DavidD

"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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

1) I have always thought the Romans would have crucified anyone who overturned tables in the temple at any time, much less Passover. If that was the primary cause of the crucifixion, the world is no uglier. Countless numbers of people were crucified. Many false Messiahs were crucified. Why not the real one? 2) It is not just a substitutionary atonement that is loving. If Jesus was an atonement by example, it may have been just as loving. Jesus may still have heard the Father say, "Let them kill you" before praying in the garden, "not my will, but Yours". If He wasn't the sinless Lamb, if He didn't have all the powers of God, then it is even a greater faith and greater love that kept Him from running away. 3) Is it the words of Jesus that matter most or something else? Yes, the gospels say to keep His words, but Paul wrote, "But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God really dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him." (Romans 8: 9) It would seem that words are not enough, though there are other verses that say belief is enough. Whatever is involved with having the Spirit come live within us, it is what it is, no matter whose authority is involved. If God says that the Spirit of a wandering philosopher will determine how God sees you, who is any man to say otherwise? To argue that only one sort of theology can support this process is pure sophistry and idolatry, no matter how commonly the argument is made. Conservatives have gotten used to belittling the idea of atonement by example and/or a diminished sense of divinity to Jesus. What I know is that I read the gospels, saw Jesus as someone to follow and did that. As a liberal I liked what a lot of liberals like, to follow the gospel version of the commandments being to love God, love neighbors and love enemies, in that order. For years that's how I evaluated what was moral for me to do on a daily basis. I also prayed a lot for direction and other things and found I would have these prayers answered in various ways, in recent years in words from God. My awareness of the Spirit living in me gradually increased to where I can now go through all of Paul's description of what the Spirit did for Him in all of his letters but Philemon and see that the Spirit in me does what Paul describes. Some of that is untestable, such as the Spirit giving us eternal life, but some of that is more immediately experienced. In contrast, conservatives say that what matters is belief in the trinity, the virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, resurrection, and the inerrancy of the Bible. What authority is there for that? The words of the Bible and argument? Paul's description of the Spirit isn't necessarily true because it's in the Bible. It's only true if it's true. One can test it. Look at the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5. Some people have them, but look how many who favor substitutionary atonement don't, instead who are arrogant, ignorant, hateful, neglect the needy and raise up idols of doctrine, rituals, leaders and institutions instead of being loyal to God, whoever and whatever God is. Those who say they would walk away from God if God isn't just who they say He is are inviting God to invite them to do just that. Jesus Christ is my Lord and my Savior. Exactly how that came to be is less imporatant than that it did come to be. I have come to understand that from the Bible, from following Jesus, and from watching the Spirit come to live in me. It did amaze me to discover how the Spirit is a palpable presence that given how few Christians mention its importance, must be fairly rare to sense as Paul did. Maybe it is much more common in a quieter form. I know this first-hand. I am suspicious that those who rely so heavily on argument know much less.

Who said anything about relying only on private revelation? I mentioned some evidence that the Bible has errors. There's a lot more. Atheists have websites devoted to going through the Bible from cover to cover listing every contradiction or other problem someone could compile about that. As someone who knows that Jesus Christ is my Lord and my Savior by charismatic gift, I can't imagine why I would want to spend my time looking at all that. Yet there are some points, such as with homosexuality, where it matters whether the Bible is inerrant or not. How does one address that? My first point was to say that in my experience, Bible-believing Christians don't budge at all to any review of why homosexuality should be seen as a biological trait, not the explanation Paul gives in the first chapter of Romans. I've heard many who speak of the Bible as you do, DCJ. It doesn't sound right to me. I don't see how Jesus could have endorsed a New Testament that hadn't been written yet at the time of His ministry. So much of what people say on this topic, whether it's defending the Bible or arguing against inerrancy, is just argument to excuse a position someone has already committed to, an idolatry as I see it, either an idolatry of the Bible or an idolatry of belief against the Bible. If you make your mind up on your own, an adversary has got you either way, doesn't he? Who is not an idol? Why God! And who is God? Well you can start with what the Bible says. You can start with what philosophy says. If you've been given faith, then who God is is part of that faith, I would think. Somewhere out there is God. And most of us believe that anyone can try praying to Him with a chance of being heard. So one can pray for understanding, for direction, for strength, for comfort, for all sorts of things. To have one's prayer answered is not what I'd call a private revelation. Maybe it is. It's your phrase. But if an answer to prayer is what you call "private revelation", I'll take it. You know, it seems to me a lot of people I admire had private revelations, like Jesus, Paul, even if Paul was wrong about homosexuality. They certainly didn't get their ideas from following a crowd. I don't, but I don't trust any one thing either. I trust God, and I trust the integration of many things to know what God is saying to me. It works for me. What doesn't work is this impasse between Bible-believing Christians and others who have all kinds of evidence how the Bible is wrong. Do you think the Bible is right every single time? I wonder what the odds of that would be? Whatever it is, it would be a miracle if the Bible were right and science and other experience is wrong. Yet no one can say that it's one way or the other with absolute authority but God. That thought has driven me to prayer many times. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with that.

"their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us" It came up before there was this section here, on one of the main message boards, that some wouldn't say it this way. If I say something "works for me", I'm talking about something like the above. I don't see "truth" as so relative, but as soma suggests, it's not where one needs to be putting one's energy. More important to me would be if the idea that faith is trust and devotion caught on, rather than whoever believes the hardest has the greatest faith. Faith is trusting God despite uncertainty. As has also been written elsewhere here, Marcus Borg has a nice chapter on this in The Heart of Christianity.

Oh I like that analogy to left-handedness. I haven't heard that before. Has anyone ever encountered a Bible-believing Christian, who believes homosexuality is a sin based on Leviticus and many of Paul's writings, change his or her mind based on evidence that homosexuality is natural, not a choice except in the sense of exactly what gays and lesbians do about their attraction to the same sex? I can't say I have. Yet I've seen this same exchange many times. Elsewhere I shared my personal experience of a boy who grew up with my daughters. All the parents knew he was gay very early on. He didn't. He dated girls for a while. In fact my older daughter was the last girl he dated, before coming out of the closet at about age 17. Wow, what a safe boyfriend he was. He was more respectful to me than any other of my daughters' dates. I liked him a lot, yet I was certain this was not going to last. So this well-behaved, mild-mannered young man was estranged from God? No, I think it makes much more sense that Paul was wrong. The Bible is wrong in many places, you know. Genesis has the creation of life in an order that science knows to be wrong, even if somehow the absolute scale of the timeline science has it wrong, which it doesn't. The Bible says that sin causes disease. Medicine has found many causes of disease. None of them are the direct consequences of sin. I think as many patients as have been treated now by modern medicine, it would have been found by now if there was some unknown cause of disease in a large number of patients compared to the biological ones that are known. There is no such gap to be explained by sin. Still some people idolize the Bible. Does God? Wow that would ruin my relationship with Him if He did. But He knows He didn't dictate the Bible. Those who gets close enough to Him can ask Him themselves. I don't know what else will help this, unfortunately.

I wanted to come back to the peaceful and simple way soma frames this question here. I talk about this issue a lot, in large part to see if there is any way I can present my belief that the answer to the question here is a loud and resounding "no" and be heard by people who are sure the answer is "yes" or perhaps just the people who aren't sure. I'm not trying to advance the argument here, but I remember the way I got here, and I find that interesting. I don't know that I heard anyone say something like "all religions are true" until Joseph Campbell was on PBS almost 20 years ago, but throughout my liberal Christian upbringing there were messages that reflected the perennial philosophy that there are common truths among all religions. I embraced that. I surprised a high school teacher by how insistently I stood up for Islam when we were reading Dante's Inferno. Of course when I became even more of a scientist and largely gave up on religion, my only exposure to religion was not flattering. It would be from creationists saying silly things about science, proudly, too, as if they were better scientists than scientists. Then there were books like The Tao of Physics, which to me is obviously twisting facts to fit the author's thesis. I had gone back to prayer in my thirties, because I needed it, but I suppose I never would have gone back to religion per se except for that road-to-Damascus experience I described here recently. That was not a little thing. And the same God talks to me now as talked to me then. It says something about that God that our relationship has been steadily evolving. It wasn't that my hair turned white, and suddenly I had my mission. It wasn't that God could tell me exactly what the plan was for the next 20 years. but He gave me direction, first in impressions, eventually in words. I wish He would dictate to me exactly what to say and do, but it doesn't work that way. It is interesting to contemplate why not. With that experience, I would have gone wherever God directed as far as religion. My first expectation was that this must mean I was completely wrong so I was ready to become the anti-liberal, a fundamentalist. That's not what happened. What was good science before I knew God's presence was good science afterward. Fundamentalists were still obvious hypocrites, many of them. I spent years reading the Bible, going to different churches, finding a deeper relationship with God, continuing my career at helping people doing volunteer work. It was all good training. And God was eventually having a presence within my consciousness that I couldn't have tolerated at all that first day. I went nuts for about four hours after the first sentence from God. Now He doesn't go five minutes without saying something, unless I'm busy. He told me to do this, really. I knew this was here. He knew this was here. Why not make use of it for those who are put off by my other style of writing. A few minutes ago He gave me a few ideas as mileposts. I said fine. I usually do. That doesn't make this the Word of God. I don't think there is anything like that. I'm not sure communication from God gets any more efficient than this. Yet with all that going on, what do I know? I know that there are some truths some people know and other people don't. I know that on message boards in recent years when somebody said "all religions are true," I would think of reasons to say all religions are false, always careful to qualify that every religion has certain false aspects and certain true aspects. I've gotten tired of being so careful. All religions are false. Of course that doesn't mean everything about every religion is false. Jesus Christ is my Lord and my Savior. That's true, but Christianity is still false in some ways. So it's false. You know why? Because God says so. It's enough for me, partly because I remember all those long arguments, and that one can bring up fact after fact to push the argument that all religions are false. While there are probably more books in favor of the perennial philosophy than against, one can read articles against it and whatever other input one wants to answer that simple question asked in the beginning of this thread. Anyone can make up his or her mind. So are the ones who say, "no", bad guys? Now I suspect that few people if any thinks God directed me to write this. You're wrong. He did. I'm not sure why. It might be training for me about being open about it. Maybe one person besides me will get something out of it. I don't know. I just trust the God who's been with me for 17 years. 17 years after a road-to-Damascus experience is a long time. You can look it up. It is strange what people will believe happened thousands of years ago, but don't believe can happen in the present. I understand. I wouldn't believe it, but God is right here and anytime I want God to tell me something, I just ask. He never tells me facts not already in my mind. He never says there's a bag of money in the bushes at 3rd & Chestnut, but when it comes to efficient things to do, things I'd never think of, things He wants for reasons that are hard to explain briefly, God is amazing. I trust Him. God says there's a better slogan than, "It's all true." He likes "Live and learn." Of course everyone is free to go their own way.

MOW's comment about Lord started me thinking. I have only positive associations with that myself. I think of all the things I dislike about fundamentalism - the idolatry of the Bible, the inability to see any validity in another point of view, the agenda of anti-abortion, anti-evolution, and anti-homosexuality, and I don't hear "Lord" in any of it. It must be there, but it doesn't register with me. To me "Lord" came up in prayer, both the Lord's prayer and more personal ones. I learned to use it from people who I did think were following the real God, at least somewhat, even if some had beliefs that weren't mine. When I say Jesus Christ is my Lord and my Savior, the first part just means I follow Him. He is my leader, not as impersonally as a political leader, but as naturally and intimately as being the head of my body, Paul's image. If only I could get along with the rest of Christianity as intimately as I do with Jesus. I think of samurai movies where I think the word for lord is "tono". "Dictator" would be a poor translation. There is not only the sense of someone with high rank, but a brother-in-arms as well. I don't hear Lord as any more oppressive than "boss", as if Jesus were some crime lord. It's not like calling your spouse "honey", but there is this sense of endearment that I think is missing in looking at "Lord" as someone who lords himself over you, maybe even involuntarily, maybe even illegitimately, arbitrarily. People do hear all sorts of words differently.

So even under the heading of debate, some of you only want to read the comments you want. How religious of you to make judgments about why that's not what you got. Yes, Cynthia, I have said before that physics has nothing to do with spirituality. My saying that doesn't make this a fact any more than others saying the opposite makes that a fact. What I was saying was that there are plenty of resources to explain why whatever mystical interpretation of physics that catches someone's fancy is wrong. I can't make anyone read them. As far as the difference between the physical and spiritual, Aletheia raises some interesting questions. Why can't we know all this? I think that's interesting. Others would rather have a theology that claims to know everything. They're welcome to it.

Thousands of good studies on prayer? I don't think so. Physics showing separateness is an illusion? The illusion is that anything about physics relates to spirituality. Consider just about any author you like who says physics has some mystical application. You can find well-reasoned debunking of that author on the net. I was impressed by reviews of Roger Penrose's books at amazon.com. His is the only book I've seen there where both spotlight reviews are extremely negative, chosen even though amazon is in the business of selling books. I could reiterate that Penrose is an arrogant mathematician, with no understanding of neuroscience, that microtubules are far too large for quantum effects, but it's been done. All one has to do is read the criticism that's available. The physical universe is one, connected by a physics that seems to be the same everywhere, but that cares nothing about me. There is more, something spiritual, something that is not physical, that does love me. My connection to it has grown as I have grown spiritually. There is a partition in my mind. The part closest to me is what I've always known, but beyond that is Spirit. It's not a solid boundary. Is this the veil that tore when Jesus died? I don't know. Maybe that was something physical, maybe not. The boundary between me and God is not well-defined. It may be as complicated as the boundary between the air spaces and capillaries in my lungs, but I don't see any reason to see it as physical. Ancient people saw it that way. It didn't get them that far. To see God as having no physical existence or relevance is a lonely position to take, but it's a possibility. Then what is my connection to God? It is through Spirit. To look for Spirit in the physical is to be distracted. Those who don't like such dualism might just have to get over that someday.

Why not? Because the authors of the gospels liked the story of Jesus not throwing Himself down to be saved by God because that would be testing God? I forget the references, but I remember there being Old Testament verses where God invites His people to see if He won't deliver blessings to them if they do what He wants. Empiricism is not a sin. I don't know if you were saved in an auto accident due to the hand of God or due to automobile engineers. I suppose a lot of analysis might show if there was something miraculous about that event or if the car simply protected you the way it was designed to by human beings. If you have faith, it doesn't matter. If you don't have faith, you likely have better things to do. Experiments in prayer are looking for something to give people a reason to pray. Anyone who has gotten very far with a prayer life knows what prayer has done for him or her personally. I do. I also know it didn't do anything to pray to win the lottery a few times. Some prayer works. Some doesn't. What reason could there be for God not to want us to know the difference? Just living a life tests many things about theology. Who says we are supposed to shut up about that? That doesn't sound like the freedom of liberalism to me.

One reason I am a liberal Christian is that I think the Bible was written by men, not God. If the Spirit could get writers to quote Jesus perfectly 50 years after His death, I'm sure that would still happen today. Instead this resource is less than perfect. Still it must capture something of Jesus. Do I have to know which is the historical Jesus and which is the legendary Jesus? I hope not, because all I really know is what parts of the story of Jesus affected me most. Why should He be a way to God, whether it's a real person or a character in a book who shows me that way? I suspect the most important image of Jesus for me is the way He prayed the night before His crucifixion. The synoptic gospels vary a little in describing this, but the key phrase for me is, "Not my will, but Yours". Did Jesus really say that? Was He just a man who didn't know what the gospels say He did at that point? I used to wonder about that. I find that I don't now. When I started praying again in my thirties, I didn't follow this example. I didn't trust God that much then. I just wanted help. So I went to God as a last resort. That went well enough that I learned to go to God as a first resort about certain things. I don't remember how long it took me to pray, "Not my will, but Yours". I'm sure different people see that differently. Besides the ridicule atheists would give me for that, I remember a conservative who claimed I only prayed that so I could say everything I did is God's will. No, I mean what I pray. I believe in the power of prayer in ways that that conservative apparently doesn't. My experience has borne that out for me. Jesus taught me that. I don't believe everything the gospels has Him saying, but this one reached me and works for me. I guess that's one of the complexities in following Jesus. Who is the Jesus who leads to God as opposed to one who doesn't? Still He's been a way to God for me.