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DavidD

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DavidD last won the day on July 31 2013

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  1. "Quantum" refers to how at a very small, building-block level, energy comes in steps. It's not a continuous variable. That's it. It's not at all mystical. That there are spooky things like quantum entanglement of co-created particles is intriguing, but there's no way the whole universe is entangled this way, even if all our heavier atoms came from the same supernova. That's not co-created enough. That's the science. To a neuroscientist, "conscious" means ordinarily awake, as I am typing this. It's also not at all mystical. It's just phenomenology. When someone uses a term like "quantum consciousness", therefore, it can have no meaning in science, no matter what degrees the speaker has. It's worse than a mixed metaphor. The speaker means whatever he or she means. The listener hears whatever he or she hears. Such is the imprecise way of language. But it's not science.
  2. It so happens my undergraduate degree was in physics, almost 40 years ago but with an A+ in quantum mechanics. Then I went into neuroscience. Quantum physics in no way denies a boundary around self nor denies a reality beyond that self. The Uncertainty Principle just means that the smallest details of reality are fuzzy, not reality as a whole. People leave out important words when they correctly say that our brain creates a mind that is its own reality. Our brain is a mirror. Our mind is the image in that mirror. The image in that mirror is a virtual reality of the material world plus whatever spiritual parts there may be beyond that. It has no mystical power such as the Law of attraction. It is a virtual reality, one that distorts reality easily, but doesn't erase the true reality out there that was its template, as well as template to billions of other minds. I like to believe there are non-physical aspects to that, but they are far from proven. Meanwhile I notice that the Wikipedia article on "What the Bleep do we Know" has a large section of academics calling it pseudoscience. That works for me.
  3. Who is more worth following, the historical Jesus or the gospel Jesus? If it's the former, there are many authors who vary on who that was. How do you pick one to believe? It might be the latter, no matter how far the authors of the gospels went to construct words and events. What does God intend for us? If that's nothing, then what difference does it make? According to Borg and Crossan, Paul was received best by the Gentiles who attended synagogues, but hadn't converted fully. It wasn't Paul who chose the Gentiles as much as the other way around. Also Paul claimed to have been told by the Spirit to preach to Gentiles. To dismiss that is to again say God has no place in this. Maybe not, but then again what difference does it make, if not?
  4. The message of Jesus was love God, love neighbors, including Samaritans, and love enemies. The gospels present this clearly. Love gets obscured not by debate for the sake of debate, but because many have an agenda beyond the above, such as propping up other things in the Bible or making an idol of the unborn child that isn't in the Bible at all. It's not progressives who condemn their enemies in this to hell or otherwise try to hurt them.
  5. My favorite book on the historical Jesus was the one John Dominic Crossan wrote some years ago. He pointed out the difficulties for deciding which parts of Jesus' cultural context were the most important to his actual life. It's too bad this is so speculative. I guess the Jesus Seminar took this as far as one can in voting how strongly they thought any Gospel verse was actually said by Jesus. That got them mostly hate from conservatives, but mostly shoulder shrugs from those like me who agree with them. The easy answers aren't likely to be right.
  6. I was a member of a UU in the eighties. It wasn't a burden. You'd be more likely called upon for church projects and retreats. If you want to be in the church with both feet, it won't really be a difference. I left UU because I was changing to be explicitly Christian. Mostly I've gone to UMC churches since then. I never joined. There I would wonder about joining some who are more conservative than I am. Last year's vote in the governing body of UMC was 61-39 against same-sex marriage. I'd rather they join me than I join them, but that's not an option.
  7. There is an advantage in Christianity's external focus, At a minimum there is a culture out there to help us, people who have been my way before. That is far from perfect, but it's definite. It includes advice to look within (Mt. 7:1-5). Getting help non-physically is not so definite, internally or externally.
  8. Rhino, I agree with your original post that you don't control this. No one made up the issue of whether the Bible is being used as an idol. People are either very right or very wrong in what they're doing about this. Sometimes it couldn't be more extreme, such as Mike Huckabee saying that anyone who votes for Obama is going to hell. What amazes me is that no one from Huckabee's side criticized such extremism, as far as I heard. How can people hear that either side may be carrying their beliefs to the point of idolatry and not take a step back to look at that? I agree that all we can do is our best. Intellectually I have no doubt that Huckabee was very wrong to say what he did, but there is a part of me that is insecure about that. If it's so obvious, why doesn't God fix someone's heart, mine or theirs? I suppose we need to learn to have faith, even in a progressive faith that looks at the way many use the Bible and sees idolatry.
  9. Bill, you point out something else that is frustrating about this. Love and truth don't go along well in individuals. If the Spirit sanctifies us, shouldn't we be improving at both? Or does the Spirit have other priorities?<br /><br />It is as you write that people believe what they believe. I am pacified by that when it comes to people who trust apologetics to say there is no problem with biblical inerrancy. What amazes me is how easy it would be for those with some exposure to science to know better. If you do the calculation to suggest that the current drop in magnetic field can't be more than 20,000 years old, how do you miss the bigger context of millions of years of complete reversals?<br /><br />It's like the politics of global warming. Because 1998 was an especially warm year, deniers say with a straight face that warming stopped after that year, yet the actual graphs show that the trend has continued warming straight through the most recent data. Human capacity for denial is amazing.<br /><br />I hope it's true as the others said that religion is evolving. It may take centuries, though.
  10. I live not far from the creationist museum in Santee, CA. Recently I was listening to a Christian radio station and the museum had an ad on. It included an invitation to an exhibit that presented 10 reasons why the Earth is no more than 20,000 years old. I was intrigued enough to see what their website said about this. Most of their denial of geology and evolution was vague and subjective. Some claims they make must be false, such as their claim that both carbon dating and argon dating are on their side, but it would be a lot of work to track down their references as to why. One claim they made was easy to evaluate fully on its face. They claim the currently decreasing magnetic field of the Earth is proceeding so quickly that the original field and therefore the Earth could at most be 20,000 years old. That's an absolutely incredible claim. It's not the math that makes it incredible. It's that anyone who has the relevant data at hand also has geological data saying that the Earth's magnetic field reverses completely almost like clockwork, presumably for billions of years. Data from the sea floor shows stripes of rock with alternating magnetism for many millions of years. Computer models show this continuing indefinitely. Yet somewhere in teaching this story was a creationist who realized that if you ignore most of the data, there's an argument in here for a young Earth. That's the part that amazes me. Someone wanted a young Earth this badly. It can be hard to understand what's wrong with every Bible-based attack on geology and evolution, but there's a good place to start every time. What does a scientist say about that attack (not an engineer or with a job related to science)? Why didn't the Bible remain scientific truth? Creationists don't want that answer. Even halfway well-meaning fear-mongering on TV gets the magnetic field story wrong with warnings of the field's collapse someday. No, computer models show the reversed polarity happens in patches, so the field never goes to zero. Sometimes Christian apologetics is not about well-meaning ignorance, though. Look at some atheist's website of 101 or more contradictions in the Bible and then a book on apologetics. Things like this deliberate misuse of magnetic field data happen regularly, because that's what it takes to prop up biblical inerrancy. Yet biblical inerrancy is not on the verge of collapse except in the mind of someone like me, because I was born recently enough to know science, and because the flaws of Christian apologetics have bothered me for 40 years. Will it ever collapse? Will it weaken as opposition to homosexuality weakens or as science keeps growing? I am sure that it keeps going because of the almost blind leading the completely blind. So what? It drives me to prayer.
  11. One can be called Christian who thinks Jesus was utterly flesh and a good teacher, same as Buddhist and some other labels. I think the meaning of "liberal" or "progressive" Christianity reasonably goes that far, unlike "Bible-believing" Christian or something else more specific. "Christian atheist" would make sense to me, though I don't hear that from those who believe Jesus to be a good teacher. If there is no God and no Spirit, wouldn't a good teacher know that, ruling out Jesus? The question for me is how much more than a good teacher is Jesus, a thoroughly mystical issue unfortunately. I call Jesus my Lord and my Savior, in part because I was raised that way, but in part because of how I experience that and what it might mean non-physically. Much of the Bible is myth. Any serious scholar admits this. But what is the rest? Much is longing for the God-shaped void in our brain, the one evolution built from our desires for power, wisdom, goodness, love, and whatever else. Is there spirit(or spirits) that fills this well? Was that the source of Isaiah's experiences or were they just dreams? I don't know, but I reach to Jesus as well as God for whatever help I can get with that. That's the sort of liberal Christian I am. There are other ways that are reasonable for others.
  12. I noticed a quote from Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptists in the Wikipedia article on the CPC. In 2003 he wrote a commentary on being tolerant of other religions and of sexuality. He summarized his disapproval by labeling this "the basic hatred of biblical truth that drives those on the theological left." I haven't seen such a drive. I've seen many people searching for integrative truths, often with some understandable confusion. The hatred I see is more often from someone like Mike Huckabee proclaiming that everyone who votes for Obama is going to hell. I don't see that on the left. This reminds me of those who attack evolution as a great conspiracy to reject God. I've found science to be much more about finding truth than rejecting anything. The Nobel Prize goes to discoverers of truth that stand up to great scrutiny, not some conspiracy. Yes, John 14:6 is in the Bible, but what did Jesus mean, "No one comes to the Father except through Me"? Is the truth of that just in His flesh, His name, or maybe something that's in other religions, too? Similarly one can explore sex in the Bible and doubt the claim that God only wants heterosexual virgins to have sex on their wedding night. In early Christianity some thought it good for even married couples to forego sex. Does modern orthodoxy hate that "truth"? As much as I hate lies, I try to understand liars. Couldn't Albert Mohler resist making it black and white? Why doesn't Jesus lead him the way He leads me? No doubt there are lots of reasons. Love is about searching for truth, not wallowing in hate. Jesus didn't teach that to me verbatim, but it has been a cooperative effort between the two of us.
  13. I also am Christian because I was raised that way, in an Episcopal church. I suspect if I had been raised in a different religion, I would be pursuing a life of love and truth that way, but I don't know the details of how to do that compared to following Jesus. Something had to support me in being progressive, however. I tried out more conservative churches from 1992 - 2004, as they seem more serious about following Jesus, but there is so much hypocrisy and ignorance there. Scientific truth cannot be waved away by one hand in the 21st century, whether that's evolution or archeology. Fortunately I'm not on my own in trying to discern the truth in the Bible where so much is not literally true. Many authors help with that, like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, though I've yet to find one who is perfect. As BillM just wrote, there is no TV or radio that preaches progressive Christianity, just books and individuals, on the internet and in person. Still that's been enough for me not to give up on church entirely.
  14. I have heard from God in words for 24 years, since I was 34. It was very exciting at first, but I quickly learned I could not trust every word. Whether one hears words or has a feeling that one put into words, even silence, they are our words. I hear my particular version of English, with innumerable concepts attached that I have learned. I never hear facts I didn't already know. It's not hard to imagine why different people hear different things from God. The experience is necessarily a cooperative effort, and who can say how much of God is in any of it. I think it's a mistake to say there is nothing of God in it. That's no more justified than saying it's always 10% God. It depends on the individual mind having the experience. How much of God is in that mind?
  15. Might this be reckless? I never will see it this way, not that Jesus is some schmuck no matter what His ultimate nature is. And why do you assume that God required His death, even if substitutionay atonement is not true? There are many ways our behavior may have required His death beyond the fact that the Romans would have crucified anyone who acted like Jesus. I bring up the Spirit to say that there is something more important than words. Paul says so. Paul says it is the Spirit that brings eternal life - I forget in which of his letters. So if you believe Paul in one place, why don't you believe him in another? It is not a matter of my being so special. I simply pursued God however I could, not assuming that traditional theology was correct. If traditionalists want to believe that tradition is perfect, to hang on to their understanding of John 3:16 or Romans 10:9 and hope that that is God's understanding, that is up to them. I don't trust mere words, especially not from people who contradict those words in their own actions. The Bible tells other stories that are not true. Whatever else is wrong with Genesis, it certainly gets the order of the appearance of different kinds of life on Earth wrong. It's not true that disease is all due to sin and can all be cured with prayer. It's not true what people take from Romans 1 to mean that homosexuality is a consequence of abandoning God. It is not enough to quote the Bible. I believe you need some confirmation that something in the Bible is correct, from living with the Spirit, not as a single "Yes" or "No", but as a lifetime process of prayer, study, living with God and moving on to something else. It's not all for this world. What makes you think that my argument was limited to ethics or gifts? Did you understand what Paul said in Romans 8:9? Do you know Matthew 25:46? This is what the Bible itself says, that words are not enough, for anything but eternal punishment. Now maybe death is punishment enough. It doesn't look to me that it's God who's insisting on that. So no matter how lovely and easy, the traditional way of seeing the atonement may not be right. If you tell God, "to hell with You", should you find that out at somepoint, I don't think that will help. I think what helps is to acknowledge that God is God, whoever and whatever God is, and I'm not God. Neither are you. Neither is everyone who believes the same tradition put together. No matter how much people want certainty, God cannot be bound by theology. Now maybe He bound Himself or maybe He didn't. Maybe there is another story that He likes better. His belief is the one that counts. If you don't believe Paul when he said, "Christ lives in me." as something very real, not abstract, then don't believe me. People can choose to believe whatever they want. If you do believe Paul, even if he made some mistakes, the presence of the Spirit is not one he was likely to miss. Yet so many people pretend that that is not important. I'd look up where Paul says that it is the Spirit that brings eternal life, but you really should look through his letters and remind yourself of everything Paul says about the Spirit. This is not something that deserves to be pushed aside as merely "spiritual". Ask God and wait for an answer. Anyone can do that instead of just repeating the same story that everyone you know tells, no matter how much it insults God during the course of its telling. Did no alarm go off in you as you told it? How you talk about God and the Spirit is between you and Them, but I never would write as you write, and I am quite sure God loves me no matter what I do.
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