Sorry, a little off-topic: how’s your experience with Kiva been? I’ve saw these micro-finance sites discussed on TV, but I’ve never given to them or known anyone who has.

More food for thought and in no particular order:

8) Clear Conscience - Non-believers do not have an affiliation or association to horrible deeds carried out by the church, in the name of religion or by church officials. Throughout history, many horrific events have been religiously-motivated and by not subscribing to a particular religious faith or sect, I am not subscribing to this behavior, nor do I have to atone for it.

9) Open-mindedness - Without a declaration to a particular faith, I am free to accept the faith of others with an open mind. I don’t have to defend my faith, nor argue its merits. I do not judge others and I can avoid emotionally-charged arguments about religion.

10) Free, Independent Thought - I am free to think what I want and can form my own opinions on moral issues. I don’t have to subscribe to a communal set of beliefs, thoughts and archaic practices or risk being ostracized or judged. I do not need a group of people who think, act and subscribe to my way of thinking.

11) Private Spirituality - By not openly declaring a belief in a particular religion, I am free to explore my spirituality in private. I realize that not believing in a God, or the bible does not make me a heathen, diminish my awe of our natural world, or lower myself in the eyes of a Supreme Being. Instead, it provides an intimate connection with my own spirituality, makes it unique and - kept where it should be - private.

Is this your own personal list? Just wondering. Here is my personal response (I’m not trying to be argumentative or convert you back to Christianity, it’s your life you can live it how you want, I’m just presenting an opposing viewpoint):

#1 I agree for the most part. Stuff does happen, that’s why God gave us free will. And if he gave you and me free will has he has to do the same for murderers and rapists and the like. Also, with things like cancer and stuff - both of my parents’ dads died when my parents were young. This changed their lives forever and they probably would’ve never met had their dads not died. Sometimes it’s hard to look at the big picture when we want immediate answers.

#2 I don’t really look at hell as torture necessarily, I think that it’s God giving people what they want - eternal separation from him. If people hate him and don’t want to do anything he asks of them, why would he let them into heaven? They clearly don’t want to be there. (I don’t believe that fire and brimstone is literal, just a way to describe how miserable it will be)

#3 I agree and disagree. I do believe this is my one chance that’s why I need to make the best of it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in an afterlife. I believe the afterlife is going to be something completely different than what we have here.

#4 I agree there is a lot of bizarre passages in the Bible and that sometimes some of the things are hard to harmonize. We’re God’s creation, he can do what he wants with us. I just think my ways are not God’s ways, but I guess in your opinion that’s a man-made passage.

#5, #6, and #7 are all interesting to me. Personally, I don’t care if God is listening to my thoughts, I’ll think what I want to think regardless. We have free will. If I don’t want to go to church on Sunday, I don’t go. And I don’t feel bad about it. And I rarely tithe. Sometimes I do, but most of the time I like to give money to people or organizations that I think are doing things God approves of.

This is just my lowly opinion.

And when all is said an done it all seems to boil down to - No body is gonna tell me what to do!

Of all the benefits discussed, I feel that I, as a person of faith, have most of them. Granted, my faith is probably a lot more open than most, but I don’t think the things you talk about are exclusive to nonbelief.

1. I believe that stuff happens, and that it’s usually just random happenchance, and not God’s divine retribution against a sinful world.

2. I rarely, if ever, think about hell. I haven’t so far as to say I DON’T believe hell exists, but it’s really not a major factor in the way I live my life.

3. On a related note, I don’t think about Heaven much either. These days I’m mostly concerned about my present life on earth.

4. I’ve also come to believe that the bible is a human document, but I don’t think that excludes a divine aspect to it either. It’s given me a lot more flexibility in the way I interpret the scriptures.

5. I haven’t considered this much, but I guess I feel pretty alone in my thoughts. I don’t think much about God listening in.

6. Although more free time on Sundays sounds appealing sometimes, I think regular church attendance is good for me. I’m an introverted person, almost to the point of being antisocial. If I didn’t attend church the only adults I would regularly interact with outside of work would be my wife and maybe one or two friends (even that I’m unsure of). Belonging to a church forces me to get to know other people and be more of a social animal, which is good for me.

7. In a similar vein, having some extra money sounds appealing but the act of giving is a good discipline to have. I don’t give all my tithe to my local church, either. I give to several people and causes that I want to support.

And as for the additional points:

8. Clear Conscience. I’ve got that. I don’t feel guilty for what other Christians have done (on a sidenote, stk, do you feel guilty for the centuries of racism and genocide perpetrated by your ancestors?).

9) Open-mindedness. I’ve got that.

10) Free, Independent Thought. Check.

11) Private Spirituality. Definitely check. I’ve long believed that while believers are part of a community, spirituality has to be formed on a personal basis, and not everybody who worships together has to believe the same things.

I appreciate reading about your experience, Danny, and I’m glad that you’re happy with what you believe now.

You have claimed lack of belief, but here you come out and claim strong belief in the absence of hell. You say that you know there is no hell. What evidence do you have for your belief?

Thanks for writing this. I felt much the same way when I shed my faith in a god. I was never really afraid of hell, but #1 always bothered me. If there was a god and he was both powerful and good, why would he let truly horrible things occur? How is ‘free will’ more important to a god than the right of a child not to get raped, for example? If you believe in a god, than you believe that god set up the system, after all, and that god made that specific decision at some point in setting things up and then failing to intervene.
My father, who currently struggles with depression and substance abuse, was raped as a child, multiple times. He prayed for it to stop, but it didn’t. He is still a Christian and is tortured about why God, who he believes loves him even now, didn’t protect him. Did he somehow deserve it?
It is much easier to understand these events when you understand that there wasn’t a God who ‘allowed it to happen’. There was just a man with some sick impulses and a vulnerable child.
Sadly, I don’t see my father ever coming to that understanding. He is still trying to find meaning in the event. If you believe in a god who can act in this world, then you believe in a god that chose not to act on your behalf when you most needed him.

“For me, I find it nice to know that there isn’t a God ignoring our pleas for help.”

What do you do with seeming “miracles"?

People who have malignant tumors one day and the doctor can’t find them the next.

Money turning up in the exact amount of a give need, when no one was told about the need.

People healed completely from a mental illness that they have had their entire life.

There are documented occurrences of stuff like this all the time. Are these people liars or is it just coincidence?

It would be your choice to be unimpressed by that. People’s problems and hurts are never simple. No one is without hurt. How would you decide who to help. If you were God, do you think it would be wise to make everyone happy and without grief? Would you change people to puppets to keep them from hurting other people? You seem a little arrogant in your statement. Can the president help every hurting person or always do everything right? No, but we elect him as the best man for the job. We are talking about a God that I believe intervenes supernaturally some of the time (of course I believe He always does everything right, but I am using your argument). Is that not better than you can do? But you dismiss it casually, like you can do better. I do not have time this evening, but I will go back over some books this week and pull out some stories of miracles that have impacted me. I am hesitant to do so, though, because I think you will just discount them as you do the Bible, and I think it will be a waste of my time…as you have already stated that you won’t believe them.

Religions don’t tell stories, people do.

It is the people that you don’t trust.

I definitely can’t come up with any stories of miracles that weren’t told by people.

I think Katie does raise an interesting question about the nature of proof and evidence. The observable and repeatable is one form, but, while very convincing, it’s almost never the only form of evidence.

A couple of times in the last few years a new study is released in which someone finds that hospital patients who were prayed for do not fare significantly better than those who did not receive any prayer (at least from those praying as part of the experiment). This seems, on the surface, like the sort of empirical evidence Danny wants (except against, rather than for, the reliable efficacy of healing prayer) But everything about such experiments is reported by human “stories". We have to rely on the trustworthiness of the reports and trust that the experimenters controlled their variables as carefully as they claimed. Sure, we could try to repeat their experiment, but the point of such an experiment (which does not really demonstrate the usefulness of a new method, substance or algorithm but is really just a kind of “myth-busting") is that those who ran the experiment had a rare set of resources (access to funds, hospitals, lab managers, etc.) not easily available to anyone whose ever wondered whether, statistically, prayer can really be said to work. I’m not necessarily doubting the results of these experiments (they seem completely in character with the Christian God who, for whatever reason, seems to hide from attempts to smoke him out), all I’m saying is that very few forms of evidence do not, in some way, rely on human narrative.

If I hear someone say they needed exactly $152.67 cents, prayed about it, and got exactly that, it is remarkable. If I hear such stories a lot, by people I trust, perhaps even by people whose need I could verify before hand and whose new-found provision I can see after, then it starts to suggest something interesting. I have no idea why God would provide in this way and not, as you point out, save a child with cancer, but that’s part of the weird mystery of God that any Christian has to come to terms with somehow. I don’t know that its less disturbing that the atheist’s problem of living an existence where one, as Hamlet says, “bears the whips and scorns of time” simply out of some biological need to reproduce and perpetuate the species, or to grab the pleasures of life which never seem as pleasurable as they promise, or to attempt to make a contribution to society that, save for a few cases, will not actually want or need it. Turning a blind eye to the extreme pointless of earth life by celebrating the moment and savoring the ephemerality of life seems to me no more satisfying that the answer to the problem of suffering that says that God is in control and knows what he’s doing.

I’d be interested to find out whether educated Hindus typically have the same number or sorts of miracle stories as do educated Christians. I honestly don’t have any data on this. Anyway, while I definitely believe there is but one God, I also am not convinced that sincere seekers don’t occasionally stumble upon His grace even when calling out the wrong name…or that He does not provide for and miraculously work in the lives even of those who do not know or love Him when they begin to reach outside of themselves and their own understanding.

It’s not the money thing “again” by the way. I admit the example has its baggage, but I was just picking up Katie’s example as a stand in for the little everyday miracles I feel like I see in my own life or hear about frequently. Of course, the data can be interpreted in many ways (as it can/must be even in empirical studies). This multitude of interpretations makes me really wonder if there isn’t something to Calvinism…some, for whatever reason, just are bent to interpret this data in a way that leads to faith, and others in the opposite way. Arguments against another’s interpretation can only go so far in contradicting what the individual deeply feels to be true. Conversions are possible of course. We evangelicals insist on them, and you seem to have recently experienced one, but, what used to seem like the ultimate cop-out, that those who “fall away” were never really Christians to begin with, actually is beginning to make sense to me (especially when one accepts the corollary, that those who come to faith were never really convinced of their atheism to begin with). Maybe this propensity to a faith-based interpretation is genetic/God-given (I feel like I’ve seen more than one report recently claiming the naturalistic version of this). All this is to say, I feel like interpretation of any data, what the conclusion, is only ever partially rational. One ultimately tries to fit it into the framework of reality one already believes.

Your last point is I think the best example of this. I say the desire for meaning suggests that meaning exists–a version of the C.S. Lewis claim that the desire for Joy implies that it is a desire that can be fulfilled. You say the desire for meaning leads us to create gods. I respond that the desire must come from somewhere (what evolutionary purpose does it serve?). You say (perhaps) that we don’t know yet what purpose it serves, but you’re unwilling to give the answer to a God of the gaps…or maybe that you suspect the longing for meaning is a byproduct of the evolutionarily adaptive impulse to make sense of an environment…or maybe you have an even better explanation which I will consider but likely to remain ultimately unconvinced by (but who knows…) The point is neither of have an irrefutable answer to explain the near universal human sensation that life has some sort of meaning; we’re both just speculating. I’m all for finding out more about how the universe works, and I’m willing to reject those explanations that are demonstrably false. But I do worry a little when the hardline “new atheists” can’t admit that they have an interpretative framework that is not at all objective. Not saying that you are an atheist fundamentalist, but I do think this is a danger to avoid whatever one’s position on these matters.

Some comments on various points:
#2) I can sleep a lot better without thinking that Satan and demons are always trying to take me over.
#3) Knowing that there’s no afterlife makes me feel a lot less doomed.

“I don’t know that its less disturbing that the atheist’s problem of living an existence where one, as Hamlet says, “bears the whips and scorns of time” simply out of some biological need to reproduce and perpetuate the species, or to grab the pleasures of life which never seem as pleasurable as they promise, or to attempt to make a contribution to society that, save for a few cases, will not actually want or need it.” So what of animals then? We are of higher intelligence, supposedly, because the tests we have made for some animals were failed by them to indicate any “higher intelligence". Therefore, we come to a few different problems:
1.) The tests were made by humans, with all of whatever intelligence we have.
2.) We do not know that animals are not smarter than we believe them to be, due to the way our brain and mind work (same goes with “God", how can we possibly know whether he wants to intervene in life or not?)
3.) Fact. Dictionary.com says that fact is “a truth known by actual experience or observation; something known to be true". Therefore, fact is only human knowledge gained through EXPERIENCE. I am not fighting either side on this one. I Myself was a strong Christian until about 2 years ago when I began to read the bible more extensively. Ironic, I suppose, that My pastor had encouraged Me to read it more, and upon doing so, became agnostic. I do not say there is no God, because I believe it is possible something created all of the universe; how then, did it begin? The big bang, of course (which I believe in), but who created that? Perhaps this was the way God created it all, though the bible recounts the story in a dramatically different way. I believe the bible was written by man, it seems evident to Me, and that even if it did hold some divine air, it may have changed due to thousands of different translations and interpretations over the years. As for this “money thing", as you all keep referring to it as, I believe in chaotic randomness, which is being proven every day in science (proof being fact, or experience by man) in studies of a new physics system, quantum mechanics. I can not blindly follow through with the bible; it is sad to hear someone say they must believe in it undoubtedly or they will become afraid that it is not true. Bingo. Said time and again, allow Me to repeat it one more time: ignorance is bliss. Some say “I felt something inside Me, and I knew it was God speaking to Me!” Perhaps you did feel, and perhaps you say faithfully that it was God. Perhaps that tumor from yesterday did mysteriously vanish. Keep in mind that medical technology, along with all human advances, while coming a long way, are still not perfect. In the future, we may (and probably will) have the knowledge and reason of why it “mysteriously vanished". Perhaps people do feel things, but we just are not sure what it is yet. After studying psychology and body language, I understand that religion is a form of operant conditioning. Look up that term, have you the time from praying and singing your life away. Perhaps that last sentence was a bit biased, but after having realized how much of My life I could have been doing something else like learning about astrophysics (the field I am currently studying in, trying to earn My doctorates eventually in Astrophysics). Heaven or hell? Maybe. Who’s to say? We have not proven their existence yet, but we know that according to current physics, there may be up to 23 additional dimensions in this universe. Perhaps God is real. My point of view? He is. But not the same as the one in the bible. Perhaps there are many or were many gods. They each mold a different part of the universe, or each one holds over each dimension. Or perhaps they are not infinite, and do die out. Maybe we have not obtained a new one yet. Who knows? Gos made us in his image, according to the bible, therefore, if you so strongly believe, perhaps you should think he made us to be like gods, as in his image? Perhaps we were a test for him, he created life on this planet, thought “no, not quite…” then went elsewhere in the universe and made more, continuing to make more? We simply do not know. I understand the thought of nothing after death can be more than slightly unnerving, but a god capable of determining every aspect of our life, thought, soul, existence, can be just as unsettling. Give it some thought before you decide to live out your whole life not allowed to think, feel, or say certain things, living this one life restricted. Live free, not enslaved.

this is test text.

If there is no heaven, no hell, no God, just meaningless, purposeless forces, then there can be no free will, no good or evil.

So why would you care about your church’s discrimination? Why would you care about the less fortunate? Why do you call cancer and floods tragedies? On what do you base that idea? Where did good and evil come from?

Without God, nature simply IS. There is no good and no evil. You have no right or position to use any kind of ethical language.

Don’t glom onto the faith you have rejected to construct a moral foundation from which to attack it because it cannot stand without some transcendent truth which cannot exist without a transcendent creator.

You are obviously smart enough to choose whether you believe or don’t.
Be intellectually honest at least.

Why have you not tried to reform religion rather than to abandon it? You are certainly right in many of your views.

I am quite sure that their is God and religion is good and right. I do believe that religion must make progress. It’s a schismatic process and ugly but you can sometimes enjoy a good fight.

An often made error is to fail to account for a test of progress when we evaluate religion in historical context. Humanity is making progress. Things are getting better. This change is confusing to people, especially our theocracy. The homicide rate has been in continuous decline for at least 600 years. Per capita calculations can be made in Europe for that long. Christ lives.

I believe that dropping religions is the next step in human progress to a new and better era.

Here are my musings…

I think alot of times religion gets mixed up with faith. although they can interplay, they are at their roots two seperate thingys.

I define religion as a list of do’s and dont’s, or put simply a LAW. Now, everyone knows the christian religion concept of “your a naughty boy” if you break the do’s and dont’s. Well - thats kinda right, kinda… but breaking the law doesnt make you naughty, it only defines or makes known the naughtiness already in you ( that God put there by the way ) I am a very naughty boy… dont tell santa.
The law - or religion - was not made merely to DEFINE the lawbreaker though, it was also made to RESTRAIN the lawbreaker, simply because it gives the things to do or not to do - and then gives negative consequences for the action.
So - the naughty little boy in us all - will maybe think twice before stealing an ox if he knows that he will have to repay 2 oxes in its place. Or the neighbor waiting for the husband next door to leave so he can borrow some ” sugar ” from his wife might have second thoughts after considering his ” consequence “… ( the law of moses never once instituted torture by fire or any other torture as a consequence - death was the biggest punishment )

These are very practical civil and moral laws… and they are religion. Surely their is a benefit in restraining someone from murder, thief, or even lying? well there is, but there is also a big negative… you can not restrain someone for ever and soon or later they trespass because it was there inherit nature to want to kick the dog in the morning. So the negative is it sets everyone up to fail and that failure includes death, and death defined is everything you experience every day… Kinda like the tree in the garden where God made a law and then placed with in adam and eve the nature to transgress that law, and then on top of that placed a tempter there,,, there by setting them up to fail, setting them up to enter into the death realm.

but Faith is different from this restraining and failing. Christian faith is not Christian religion. In fact true Christian Faith sets you completely free from christian religion ( laws )

Christian faith is the ability to see yourself other than in the light of the dead guy on the day of your funeral…

Christian faith is the ability to see yourself as blameless before the law that defined your sin inside, not because God looks at you and says ” boys will be boys,” as if He overlooks the sin, but because He gave your new nature back which has never sinned.

Christian faith is the returning back into God before there even was a law and this is the lake of fire and brimstone.

talk about your supernatural claims

now that i got that off my chest…

La Cuidad- if this is true then why did God even place within us the desire to sin and the temptor to help us sin? Why bring us to a place with “Law” and death only to bring us back to the same place (without law?) Why couldn’t he just have placed whatever knowledge he wanted us to have within us from the start?

Why do unbelievers receive miracles? Why do those that stray/make really bad choises always seem to be the ones that eventually claim God intervened? Why do the ones that made good choices for most of their lives and who had strong faith have to be the ones who get the short end of the stick?

For most of my life I was a devout Christian- studying the Bible, doign as it told, reaching out to others in the name of Christ, and being ostricized because of my beliefs (all the while taking some encouragement in thinking that my efforts weren’t for nothing.) It wasn’t when these efforts didn’t seem to pan out that my beliefs changed. I still thought that God somehow had a greater purpose in everything. It was when I realized that no matter how faithful I was, no matter how much I prayed God didn’t care to respond in any way that I could even remotely distinguish was him. The Bible says that God’s children will be able to recognize when He speaks to them; that we will know when the Holy Spirit works. I even reached a point where I didn’t care if there was an act that was ” miraculous,” I just wanted something to be sure it was him and not just my own mind hoping that a Creator existed, grasping for instances that could be considered God making himself known.

If God can speak to so many other people (including non-believers,) if he can speak to so many people from Bible times but cannot speak to me, then I don’t think I want to serve that God. If he can speak and place within people (some of whom don’t even ask for or want it) a deep peace and knowledge of himself but not me, then what does that say? Why do I want anything to do with such a God?

At one point I believed that even though it seemed I was on a path that was leading me further from God, somehow God would show me meaning and lead me back to him. While I struggled with what was written in the Bible, I still had a core faith that God wanted me, saved me, and would somehow bring me to a deeper knowledge of him than when I first began my “journey.” To me this was an even deeper faith than those who suppodely hear or see God, those who supposedly have seen miracles because I hadn’t had any of those things and yet I still had faith. But in the end there still seems to be nothing more than this meager life. Nothing more than the lessons I learn based on my experiences and capabilities within THIS LIFE (none of which point to a higher being.) Somehow I still believe there is something that created us, or at least something more than just us. But I don’t think that being is in any way like the God of the Bible.

The God in the Bible saved one man and his family in the midst of a sin ridden town. All he asked was that they not turn around lest they be turned into a pillar of salt. These times are no different than those in Sodom and Gommorah, yet somehow I’m to believe that God chooses not to reveal himself to his believers in this time? The Bible states that God said he will not reveal himself to us in signs or miracles. Apparently he gave up on us or decided we were too wicked. I don’t know. But if this is the case, then why are any of you claiming to hear him, or see miracles? And why would I want to serve a God who helped out so many wicked people back in the day but won’t do the same for me now? Supposedly Noah was such a good dude, but the Old Testament says that he got drunk in his tent. He then fell asleep naked and one of his sons saw him naked, called in his other brothers, and they laughed at him. Noah then killed the son who made fun of him. Tell me please why God sat by and let Noah kill his son, especially when this was supposedly the time when God intervened the most? God’s law was that no man be drunk. It was Noah’s fault that he was drunk and naked. He disobeyed the Law and should have reaped the consequences. He not only didn’t accept his consequences, he commited a sin against the 10 commandments, which didn’t even fit the act of his son laughing at him. That would be like me gouging out someones eyes because they looked at me wrong for wearing an ugly outfit. What ever happened to turn the other cheak? The Bible is frought with contradictory statements. I don’t care if anyone says God knows best and can do whatever he wants. I thought God was supposed to be fair and seek justice? Well the knowledge of fair and justice he’s placed inside of me doesn’t fit what is written about him in the Bible.

O the story of Noah. What a beautiful story - if you can only see the story, not the history lesson.

What you point out about Noah is kinda like the story of David. David - whom committed adultery with a woman after David himself sent the woman’s husband out to war for the very purpose of killing him - this same David is who God said was after His own heart and God chose as King.

Makes me feel kinda good about myself.

And then there is Jacob - a heel grabber. A down right rotten scoundrel. Stole his brothers birthright, lied to His blind Father - and ran away from home, yet God was actually the one that picked Jacob for that very birthright - the one that had this already planned.

There are a couple more…

Again - forget the history lesson. Reread the story here.