Mmmmmm;673936You are getting close to a conclusion, but you are still defining your argument in Christian terms:
Do you believe that I am coming at this from a Christian perspective? I have 100% faith but I don't think my beliefs would be embraced by Christians.
If by this, you mean atheists (no need to capitalize) require demonstrable evidence or a defensible theory before they will accept a something as believable, then you are right on. That doesn't make us fundamentalists. We will by our own principles change our beliefs as new and better theories develop.
No, what I mean is that whenever I hear an atheist in this thread they are reacting to a Christian belief system. "I don't believe in God. Who could believe in a man that lives in the sky..." etc. They're reacting to a cartoon version of the Christian belief system.
Why? If by "creator" you mean a force (gravity, fusion, magnetism etc.), your language is misleading. I see no reason why fundamental forces such as these could not have always existed, and indeed why they could not have been responsible for the creation of the present universe. If one can believe in an omnipotent god who has always existed, why not a natural cosmic force responsible for creating universes.
I believe thought precedes form and is manifested, by an interior force. I believe that the Universe itself is conscious. You're breaking a total "thing" down into parts and naming the parts and I'm talking about the sum of the parts and the "spark", the energy, that came before and exists within them.
Why do we need to invent supernatural beings to explain difficult cosmic concepts? The fact that matter exists is in no way evidence of a deity. There may be many questions we have yet to answer about the nature and origin of the cosmos, but let's not name our ignorance 'god'. While a mud puddle and I may be made of the same constituent elements, the development of consciousness took billions of years (on this planet). Neurological evolution is reasonably well understood and the selective forces favoring greater awareness of environment are quite within the realm of logic. It is not at all random just as it is perfectly natural.
Fundamantal difference of opinion here. I'm not "inventing" something, I'm just trying to define what I percieve. I don't understand "supernatural" in this context. Your last sentence states that neurological evolution... First of all, can we call it consciousness? There's no way to trace neurological evolution. That may be a term I'm unfamiliar with but I know the two words, and we can only test, gauge, or measure anything from our own perspective, so I find it impossible that we can trace neurological evolution. If this concept is not random, then it is predictible, so it has a pattern? And where there is a pattern there is intelligence?
I also don't know what "perfectly natural" means but it doesn't sound atheist.
Here's the thing. I have my own experiences which are impossible to impart. I don't ask anyone to believe what I know in my own mind to be true. I do find it irritating when a straw man argument is used to deny the existence of something greater than ourselves. That's what I meant by "atheists are fundamantalists".
They say:
1. This is the definition of God
2. This does not exist.
3. Therefore, God does not exist.
I don't know any atheists who don't acknowledge the infinite complexity and greatness of the universe. They just don't call it "god". If you wish to call the sum of proven, theoretical and unknown cosmic forces "god" (in the same way Einstein did) then you may well be an atheist. Atheists don't define "god", they are by definition without one. They deny the existence of other people's definition of god.
Einstein was not an atheist.
Lacking the ablity to define something does not mean it does not exist, and gets to the heart of my argument. It exists. It is greater than us. It was here before we were, and will be here after we are gone. We come from it and return to it.
Why must the forces that create the universe be outside of the ability of humans to comprehend? You are borrowing the logic of religion and applying it to science. We do not have all of the answers and we may never have all of them, but this doesn't mean - as you posit - that they are too complex for human intellect.
Because we come from it and are a part of it. We are smaller than it. All we can ever see is a model that represents the reality, but not the thing itself.
Let's think outside of the terms of the media debate. The phrase "descending from apes" (never mind that evolutionists don't even argue this) exists to rile the pride of humans. Why apes and not amphibians, fish, bacteria or star-dust? All are equally true. A jealous, vindictive magician in the sky is far less awe-inspiring than natural forces such as nuclear fusion or evolution.
I never talked about jealous, vindictive magicians. This is you seeing my belief in "God" as the opposite of your disbelief in that same "God". This again, is why I say atheists are fundamentalists, and reject other people's definitions, due to lack of understanding. You got this image of "God" imprinted on you when you were very young, and it didn't make sense to you then and doesn't now. Join the club. Me too. Why would God feel these petty human emotions? I recognized that as a child.
But I got past that. I'm not letting other people define my terms.
God can and has been put into words. Way too many of them and they are rife with contradictions, untruths, deliberate lies, ambiguities and misleading advice. In this case it is the adherents of these flawed words who are driving the "moment of silence" because secular schools threaten belief in those words.
No. Models of God have been put into words. Other people have done their best to put their perceptions into words, but it's not possible. If it were you could just find the right book and read it and you would be enlightened. It doesn't work that way. People that know things don't always guard them because it is a secret they are keeping, but because it is impossible to pass the knowledge along.
Instead of a moment of silence, why not add an extra moment of astrophysics so that we can gape in awe of the facts (as best we understand them) rather than pray to our ignorance.
I am not a teacher. I used to teach guitar. I started giving free group lessons at the library in addition to private lessons. This led to me getting a job through a referral at a court ordered school for teenagers who are between juvenile hall and public school. I only taught 6 of them at a time. I don't have the training or skills that Buzzetta has. I can't tell you what it would have meant to be able to have a moment of quiet reflection. The idea of a time when the students can't talk to each other but must spend that time in silence doing whatever they want sounds great to me.
I agree that the wonders of astrophysics or whatever higher ideas can be shared would also make a nice daily "ritual". I don't see why there can't be both.
