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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rick Julian who wrote (25128)	10/1/1998 5:37:00 PM
From: George S. Montgomery	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Risk, are you capable of understanding how it is possible to say that this post of yours is one of the most immature and snotty pieces of word contamination entered into "discussion" on this god/no-god subject? You seem an Emile of a different stripe. E answered you so nicely a post or two ago - then you spit in her face, immaturely and snottily. I have asked you a few questions that you deride or ignore. You have no discussion. You have your premise as Truth - anyone trying to spec your Trusth is, in your immature and snotty view, unqualified to enter a discussion. Sam, if you read this, I meant to respond to one of your recent notes about not realizing till you were 51 and about God making you aware of the Christ within you, which wasn't the Jesus Christ. My response is: Sam, I didna' know ye! (I got the internal peace/awareness at 23 or 24, after a decade of heavy "research" and, I am sure you will admit to the slyness of this: The Christ that you are is not Jesus (you said that), but it also is Jesus, and E and Rick and George? Rick, I used to insist, this has been a life-long requirement, that one, you in this case, define God - before you start tossing stale vegetables all over the forum. (I did this back into the Galt days.) Do you have any communicable idea of, can you define, this God, who is your answer to the Ultimate"X"? I felt you were open to posting. But to go back again over the eternal God-Problem of Evil with such an immature, snotty (and disrespectful) attitudes as you expressed in this post is ridiculous! I guess I am infuriated because I deeply admire E, and you throw immature and snotty sauerkraut right in her face. Disgusting! gsm

To: Rick Julian who wrote (25128)	10/1/1998 7:34:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

You're demonstrating that the vast literature accompanying and documenting the historical attempt to escape the blanketing intellectual oppression of religious belief is largely unknown to the believers, or "credulists," as atheists sometimes refer to believers, among whom you count yourself.... I mean from the agnostic tendency in Greek thought through the Enlightenment and on to our own times. Hundreds of thousands of books and documents.... Each proposition-- credulist versus atheist --is obviously reducible to a simplistic central statement: I believe there is a God entity doing things, or, I don't believe that. It is hardly necessary to snorkel though the thousands of reiterations of the notion that there is a God entity of some kind or another (massive stones, carved idols, animal totems, thunder, lightning, volcanoes, select historical personages, members of royal families, celestial objects, etc.) in order to engage in an argument about this central opposition. P.S. My husband, who is currently writing a book that engages with the origins of Christian and other religious thought, and who is therefore more knowledgeable than I am in in the field of religious literature, suggests that I add that the great revolution in New Testament scholarship culminating in the work of the Jesus Seminar and in the works of Geza Vermes conclusively demonstrates the mythical character of Christian belief. If you want a handy popular summary of this critically important work, you might see A.N. Wilson's book, Jesus. Also very useful in his opinion is the work by Daniel L. Pals, Seven Theories of Religion, and all of the books by Norman Cohn, but in particular Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come, the Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith. One of the greatest books in this field is Weston LaBarre's The Ghost Dance. (Weston LaBarre, who died not long ago, happened to be a friend of mine, through my father, who retired to the same place as Weston did and became his close friend...but the recommendation has nothing to do with this small-world coincidence.) My husband knows less about Eastern religions that he does about Christianity and Judaism, but with a little effort could provide recommendations there too that would convince you, I think, that there is a great deal more to be said in support of non-deism than "I don't believe." By the way, I was, to my bafflement and dismay, forced to read the Bible in one circumstance or another when I was growing up; but how many classics of freethought were you forced to read growing up, I wonder? or have you consulted recently? I'll just mention Thomas Paine's Age of Reason, David Hume on miracles, or any of Mark Twain's wonderful critiques of the 57 varieties of the Christianity of his day.