Carbon as God.

Circumstantial evidence for God - Beliefnet

I don't believe that the order, complexity and information content of even a single-celled bacterium, let alone you and me, is the result of chance, no matter how long it might have taken (and that turns out to be a very narrow window anyway, some 130 million years).
stardustpilgrim

J'C: "22,000,000 to 1 Odds happen every week in the various lottos. The structure of the carbon atom guarantees that every weird chemical structure in the liquid water world will be generated frequently. (You might have a better argument that God created Carbon. In Herm own image by the way, ever changing, impossible to pin down in anything from a buckytube to a diamond to a human.) That one of those weird chemical structures found a way to hide in a lipid balloon and make copies of itself seems to me inevitable and indeed seems to have happened several times a few billion years ago. That one of them, DNA, was so stable that it ate everything else in sight is the way evolution works.

It isn't really chance, carbon's theory as well as evolution's is try everything. Most of it won't work but who cares.

To try and fail, is at least to learn, To fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been.
Chester Bernard

Please excuse the anthropomorphizing of carbon and evolution. They don't care but it makes a better story."

Problem with Pascal's wager

Problem with Pascal's wager - Beliefnet

J'C: "If Pascal had a delete button he would have used it for this brain fart.

As I noted in the other thread even if I were guaranteed an eternity of bliss worshiping the glory of God, it is still a bad bet. Even if I bet on the right God. And spent the right amount of time learning how to worship the glory of God. What do I win? An eternity of more of the same. Talk about SSDD."

It is high time fler0002 made the blog.

fler0002 1/15/2004 11:15 PM

And we also discover that only those who believed in God and gave their lives to Him will enter into heaven and those who didn't will go to the torment of hell... what then??

What is it that you find to love in a deity that threatens you with eternal torment if you make one wrong decision?

Does a perfect deity sound like one who feels that it is just to torment you forever because of a choice you made based on the limited knowledge, and some erroneous knowledge, that you had when you made the choice?

Or does it sound like a shell game designed to play upon your fears in order to persuade you to believe?

Does it sound like a policy that benefits the church more than it benefits the believer?

Does it sound like a plan to intimidate the uncertain by depicting their 'loving' deity as one that is bigger, stronger, and incomparably more vicious?

Does it sound like a plan that not only creates fears of what happens after death, but also creates in humanity fears of each other? Fears of any tolerance for anything other than what is sanctified by the church. Fears that turn into hatreds. Fears that turn into witch hunts. Fears that turn into jihads, crusades, and terrorism. Fears that turn into sexual abuse.

You are welcome to indulge yourself in all those fears. I for one have chosen to use reason to dispell them. I don't have to live with those fears, and consider Pascal to be a coward.

Aesthetics and God.

Science and Beauty - Beliefnet

Science cannot verify this relationship nor can it explain the reason for the emotional response to beauty completely unnecessary for animal life.
2bme

J'C: "I am not sure what science you have been studying, but the human emotional response to beauty is not only well studied but the neurochemical reward mechanisms are well documented.

The appreciation of beauty in art and music among other things, patterns in clouds for example, begins at a very young age. One only has to watch the infant in the crib laughing as the rocking crib moves the hanging toys. It isn't until much later that the priest, shaman, or Sunday School teacher starts to impose God as the source of all that beauty. Yet another instance where God is a Johnny come lately, trying to make up for lost time. Morality, love, empathy, compassion and many others are all the property of children until God takes the candy from the baby and says "That is mine." If you are good I might let you have a taste."

J'C: This is probably my biggest beef with God. Kids do just fine in all social and aesthetic activities until someone needs to pound some God into them. Then their fine tuned morality they learned in kindergarten if they weren't corrupted before, is chopped up and parsed out by the God mediators and weird additions needed for sin are added. By the time they get to confirmation they are so screwed up that they don't know right from wrong and must pray to be saved from their sinfulness. Oh, yeah, throw a whole bunch of money in the plate so the mediator can help you find enough sins to keep the church in SUVs and Caddy's. But don't worry no hypocrisy there the mediator will be sinning right along with you.

Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World

Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World | The Onion - America's Finest News Source: "Members of the earth's earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.
...
'I do not understand,' reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. 'A booming voice is saying, 'Let there be light,' but there is already light. It is saying, 'Let the earth bring forth grass,' but I am already standing on grass.'

'Everything is here already,' the pictograph continues. 'We do not need more stars.'
...
According to the cuneiform tablets, Sumerians found God's most puzzling act to be the creation from dust of the first two human beings.

'These two people made in his image do not know how to communicate, lack skills in both mathematics and farming, and have the intellectual capacity of an infant,' one Sumerian philosopher wrote. 'They must be the creation of a complete idiot.'"

The Value of Nonbelief.

What Does Atheism Have To Offer To You? - Beliefnet

Yes, I do doubt there's a benefit. Is there a benefit to a Jew who doubts Jesus? Is there a benefit to a Muslim who doubts Buddha? Doubting something in itself has no value, in my opinion. What can be valuable is a belief system, and I don't think atheism is a belief system - at least to me anyway.
rgr075

The problem with belief systems is that the package the belief system comes in may contain a whole lot of dysfunctional crap along with the valuable stuff. It is certainly possible to weed out the dysfunctional crap, but I find it much more useful to find the valuable stuff and incorporate in my life. It is much easier to do without belief, as the valuable stuff is well highlighted typically.

The other value of nonbelief is that valuable stuff can be found in sources of wisdom that don't require belief. A good novel, a work of art, a piece of music, all can provide valuable stuff, no belief required. The value of atheism is that all of the traditional belief systems can be taken without any need to consider the God basis of the belief system. Without God the good is readily apparent and the crap easily disposed of."

If atheism offers anything, it's a clean slate for which to base rational values. But it's the values themselves that seem of use to me, not necessarily the lack of belief in something supernatural.
rgr075 (followup)

J'C: "The problem with supernatural beliefs is the rational values which are admittedly plentiful, are so distorted by God that the disbelief in God can be a useful touchstone in the sorting process. Religions have a lot of good things to say about dealing with death for example, but you have to get God on Herm Great White Throne or little porcelain throne completely out of the picture to discover them. Ironclad disbelief is really helpful in sorting all the threads in the tapestry into something useful. The disbelieving mind can make the God threads go away to reveal whatever is left.

Intelligent Responses to Stimuli

Nick A:

The question then becomes if Man is capable of more than just blind reaction and its expressions of associative thought? Simone and much of esoteric thought says we are. As we are we are just performing mechanical necessities in response to universal laws.

J'C: Your last statement is just flat wrong. Once a stimulus is presented to the mind it is evaluated and integrated into the complex reality of the self, and the response is conditioned not only by the needs of the self but the evaluation of the situation presented. There are internal stimuli from the more primitive parts of the brain, but the mind is capable of overriding even basic instinctive responses. We might sweat a bit but neither fight or flee.

This intelligent reaction to all stimuli is the birthright of all humans, and most higher animals. There is no esoteric input needed from God or Guru, unless of course the individual is conditioned like a dog to obey the smarter and more powerful Alpha. This conditioning is common and perhaps instinctual as a transferal of parental obedience to others as the child matures, but it is subject to manipulation by the mind as are all instinctual responses. If, as the Jesuits claim, a child is conditioned to transfer this parental obedience by the time hesh is 10 it is fixed for life. Not strictly true, but the loss of the parental surrogate is traumatic. Simone had to reject religion entirely and become an atheist before she could transfer the surrogacy to God. Others may stop at nihilism when God dies, others may proceed to a rational atheism. Some may attempt to find a more esoteric path to the Alpha. A few never get the conditioning in the first place and take their place in their society as a rational purposeful, moral contributor. No external controls are necessary as the internal controls are built in which are, as Fulghum via Exploringinside showed us elsewhere, learned and reinforced in kindergarten. God plays in the same sandbox which is why Herm rules are generally similar except for the Alpha dominance rules.

Compassion and atrocity

Nick A:

We create programming. It explains why we can be simultaneously capable of compassion and atrocity.

J'C: Humans as social animals are incapable of atrocity without some higher level programming to cause them to counter their social imperative to respect other humans. Normally this higher programming comes from God, but insanity, nation, or even a charismatic leader can program people to go against their social values and commit atrocities.

Science as a Bridge to God

The blue roads of thinking: The Human Condition:

To restore to science as a whole, for mathematics as well as psychology and sociology, the sense of its origin and veritable destiny as a bridge leading toward God---not by diminishing, but by increasing precision in demonstration, verification and supposition---that would indeed be a task worth accomplishing.
Simone Weil

Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
- Simone Weil, Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 417

J'C: So we come full circle. To restore to science its destiny as a bridge leading toward God it must be purged of that religious view of humans as God's failure to create, at the very least, a species with no need for a re-birth mediated by religion but fully capable of themselves awakening the supernatural connection to God. All scientists I know who have made this connection, and they are many as I tend to live in a science dominated world, see their mission in science not as saving their souls, but to discover the world God has created with themselves as an integral part of it along with all other humans. They have purged themselves of the need for consolation or salvation of their religion and have made that direct empowering connection to God. Most Christian scientists have done this by a return to the Synoptics and the empowering first Commandment "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." [Emphasis mine.] There is no room in that commandment for consolation or salvation.

The Human Condition

The blue roads of thinking: Is atheism compatible with God?:

The human condition is such that we are incapable without the help of grace of coming to objectively experience the human condition in order to reconcile it. Our defense mechanisms are too strong.
Nick A

J'C: Perhaps a good Apologetic, but certainly not a general statement about the human condition. Many humans think of the East Asians as an example do very will objectively experiencing the human condition without Grace. Some use various forms of meditation as a way to focus on the human condition, and rid themselves of the defense mechanisms but it is done without external help. Many well educated westerners particularly those without a strong indoctrination for dependence on God are able to experience the human condition, objectively, subjectively, or spiritually without the need for grace from God or other. I am well studied in the human condition, not because grace showed me the way, but because I was indoctrinated to be aware of it from my earliest conscious moments.

Each religion is alone true.

The blue roads of thinking: Materialism and God:

Each religion is alone true, that is to say, that at the moment we are thinking of it we must bring as much attention to bear on it as if there were nothing else...A 'synthesis' of religion implies a lower quality of attention.
Simone Weil

C'J: In a long lifetime of studying, and learning from religions, it is necessary to suspend disbelief to this extent to get anything from them. When I am singing a Mass it it impossible to do it right or learn from the experience if there are any reservations about God or the belief set you are singing about.
One of the reasons I do not attempt to build a coherent whole from what I learn is that not only are they alone true, they are also alone false. I suspect that if any had been true in the sense of having a true connection to God, I would have by now found God. Unlike Simone, the fact that all religions are alone false led me not to God but to a cosmopolitan understanding of morality, meaning and purpose in life.

Is atheism compatible with God?

The blue roads of thinking: Materialism and God:

Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
- Simone Weil, Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 417

Nick A.: This is far easier for me to accept since I've experienced a bit of this transition. Yet I am interested how you and other atheists would react to her observation.

Is it difficult for an atheist to be open to the possibility that something has not opened in them as of yet to experience the real meaning of the essence of religion? Does it seem too elitist to consider? Yet IMO the atheist is quite right to react to the imagination of those who call themselves religious. Atheism then is a necessary purification."

J'C: Perhaps the purification Weil is talking about is the purification from the religious intercession between believers and God. A major cause of atheism is really paying attention to the religious teachings of the major religions and then committing the mortal sin of thinking about them. At that point the only thing left for those needing God is a direct personal relationship with God unmediated by religion. I think this is what Weil is talking about.

There are many people who are overwhelmed by the challenges of life and find the need for God either directly as the mystics strive for, or mediated by religions. Others of us see the challenges as just that, obstacles to overcome. Including the huge challenge of inevitable death. If an individual is unable to cope, that yearning for God gives an escape. I suspect most atheists are past that. I know I have examined many of the religious avenues of escape and found none including direct relationship with God that worked for me. This is not a rejection of religion. I have learned much about living and dying from religion. It is just a celebration of my human yearning for interdependence only with other humans. There is no part of my life that I feel a need to cede to God.

Materialism and God

God and Consciousness - Beliefnet

Reality is anchored by a principle known as The Primacy of Existence; “Something that has objective existence in Reality exists independent of any observation.” This is quite obviously a materialistic notion and I also believe this idea is the key to most objections to Materialism. The wish that things having subjective existence could somehow be or become things having objective existence is one of the mantras of the “A-Materialist.”
exploringinside

J'C: "The only problem I have with materialism and the Primacy of Existence is, as I told Blü on a different thread, that it is boring. I have no interest at all in the subjective having an objective existence. I am quite happy with it being subjective. Art, music, fiction, myths, gods, and rituals all mean exactly nothing to the materialist since they admittedly exist only in the minds of those that can understand them. Each understanding of the subjective entity is subtly or grossly different, but people can agree on some of the important features of the entity. God may be supernatural, natural, imaginary, or a delusion in rare cases, but it is at the very least something that someone, lets call them a believer, finds to be important in their lives. One can argue all night that God has no material existence. (Not with me. I stipulate it in the first few seconds and everybody gets pissed. The materialists go off and rub the belly of the material Buddha, and the Buddhists go off in another corner to discuss the issue of non-material suffering. I go read a novel.) I find it much more interesting to find out why an intelligent, rational person can and does find God to be important in their lives."

A tree falls in the forest. Who cares whether or not the compression waves in the atmosphere qualify as noise or not. It just doesn't matter. I think this was ultimately my problem with Chemistry which was my boyhood choice of a career that lasted through my Sophomore year in college. I just couldn't get worked up about how a rocket went up. It was much more fun to deal with the absolutely subjective and political issues of getting someone to buy it so it could go up. If a car salesman thinks hesh is selling a material object, hesh had better find a job in a factory building cars. What heah is selling is prestige, practicality, social status, or political correctness. They all work to move the iron. Some of the worst salespeople are materialists, they try to sell the technology, the intercooler, and the V4. They might as well try to sell the frame. It does not work.

Is there value in God beliefs?

Is there any value in belief in God? - Beliefnet

ExploringInside:

"What is the value of a belief in God?

The most obvious values concerning a belief in God include conformity to social mores, strengthening of a sense of community, psychological benefits including the sense of personal power, and increased satisfaction from the internal perception of the expansion of knowledge.

What needs does the belief in God address?

Within Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs, Safety Needs are addressed directly and indirectly by belief in God. God is identified as the Protector and Guardian of his flock, the unstoppable foe of enemies, source for miracles of all kinds, etc. Love/Belonging/Social Needs are also addressed directly and indirectly by belief in God. God’s grouping of humans is characterized as a “Church;” membership is claimed to earn one God’s love; etc.

How does belief benefit/improve a person?

Belief can be a bridge out of the quagmire of low self-esteem. The belief that one has the benefit of an infallible Guide can instill the confidence to act rather than remain immobilized due to fear of failure or misfortune. Belief “socializes” a person and helps connect them to a support group outside their immediate family.

God is not required to objectively exist to provide benefit to the believers

The idea of God is more powerful than an actual existence of a being: the non-existent God is not required to conform to reality; supernatural qualities, reports of miracles and anecdotes of His supposed exploits are beyond the reach of falsification; His supposed revelations need only happen to His representatives to earn authority: He is not required to meet anyone’s expectations and is not required to conform to any moral code, not even His own."

J'C: This deserves to be rescued from the train wreck don't bother with the link. Please note the critical fact in the last paragraph. The existence of God supernatural, natural, or at all is irrelevant to the benefits of God to believers and non-believers alike. If God makes my neighbor a happier, better integrated, more productive and better socialized person, I am still looking for the downside, for my neighbor and for me.

I do not live in a vacuum, I am dependent on my neighbors at the very least to keep the street a safe and welcoming place for visitors and my children as they walk to school. They produce goods and services that I need, and if they were in that quagmire of low self esteem either because of low capabilities, or incorrectly evaluating those capabilities they would be unable to produce for society. They consume goods and services that support my society providing the critical mass of consumption that makes the goods and services I need affordable. Many of them provide social, artistic, and intellectual support for me through my contacts with them at work, in the stores, in leisure activities, and even in their church if I can wrangle an invitation as a respectful guest.

God, Humans and Nothing

Inferring gods' character from nature - Beliefnet:

Regardless of whether you believe a personal being is responsible for it or if nature is, you are wholly dependent on someone or something else for your existence and the continuation of it, and for every thought and action that you take. Without something or someone else, you are nothing. We all are nothing on our own. Yes we can do things, we can make a difference by our wills, but ultimately we can take credit for nothing. If we reach out and touch people, we do it with the hands that we did not make.
jonny42

J'C: "I have no problem with being interdependent with all in my chosen society present and past. My parents, from a long line of sapient beings, and an even longer line of successful living creatures, taught me to speak and think, and the moral precepts to take my place in that society. I affect my society and in turn am affected by it. But neither my society nor myself is nothing, and we can take credit for all the wonderful things that society past and present gives us. When we reach out and touch people it is an acknowledgment that we are humans and responsible for not only those we touch but those they touch and have touched."

And a God that stimulates the quote is worth less than nothing.

Petitionary Prayers

Prayer and Magic - Science & Religion - Beliefnet Community:

common sense alone says that most people wouldn't go to the trouble of asking if they didn't think it would work.
McAtheist

"Arguments based on common sense are generally false. Sense is not common and when people are using what sense they have about things that they don't understand the chances are that their sense is misleading them.

In my experience petitionary prayers that are a part of a liturgy or a religious ritual are not expected to be answered. The rituals and liturgies have a powerful unifying value for those who choose to believe. Whether this unity is with God or with their religious fellowship is really unimportant. But the petitionary prayers are integral to the ritual and liturgy not because of expectation of fulfillment but as a promise that God or the religious fellowship is listening and paying attention. Prayer circles have the same function. It is not that God will respond if a lot of people care, it is the fact that a lot of people care that is important.

I have spent thousands of hours studying and singing liturgical works not because I believe that any of the prayers contained therein will be answered, obviously since I do not believe in the referent God, but I learn much about how people respond to things like death and tragedy that they cannot understand. The prayer for peace Dona Nobis Pacem that ends the mass is at least ironic as Beethoven reminds us in the Missa Solemnis with the martial interlude. Do people really believe that God will give us peace in our time or in our lives? If not why have they been praying for just that every Sunday since the Nicene Creed was adopted? What does common sense have to say about that? "

Aller Menschen werden Brüder

Heroes - Religion and the Human Mind - Beliefnet Community:

I'm interested to see you describe your heroes in terms of teaching you how to wrestle with the angel.
Blü

"Not so much how to wrestle with the angel, but how to deal with the victory. The Nicene God provides believers with a way to deal with a life in which lots of bad things happen and death is inevitable. Kill the God and you need to deal with a life in which lots of bad things happen and death is inevitable. Trying to do it alone is to deal with Neitzscheian nihilism or the existential angst of Sartre. In his Freude, Freude, Aller Menschen werden Brüder Beethoven gives his triumphant answer. Joy! Joy! All humans are siblings.

We can look to our fellow humans for all the answers to meaning and purpose, and how to deal with the bad things in life and its finite duration, with courage, optimism and joy. We don't need God with Herm pie in the sky after we die. We don't need God to make us feel good that there is something out there that cares if bad things happen. Or even to thank when good things happen. Aller Menschen werden Brüder and they care when I make their lives better. They care when I hurt. I can thank them for their help and support. And when my contribution ends if I have done well, they will remember me with pleasure and joy."

Designed Universe?

The supernatural??? - Science & Religion:

Show your evidence, not your belief.
F1fan

"There are many things that might indicate a creator. Just the asymmetry of the matter anti-matter in the universe, for example is explained just as well by God sorting it out as by the scientific theories of the beginning of matter. There are many constants that have been defined that keep the universe working the way it does. It can certainly be argued that the universe is as it is because it conforms to those constants. But it cannot be disproven that God designed those constants because Hesh likes to watch the gravitational dancing of the galaxies. I know I do. I waste much of my time on my APOD bookmarks of colliding galaxies. Frankly I cannot conceive of anything or even any God that could do such things, so I favor natural explanations myself. But ask me to prove that God didn't put those APOD photos up for my enjoyment, other than a weak 'I am not that important,' I couldn't prove God didn't do it. With very little effort I could prove that a specific God e.g. any of the primitive Mesopotamian Gods didn't do it. It is easy to prove they couldn't be that smart. But some Deist Creator? I wouldn't even try."

Heroes - Religion and the Human Mind

Heroes - Religion and the Human Mind - Beliefnet Community:

Who are your heroes? What makes them heroes to you?
Blü

To stay with the theme of the board, my lifelong hero has to be Beethoven. By studying his Masses, and indeed all of his music I learned what an atheist can learn from God. Indeed his war with God, which in my opinion he won particularly in the Ninth Symphony taught me more about being human than anyone else. But in my mind the Missa Solemnis is the definitive comment on the relationship to man and God, God being defined as the Nicene God of the Anglican, Catholic, Eastern and Orthodox liturgy. Mahler followed in his footsteps and turned the path to humanism into a highway. But Mahler was not at war with God, he took Beethoven’s victory as a given and built on it, as did many others, too numerous to mention as heroes. Bach might be included in the pantheon, but it wasn’t until I had thoroughly studied his music and Masses that I realized that he too was on the humanist path, but so constrained by his employer, the Church, that he couldn’t be obvious about it. But it is no accident that he introduced the tritone (The devil’s interval) into music even, God forbid on the pain of death, to church music. Although in my view the tritone is an intensely human interval with its eternal questioning and questing.)

In literature, Steinbeck stands tallest in the God wrestling business. If there is a humanist bible East of Eden (1952) has to be near the top of the list. The interpretation of the verb timshel from Cain’s charge as “Thou mayest triumph over sin” is brilliant. Not you will. Not you can. Not you must. But you may choose to triumph over sin is profoundly humanist and taught me how to deal with the serious mistakes I made that I couldn’t nail to the cross like my religious friends. Most of the Science Fiction/fantasy authors following Asimov and Heinlein wrote some great humanist novels, with not so incidentally some of the best humanist moral discussions to be found anywhere, most are on my reread list when I need some moral support as a humanist. Niven-Pournelle, Card, Clark, Tall, Tolkein, the list is too long to remember them all. Omissions are memory failures not intentional.

Interestingly philosophers are not on my hero list, although their contribution to my life has been immense, if only by providing the challenge to my thinking to make it what it is today. A few of them were religious philosophers (theologians) and one Jesuit that made major contributions to my intellectual growth as an atheist.

I would agree with many of the scientist and mathematician heroes but they are not so much in the God wrestling business as in the advancing human knowledge business. Incredibly important in the mind part of the title, but not much in the religion part. Their quest is not religious but the intensely human desire to become omniscient, not by definition, but by hard work."

When Gods Crash

"When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)1952

And the second is like the first. When a believer finds out that herm God, whatever it is, or the portrayal of it is not always wise, or true or just, and the god crashes, and shatters, the rebuilding is an interesting process as God cannot be unwise, unjust or untrue. Some put the shattered God back up on its pedestal, pastes the gold leaf back in place and denies the God ever fell. It does no good to point out the cracks, those cracks are not the cause of the fall and therefore do not exist, frequently with vehemence.

Others look at the ugly mess, and decide it is not worth even picking up the pieces, or find a few pieces that look OK and try to rebuild their life without God or perhaps with a new one built of the shards. Inevitably the wisdom, trust, and justness of the new God is tentative, and the failure causes reliance on the human resources for wisdom, trust, and justice inherent in all of us.

Those who have rebuilt their life after the fall, whether with a new God or none, are almost always good people to be around. Those who rebuilt their God are not.

Science and God

Why does anyone believe in G-d? - Discuss Atheism - Beliefnet Community: "Science and many religious people are unable to explain God because they both are looking in the wrong places to find God. Both science and some believers are looking for external evidence for a supernatural omnipotent alpha humanoid that exists outside the minds of believers. Those who are able to find God are those who are willing to look where the only evidence exists that is in the minds of believers.

Science has a hard time even finding experiments to do although the God Helmet at least is trying to establish a data point of where God exists in the brain. Science and skeptics in particular simply refuse to study the most important evidence for God that is available, that is the anecdotal testimony of what a believer is experiencing in church especially but whenever a believer feels hesh is in contact with God."