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Reading all this constant bickering between Atheists and Theist on the Internet blogs is becoming tedious. It might not be so boring if any one of them could just come up with some new argument for their side to present to those unpretentious readers who are earnestly seeking some hint of uncorrupted truth.
Here is a snippet of what I see as rationality that I am now allowing to escape, some seemingly lucid thoughts displaying my own version of What I Probably Believe.
Below are some of the declarations of Jesus, taken from the first book of the Christians' New Testament, from the book of Matthew:
5:17
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets...
5:18
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
5:19
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven:
How many supposedly devout Christians truly believe those words? Do they actually believe that Jesus commands Christians to follow the Old Testament laws when he says that until heaven and earth pass away you must obey all those ancient laws? Or else, if you don't, you are verily a doomed sinner worthy only of the damnation of eternal punishment?
No. Of course not, you might answer. You might chuckle and say that the Twenty-first century Christians have modified their internal moral codes to echo, not biblical dogma, but the childish fairy tale beliefs they themselves, each individually, want to agree with, and nothing more.
Such as, for example, the absurdity that all of their friends and family members who die, no matter how despicable they had been in life, immediately ascend to Heaven, or Paradise, and there assume the form of a glorious Angel, where they recline up there at their ease on drifting white clouds dressed in white robes with a golden halo encircling each holy head, playing the harps and watching over the risible comings and goings of their Earthly acquaintances and their still living loved ones.
You may scoff at that and say that all the modern-day Christians are enlightened, and that they do not believe all that beautifully poetic malarkey to be the literal truth.
But they do. Ah yes, they do. I know some of them... I know, and have known, some of them intimately. Down deep, in their heart of hearts, as they term it, they do believe those childhood-impressed images.
And who am I to say they are wrong?
As I have said previously, many times: "I am not an atheist." I do not profess to know (or even suspect) that there is no God. I admit freely and often, that I do not know what GOD is. And if there is (or ever was) some unseen but somehow sensed sentient entity that brought about the existence of mankind on the Earth, in the Solar System, within the Milky Way Galaxy, a minuscule part of the billions and billions of other galaxies and galactic clusters... or even the human concept of a vast, possibly unending, Universe, or MULTI-VERSE...
Well, I just don't know.
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I found a word I was unsure of
its meaning -- so I looked it up.
beget
(verb)
1.
(especially of a male parent) to procreate or generate (offspring).
2.
to cause; produce as an effect: a belief that power begets power.
Synonyms
1. spawn, sire, breed, father. 2. occasion, engender, effect, generate.
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Born March 7, 1934I spoke briefly with Willard Scott back in the 1990s (or was it the late 1980s?) when I was employed by Walt Disney World as a House Man at The Contemporary Resort. One morning I was standing just inside the doorway of the hotel's VIP Lounge when the famous celebrity entered. I recognized him immediately and called out, "Mister Willard Scott!" He swung his gleaming bald head around, raised his hand in an expansive wave, grinned at me, and said, "How ya' doin', Pardner?"
That was the extent of it.
But it's one of those secretly harbored memories we all seem prone to treasure, nonetheless.
(At this moment I am pursing my lips and shrugging my shoulders)
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Back to my original subject . . .
The God Wars is the title of an article in New Statesman written by Bryan Appleyard. The article's sub-head first states then asks:
To hardline atheists, it is now unreasonable and "dramatically peculiar" to argue that religion is not altogether evil. How did such intolerance become acceptable to rational minds?
This article helped me to get a better feel for the meaning of the term neo-atheist which has been irritatingly unclear in my mind. There are so many disparate views as to what constitutes a clear definition.
In the article Appleyard proposes: By "neo-atheism", I mean a tripartite belief system founded on the conviction that science provides the only road to truth and that all religions are deluded, irrational and destructive.
He goes on to say that this tripartite comprises Atheism, Secularism, and Darwinism, and then he elaborates on the difference between the three belief systems.
More about Bryan Appleyard.
Bryan Appleyard's blog
I try to keep up with the writings of some of the more popular Atheist bloggers, like PZ Myers, Greta Christina, Hemant Mehta (The Friendly Atheist) -- and a few others, but some of their shouted vituperations make me wince and stop reading, and I go on to other (relatively) milder, and quieter voices of reason. Such as the colorful, droll, and sometimes intellectual site named Quarkscrew.
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One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
--Robert A. Heinlein
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