No Such Thing as Atheism.

[Wryetui]

I'll take that as a no, you haven't read Craig or Luther.

Yes, I have read about Craig and in a more extent about Luther and his ideas, but not those in praticular you mention.

Did you read St. Simeon the New Theologian, St. Gregory Palamas, St. Silouan the Athonite? These three talk very much and very well about the subject we are talking about, please give them a try.

 

[Wryetui]

Yes, I admit I know little about Orthodoxy.



ology
a subject of study; a branch of knowledge.

I find that choice of word to describe something that isn't a study rather confusing. It seems that we aren't using the word to mean even remotely the same thing. I think that we should just stop here.

I'm relieved to be so "pagan". I can't imagine the hell of renouncing reason.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Your "reason" will be the cause of your hell.

 

[Wryetui]

So... when faced with people asking you for "reason" in regard to your position, you retreat to your "purify your heart and pray" assertions. And when you have to justify that, you revert to "you haven't even read a book about it - your limited reason does offer nothing for the discussion". And all that evading while deriding your opposite. Impressive!

Well, if you really think that this kind of arrogance is a sign of a "pure heart"... I am glad I don't have it.

No, you didn't ask anything, you just came to twist my words without having any idea about what I was talking about.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

The same as the position in the West which seems deeply anti-spiritual. Let me explain it, Orthodoxy puts reason and intellect in their place, a fairly secondary place, and why is that? Because our intellect is something created, and through it we cannot discover God since our reason is limited and God is transcendent, so, in order to believe in and find God, Orthodoxy follows the empirical way, the way of experiencing. The same way the apostles saw Jesus's uncreated light at Tabor, the same way the orthodox try to purify ourselves enough in order to see it, through deep prayer. It's not a secret or some form of weird practice, even Jesus clearly says it: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

I know this seems odd for someone in the West because of their dependence on reason, logic and intellect, but in order to enter in the sacred space of apophatic theology, of actually seeing God through theoria one must learn to make their reason, logic and intellect, subordinate to their hearts.

This is not fundamentally dissimilar from Craig's line of thought:

I have argued that the role of rational argumentation and evidence in knowing Christianity to be true is the role of a servant. The primary way in which we know that Christianity is true is through the self-authenticating witness of God’s Spirit, and while reason and evidence and argument can be used to confirm that conclusion, it cannot be properly used to subvert that conclusion.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Yes, I have read about Craig and in a more extent about Luther and his ideas, but not those in praticular you mention.

Did you read St. Simeon the New Theologian, St. Gregory Palamas, St. Silouan the Athonite? These three talk very much and very well about the subject we are talking about, please give them a try.

Why should I read them? That would involve using my intellect, which is bad apparently.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Your "reason" will be the cause of your hell.

So you say, but the light of reason is the only thing saving me from my hell. I do not consider the darkness of superstition and non-rational "knowledge" anything other than hell.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Celticflower]

I'm relieved to be so "pagan". I can't imagine the hell of renouncing reason.


eudaimonia,

Mark

You could be a Methodist. We do not divorce faith from reason.

 

[GrimKingGrim]

It's just that faith is really an unnecessary extra with all the stipulations it brings. Why not just live a good life on one's own accords? Faith offers nothing really to that

 

[Archaeopteryx]

You could be a Methodist. We do not divorce faith from reason.

It's not so much a matter of divorcing faith from reason, but prioritising faith over reason.

 

[KCfromNC]

This seems to be the main opposition to belief in God.

In a way this is true. Through life experience I've learned that people make up all sorts of stuff for various reasons. I've found it is a bad idea to take their most fantastic claims at face value, especially those which can't be independently verified. Applying those life lessons to various claims about gods finds those claims lacking in many ways.

 

[KCfromNC]

Is a 0.5% chance (subjectively assessed) that God exists - and I think Sam Harris holds this belief - a form of theism?

No more than buying a lottery ticket with a 0.5% odds makes one a multi-millon dollar jackpot winner.

 

[GrimKingGrim]

I tend to feel the same, that my faith and my reason kept clashing. It made the idea of a god so irrational and I had to find new strange explanations for believing rather just accepting that I pretty much don't believe.

 

[Eudaimonist]

You could be a Methodist. We do not divorce faith from reason.

Note what Archaeopteryx says a few posts above, but I agree that any Christian denomination that recognizes some importance to reason is less trapped in the darkness than those that don't.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Wryetui]

Why should I read them? That would involve using my intellect, which is bad apparently.

How can you say so? I did not say intellect is bad, I didn't say we shouldn't use it, lol. Since you can not have a spiritual life for yourself because you don't believe in it, you should read about how others had a spiritual life, but that's it, only reading, it won't deificate you or take you away from passion because study is study.

Intellect is bad only when it's over used for everything, orthodox christians, since the very beginning (palamism is a doctrine that exists from the very beginning of christianity, it's the core), have reached God through it, and menawhile, you "rationalists" are in atheism, and those who are christians there in the West use their intellects to formulate their own theories about God based on speculation which gives birth to "denominations", like Jean Calvin did, Luther, Zwingli... all using their intellects to speculate about God, and Richard Dawkins uses the same intellect to go against God, so the human intellect is blind when overused, it's only useful when put into the light of God's service.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

How can you say so? I did not say intellect is bad, I didn't say we shouldn't use it, lol. Since you can not have a spiritual life for yourself because you don't believe in it, you should read about how others had a spiritual life, but that's it, only reading, it won't deificate you or take you away from passion because study is study.

I'm very passionate about what I study. I also deny that atheists are closed to the "spiritual," though I don't define "spiritual" as synonymous with "supernatural."

Intellect is bad only when it's over used for everything, orthodox christians, since the very beginning (palamism is a doctrine that exists from the very beginning of christianity, it's the core), have reached God through it, and menawhile, you "rationalists" are in atheism, and those who are christians there in the West use their intellects to formulate their own theories about God based on speculation which gives birth to "denominations", like Jean Calvin did, Luther, Zwingli... all using their intellects to speculate about God, and Richard Dawkins uses the same intellect to go against God, so the human intellect is blind when overused, it's only useful when put into the light of God's service.

Again, this is fundamentally no different to what Craig is saying, and Craig isn't an Orthodox Christian.

 

[Celticflower]

Archaeopteryx and Mark -- I was actually trying to lighten the mood a wee bit .
When it comes to faith, the choice is yours and no one else's. Just didn't want you to think that Christians all check their brains at the door, drink some cosmic Kool-aid and mindlessly follow what the guy up front says. Many of us study and make what we consider to be a rational decision about the branch of faith we follow. And some of us are actually able to reconcile the teachings of the church with the teachings of science - giving us the best of both worlds.

 

[Loudmouth]

People are just atheists because they don't know what God is.

I would argue that it is just the opposite. People are atheists because God is indistinguishable from a deity that people have made up. Sagan famously wrote about this in his essay "The Dragon in My Garage".

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

I have never met an atheist that knows theology, patristics, dogmatics, hesychasm, hamartiology, soteriology, eschatology and lots of words that are unknown to most christians out there. When I was an atheist was because I was ignorant, and I am not lying if I say most of the atheists out there are ignorants, because no matter how much you think you know, how much philosophy, how much Richard Dawkins, how much Christopher Hitchens you have read because they are as blind as you.

With all of that knowledge, can you present to us any verifiable evidence for the existence of God?

 

[Wryetui]

I'm very passionate about what I study. I also deny that atheists are closed to the "spiritual," though I don't define "spiritual" as synonymous with "supernatural."

Again, this is fundamentally no different to what Craig is saying, and Craig isn't an Orthodox Christian.

Tell me where and what does Craig say that is exactly the same as Orthodox Christianity. It would be no surprise, Orthodox Christians follows these methods since the very beggining of christianity because this one is the way christianity is in essence, I am referring to the Fathers of the Desert, who explained it very well in the philocalic readings, centuries III to IV.

I would argue that it is just the opposite. People are atheists because God is indistinguishable from a deity that people have made up. Sagan famously wrote about this in his essay "The Dragon in My Garage".

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm



With all of that knowledge, can you present to us any verifiable evidence for the existence of God?

I seriously doubt that you actually know God in such a way that you talk about Him, tell me, how is Jesus Christ indistinguishable from any other deity?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Tell me where and what does Craig say that is exactly the same as Orthodox Christianity.

See the quote I posted.

 

[Loudmouth]

I seriously doubt that you actually know God in such a way that you talk about Him, tell me, how is Jesus Christ indistinguishable from any other deity?

I doubt that you actually know a deity that exists to begin with.