Fretting about the bird cage on religious topics...
Warning: Explicitly Christian. Atheists should only proceed if they wish to be annoyed.
Enjoy the music at the link.
Cheers!
Posted on 02/08/2013 5:37:02 PM PST by grey_whiskers
Recently I was watching a YouTube video of Phil Keaggy. For those of you who do not know -- (which is to say, almost everybody) he is a Christian songwriter and guitarist who is a legend among guitarists; there are rumours floating around that Jimi Hendrix once called him "the best guitarist in the world."1 What is interesting is the comment threads which show up on YouTube under many of his videos. Generally one or two Christians will show up, with comments like "This is what Heaven must sound like" or "Praise GOD for Phil Keaggy's gift." Then usually, one of two things will happen: either other guitarists will show up, and say "Shut up and let us listen to the music" or "Yngwie Malmsteen / Van Halen / Leo Kottke / name your own" is better. Or, the atheists will show up and start ragging on the Christians.
And so it was here. A couple of days ago, one of the posters led off with the following gem:
"see above fairy tales" .... No thanks, enjoy being indoctrinated by a cult based on the ramblings of drunk arab sheep herders from a time when selling your daughter seemed like a great idea. I don't have a problem with you so please don't take offense. I would honestly be happy for you if you realised that you are wasting your entire existence."
And another poster, further down, wrote :
Nope Stop trying to shove religion down our throats and just listen to some music with out bringing up god or jeebus.
followed by
Do a Youtube name determines my Intellect? the fact that you believe In a magical man In the sky who hates gays,Nonbelievers and pretty much anything, Kind of says It all.You're the kind of people who are slowing down the human race.
Do I detect a trend here? "fairy tales" and "magical man in the sky" tend to be stock insults, and used by atheists. The words are pejorative, to be sure, but more tellingly, what are the values communicated by the words? As Christian Blogger and SuperIntelligence Vox Day reminds us, we reveal our values in attacking others. So it's fairly obvious, that to the mind of the atheists, religion is a crutch, a holdover, which has been rightly supplanted by science, and it's about time. And it is this thought that I take as the jumping-off point for my essay.
Let us begin by comparing and contrasting two well-know quotes.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
He replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." -- Jesus, in Matthew 17:20
Note the following points: Arthur C. Clarke is bragging, not only that technology works, but that, boy does it *ever* work. Jesus, on the other hand, is promising that one CAN move mountains -- but only under certain conditions.
And this is an important ingredient. Recall that C.S. Lewis, noted Christian author, was a professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Oxford, then Cambridge. He wrote in his book The Abolition of Man:
I have described as a `magician's bargain' that process whereby man surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power. And I meant what I said. The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.
There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead.
If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe's Faustus, the similarity is striking. You will read in some critics that Faustus has a thirst for knowledge. In reality, he hardly mentions it. It is not truth he wants from the devils, but gold and guns and girls. `All things that move between the quiet poles shall be at his command' and `a sound magician is a mighty god'.3 In the same spirit Bacon condemns those who value knowledge as an end in itself: this, for him, is to use as a mistress for pleasure what ought to be a spouse for fruit.4
Now this is quite a lot to take in at one go, but the essential elements are these:
1) People wanted power: both magic and technology strove for a time to deliver that power, but technology worked, and magic didn't.
2) In the centuries since that time, by accident or by on purpose, the impression has been left on people that everything but naturalistic science is "superstition" and that people used to believe in it before science set them free; and that the proof that science is better is that it works; in fact, religion is only for the losers, for those without any way to help themselves, it is a last gasp, a final (futile) resort.
People tend to lump prayer in with magic because the results seem to be inconsistent. But the reality goes deeper than that.
Bear with me for a change of pace while I use an analogy from the world of sports. If you went back in time and stood on the baseball diamond next to Brooks Robinson in his prime and tried to vacuum up line drives down the third base line; or if you tried to pitch like Nolan Ryan; or if you tried to run for long yardage like Adrian Peterson two things would happen. First, you'd get hurt. Second, you'd fail.
Does this mean that sports are magical, or that legendary sports achievements are mythological? After all, you tried to reproduce the results yourselves, and you failed.
No, it means that you weren't paying attention closely enough. Science is not reproducible -- except if you follow the instructions carefully. This is why we have experiments with controlled conditions, and why scientists are careful when reporting results in a journal to specify the methods, materials, and experimental apparatus, setup, and conditions. And since (as far as we can tell), science is "mechanical" and operates without respect to the individual, one person running the experiment is just as good as another.
Athletics, however, is only somewhat reproducible: it is mechanical, to be sure, but one of the conditions involved (if not pre-conditions) is skill. As Danny Glover said in the movie Angels in the Outfield, "There's this thing called talent. You guys don't have it." In order to reproduce athletic results, you need to have talent. And discipline, and practice. And then more practice. And even then, the results are not perfect. An all-pro batter only gets on base one-third of the time. Reggie Jackson pointed out that his 2,000 career strikeouts meant that he spent the equivalent of four full seasons doing nothing but "swing and a miss."
So it is with faith.
"And because of their unbelief, he couldn't do any miracles among them except to place his hands on a few sick people and heal them." Mark 6:5
(The mountains stayed put.)
And even *with* faith, God may say, "No," because He happens to have other plans: remember the Garden of Gethsemane:
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (Matthew 26:39)
Therefore, one of the differences between technology and faith, is that since faith is personal, and not merely mechanistic, you can't guarantee results. Whereas technology relies upon observable, discovered, repeatable regularities in the behaviour of the natural universe; and taking advantage of them.
But the other difference is more subtle. Since technology *is* impersonal, as the large corporations have discovered while offshoring jobs, the physics and the engineering of a manufacturing process work whether the factory is in Toledo or in Harbin. Furthermore, once the formula has been discovered, the blueprints built, all of the accumulated knowlege of how to leverage nature's workings can be applied immediately: and the machines and factories and cars, and the knowledge imbued in their workings, endure even after the original discoverers have died. It is not as though each person born has to *rediscover* fire, and gravity, and calculus, and classical mechanics (or the horse collar or the cotton gin) in order to enjoy the immediate benefits of past discoveries.
But with faith, since it is a personal discipline (think of Brooks Robinson!), each person *must* start at the beginning, from the ground up. I can pray for you: but I cannot "Vulcan mind meld" my faith over *to* you.
Which means that there is an accumulation of applicability, of efficacy, of technology, over time, which is widely diffused among individuals, which is not necessarily seen in prayer.
But there are two other important differences.
Since prayer is a petition to God, and God can work miracles (whether by interfering with nature without our knowledge, or by truly *breaking* or *suspending* the laws of nature) -- when prayer works, it is not limited to the discovered laws. It truly can "move mountains" -- or change entire kingdoms, or the course of history.
And the other difference, is that prayer is not designed, we are explicitly told it was never meant, for personal power. That way lies Faust and the Occult. Think of the difference between the Three Rings of Power forged by the Elves (power to retain all things unstained; this they have gained, with sorrow) vs. the express purpose of the One Ring -- to capture and ensnare all.
Technology, though it can be used for good, always contains the possibility of being used for evil, to control other people. Witness the trench warfare and poison gas of World War I up to the atomic bomb; or even the ability of the government to spy on you using sophisticated telecommunications and electronics.
Returning to The Abolition of Man C.S. Lewis pointed out that "what we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument. "
Whereas, by definition, the power of prayer *is* that of self-denial, as witnessed by Gethsemane. "Yet not what I will, but what Thou wilt." This is the very opposite of the "will to power" which countenances or demands abominations such as digging up the dead: and it is opposite in its effects as well, for Gethsemane did not result in an exhumation, but in Resurrection.
And the Stone itself was rolled away.
1 I tracked that rumour down as far as (IIRC) the Feb. 1975 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, in an article on "Jesus music" or somesuch. The rumor has been squelched by a number of sources. But he *is* off-scale versatile -- speed, melody, techniques from using an E-bow on an album all the way back in 1978, to volume swells with his little finger on the volume knob, to jaw-dropping looping, and intricate finger-picking. He does it all, with superlative technique.
Fretting about the bird cage on religious topics...
Warning: Explicitly Christian. Atheists should only proceed if they wish to be annoyed.
Enjoy the music at the link.
Cheers!
I couldn’t agree more.
And atheist’s agree too.
Robert Jastrow (September 7, 1925 – February 8, 2008) was an American astronomer, physicist and cosmologist. He was a leading NASA scientist, populist author and futurist.
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
Robert Jastrow.
Awesome post, just what I needed to read this Friday evening. Thanks!
“And the other difference, is that prayer is not designed, we are explicitly told it was never meant, for personal power. That way lies Faust and the Occult.”
This bears repeating, since we have some Christians today who are chasing “prosperity” through prayer. That’s not a good road to start traveling down.
That was great, thanks for posting! :D
Faith demands the believer to acknowledge the believer's god to be omniscient, all-knowing. The believer, by implication of the acknowledgement, has to believe that this god also knows the wants, feelings, needs, desires, intents and goals of the believer. So you have the believer and the believer's omniscient god as two entities, with no need for any "lines of communication / petition" (a.k.a prayer) between them, due to the quality of omniscience. What does this render prayer into? Redundant nothingness. And religions that demand it? Self-contradictory nonsense.
Enjoy your weekend!
It is not merely symbolism, nor metaphor, nor simile, to refer to God as Father.
Cheers!
Christian belief begins with the presumption of an omniscient God, which is based on extrapolation of the physical evidence of the nature of the universe: the evidence is insufficient to prove nor disprove with certainty, which is why one may have faith in a God, or have faith that the universe is as it is totally by chance.
The believer, by implication of the acknowledgement, has to believe that this god also knows the wants, feelings, needs, desires, intents and goals of the believer. So you have the believer and the believer's omniscient god as two entities, with no need for any "lines of communication / petition" (a.k.a prayer) between them, due to the quality of omniscience.
This is not true, on at least two levels. First, while the Christian believes that God already knows what we need before we ask, the Christian also believes that God commands us to ask--not for God's benefit, but for our benefit. For example, I already know most of my daughter's needs; does that mean she does not need to ask me, not for my benefit, but for hers?
Second, as in the quote above, prayer is not only petition, but communication--or, to be more accurate, communion. My daughter not only talks to me; she talks with me, a two-way communication, not only for the purpose of sharing information, but for the greater purpose of sharing relationship. The most important aspect of prayer is not what we say to God, but what God says to us: God already knows our needs, but we do not know the extent of God's nature or God's will, and the more we can experience that communion, the stronger our relationship to God.
Therefore, your dual assertion...
What does this render prayer into? Redundant nothingness. And religions that demand it? Self-contradictory nonsense. Enjoy your weekend!
...is twice incorrect. Prayer is the essence of a communicative communion with God, where we are given the opportunity not only of expressing our needs to a God for our benefit, but also of experiencing a dialogue that is a portion of a sensory and extrasensory communion. And there is therefore no self-contradiction. Whether it is nonsense or not depends on whether my "bet" that there is a God who desires a communal relationship with humans is accurate, or that your "bet" that there is no God is accurate. My experience, along with the nature of the universe itself, leads me to conclude that my "bet" is the accurate one. Which, by the way, is why I will indeed enjoy my weekend, and the eternity of which it is a part: not because I am wonderful, but because God is wonderful. And so can you.
And the Stone itself was rolled away.
They demonstrate that nothing makes atheism as attractive as atheists do. See how happy, peaceable, broad-minded, and wise they are!
What an amazing quote!
She wouldn't need to ask you if she believed you knew everything running in her mind. Since you don't, and since she doesn't believe so either, she has to ask you. If she truly believed you knew everything running in her mind as well as she did, then neither of you would find any purpose or meaning in asking. Because the need is invalidated by omniscience. Do you ask your heart to beat at X Hz when you are performing a strenuous activity? No. Would you enjoy asking your heart to beat faster, even though you believe your heart knows what it has to do better than you do? You wouldn't, unless you were insane (compare this with the previous comment of mine, the part about the pertaining activity being nonsensical).
Second, as in the quote above, prayer is not only petition, but communication--or, to be more accurate, communion. My daughter not only talks to me; she talks with me, a two-way communication, not only for the purpose of sharing information, but for the greater purpose of sharing relationship. The most important aspect of prayer is not what we say to God, but what God says to us: God already knows our needs, but we do not know the extent of God's nature or God's will, and the more we can experience that communion, the stronger our relationship to God.
Your faith in your god to know your heart in and out, your intents and feelings, renders unnecessary the need for this mental / verbal / physical communication because by the repercussions of your faith, you ought to be 'spiritually' connected, and believe that you are so, whose lines of communication are superior to anything you do as a substitutionary activity to pretend to give a physical aspect to this 'communication'. Since a believer believes this to be the case, the unnecessary and self-contradictory nature of prayer becomes self-evident. To put it in simpler words, does the faith of a believer weaken when the believer falls into a coma? What about when the believer is in subconscious states, such as during deep sleep? If the answer is no to either, then my point remains validated.
At best, you can plead for a deistic god with your arguments, no more. The type that does 1 Samuel 15:3 is totally repulsive to me. Add to that, the prayer fluff, and the falsehood becomes unavoidably evident. Do you find this verse difficult to accept, even if you eventually do?
Oh, and I enjoy my weekends. My weekdays, too. After all, we live only once, and eternity is a fantasy. About half of all natural conceptions end up in spontaneous abortions where the mother isn't even aware of it, usually. Such is the nature of life.
It’s just fluff to hide the self-contradiction. If you enjoy it, more power to you!
Also, faith is believing and therefore must spring forth from the deep and clear well of truth. Many who pray hold tightly onto their false beliefs which impact the way they perceive and understand, and therefore impede the purity of their faith. By the beliefs that they tightly hold onto which are not true they muddy their ability to have strong faith.
The Church of God is multi divided with all people holding the central truth about salvation through Christ, but not agreeing on many other important truths. One Church or belief system may believe certain things right and certain things wrong, and others believe wrong about other certain things and right about other certain things. Often adherents are adamant and proud about what they think is their corner on all truth. Few admit that they may hold to things that are not true. I doubt that at this present time very many Christians have and hold all important truths correctly.
Since faith, which is correct believing, is wedded to truth, our false beliefs impede it from working as it should. When God's people seek Him for truth, and stop relying on their denominational prejudices for their personally derived understandings of truth, then truth will flourish. We need to study The Word of God carefully and prayerfully before Almighty God, seeking and asking Him to show us what is true.
Also, the Bible says that faith works by love. How many Christians really walk in God like love as we should? How can faith work, if it works by love, if we do not love one another as we should?
I liken faith to the airplane. For ages man did not know how to fly so he often believed it impossible. Because man could not fly didn't make it impossible. When we finally learned how to fly we began to be able to fly on a regular basis. When Christians finally learn to find truth out from God through His Word, learn to love each other with fervent love, and learn to commune with The LORD on a continuous, love filled and intimate level, then our faith will become powerful, and will flourish as it should.
The one thing that is often missed about faith is that faith is asking God. It isn't a formula, it is a person, the person of God. We cannot manipulate God, but must purely ask Him. Whatever it is that we are asking Him for has to come from Him. It will come from an act of His will. It will come from His power to perform it. It is all of Him. Like getting saved, all we can do is ask. We do not have the power to bring it about. The power does not in any way originate from ourselves.
_______________________________________________
Luke 11:34 The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when [thine eye] is evil, thy body also [is] full of darkness. 11:35 Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. 11:36 If thy whole body therefore [be] full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.
Thanks, I enjoyed that. I think the simile of athletic competition is quite useful: each person in his relationship with God starts with himself, the totality of his own unique person, and then adds his effort and discipline to all the grace God provides.
It's just a completely different -- well, I wanted to say ansatz, but that's not quite right; nor is schwerpunkt -- "approach" maybe? -- than the one you're used to.
And all the intellect in the world will not suffice to internalize it: it is not a model, but a relationship.
While Paul was saying this in his defense, Festus said in a loud voice, "Paul, you are out of your mind! Your great learning is driving you mad." (Acts 26:24)
Cheers!
So it is your own private intuition which rules.
Tell me then, since all sentiment and moral values are usually held by atheists to be epiphenomena, a swirling of cerebral biochemistry in response to cultural trends, coupled with instinct -- and sifted by the imperfect, impersonal sieve of survival value over time and populations --
since death comes to everyone anyway, and natural selection operates without pity to kill individuals and populations alike --
where's your beef?
Cheers!
Yes: I can pray that God gives you grace (we are commanded to pray one for another), and God can and does give you grace, but I cannot personally imbue you with it.
(1 Cor. 3:6).
Incidentally, (hint hint), read 1 Cor. 9:24.
Do you know how "crestfallen-making" it is, to think that one has come up with a wonderful analogy to explain this, only to realize you have been scooped by the New Testament itself?
God has a wonderful sense of irony -- what a gentle way to give me a little humility.
Cheers!
Oh, I always find that when I think I’ve had a clever and original insight, someone (or several someones) has already come up with it, expressed it better, and published it. I don’t mind: I just think, “Golly, I thought of this in my own head ... and look, I was right!”
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