While i am not a believer in the bible, or in jesus christ, i do admire the sense of purpose and belonging that comes with religon.Infomation and communication, have really started to take the mystery out of life. It's true that theres new mystery's evolving, but it's so much harder these days to be apart of them. It would be nice to think theres a higher power then yourself, controling your fate.Thinking to yourself, everything that happens in your life happens for a reason, a purpose.

People i have met who are part of a church, are usually less stressed, happier people. [well until you do something the church does'nt like]Would'nt we all be less stressed if the afterlife was proved beyond shadow of a doubt? i know i would be. Beliefs, which are about what happens to us when we die, i think would stabalise the world.

When people follow a good set of rules, society functions alot more harmoniously, today society is turning into a pile of horse snot, you trip on the street, and the next thing you know you have a stranger telling you to stay down until your lawyer arrives. People are out to just screw others, why? i think a possible reason is, science while benefical, is pretty dam cold, in it's forcast for us, we live we die - we return to the carbon cycle.

The problem these days, is people are becoming educated to such a high standard, religon is going down in populatrity in the western world, because science can answer [or can try to] almost every question someone could ask.

Science is taking the mystery out of living, and human life without mystery, is a life without thrill a sense of purpose and meaning.

I think that community and religion sometimes blur.

All the positives of a religion which you describe are the essence of a good social community. As we are evolved forms of a species that revolves around community it is easy to see why we are dependant on it and hold it in such high esteem.

I agree totally with you about the virtues of a community but do not believe that religion is needed to glue it together. Spirituality yes, but not religion.

Craig,

One night during my Boston years, a drunk with bad breath sat beside me on the subway.  I soon engaged him in conversation and he poured out his objections to the Catholic church of his youth.   I asked him to pretend that he was God and asked him which theological beliefs he would then encourage.  He had never thought of such a game, but soon spontaneously poured forth incredible wisdom, which he assumed was heretical.  I assured him that most of what he said was in fact biblically valid.  He had no theological training and was shocked that I said this.  I have found this to be true of other agnostics as well.  

Craig, in a few days I will soon redirect my energies to the spiritual issues you raise.  In addition to refining or expanding your issues, I'd encourage you to reflect on what Christianity would teach if you were God and the source of ultimate truth.  This playful presumption might lead to some interesting issues and insights.  In doing so, try to anticipate how I might reply. That might help me create more relevant answers.  

Your initial explorations of the Ouija board and mediums is quite rational,  though not my first choice.   I konw you're disappointed, but your explorations might have yielded very concrete verifications, which are often frustratingly elusive in spiritual quests.  If and when you feel ready for it, I'd encourage you to launch prayer experiments.  I know you don't believe in the Christian God.  I respect your reasons and will soon address them.  But beginning prayer requires no faith.  I am not suggesting that you compromise any of your current convictions.  Engage God AS IF He exists and cares about your quest.  But respectully present "Him" (Her) with all your reasons for rejecting Him.  Be real!  At the same time--and this is the most important point--tell God what you might be willing to do if God convinced you of His love and guidance to your satisfaction.   Spiritual experience is everything; doctrinal correctness is the booby prize.   The more you play this game in your imagination, the more likely it is that you will begin to experience a transformed consciousness and eventually some convincing verifications.
             
I know that you are far from being ready for church.  But let me address your comments on this thread.  In real life, the strongest argument against Christianity is other Christians. (hypocrisy, judgmentalism, narrow-mindedness, etc.).  Conversely, practically speaking, the strongest argument in favor of Christianity is also other Christians, i. e. Christians in community who often go the extra mile to comfort those in distress and offer them financial assistance.   Ordinary folk are initially attracted by the warmth of certain churches (too few!), a friendliness which eventually opens their hearts to experiences of God's loving presence and even miracles.   Initially, though, most of them could care less about doctrinal debate and the problems of biblical credibility.  Eventually, though, if such concerns are not adequately addressed, this would be sufficient grounds for abandoning a church.

Once newcomers find value in loving community and sense God's guidance, many are then ready to confront the difficult questions of doctrine that you have raised.   But many other church members care only about the loving harmony and never launch a genuine spiritual quest.   I like to confront such Christians with legitimate grounds for doubt to motivate them to dig deeper.   Also,  those who are comfort-seekers rather than truth-seekers often display the character flaws that give some churches a bad name.  

Occasionally, a poster on this site will ask me to recommend a church.  I advise them to initially take for granted that they have enough spiritual discernment to sense whether the spirituality of a specific church is genuine and potentially nourishing.  What one senses and experiences in a church is far more important than how well the church articulates biblical beliefs.  I wouldn't make  the denomination a priority.   All churches give lipservice to the power of prayer, but in my experience, only a few really take a disciplined prayer life seriously.  Those churches that do often radiate a loving atmosphere and a palpable sense of God's presence.        

Don

P.S. For my Jewish friends, I acknowledge that jewish mysticism (Merkabah, etc.) seems absolutely fascinating and full of valuable insights.  But I must address what I know best and have experienced.

I have the imprssion that the same general comments can equally be applied to the yoga students living in a Hindu ashram yet their belief system is based on a very different perspective of God. To the relatively enlightened and devout Hindu, Brahman is the essential nature of immanent creativity in emptiness, manifested by extension of space (purusha) and specificity (prakriti) and leading to the statistical combinations of these factors by which superposed properties come to act like the material world.

In other words, it isn't the churchy part, but the human part that makes it work.

d

Spitfire,

Like Don, I too respect the reasons behind your beliefs.  I also encourage you to pray...whether you believe the Christian "God" is listening or not.   Those who diligently search for truth will find it, so keep searching with an open mind and open heart.  

;) Bug

Prayer works. It has been demonstrated as a healing power that increases healing, even though the praying people and the ill people have kept isolated in a double blind experiment.

We can assume that it's from an external Deity, or that it's because we're each a fragment of God-stuff, or whatever. But prayer definitely works.

Conversely, just because prayer works does not mean that we have an external God, an internal God-Self, or a mechanical hookup to make things happen.

Personaly, I like the idea of getting together to acknowledge the Statistical Tendency through which emptiness gave forth  the reality we know, and the chance to share information on how to become better, more loving, wiser and more joyful. And I really don't care whether you call the Tendency by the term "God", or "Uncaused Cause" or the "Big Mushroom in the Sky".  

As for the idea of prayer, I wonder whether we might do better to pray for a good government and world peace, as opposed to electing people whose idea of pacifying the world is to shoot the parts that seemt to be distressed at the idea of being shot.  There's already a surplus of that kind of thinking. t nvariably seems to be typical of young, immature souls. My favorite example of a mature soul would be Edgar Cayce who was simply a family man who practiced photography. Lao Tse said much the same thing, that the nation best prospers when the rules leave it alone.  

d

Dave,

I do agree that prayer works.  I cannot speak for Don, but I didn't encourage Spitfire to pray in order to find God...what he finds will be up to him.  I am simply hoping that prayer will lead him to the truth.  If that truth is the Christian God, then so be it.  Second, if a person prays earnestly for God to show him/her truth...there is no doubt it will come.  And when it comes, there will be no doubt who answered the prayer.

:)

Hi Fluttrerbug-

In suggesting that truth will make itself appropriately known, you've suggested an interesting can of worms to think about - the idea of multiple streams of truth.

Truth, as we understand it, must agree with our perceptions. Else, we are mad, and the world will be arbitrary and inconsistent. . But if our perceptions are situationally dependent, then our truth is similarly situational. It seems rather as if the essence of truth is like a retreating barricade behind which we suspect that we will find a gem of validity, but we can't penetrate to get to it. The best we can do is to ease the barrier back a bit at a time.

Meanwhile we find that the ground exposed before us brings our awareness to new conclusions because it both fails to nullify our individualistic concept of truth,  while at the same time, it restates the old in new and unfamiliar terms. In a sense, all truth is one truth, yet at the same time, all truth appears in diverse and sometimes divergent ways.

One of the reasons that I personally came to the conclusion that we all participate in the essential nature of a "Cosmic Oneness", long before learning how to meditate and investigate for myself, was this problem of one or many. My conclusion was that everybody has to be correct, if not, then nobody is. Either case seems to require that we somehow touch commonly at a single point, in this case by sharing an ultimate potentially discovered Truth after a series of highly divergent experiences, but also in the sense that were we not to have a commonality at the beginning, we'd be unable to communicate - ultimate solipcism, with no truth to be communicated.

Of course, having thought about thuis, I wonder if it's true.  :-)
d

Dave,
I believe that you have hit the nail on the head.  Individual truth is all relative.  Relative to many things...who you are, the time of day, the purpose meant for your existence, etc.  Personally, I don't think the same "truth" is true for everyone.  Excuse the pun.  We can all look at a painting and see very different images because we all see the painting from a different perspective.  I do not believe that God expects or meant for us to be robots who all believed, felt, and acted in the same ways.  How boring!   We all have a different purpose in life.  Your purpose may very well be to question these beliefs in order to make those around you think a little more about what this all means.  Ultimately, our main goal in life should be to seek this purpose because it is, in fact, our truth.  

The foundation has been set.  What we have to do is seek truth without trying to destroy it.  Take the Bible for instance.  There are too many people so quick to call it garbage without trying to find their own truth hidden in it.  I'm not trying to force you to read it, or tell you that you will find the truth in it...just saying that's one place to begin searching if you want to look.  The same goes for prayer.  

Your truth is very different from mine.  My truth comes from faith...which is a whole different converation thread, so I won't go there.  For some, faith comes easy, for others it takes a lifetime of searching.  

Needless to say, there are millions of people looking for a scientific explanation for everything under the sun.  Many times science leaves us with more questions than answers.  So, I have to accept that there isn't a scientific answer for everything (truth included).  If so, mankind hasn't been able to find all of the answers through scientific experimentation.  I don't know all there is to know about life nor do I care to know.  I have found a peace that surpasses all understanding.  I can tell you one truth, my friend... there is something out there greater than all of us.  That something holds the key to all of the questions that science cannot answer.  ;)

Hi Flutterbug-

My mind is wandering a bit around this topic. The analogy I like best is the one about the mountain - All around the base of the mountain are roads with signs in different languages that direct the traveller to do different things and to bring different preparations etc. At the top is a single Destination.

There's a Zen saying that comes close-  "In the beginning, mountains are mountains and trees are trees. In between, mountains are no longer mountaions and trees are no longer trees. At the end, mountains are mountains and trees are trees."

In all of our efforts to understand God, the one thing that I find more and more persuasive is the idea that God has a Cosmic Sense of Humor.  Having read most of the major religious scriptures of our planet, I have found a very great similarity in message and style throughout, although not in the literal words themselves.  It's the same message that we get from meditation, although filtered through the pens of a few generations of uncomprehending scribes, many of whom sought to "clarify" what they were transcribing.

Faith is a funny concept. I have faith in my car, my feet, and the weather, meaning a statistical analysis that leads me to certain expectations that are generally validated. Faith is more often used as an expression of unshakable certainty. That's more difficult, because I can't really tell you how information gets from outside where "Others" exist, into my inner self where the "I" lives. My sensory system responds only to changes, meaning that there may be a vast universe of unseen and unknowable constancy out there that I can never perceive because it doesn't cause sensory changes to stimulate me.  

Worse, I can't really "see" myself on the outside because I have to use the sensory system that I'm trying to look at in order to see it, which suggests that there may be a lot of distortion, error or misinterpretation of incoming sense data due to the circularity of the effort.  Like the microphone that tries to pick up what comes out of its loudspeaker, and eventually just squeals.

However, it takes little more than looking at the logic of the situation to figure out what must occur, and how it must be arranged, using the same kind of reasoning that tells me that two geometric figures are congruent because they must be, by use of abstract logic alone. And in moments of deep meditation and samadhi we invariably come to the same perception that the "Top of the Mountain" is common to all the paths leading to it. I'm inclined to call that by a different term than faith, but I don't really have a better one. Perhaps "experience" or "direct perception".  

I have the impression that Spitfire is presently traversing the region in which "mountains are no longer mountains and trees are no longer trees", using a sharp wit and keen insight the way an ice climber uses crampons and pitons, and he's trying to keep from unloading all his beliefs and safety nets. I've been there, and it can get pretty scary when you realize that you're standing on nothing, at all.

Eventually there will come an impassable abyss that requires a jump, a release of the old ideas that used to focus inward as threats and limits, and a substitution in their place of intention and effort, which will be followed, I assume in the near future of this lifetime, by meditation, samadhi, and the same indescribable perception, at which time everything turns "inside out" and focusses outward as part of the causal mechanisms by which all this stuff happens, the "peace the transcends ordinary understanding".

Prayer is one approach, and it works, even if one prays to mountain spirits and the four winds, providing that one is willing to ask for Ultimate Truth (whatever that might mean).

dave

Dave,

I fundamentally disagree with you about many things.  But I agree with you about God's cosmic sense of humor.  In the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament, the process of divine creation is imaged as divine "play"--an image that helps make biblical creationism somewhat compatible with the random aspect of evolutionary theory.   As the embodiment of God, Jesus displays an acute sense of humor which is on display in His celebration of laughter, in His bizarre use of Semitic hyperbole to infuse His points with memorable shock value, and in His frequent use of corny  puns, which are on display in the Aramaic retroversion of His Greek Gospel sayings.  Ministers often misinterpret Jesus by taking some of His teaching literally when He was basically going for laughs.  

One of my favorite cinematic portrayals of Jesus is a scene in Bunuel's Spanish film "The Milky Way."  In this scene two witless pilgrims in France have stopped at an inn en route to a sacred site.   They are immersed in grim theological debate.  A waiter notices their frowning faces and asks, "Do you  think Jesus had a sense of humor?"  That question cues a switch to the scene of a man racing through a field of grain laughing his head off.  The audience is startled to realize it is Jesus, who is on His way to bring His disciples to tthe wedding  feast at Cana, where He will turn the water into wine, but only after a long period of wine drinking and mirthful merriment that characterized Jewish weddings in Jesus' day--and today.

Christians like to stress Jesus's character, example, and teaching at the expense of His witty personality.   But in real life, personality and character cannot be so easily separated.   The church would do well to compensate for this neglect, the reason for which is not hard to find.  

With all its warmth and wit, Jesus' humanity brings with it all our natural limitations.  These limitations enhance the realism of His spiritual example, but are threatening to Christians who have an unbiblical view of His divinity.  Many Christians wrongly assume that the earthly Jesus was omnipotent and omniscient, but then are hard-pressed to explain why He could do not miracles until He was anointed with the Holy Spirit at His baptism.  Jesus spent most of His life as a carpenter with no obvious special powers.  If He was always walking around with two full-blown natures---one human and the other divine---then why would He need an infusion with the Holy Spirit to perform miracles?   The Bible teaches that He "emptied Himself" of His divine prerogatives to become human and that these prerogatives were restored to Him by His resurrection and exaltation.  But during His strictly human period, He was limited in both knowledge and power.  

Don

P.S. Justin Martyr who grew up in first-century Samaria, near Gailee reports people proudly displaying ploughs made by the carpenter Jesus.  Just imagine if archaeologists discovered a buried first-century plough inscribed with the signature of "Jesus of Nazareth."   In addition to being priceless, such a treasure would be a valuable reminder of Jesus' full humanity.

Dave,

Just want to make sure there is no misunderstanding here...
Although I said there is a different "truth" for all of us, I do believe that the "ultimate truth" we speak of comes from Jesus Christ and Him alone.  Just my belief, and I'm not trying to push it on anyone.  While I do believe that there are many paths that lead to Jesus.  Jesus is the only path leading to the Kingdom.  

Thanks for the reply's guys.

Prayer, is almost an alien concept for me. I have no faith, belief or evidence to show me, praying is anything but imagining your wishes inside your head, thus leading yourself to cold conclusion that "no one/thing" is listening.

I had a college teacher who's wife was dieing of cancer, a devoted christian, the church organised a pray meeting for her, 15,000 people attended, and the outcome. She died. [and convertered most of her family to athiesim].

Ultimate Truth to me, is the maximization of ones knowledge based upon the confines to which they are held. As the confines to which we are held change, so does truth.

What do i search for in this mortal realm?, i search for the basic truth of "what comes next?". Do we survive, how do we survive, what is our purpose here?

Like most things, until ive had time away from my current existance i will not fully understand many aspects of whats to come. Just like when i was at school, i could imagine having a job - being grown up, driving a car - but until it occured many things remained foriegn to me, but the basic concepts - such as earning money, responsibility, i could comprehend basically, thanks to our unique ability of interlectual growth/interpretation of information and imagination.

Hi Spitfire-

I think your critical mind and insight will eventually find new things to look at in the spiritual realm, but that certainly is not a necessity.

My guess is that prayer operates by aligning our intention with some kind of external system of fulfillment. I don't see why it would be necessary to specifify it too precisely, but it presumably associates us with a way to steer a better path to our desired goal states. We have a basic awareness that there are spiritual beings out there, and my inclination would be to address then generically. "Calling all Spirits and spooks. OK, you guys, what I want you to do is this ... Thanks."  People get results this way.  They do not generally work last minute miracles. However, if you look into faith healing you'll find cases in which some remarkable healings have happened.

Don- I don't see any basic disagreements between awareness of earthbound souls, stuck souls, desirable and undesirable astral locations etc, and the general notion underlying Christianity.  I am inclined to argue strongly against modern "interpretations" of "what the Bible really means", and suchlike.  But I have no problem envisioning Jesus rescuing stuck souls and discussing metaphysics with us.

The speculation that I produce about the way God and the world operate is, literally, speculation.  It's abstract reasoning based on logic and is unquestionably true, but might be extremely misleading, in the same sense as describing Manhatten as an island in a river. True, but misses the point.

My own life is filled with oddball communications from "out there", and a substantial number of these communications, aside from the ones that prompt me to buy gas the day prior to an "unexpected" rate hike, often carry a sense of laughter at my rather klutzy handling of things. Fortunately, it's the same kind of humor that makes me laugh at our kids when they do what kids do, and I have to admit that it's usually justtified.

My hope is that through interactions on this forum we can all progress forward to see a little more of the way that things actually are, and I am certain that that's going to be different from the opinions of 2000 years of scribes, many of whom were far less than enlightened.  In this regard, it is the critics and objectors who are most likely to succeed first, because it takes a perpetual upgrading of opinions in order to keep a critical posture alive. Thus, I endorse what you say in principle, even if not in detail. Keep ploughing-

dave