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4.14.2004
Six Steps from God to Jesus Chaotic Not Random Kilgore Trout (Yes, THAT Kilgore Trout!) writes about God. I've heard a few people take on the task of reasoning the existence of God from basic logical assumptions. And you can get pretty far along as long as you stick with vague notions of a creator for creation, the universe, unable to create itself must have been created from an outside force... etc. But.. most people intent on proving the existence of God are not usually content to stop at such simple concepts. The whole idea is to prove that THEIR god exists, hence validating their religious convictions. So at some point they make IT, that HUGE leap that takes God from a simple concept to book-writing prude. Once they hop, skip and jump their way to the Bible then they're home free with various Biblical interpretations for whatever they want to preach. One day I sat down with a C.S. Lewis book. I forget the title but its one that believers give to non-Christians to get them to convert (back). Lewis, a former atheist writes about his transformation into a Christian. I was curious. Here I was a proclaimed atheist and I was ready to have my certainty challenged. Bah! So I'm not an atheist anymore. But not because of anything C.S. Lewis wrote. I'm not an atheist because being one meant that I had no concept of a higher being whatsoever. Me? I'll leave a little doubt there. Some would probably not see much difference from my point of view and hardcore atheism. I find the whole idea that a creator wants to play hide and seek games with humanity silly. So God wants me to believe but he doesn't want to give me any evidence? I have to have faith or it doesn't work? He hasn't come back and updated his official "handbook" for two thousand years? He's telling different groups of people different things? He doesn't bother to step in between two religious factions slaughtering each other to let one side know its wrong? That's freakin' demented if you ask me. To have any hope in the relative goodness of creation I HAVE to NOT BELIEVE in current concepts of God. They're too messed up! That the currents visions of God are just horribly magnified versions of our own human biases and prejudices seems lost on most people. Its obvious to me. So Lewis goes through the usual and gets to the part where he has to go from vague notion of creator to the God of Jesus and Bible and he just fakes it. I was laughing my ass off. I was incredulous. It was like that scene in Army of Darkness where he's about to open the Necronomicon and he yells out "KLATOO... VERATA... NECTtphhhhhhhhhh...". After a little search I think it was Mere Christianity that I had read. The argument as I remember was that since men had a shared reference of right and wrong that there must be a source of this intuition, and that was God. My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. I don't buy it, sorry. So then the leap: regarding Jesus as the son of God. We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form. Right, so if a man runs around saying he is the son of God but is an goodly person and not a lunatic or a fiend, our false dichotomy, erected by Lewis himself, insists that he must be the son of God? The simplest explanation is that this person thinks he is the son of God but is not a violent person. In today's terms he might be a non-violent schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur. But not the messiah. There are many examples of people that are delusional or even make claims to divine contact that are not lunatics. Look at Pat Robertson for example. But I never set out to take on C.S. Lewis. I thought he made a good example of one that has tried to jump the gap between God and religion and failed. In my opinion I might add. So it goes. | |
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