started the Jewish faith. Then Jesus arrived, and the Jewish faith had an offshoot called Christianity because Christians believed the sheepherders didn't quite have it right. Soon different sects of Christianity appeared. Then came Mohamed, and yet another offshoot from the original sheepherders came to pass. They thought not only did the sheepherders not have it quite right, neither did the Christians. Then along came Martin Luther, tired of the oppression of the Catholic Church to start another evolution, the Protestants. Then differing opinions of the protestants broke off into even more sects.

Even the sects have evolved with differing beliefs as society became more sophisticated. Augustine didn't have it right about nothing being on the other side of the vast expanse of the Atlantic. So some tweaking was in order.

In other words, each religion, although based on the same God, has not only sprung from another religion, they have evolved themselves over the years. The Catholic Church is nothing like it was in the dark ages. Just about eveyone's version has been tweaked along the way for credibilities sake. Therefore, it is with the utmost arrogance that anyone would claim that only their view is the absolute truth, when in fact, the view that their religion has will be tweaked further. You can't be absolutely right 1000 years ago, change some of your dogma, and be absolutely right again.

Speaking of conversion, quite a few of the atheists I know used to be Catholics (myself included.)

Not surprising that the author cites so extensively Pascal, who in his later life wanted to believe so strongly that he fooled himself (via "Pascal's Wager") into thinking it a logical choice.  The writer chides atheists for not continuing to look for something for which there is no evidence, then says they're doing it the wrong way.

It is the believer on whom the burden of proof lies.  He need only produce a single "black swan," in the philosophical thought experiment, to be proven right.   Centuries of trying have yielded not a single such swan.

Oddly enough, the temptation for the believers is quite strong to "do it the wrong way" and try to use scientific methods to prove the existence of a god.  Intelligent Design Creationism is one such fruitless search to clothe faith with a pseudoscientific babble.  They can (and have) fooled millions with that babble--but scientists aren't so easily fooled.  The swans are still white.

Anti you should do more research on Christian history.  The Orthodox Church for one is known to have zealously held on to the unchanged faith that was given to them by the Apostles.  I would also like to see the math that let's you proclaim with certainty "that 99% are mistaken to believe that their version is the right one"  But this is all of topic any way.  The topic being the linked article and a skeptical inquiry into the existence of God.  

I complement you Random that is a nice response.  I disagree of course and my own personal feeling about Pascal's wager is that is a stupid reason to have faith.  I am more incline to agree with the article's author that the heart or core of our being is the more proper instrument for seeking God.  On another note do you have any input on the next get to gather that is being discussed in my other blog today? 

I'm for science. I like the idea of believing what you can see with your own eyes. I don't believe in ghosts, Big Foot, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, cannibals, aliens from outer space or supernatural beings. People say you can see God via the beauty of the world. I don't. I see beauty, but I don't see God in it. I see the wonder of biology creating beauty.

I believe in people. I'm not at all surprised by the tangle of interpretation in that document. I grew up in a community of 200 that had 16 churches in it. "Your church uses musical instruments in it," someone hissed at me one day. "Your church thinks you have to completely immerse someone in water in order for them to be really baptized," hissed another. "Your church allows drinking and dancing," hissed someone to a friend of my who was Catholic. "Catholics believe you have to confess to a priest to be absolved of sin," another hissed to yet another person. "Some people believe the sabbath is on Saturday," hissed another. "Jews killed Christ," hissed another. "Negros have the mark of Cain," hissed another.

See what I mean. This thicket of supposed skepticism among believes is centuries old; well, maybe only back to the time of Martin Luther, to be accurate, since there really was no other Christian church outside of the Roman Catholic Church until then

Rubbish. I'll take the ever evolving pursuit of science and content of a man's character any day.

 Anti you should do more research on Christian history.  The Orthodox Church for one is known to have zealously held on to the unchanged faith that was given to them by the Apostles.

Which has exactly the same chance of being right as any other "flavor" does. 

HM the original Church was the Orthodox Faith and the Roman Catholics tried to change some of that faith and ended up excommunicating themselves from the Orthodox Church.  Your view of history comes from the Roman Catholic/Protestant history books, as the world was largely colonized by Northern Europeans and so that is what you were exposed to.  Schisms in Christianity are not do to the weakness of God ,but the weakness of men and the temptations of the evil one.  They are proof of the fallibility of man.  The proof of the strength of God rest in that the unadulterated Orthodox Christian faith has survived unchanged for over 2,000 years despite the fact that it has largely suffered from persecutions by pagans, Roman Catholics, Muslims and Communist for a large part of Christian history.  I have often been accused of being anti-science on these blogs, but nothing can be further than the truth.  The truth is that I am a science nerd, but I must be pragmatic.  Science is useful for the material creation , but what instrument do we use to explore the spiritual world that we can't see.  If you want a view of what the universe looks like you have to view from outside the universe and the only thing outside the universe is God.  So you need his help to learn about the world around you and himself. 

I think it's important to understand that the search for God has got to be with the heart as opposed to the mind. ..... "You will seek Me and find Me when you search for me with all of your heart"  (JER.29:13) 

    Once we find Him we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength.  But I don't believe even the greatest mind will find God without involving their heart.

   And once you have found God , then He will reveal Himself to you, and you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt..... "He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by My father, and I will love Him and disclose myself to him."  (John 14:21) 

My heart pumps blood, dcs.    The mind is where the action is.

.

Buffoo, I'm sure that the Jews quite rightly consider Christianity one of those "schisms" you look down upon. 

Random  -- Have you ever heard that heart transplant patients take on the presonality of the donor?  I've heard it, but not from a scientific study. Probably hooey. ..... I'll tell you that you can just substitute the word spirit  for heart in my above (edit) comment  -- but I don't think you will give either any credit.  

I was just rethinking Pascal's Wager.  If you come at it from another direction the question changes from "What do you lose by believing in God?" to "How much do you lose by shutting yourself out to any inquiry into God?"  For example a friends mother is a brilliant women ,but she is also an atheist.  She greatly takes pride in her intellect, but now she is beginning to show senility.  So she is losing her greatest treasure even before she dies.  Youth will vanish, you mind is undependable and eventually your body will return to the dust from which it came.  Even the memory of you will eventually fade in this world as the people who knew you died off.  Maybe that is why the Lord said to seek a treasure that rust will not corrupt. 

The word heart as used in scripture has been translated to mean "the inner man" by St. Gregory Palamas, "the hidden person" 1Peter 3:4, "Man's natural, para-natural and super natural center." St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite. 

Wayfarer, no matter how many articles you post, no matter how much "philosophy" you quote, I will never, ever believe in any god, angel, deity, being or entity that supposedly exists somewhere. Nor will I try to find one.

In my opinion, philosophy is nice and all, but it ain't real. It's all hibbery jibbery, and is only possible when people have way too much time on their hands with nothing particularly important to do. People could sit around and philosophize that up is down, black is white and the air you breathe is actually vanilla cinnamon swirl ice cream. Who cares?

In my line of work, I don't have the luxury of philosophy, nor am I wired to think that way. I have to be disciplined; do A then B then C or you die. If this happens, do that sequence of things NOW, without thinking. A bunch of philosophers didn't sit around and debate what speed I should fly for a flaps 25 landing with one engine shut down. That came from the discipline of science.

This is just a fun diversion from a very stressful job, and a chance to get to know people and enjoy talking about subjects that are taboo at the "office". I don't take any of this personally, and I hope you don't either.

But...I will have that beer with you someday, my friend.

H8 I can agree with you about philosophizing.  As a professional student I have come to appreciate math and hard science more that liberal arts.  In math it works or it don't.  Same with hard science when we don't lose are objectivity and muck it up are self projections.  Liberal arts seem to be an endless debate of opinions.  However my purpose here is not to convert anyone.  That is between you and the Lord.  Here I just share me and my faith is central to my life so there is no getting around me talking from the faith perspective.  I have also an insatiable curiosity about the world and welcome to explore new ways of thinking about things.  Which is why I posted this particular article.  I find it very invigorating to try to step out of the habitual modes of thought and explore new ones.  As for that beer, I did post a blog to put the ball in motion for another blog sphere get together.   

Well Wayfarer, I do have more respect for the Orthodox church than the Catholic church, and I was baptized a Catholic. They weren't nearly as ruthless.

However, just because they prefer to call it 'growth' instead of 'change' doesn't mean they didn't change their minds about things over the years. Thus, it is only logical that when you change something, then something was either not right to begin with, or you are changing it to something not right.

As for my math, you are correct. Considering that there are anywhere from 2000 to 3200 different Christian sects, depending on who you ask, all with some point that they differ on, 99% of them being wrong is too low. It's more like 99.99%

It is simple. If God exists He did not want to be figured out by science. He wants you to have faith. Faith is what all religions are based on. Religion cannot be quantified by science. Christians do a diservice to themselves by trying to enter God into scientific debate because to me it shows that they lack faith. Perhaps someone like myself, an agnostic, might try to put the two together. That would be someone who believes in science, but has a spirtual side to them and to reconcile the two. But even I know better than that. As a firm believer, you should be as adamant about not putting God in science as Random.

Regarding faith and the existance of God, I think it's a good time to lighten it up for a minute or two by considering the argument of the Babel Fish from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Universe, by Douglas Adams:

"The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language."

 "Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."

HA! Wayfarer, dispute that one! Of course, that means I need to find a...Babel Fish...would they have those at Pet Smart? Damn, I thought I had you there for a minute.

LOL, you can find most of the babblers near the Potomac river, H8cloz.

Here is an argument that I borrowed from some one from the branch of philosophy called metaphysics:

If we can say that the proof of God is our own dependence on Him; we can also point out that atheism could not exist with out God.  Since atheist's as well as satanist's whole rational for being is in trying to deny to God.  Or to put it humorously "If God doesn't exist then who are the atheist trying so hard to hide from:D"

The rational proof of the existence of God is nothing more than a particular application of certain principles; the outline of the proof is as follows.Finite being, whether considered as a limited series or an unlimited series, is essentially incapable of being the cause of its own becoming. Becoming finds its rational explanation only in the Immutable.In like manner, motion is explainable only by the Immovable; the contingent, by the Absolute. But the Immutable, the Immovable, the Absolute, is God.

This metaphysical argument, first proposed by the Greek thinkers, was adopted and developed by the medieval philosophers. Its value is absolute because it terminates in the existence of God through metaphysical necessity. This argument must not be replaced by or subordinated to any other. Other arguments proving the existence of God are derived from the universal consent of mankind, from the necessity of a rational foundation for morality, from psychological exigency, etc. These and the like are good; but they are conclusions drawn from convenience, not from metaphysical necessity.This metaphysical argument makes it possible for us to acquire some knowledge of the nature of God. From it, indeed, we conclude that God is Pure Act, i.e., totally devoid of any potency. By mentally elevating to the absolute the perfections we find in created beings, we obtain such concepts as the good, the one, the true, the beautiful which give us, in an analogical sense, some understanding of the Being of God.

Metaphysics shows the complete dependence of every finite being on God. Man, a finite being with understanding and free will, is obliged to acknowledge his dependence according to the nature of a rational being. Consequently, man, as an individual, as a member of a family, and as a unit of society, is obliged to know, obey and love God, from whom he has received a natural inclination toward perfection. Beyond this point philosophy does not go. However, since philosophy finds it reasonable that God could have revealed some special form of knowledge, it demands that man remember such a possibility. It is the duty of theology to show that a special revelation was truly made, and to unveil God's love for man in providing him with a supernatural society, a supernatural means, and a supernatural end for his complete happiness.

"If God doesn't exist then who are the atheist trying so hard to hide from:D"

Atheists aren't hiding from anyone, other than people, to avoid discrimination. I have no need to hide from something that doesn't exist, that would just be crazy.

True, if no one else on the planet believed in any God, there would be no atheists (so, I guess I wouldn't exist...bummer). But remember, an atheist does not believe in any kind of god, being, ghost or demon, nor do we believe in astrology, new age, witchcraft, anything involving the supernatural, unicorns, trolls, leprechauns, honest politicians, competent female drivers...or anything else that cannot be proven to exist by science or direct observation.

Besides, I'm a nudist atheist, so I ain't hiding anything from anyone!

A nudist atheist? Well even the Christians were nude till they ate that damn apple. ;)

Atheists aren't hiding, they just don't believe. You think they are hiding because you think Satan is influencing them. As h8cloz suggests, they don't believe Satan exists either.

I

Someday they will

Ron

H8 are you a nudist of the circumcised or uncircumcised variety?  On the other hand I really don't want to know. 

Nudists don't separate into varieties based on physical attributes. Nudists accept themselves and others for who they are, and what they look like makes no difference. (Which is what many Christians say about their faith, but utterly fail to practice in their faith.) It's not about nudity, it's about not having to wear clothes, if that makes any sense. If you ever attend a clothing optional function, like a cruise or visit a resort (unlikely, I know), you would be amazed at how friendly, accepting and non judgmental these people are. Everyone is equal, everyone is accepted.

I don't know that it makes people friendly, but, perhaps people who already have a friendly, not so serious and uptight personality are much more likely to become nudists. After all, most people take themselves way too seriously, and are just too afraid to give it a try. Too bad.

H8cloz  -- A nudist, athiest, pilot ?  Quite a combination, really.  What do you fly?  You speak of engines above, and your profile says soaring.... is that flying gliders?  And the next question  - do you fly in the nude?       

dsc217, I fly many different airplanes from single engine piston to multi engine turbine. For fun, I fly sailplanes. No, flying without clothes on would be just 'plane' stupid. Don't be silly.

However, there are actually people who charter a 757 out of Florida to fly to a C/O resort (they call it Naked Air). They are idiots, as are most "clothed" people on passenger aircraft. Shorts, flip-flops and anything other than cotton should be avoided! People should always wear real shoes, pants (jeans) and long sleeve cotton shirts of some kind. If you have to get out of a burning airplane, especially via the slide, anything less will result in some very painful and possibly disfiguring injuries. Not good.

So, no, I don't fly, drive, or do anything else sans clothing that would be inappropriate or unsafe. Only at home, at established C/O beaches or hot springs, at resorts, on C/O cruises or sanctioned events is it appropriate to run around the way "God" intended. OK?

Different strokes for different folks..... party on.   I'll bet you've never been accused of being boring.

"Anglican traditionalists" = misogynists.  Maybe Pope Benny can welcome them to the "He-Man Women-Hater's Club."

Benny the Rat might've made a good atheist, and in fact may *BE* an atheist.

I believe it was Heinlein who noted that a shaman can be handicapped by actually having the faith he wishes to instill in the rubes.

.

"Detraction" isn't a sin.  It's the Original Virtue.  Oscar Wilde, more or less.