PaulS

DavidD, I think it is inevitable that the creation story as told by biblical literalists and young earthers, will collapse one day. I believe it is doing so as we speak. The internet has made information so readily available to so many, and I think we are starting to see the impact of such availability of information. It may seem slow, but I think it is faster than what we imagine. Cheers Paul

Interesting. I wonder when the online shop for indulgences might launch.

Welcome Element, I hope you enjoy it here. Cheers Paul

Very well put, Bill. I like it. Cheers Paul

Bill, personability The quality of being personable.Synonymspersonableness I can't agree that the teleological argument is more than just about odds. In fact, the whole basis for the teleological argument is that life is so complex and its existence astounding, that there must be a creator/designer who created it. This is an argument for odds - the chances of life being created other than by a sophisticated creator beyond our comprehension, are simply too great due to its level of complexity. It seems to me that this a position created to explain the unexplainable, but without any 'answers'. I started this thread using the term 'love' because that is what I often hear from people concerning the main attribute of God. So I was interested to hear about how people actually understand that. But at a deeper level I ask the same question about the existence of God at all - how do people understand this entity's existence and how do they come do believe this entity exists (I use the term entity 'loosely' to broadly cover person/spirit/chemical/feeling/etc). It seems to me that everyone who believes in God has their reasons, which as we have seen here vary far and wide. It just seems to me that any arguments for the existence of God seem to boil down to an individual's personal experience with such experiences varying widely - some genuinely heartfelt and many perhaps constructed by teachings and culture. I am curious as to how all of these different views fit together (if indeed they do). I appreciate everybody's input into the discussion. Thanks. Cheers Paul

Bill, I've never understood this argument - Although we don't 'know' the answer we seem to accept it because it's just too big for us to understand at present. If the odds of the universe happening so as to allow life are astronomical, then the odds must be even more astronomical for there being a creator who existed before existence itself existed. At least the lottery is only 175,000,000 to 1 (yet people win it). I would hazard a guess that much like ancient people who scoffed at the odds of the earth revolving around the sun or that indeed the earth was a sphere and not a flat disc, primal cause is still yet to be understood. Personally, I find less and less points toward there being a personable creator, but maybe I am wrong. Paul

Welcome Veratatis, I think you'll find a very diverse range of views here concerning God - in fact many people's view of God differs amongst others here! I hope you enjoy I here and nook forward to your participation and readin your views further. Cheers Paul

Hi zcarol and welcome, I hope you find plenty of interesting things here to read, but unfortunately I think Bishop Spong is yet to post here (maybe there's something in an ancient archived post, I'm not sure). You can subscribe to his newsletter and access all of his previous essays from his site http://johnshelbyspong.com/ As I understand it, Spong is affiliated with Progressive Christianity and this web site, but he is no more a player here than any other member chooses to be. I've been here a few years now and am yet to read a post from the good Bishop. I subscribe to his newsletter though and like you, have found a different way to understanding the bible than I was taught within my fundamental, biblical-literalist, Christian upbringing. Again, welcome and I hope you enjoying learning and participating here. Cheers Paul

Welcome CDWolfe, I hope you enjoy sharing and participating here. Cheers Paul

Listening to a podcast today (Interfaith Voices) the subject of mystical experiences was introduced. A couple of interviewees cited experiences they had had which to them had 'connected' them to the divine, albeit temporarily. One spoke of being in a church service that was quite intimate but enjoyable, when he was just suddenly overcoming with incredible love & feelings of connectedness with everything. Marcus Borg reports his mystical experience in an aircraft cabin once when he 'saw' light permeating 'through' the airplane an everyone in it. The producer of the show quoted William James as below: America's great psychologist, William James provided a description of the mystical experience in his famous collection of lectures published in 1902 as The Varieties of Religious Experience. In Lectures 16 and 17 he stated: "...propose to you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical...:1. Ineffability - The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. 2. Noetic Quality - Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for aftertime. 3. Transiency - Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. 4. Passivity - Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. So of course I got to wondering what mystical experiences some here may have had? Would you care to share if you have, or even if you have not, about mystical experiences? Cheers Paul

Familiarity (Christianity is something I grew up with so culturally it's something that I can relate to), and my idea of Jesus (a man who showed us how we can all live a life of peace and fulfilment).

Yes

Keith, it seems to me that Spong puts across a more thorough argument than the one-liner your OP presents. Chapter 32 of that book (from where this line comes) is dedicated to this issue and it presents Spong's reasons for deciding that he thinks Paul was most likely a repressed gay man. It's not just a shot in isolation, he discussed his thoughts at length. I think any reasonable reader would be able to weigh up Spong's reasons and decide for themselves. I don't think anybody should take anybody else's thoughts as their own without considering all the available evidence.

Why? By what rule does it have to be this way? How do you come to that conclusion? (Not arguing or saying you're wrong, just trying to understand).

I'm getting your picture now, I think. God is everything. God is you, me, our thoughts, our feelings, our physicality, our spirituality. God is a leaf and all of it's components. God is air, space, fire, cloud. God is because God can not be not? Close?

Myron, Do you have a view then whether God is love or is not love? Cheers Paul

Joseph, So how would you describe God then? Do you think of God as a soundwave, or like water and we are the fish swimming in God. How does God as love 'exist' to you? Cheers Paul

Bill, I think the difference between your parenting and any Gods is that you do anything and everything you are capable of to help your children. So if your child was starving to death, you would do what you could to intervene and save them. That's because you love them. I can't reconcile how a God sitting back and allowing things to play out as they may, could be described as 'love'. We have an agreed view on an interventionist God - there isn't one. True, how do we account for the good things in our lives, but rather than luck or chance I think I would simply put that down to "that's life". Maybe something/someone called God wound us all up to experience good things, and it's our fault that the bad things get in the way. Perhaps, but again, I can't see then why anyone would relate this to God being Love. I do like your question - "Why is there good in the world?" Maybe that is God. All good fodder to ponder! Cheers Paul

No, sorry, you didn't. I was too quick on the trigger finger Got my suffixes mixed up!

I'm not sure that is the case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior

I reckon 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' is a pretty reasonable universal concept to agree on and live by. I think it may also address much if the "what's ok for you is ok for you" where such doesn't harm or hurt others.

Bill, This 'set and forget' God to me doesn't seem to be of love though if he/she/it thinks love is to create something awesome and then walk away from it so that those that come later get to experience the screwed up version, which is what your version seems to suggest. I mean, I don't imagine you would walk out on your kids after they were born and say "hey, I provided a house for you, and a society where you can get a job, so hey, I love you". I know some do, but I wonder how many who were say starving from famine could say "God is love because he created a beautiful planet, but humans ruined it, and now me and my children are suffering an excruciating starvation to death because of those people's wrongdoings". But I appreciate your views for my consideration. Cheers Paul

Just interested in other's interpretation of God as 'love'. Why have you come to that conclusion and what evidence might you proffer to support such a claim? The thing is this - having grown up with fundy Christianity, rejected this view, experienced anger at God, taken an atheistic view which softened to agnosticism, I then experienced a rekindling of interest in the subject of God. But I've now come to a point that I see no serious argument FOR God at all, other than the gap left by the question of primal cause. Primal cause seems unanswerable at present, so I can understand 'God' being inserted here to answer it. But through this website and others I have seen God interpreted less as a supernatural 'being' and more of a spirit or force that makes the world turn. To use a phrase Marcus Borg uses, God is the water that we fish swim in, even whilst that water is inside of us. But building upon some recent discussion from member BillM concerning his thoughts on a wholesale/retail view of God, putting the human bible aside and listening to our hearts to determine who/what the wholesale God is, I have to ask how anybody can come up with the conclusion that God is love? Just interested in your thoughts. Cheers Paul

I should say that I definitely don't think the term 'sodomites' in the above verse refers to gay men. I believe it refers to what the story of Sodom actually discusses - i.e. not gay male sexual intercourse but the nastiness, ungratefulness, inhospitable nature of the majority of the people of Sodom (as told in the biblical story). If it is that narrow then it would seem that homosexual women are okay though.

My two cents worth: Spong is free to make this claim as any author who comes to an opinion is. Naturally this leaves Spong open for criticism if his statements are proved wrong or even considered dubious. In the case of Paul's homosexuality (or not), I don't think one could be definite either way. However there's more to elude to a homosexual orientation for Paul than a hetero one, but whether you could convict Paul on those grounds, I'm not sure. So it's probably just as wrong to say with conviction that Paul WAS NOT gay, as it is to say with conviction that he WAS gay. Spong's conviction is that Paul was gay - that's up to Spong. My other point is that I think there is a difference between God's love and inheriting the kingdom of God. I interpret this passage as saying that if one does/experiences things that don't contribute to bringing you closer to God, then how can you experience God's kingdom here on earth. As BillM alludes to, there is controversy over whether this verse actually refers to homosexuals or not, but clearly the list of offenders, which certainly doesn't seem exhaustive by any means, seems to point to persons experiencing life in a shallow or harmful way: 9 Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. It would seem to me that this list identifies people who are living a life not to the full, not loving wastefully, not experiencing God's love, and therefore are not likely to be inheriting a life of experiencing the kingdom of God. I don't think it means an afterlife. That's just my view. Cheers Paul