Burl

Not much impact yet, but I’m 64 with severe lung issues and a wife that works in the ER so I expect to get hit by this bug pretty hard.

I posted before we knew about COVID-19 that an economic failure was coming.  That was obvious from economics reports.  I suspect closing everything is a convenient scapegoat.

1 hour ago, JosephM said:

That may be an accurate statement. I can only speak for my own experience with my children and their church. My daughter , husband and grandchildren go to a fundamental Baptist church. They love going and are very community oriented at the one they attend. They do sports there , plays,  Bible school, numerous dining get togethers, support missions and are extremely active and close to other members. Their life revolves around their church and its members (Go as many as three times a week). They are as you say not interested in the philosophy of religion however they do want to go to church and are along with other members refusing to suspend services as many other churches are because of the Coronavirus. They most likely don't even know what panentheistic means.  Salvation is preached at every meeting and event i have attended with them  and they believe in a literal Heaven,  that God lives there., and that the Bible is literally God's word. My spirit is grieved each time i attend and witness the programming of the youth there. But it is what it is.

Yes, some churches don’t move beyond the Sunday School level but that’s a good beginning.

I don’t care much for those churches either.  They remind me of parent-teacher nights and having to squish up in my daughter’s desk.

29 minutes ago, thormas said:

Not sure what you mean by theism being panentheism - unless you are with Macquarie who calls panentheism by the name dialectic theism?

My experience is that most people have thought of God as an outsider God, in his heaven, who breaks miraculously into the 'natural' world. I think this has been changing but I allow it is still the dominant take on God.  Having said that I do recognize that even in the Catholicism of the 60s there was a bit of a panentheistic take on God. However, even omnipresence was more an 'eye from the sky' take on God.

 

 

 

In the OT God and Mankind are essentially separate from each other.  The relationship is largely the Hebrews purifying themselves to allow God to use them as tools in bringing forth the divine will.

This relationship starts to gradually change to a panentheistic one which is fully completed at Pentecost.  John 14 explicates the theology behind the objective reports in Acts 2.

Panentheism is synonymous with at•one•ment.  This change in our relationship with God is the good news Christians are expected to promulgate.   

Unfortunately this degenerated into proselytism,  but that’s people for you. 
 

1 hour ago, thormas said:

This ia a tough one for while it is biblical, I agree that many think in theistic terms. The panenthesitic take on God has been neglected it seems for much of Christian history.

Do your understand atonement and incarnation pantheistically?

Panentheism is theistic, and I do understand everything about Jesus panentheistically.

I don’t think panentheism has been avoided, but public preaching necessarily needs to kept basic and culturally relevant.  Pastors preach about the timelessness and omnipresence of God, which is really panentheistic.  

Most people don’t even want to go to church, much less take a deep dive into the philosophy of religion.  

42 minutes ago, thormas said:

Yes and no: actually to be a Christian is more that accepting certain beliefs or professing 'faith' - most importantly it is being Christ or Love in the world. The case can be made that a Nazi who exterminated other human beings has failed. If they 'sinned' and are lost, then repenting means stopping the 'sinful' action. If not, they are not. 

When I brought up Germans I was trying to express how the Nazi government corrupted and perverted the Christian citizenry.

Sin, vice and evil have a spreading nature.  Like rust, small bits are inevitable but without constant maintenance the rust runs invisibly under the paint and subtly destroys whatever it touches.

31 minutes ago, JosephM said:

I find that true of many Progressive Christians. However, many of my relatives that identify as fundamental/traditional Christians would differ as some of them see God as only outside of themselves and far away with a uniting in the future inspite of NT writings that can be interpreted to

Even Calvin admits (somewhat grudgingly) in his NT notes referencing Acts 17:28 that we do exist within God.

[  For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.  Acts 17:28  ]

That should convince most fussy traditionalists.

Peter Abelard (1071-1121) developed the at•one•ment concept of atonement as an expression of God’s love for mankind.  Abelard ought to be nominated as the first progressive Christian.

4 minutes ago, thormas said:

Do you think he's saying, "a CAT!"

He is saying, “I SELF-IDENTIFY AS A CAT!”

1 minute ago, thormas said:

We are indeed connected to the universe. Some - but not all - might confuse the concept of god and the universe and for others there might be no confusion as they believe the 'two' are the same. However not all are so confused or are pantheists.

The Christian would say God knows himself already and we - and the cosmos - are God's 'letting be' so that that which is not God but 'other' can have life and being.

Biblically, Christians are panenthiests.  We exist inside of God.

This is what Jesus accomplished in the atonement.  He brought mankind into God - the at•one•ment.  
 

The atonement was everything in Jesus life from incarnation to his eventual session at the right hand of God until the present.  It was God’s full experience of humanity.

1 hour ago, Elen1107 said:

Well, one could define themselves as a cat or a chipmunk, and get to be defining for themselves who they are.

Seems to me there are limits to this sort of thing, in order to remain in the parameters of commonly understood language and concepts.

8 minutes ago, Elen1107 said:

That was all so very horrid. Thing is, it was because the people who did those horrid things were totally out of touch with ant sense of a Higher Spirit or even a good sense of sanity and decency that those thing could occur.

Which is why we refer to this as evil or wicked.  The Germans were good Christians who were spiritually occupied by National Socialism.  

Evil is a creeping contagion.  I think it starts when you hog all the toilet paper.

24 minutes ago, JosephM said:

We are continually experiencing God to me would be more accurate since it encompasses more than the universe as a thing and life as stardust. Just my take ....

The Christian concept of at•one•ment.  Post-Jesus there is a mutual connection.

43 minutes ago, romansh said:

Pain, beauty, grief, suffering etc are a product of the brain chemistry

Certainly biology is involved, but that is about all one can say.

Learning, cognitive and spiritual components are not excluded.

6 minutes ago, romansh said:

Which term?

“Written in gray matter”.  Reminds me of the failed search for the engram.

58 minutes ago, romansh said:

I can't help thinking when people talk about god, they are somehow confounding the concept of god with the universe. I am not denying people's claims regarding the experience of god (or God). But we are definitely made up of stardust and in this sense we are connected to the universe. It would appear our mathematical descriptions of the fundamental forces suggest they extend to infinity. Quantum theories suggest that the probability of events happening are determined by the state of the universe. 

I think Carl Sagan's words We are a way for the cosmos to know itself … are quite telling (I might quibble understand vs know).

We are continually experiencing the universe. 

Wiggle the language a bit and you have a fundamentally Christian statement.  

One of the purposes of Jesus’ incarnate existence was so that God could experience humanity.

16 minutes ago, romansh said:

16 minutes ago, romansh said:

And which of these are not written in grey matter?

Define this term then tell me your thoughts on the matter.

12 minutes ago, romansh said:

I just strummed through my On the Origin … I did not see any table or graph (I was disappointed) And what I  have read of On the origin I don't recall a single measurement being reported. Comparisons yes.

Nitpicking.  Go through his notes if you insist.  I’m confident you will find references to quantifiable differences.

12 minutes ago, romansh said:

 

Can you give me an example of non material. Things like concepts and ideas are writ large on paper or in grey matter.

Suffering, beauty, love, gratitude, fear . . . and God

4 hours ago, Elen1107 said:

Getting back to the OP. I do think that God/The Higher Spirit is trying to get us away from or "rescue" us from suffering. Thing is, this requires our participation.

It requires our participation to all get along, so we don't cause each other pain and suffering.

 

The traditional Christian practices of humility as well as avoiding sin and vices are very helpful in reducing suffering.

14 minutes ago, romansh said:

So what is the quantity of evolution? I am not saying quantifiability does not help, but as a flat statement I can't help thinking it is flat out wrong.

I gave this example already.

Then it is quite possible god does not exist, and it should be considering it as a possibility. 

Darwin quantified evolution using the beak dimensions of various finches.  
 

Non-material things (including gods) are not suitable subjects for science.  Pseudoscience, semi-science and social science often try, but there are always questionable assumptions involved.

The Japanese do the dense population/small house/no crime thing exceptionally well.  The key seems to be an almost complete lack of diversity and an extreme sense of nationality.

38 minutes ago, romansh said:

Does it have to be measurable? Things like uncertainty principle would argue not. in that velocity and position cannot be measured simultaneously. There is nothing a priori that states that science has to be measurable. For example what is the is the measure of evolution or biology? Science can be purely descriptive. So in that sense something must be observable and not necessarily measurable.

Yes repeatability is a bonus. But when we are talking about measurement, the limits of measurement are given. We look for precision and accuracy. 

Similarly independent observers are nice, but the fact that another observer is neither here nor there. If I happen to experience demons and you don't, does not make the study of the experience of demons any less scientifically valid.

Is that like saying the scientific observation of god is a nonsense? I would agree especially if there is nothing to observe.

Quantifiability is a requirement for science.

Yes, the scientific observation of god is not possible.  You need logic & reason for that.

2 hours ago, thormas said:

this could now be one of my favorite pictures

Didn’t Jesus say to the disciples if he did not die the parakeet could not come?

3 hours ago, Elen1107 said:

I'm sorry, I thought you, or Burl, was referring to my last few posts and the conversation we were having there.

What I was talking about is not necessarily a measurement of God. It's quantum level mathematics that tells the scientists that something like 98% of all matter and energy in the universe is invisible, that this energy and matter holds the universe together, that it can itself create what we know as matter, and that it must exist, or else the whole universe would come apart and would also not be there in the first place.

A few people have stopped to speculate and ask if this might have something to do with God.

Sounds confusing to me.  String theory has some obvious connections but I don’t understand that either.   
 

Back to the Gospels and Hebrews for me.

The four parakeets of the apocalypse.