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Penn & Teller on the Boy Scouts on Monday


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Rooster, you are scaring me. I keep checking the obits to make sure I didn't pass on recently and entered some sort of bizarro world. To think we might actually align on a religous thread just gives me the willies!

 

Now, my take is religion and reason usually don't align. Thats why religion requires faith. If it was just about reason, everyone would be in agreement. There are many aspects of organized religion that defies reason. That's what drove me from them and into a dis-organized religion of Diesm. My point is no matter what a person wants to believe, its their belief and I will not condemn them for that belief. They may feel they have the truth, I'm not so sure anybody does. But I will also not hold back on explaining why I find those aspects I do not agree upon. Consistancy is also important to me and I am the first to expose those for any hypocracy they might exibit.

 

So if someone believes that L. Ron Hubbard had some revelation or that Joseph Smith found the Book of Mormon under a tree in NY, I respect their right to believe it.

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Gern, yes this is indeed somewhat surprising, but Rooster, I find myself in agreement with 100% of your first two paragraphs and most of the third. I only disagree with your conclusion that folks who dont accept your God are "fearful of an honest search" and "afraid of the truth". I feel that is a pre-emptive dismissal of the genuine search for spiritual enlightenment by such people. In contrast, I would offer that such people may well have contemplated your theology and rejected it in favor of a belief system that is more explanatory, more satisfying, and/or more, well, believable. Your theology is certainly the best for you and millions of others, but in my view it is weak and unnecessarily supernatural. Very similar, in fact, to how I view Scientology.

 

Old joke: A religion is just a cult with more members

 

As a reader of science fiction, its very easy for me to laugh at Scientology. As an archeologist, I can dismiss the unlikely claims of Mormons. I see Christianity in the same light. That doesnt mean that I disrespect Scientologists, Mormons, or Christians for their beliefs. Or Hindus, Buddhists, or Wiccans. It would be a dull world indeed if we all thought the same. My spiritual journey has taken me on an honest search for the truth and those beliefs just arent for me. You think I am in error; all I ask is that you give me the courtesy of accepting that I am not "fearful of an honest search" nor "afraid of the truth".

 

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Rooster says: My conclusion is this: Their superstitious nature makes them fearful of an honest search one that will show them the one and only true God. They are afraid of the truth and how it will affect the rest of their lives.

 

By which you mean your God.

 

I have two observations. First, everyone is afraid of the Truth and all the neuroses and psychoses that we live with is the best evidence of that. Searching for the Truth is the most difficult thing in life. Unfortunately, Truth and religion are not necessarily the same thing.

 

Which leads to the second. Speaking for myself and many others who were raised in Christian churches (and not to single out Christianity) and then moved on to other beliefs, the search for Truth is complicated greatly by religious beliefs. It is extremely difficult to genuinely seek Truth when you have been raised to believe that Hell awaits those who leave that religion.

 

By the same token, it must be difficult for those who are raised without any religious training to sort out how to approach finding the Truth. Which, I assume, is why so many people end up in cults. It is also why many accept the teachings about Christianity on first hearing. The teachings of any religion have been refined and many have been refined in order to attract believers.

 

I am not arguing any point of view here, just making the observation.

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I feel that is a pre-emptive dismissal of the genuine search for spiritual enlightenment by such people. In contrast, I would offer that such people may well have contemplated your theology and rejected it in favor of a belief system that is more explanatory, more satisfying, and/or more, well, believable.

 

I suppose it is unfair, since I cannot determine what an individual actually thinks or desires. Even when someone proclaims something aloud for all to hear, we have to assume that his words reflect his heart. However, terminology like spiritual enlightenment and belief system or protests that religion was unsatisfyingas I see it, these terms and that kind of complaint reflects a person who is not looking for God, but for something else. The pursuit of truth is not a belief system or a spiritual journey which promises personal satisfaction for the seeker. Truth is truthit is what it is it doesnt have to provide one with all of the answers nor bring one into communion with all of creation. A conventional paradigm is that ones faith is a vehicle for personal satisfaction and/or to find a set of values for one to clutch. I think this is why so many are blind to real faith. Before I came to God, I first recognized other truths like the existence of good and evil, love and hate, and my own sinful state of being. I never would have found God, nor recognized his righteous and love, had I not first recognized these other truths. They did not promise me any answers or personal happiness. The search for God is not an easy road as some would like to believe.

 

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First, ahem, I started a religion - The Church of Moral Thermodynamics. Where's my $$$millions?

And..you guys seem to have left out consideration of Bokononism, what gives?

Rooster7 why is the search for God so difficult? If God makes it difficult, perhaps he doesn't want to be found. Ever play hide and seek? Seems to me that God ought to make finding him easy if that's what he wants. Just hit the 'Easy' button. Hey, it suddently looks like rain outside...

 

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However, terminology like spiritual enlightenment and belief system or protests that religion was unsatisfyingas I see it, these terms and that kind of complaint reflects a person who is not looking for God, but for something else. . . Truth is truthit is what it is

 

These strike me as inconsistent with each other. Either we are searching for Truth or we are searching for God. If we search for God and don't find God, the search is over. If we seek Truth and we find God . . .

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"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. "

Albert Einstein

 

I think the search for God is not an easy one is not because God is hiding from us, but because we are afraid to find Him.

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Pack, you can share Joseph Smith's millions...

 

"Seems to me that God ought to make finding him easy if that's what he wants." Did you ever read Sagan's "Contact". The main storyline was straight SF and fairly unremarkable, but one of the subplots (that did not translate to the screen) was the search for God. I remember getting goosebumps reading how the creator's signature is found in the base 11 expansion of pi, billions of digits downstream, available for discovery anywhere in the universe and just waiting for inquisitive beings ...

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These strike me as inconsistent with each other. Either we are searching for Truth or we are searching for God. If we search for God and don't find God, the search is over. If we seek Truth and we find God . . .

 

I suppose on the surface they are inconsistent...unless one has searched for the truth and found God, in which case they would be one in the same.

 

I think the search for God is not an easy one is not because God is hiding from us, but because we are afraid to find Him.

 

For various reasons, I believe that is true. God does not make the search difficult, we do.(This message has been edited by Rooster7)

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I suppose on the surface they are inconsistent...unless one has searched for the truth and found God, in which case they would be one in the same.

But that was my point. If you search only for God and don't find God, you don't necessarily find the Truth.

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Kahuna,

 

Over the last 47 years of my life, I cannot retrace and identify everything that I discovered which points to the existence of God. But when I earnestly began my search for God, I already knew that He existed. It was a matter of who He was and how I related to Him. Any cursory look at the world presents some undeniable truths like love and hate are more than simple chemical reactions in the brain; And, good and evil are not just an expedient way to describe extraordinary eventsthey exist. The evidence of God is all around us and very easily identifiable if one is willing to look. The problem is, too many people prefer this world and the god that presently reigns over it, then the heavenly Father who offers us eternal life. I dont deny that the search for truth begins with what is, as opposed to what one might like to exist or what one might fear to exist, but I cannot deny decades of what Ive already come to see and know around meIt was the basis for my search. If Im up to my neck in fish and seaweed, I dont need to conduct a search for very long to discover that Im standing in the ocean. The evidence of God is everywhere and in everything.

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Rooster,

 

We are probably too far apart for it to make much sense to argue about this, but I can agree with you about the existence of what you call God. However, you must have engaged in more than an observation in order to conclude that (God) exists. In other words, you were searching for Truth, unless your whole search simply began with the assumption that (God) exists.

 

I approached the search from the perspective that God didn't exist and, if he did, there would be some evidence of it. Over the years, I came to the same conclusion that you did. We don't necessarily agree on the nature of the evidence, but we agree that there is too much evidence of an intelligence greater than ours at work. From that point, the search becomes to determine what that intelligence is. In other words, you begin the search for God.

 

As a Buddhist, I don't find any evidence of a personal god, sitting in judgment or involving itself with human affairs. Nor do I believe that good, evil, love or hate are anything more than chemistry in the brain.

 

But, I think we are really talking about the same thing when we discuss the search for Truth versus the search for God.

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