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Avoiding closing churches, world war and total annihilation.

Started by David Pinnegar, December 28, 2015, 07:45:09 AM

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David Pinnegar

Following a discussion with my son in the thoughts of http://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,2035.0.html he pointed out to me http://www.eauk.org/church/research-and-statistics/how-many-churches-have-opened-or-closed-in-recent-years.cfm which details the vast increase of Pentecostal churches and a corresponding collapse of Anglicans. This is wholly dangerous for the human race because in simplification of faith, the religions grow farther apart and segregated, from each other and from The Creator of All who or which is everywhere, invisible and all powerful in everything and this will lead to destruction.

We will face a Germany of the 2030s not unlike that of the 1930s because the circumstances will be the same.

The human race hasn't learned - only turned its back on the nonsenses and finding Atheism. That doesn't understand the work or power of the Creator and the skills of creating. It is only blind.

http://www.eauk.org/idea/should-christians-do-yoga.cfm is interesting. We could well expect to see such an article written by a Muslim.

This sort of blinkering and deliberate blindness is not at all in harmony or worship of God the Creator nor the Creator of All.

If we don't want churches to close, we've got to get away from the worship of the square root of minus one without working + and x first in all that we do and with everyone, (explained a little in http://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,2035.0.html ) we have to understand all things in context and in the way they are all the work of the creator, but in dealing with "-" negative numbers remember that 1 is made up also of -1x-1 . . . . and we've got to get into + and x mode, the decisions that create, the meanings of texts which lead to creating and the putting aside of meanings that don't help us create, instead of 1 and 2 mode.  In other words we have to think in the operator dimension rather than the material number dimension. So we have to see the creator process between things rather than the things.

This is equivalent to the analogy of the surface of the Sea of Circumstances on which we are boats visible on the invisible sea. In order to understand where we're going we have to understand the sea, the circumstances, the decisions which link one piece of matter to another, one human being to the next and the furthest.

That article on Yoga is saying "Watch out - there's a Hindu boat over there" rather than appreciating that we are all boats of the Creator, and we all part of the same Sea.

Perhaps on that Hindu boat we can help them to see more clearly the Creator whilst we might see his component parts.

The Parthenon frieze is interesting in the section above the East Door of the Parthenon, showing the Homeric Council, or Assembly of Gods who sit in First Judgment about the creation of mankind. . . . Though we are many we are one body. In the debate on that Frieze being part of our psyche we carry it in our heads, each quality having been given by each god inserted into Pandora from whom we come, and being a hung Council, the Chairman there and in us is in charge. The Parthenon is monotheistic but through the Greek we are better able to understand its component parts and in the identification of eliminating Desire, Deceit and Hate from our hearts to achieve Paradise, Nirvana, we have a better focus in the Buddist.

Last week before Christmas I had to remind a devout Philippine Cristian of this in marriage guidance before Christmas - as the Christian perspective wasn't coming through. On Facebook she's the most devout of Christians, praying to Jesus all the time asking to be saved from this situation and that, and the cruelty of one person and another.

But the reality is that she could not embrace her husband, let alone Jesus, with anger rather than love in her heart. No amount of explaining love for Jesus would do the trick, as she didn't have love in her heart. Simply couldn't understand. No point in the Lord's Prayer - she didn't understand how to forgive. Always blame on someone else and she was always right.

The Christian message didn't get through - Jesus is a prop and a superstition and Jesus will do it for you if you ask him - but Jesus only works if we too are Sons and Daughters of the Creator and understand + and x mode. Some people can't get there, especially if they have an ego the size of an elephant and brain the size of a pea, without being enlightened from another of the perspectives. The family had a Happy Christmas as a result that Jesus alone could not have achieved.

In togetherness is power. That's why the forces of man in this world, and very apparent in our texts of all religions, want to split us apart.

Best wishes

David P

Paul Duffy

People seem to be turning their backs on churches mostly because of the divisiveness you speak of. I can't see how you are going to turn that state of affairs around. Either people attend church to worship something that is perceived to be apart from them, or they realise that they are A PART of God and do not feel it is necessary to attend public worship to be pigeon holed by a particular creed or religion. Or of course, they become atheist. Though you seem to be searching for it, there is no middle ground here. The church age seems to be slowly coming to an end.

I have had what some people might term a 'spiritual experience' over the past two years and I fully concur with Gandhi when he said that God is not bound by religion. Though I am Catholic, only Hinduism could really explain what was happening to me. So for me, there is nothing wrong with a Christian doing yoga. After all, it did prolong the footballing career of Ryan Giggs.

Best wishes,
Paul.

David Pinnegar

Dear Paul

Thank you so much for being very brave and bringing your thoughts to life.

Perhaps we might possibly bring wider perspectives . . .

I hope that others might share here too . . .

Best wishes and a Happy New Year to all!

David P

David Pinnegar

#3
We are at war with our planet, and war with each other, and the consequences of both hold fatality within realms of probability.

As worshippers of "The Creator" it is up to us, each of us, to stop the practices of worshipping our teachers and instead start to learn and understand and apply the processes of what they taught, how to create, Creation and creating.

With regard to war with our planet, there is no reason to suppose that thermodynamics applies to electrodynamics or magnetodynamics and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK3JOlY0V8Y is worthy of attention.

With regard to each other, the headlines this morning make shocking reading
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/12079647/Saudis-give-Iranian-diplomats-24-hours-to-leave-Iran-following-Shia-clerics-execution.html
https://www.rt.com/news/327755-saudi-embassy-iran-protest/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3383516/Is-Jihadi-Junior-British-toddler-sick-new-execution-video-bears-striking-resemblance-son-woman-fled-London-Syria.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3382674/Muslim-boys-kidnapped-brainwashed-suicide-bombers-traded-jihadis-30-000-time.html
and the troubles in Paris and Belgium will spread.

Rather than shake our heads in helplessness and denial, we who worship the Creator have the tools of empowerment to shake our spears at the forces of separation, discord and ununderstanding, ignorance.

The first thing we need to do, to help those who we can see are horribly misled in the world, is to de-personify. Personification and anthropomorphism is natural but primitive. It's also easier to ask our teacher to do our homework for us than to do it ourselves, but we don't learn the subject that way.

Perhaps the first anthropomorphism we should put in the bin is . . . the Devil. There is no Devil nor battle with the Devil. Our enemy isn't the fictitious personage we invent but with ignorance itself. That which does not understand. It is merely darkness. Darkness is only a place where there is no light.* Darkness is only a place where there is no understanding. "Forgive them for they no not what they do". To counter ignorance we need process and discipline.

So in our readings of texts we need to put on one side texts or understandings of texts that lead to separation, to things that don't bring together but instead split apart. If there is anything in Christianity that we hold dear, we have no fear, because in worship of the Creator God, anything true will resurrect. That's what our religion teaches us. It not what we have to enforce on anyone, it's the natural way and we can have confidence in finding it.

Is anyone else interested in running with the challenge of bringing peoples and faiths together?

If we have faith in the Creator God we can create and do with confidence.

Best wishes

David P

* This was one of the arguments between Einstein and his professors in Zurich - there is no cold - only heat. Cold is a place only where there is no heat. Ascribing a personality to cold gives it a power which it does not have. Heat always overcomes cold. There is no cold below absolute Zero. Cold is a description of no heat, but is not a force or power in itself. Likewise the personification of that which does not create gives the randomness of ignorance, of ununderstanding, a power that it does not command. The only force in creation is the power of the process of creating itself.

revtonynewnham

James   PeterSorry David - the Devil/Satan or whatever (s)he's called is very real.

Jesus has a great deal to say about him in the gospels, as does the rest of the Bible, which is, let's not forget, the Word of God.

To say that the Devil does not exist means that he has won a victory and encourages us to lower our guard.  He is the source & origin of evil - and I think you'll agree that evil is all too real!

May I suggest you read (re-read?) C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters".

Every Blessing

Tony

David Pinnegar

Dear Tony

The "Devil" or "Satan" is only a description of that which is against creation, against the Creator. But actually the physics of creation is that there is no Devil, no Satan, that can undo creation - there is no cold that can undo heat . . . because there is no cold colder than -273 degrees C, absolute zero. Creation always happens because it's the only process that produces anything. Whilst others might destruct, none can destruct beyond the last brick . . . so those who create will always result in more than what destructs. Destruction is finite, whilst creation is infinite. For this reason the concept of holding to a name and giving something life by creating it where no such power exists gives the "The Devil" false existence.

In the face of destruction, we have to focus on what creates, on the worship of the Creator. That is the power of the Lord's Prayer, which gives us specific instruction on how to create in all circumstances. Temptation is that of taking the shortcut - that doesn't create with the foundations of what creates, and evil is that which simply does not understand what creates. By following the path of what creates one is always delivered from the circumstances of that which does not understand creation.

By recognising the power of the Creator and of creating, one has already defeated the phantom which is "The Devil" and robbed the concept of the force and power of mere superstition. The Devil does not exist.

Once we kill "the Devil" so that it does not exist, and in this we are supported by John Chapter 1's illumination of logos, then the victory against "Satan" is won. It is a description of a force which doesn't exist, it being merely ignorance, and as such we are freer to get on with the work of the Creator unhindered, unobstructed. Darkness is no force and has no energy - only light has energy and power.

As soon as we kill "The Devil" and focus only on The Creator God, the devil not existing so needing no attention, instead of giving half our energy to fighting the non existent leaving only half our energy available for creation, we are released to give Creation full power.

So as soon as we kill "The Devil" we become freer to be to be Christian, hearing the Father's word and doing it as brother and sister daughters and sons of the Creator, loving The Creator with all our heart and our neighbours as ourselves, not only to our sisters and brothers, not only to our families, not only to our Clubs - including the clubs of religions - but to other human beings as human beings and not as demons to be clubbed into submission of false beliefs.

I was going to start a thread too today on killing God! Why do we need to kill God? Charlie Hebdo explains why - http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/a-year-on-charlie-hebdo-blames-god-the-terrorist/news-story/af3e55b2361faf6a97ebec4d2d0c96d3
http://seatingchair.com/2016/01/05/one-year-on-charlie-hebdo-blames-god-for-killings-66779.html
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/04/one-year-charlie-hebdo-blames-god-attack/

The problem is that "God" has been forgotten as merely the description of The Creator and has been taken for a name. "Hallowed" - "Sacred" by thy name . . . we say. Hallowed - feared - too powerful to be invoked - too powerful to be said - frightening - leading to unsaid.

But we allow the word to be said, used as a name.

Said, the name "God" becomes an idol and becomes as misunderstood as it has been. It does nothing but give false faith. It's idle, without power. That's why MP Benoist Apparu says
Quote"The convictions of atheists and secular thinkers can move more mountains than the faith of believers."

The power of The Creator has been forgotten, lost in being named.

By holding on to words which we hold dear, that don't hold in themselves the power of the process of creating, our actions are no more powerful than a child's comfort in a teddy bear.

But by operating the process of the Creator, whatever the Creator is called, and which has created ever since all began and way before we were born to name it, we can ensure that we are part of the process of creation by being its operands and so that the illusory forces of ignorance have no effect on Creation.

In doing away with words of tarnished meaning, we lose nothing, because whatever we do in faith by the Creator will resurrect. Only the Creator gives life, as it always has and always will. Whatever words we choose to use or not use, the process of creation will always happen. But it's better for us to be part of its happening.

By looking at our faith in terms more fundamental than our language, in the common sense of the power of creating, The Church, with organs as well, can flourish and will be seen not as irrelevant as now, not only relevant, but necessary to our understanding and our survival.

Best wishes

David P

Nicolette

"By looking at our faith in terms more fundamental than our language, in the common sense of the power of creating, The Church, with organs as well, can flourish and will be seen not as irrelevant as now, not only relevant, but necessary to our understanding and our survival."

How about adding prayer into the mixture? 
N.
Nicolette Fraser, B. Mus., ARCO

David Pinnegar

#7
The addition of prayer is vital but prayers in the wrong directions don't do much, and despite much prayer, churches are closing.

Indeed, the central core of the Mission Action Plan of our now doomed to closure local church was particularly a prayer something like "May we see a new vision of your glory, a new . . " and various other things along the same line, and God - sorry The Creator - has answered that prayer, and firmly, by closing the church.

So prayer most certainly works, but the answer to a prayer may put in front of us a challenge. We either have to work with The Creator in following the direction of the answered prayer, or cease to be worshippers of the Creator.

"A new . . . " is not only needed but He (remembering that that is only a description of the behaviour of the nature of the Creator process rather than a personification as fact) has answered . . . by closing the church . . . making way for something new.

How do we find the new?

Follow the lead of the Creator.

We have followed linguistics . . . and texts edited for 17 centuries since the Council of Nicea when a not very Christian Emperor Constantine saw the value of the religion of Jesus incorporating so much of the Greek before (http://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,2038.msg9314.html#msg9314) as a means of holding a Roman Europe together. The Gnostics were excluded. They believed in a living faith.

The reality is that so much of what the Church teaches us about Jesus, focussing on Jesus in contrast to The Creator, errs on being a personality cult with which St Paul was in harmony and which suited the Empire.

Quotethe dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you,  how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already,  by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ),  which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit . . .

The reality is that Paul's as Gnostic as the next guy. Indeed the "mystery of Christ" was inherited from the "mystery religions" with which so many in the Greek and Roman world were familiar.

For that reason we should reopen matters enforced by Emperor Constantine, which put forward a worship of Jesus which has caused all sorts of wars, all sorts of treacheries, unkindnesses and sufferings, and start to look again at the texts of the sort found at Nag Hammadi, and Essene texts lost and found in obscure monasteries such as those translated by Szekely, the Lost Book of Enoch, and the Gospel of Thomas. We should be open about these texts and free to discuss them, without shouts of "heresy".

In the modern age, in which scientists have discovered that there is no cold, but only heat, as the mechanism of Creation, we should be able to say "let's do away with demonising" and only seek enlightenment, and see if that corresponds more with the wisdom of John Chapter 1.

Then we might get Atheists more sympathetic to what happens inside churches. If we can get Dawkins to understand that he studies the process of The Creator too, then perhaps even He might set foot within a church.

And if we can dig our religion out of love only with the sanctity of its past texts rather than the Spirit, the Idea, of the Creator and doing it, as Jesus told us Matthew 12:50, Luke 8:21, Mark 3:35, Thomas Saying 99 . . . then we might encourage other religions to see similar light and to do the same.

Perhaps we might find that we share more than we appreciate, and work the process of the Creator thereby.

Sometimes one sees only a brick wall in front and one's imagination can find only explosives to put at its base . . . without noticing the gate at the side to walk through. The religions have seen only the brick walls of their words and their languages, having failed to heed the warning of the legend of Babel, and placed explosions between them at the walls.

Of course the owner of the garden gets very frustrated when people insist on putting explosives at the base of his wall instead of using the gate. And the more explosives you put at the base of the wall, the stronger the lock that's put on the gate for fear of ununderstanding inside were you to enter.

"Seek and ye shall find." "Knock at the door and it shall be opened." 

Stultified in dogma and sanctity of texts and its idol, the Church has not sought, nor knocked on the door of what Jesus taught about The Creator, and the Church is closing its churches.

When I was young, I was fascinated by chemical photography. Two people taught me photography. I worshipped them.

But when I studied what they were teaching me, showing me how to reveal the hidden image, the vision that arose in the darkroom developing tray underneath the safelight became a matter of process, not magic any longer, and I was grateful to my Masters.

If we hear the voice of our Master and understand what he is telling us, rather than merely worship of the sound of his voice, then there is future in our Churches.

Best wishes

David P

Paul Duffy

The Devil is a servant of God. To create, one must first destroy that which previously existed, as the Hindu Goddess Kali does.  The Devil is also a part of our nature which we have to integrate.

Best wishes,
Paul

David Pinnegar

Phew!

That's an enlightened view!

In fact it's The Creator at work in the Parable of the Talents taking away the unused talent buried in the ground by the lazy God's Servant and giving it to the bloke who created most.

It's the destruction of excess beyond the capacity to create when what should create doesn't. That happens when the process of creation isn't properly understood.

What we all talk about is really just the same sort of thing that we all sort of know and end up arguing merely about the words that describe the processes.

Certainly the sort of process that you describe in destruction isn't the sort of "Devil" "Demon" or "Satan" that we need to give any energy to by taking notice of it. At best it's a naughty little boy who's best ignored in the corner . . . and in creating, the creation makes any destruction irrelevant because the creation creates more than the destruction can achieve.

When we come from a clear understanding of the work of the Creator we can still celebrate what is taught to us in the teachings from Jesus and in the context of our Christian heritage, so that we need lose nothing and yet gain the world in understanding.

The religions have been pitted one against the other by language for the purpose of men in the mantra "Divide and Rule", quite contrary to the purpose of the Creator in bringing all and all things to work together to create.

I hope that in these heresies all who understand the light will be encharged with the enthusiasm of the common sense that allows all to speak with the enthusiasm of flaming tongues, drunken with the obvious that we have been blind to see and in language that all can understand.

Best wishes

David P

David Pinnegar

#10
I'm very serious about the matters above. If organs and our great cultural heritage are not to be lost, left to rot, decay, oblivion to Mammon, or worse violence and destruction, then we've got to move churches and the wisdoms that our teachers have taught us to being seen to be relevant, not just by us but to all.

Checking the forum this morning I scrolled down past http://www.organmatters.com/index.php/board,40.0.html - The Zurich Resolution. And the relevant signifier there is 2011. Here in 2014 what was recognised as the dying throws of a culture in crisis is now a collapse beyond a last gasp.

Zurich is a very interesting place, in extreme preoccupation with material existence, with at least a dozen or 20 churches all with the most wonderful and wonderful variety of organs, of which possibly three quarters will not exist within a decade.

It's wake-up time.

Best wishes

David P

JBR

"Zurich is a very interesting place, in extreme preoccupation with material existence, with at least a dozen or 20 churches all with the most wonderful and wonderful variety of organs, of which possibly three quarters will not exist within a decade."

I'm surprised to hear you say that.  In Britain, perhaps, but I thought that in most other European countries, especially Holland, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, they valued their organs more highly.
A missionary from Yorkshire to the primitive people of Lancashire

David Pinnegar

#12
I'm sorry - the reports of the Zurich conference on the forum here are very sketchy and more set out the realm of the agenda rather than the detail of the information gleaned. But the conference was actually set up intended as a catalyst foreseeing the collapse of support for the churches in which the instruments are housed.

My wife and I returned to Zurich last year and joined a paltry number of congregation in one of the vast churches.

So the issues in this thread have been on my mind for a very very long time, which is the reason for the rather deep thoughts and profound ideas expressed that perhaps many are surprised to find expressed.

Day by day we see the screwed up results of religion - not in any way results of belief in the Creator. Our religions are not appropriately dealing with the work of the Creator in the modern world.

Today was the story of jihadist mother http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3386771/Jihadi-Junior-s-British-mother-underwent-exorcisms-thought-possessed-evil-spirits-divorced-husband-rejected-jihad.html, the title of which says it all.

The Devil doesn't exist. The Devil only exists for those that believe the devil exists. It's an example of believing that materialises the thought and manifests. If God the Creator is the + that joins 1 and 1 which otherwise would not make 2, then the Creator also understands - too. So the process that's referred to above worshipped as Kali can be understood in this way or in terms of "the compost effect", similar to the man who buries his talent in the ground, so that what isn't being usefully employed in creation is broken down to be re-cast in a new form that might create better.

With the closure of churches perhaps we're seeing our religion being turned to compost.

But it needn't, and our churches needn't have to close were our religion to embrace and truly work the understanding, idea-spirit and embrace the power of the Creator. (That's another description of the Trinity).

The Lord's Prayer is a mantra for the positive "May the kingdom of paradise be the kingdom onb earth - may the will of paradise be our will on earth".

Were that Jihadist mother converted to Islam from Christianity to have been told that the Devil was an illusion and that evil spirits were only a superstition, and that by working the power of the process of creation, she might have understood. The work of the Creator 1+1 is commonsense and if explained is transformatory. Were that lady to have been given a dose of commonsense rather than mumbojumbo superstition, our religion in service of the Creator, and the world itself would be a better place.

The mumbojumbo, the indoctrinations of non sense, those ideas of words that are misunderstandings not leading to the work of the creator, all of this is being broken down even by people who are destroying themselves, for the reason that they don't understand the simple proces of creation.

By working together, by testing our understandings of texts by whether they lead to the work of the Creator, we can avoid the pains of being broken down by weavels and fungi in the composting bin.

Just as the Devil can be banished by eliminating belief in the Devil, ceasing to give the Devil existence, the Creator can be manifest by believing the existence, idea and power of the Creator process and operating it. It's so simple, it's doable, and the world can be changed and the Churches are where it happens.

With reports about immigrants in Germany over the new year in Cologne http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/05/germany-crisis-cologne-new-years-eve-sex-attacks
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cologne-shocked-by-sexual-assaults-on-new-years-eve-a-1070583.html
our failure to embrace the Creator in our churches and provide a format of sharing celebration of that wisdom to other places where it's needed will lead to a 2030 repeat of 1930 or perhaps even before.

The Church must earn itself out of the marginalised irrelevance perception it's achieved and the process of the Creator must take centre stage for us as a race and our planet to play its part in creation. The alternative is compost.

Best wishes

David P

Paul Duffy

I am appalled by what happened in Cologne, and I am disgusted by the recent news that school exams in England are being moved to accommodate Ramadan. I think the question you should be asking is not why are churches closing but why is our culture being flushed down the toilet by the politically correct brigade?

You have to accept David, as I do as an active church organist, that the church age is coming to an end and the decline won't be reversed. The cathedrals will always exist but parish churches will gradually disappear from the cultural landscape.

Best wishes,
Paul

David Pinnegar

Dear Paul

The answer is that unless we create, the natural order of things is that we will be compost.

That applies to our churches, our organs, our nations, our people, our being and the planet.

Our enemy is ignorance of the process of the Creator. Our enemy is to our blindness to the plus in life - the "+" between one and the other.

When the Church embraces the Creator rather than merely worships His teacher, then the Church will be relevant to all, our organs will play and our choirs will sing.

As visible ships on the invisible sea, we have to stop looking at the ships and instead see the currents of the sea.

Are there ways that the Church can succeed in this?

Best wishes

David P

Paul Duffy

It's not going to happen David. I think we need to be realistic. As a church organist I have witnessed a sharp decline in weddings taking place in church in the past few years. People generally find church dull or embarrassing, and would more than likely view organs as being dull as well. You are living in a dreamworld if you think this state of affairs could somehow be reversed and bring people flocking back. Your intellectual argument about the Creator is very interesting and stimulating but it would completely go above the head of your average celebrity/football obsessed cage-dwelling Brit.

Social media is where the future lies for humanity, sad to say. The old world of community values is on its way out. We are entering the age of the dystopian nightmare as presaged by Fritz Lang and George Orwell.

Best wishes,
Paul

David Pinnegar

;-) It can . . . and it will if we are minded to.

We have to be the Creator's creators rather than the Creator's compost.

As a human race we have to work out whether we're going to be the wheat that Jesus taught about, or the chaff.

I'll make some suggestions before long of how we can attempt to achieve it in the Church but it would be great to hear other suggestions also.

Best wishes

David P

JBR

Quote from: Paul Duffy on January 07, 2016, 01:08:57 PM
I am appalled by what happened in Cologne, and I am disgusted by the recent news that school exams in England are being moved to accommodate Ramadan. I think the question you should be asking is not why are churches closing but why is our culture being flushed down the toilet by the politically correct brigade?

I'm afraid you've hit the nail on the head there, Paul.
Although I admit to being and atheist, and should therefore avoid commenting on Christian matters, I am also a traditionalist and find it sad that we are slowly but surely losing our culture.

Admittedly, I don't attend church services or visit churches at all other than to hear organ recitals and examine the buildings' architecture and decoration, but I do worry that a loss of Christianity might eventually impact on buildings and church music.
A missionary from Yorkshire to the primitive people of Lancashire

David Pinnegar

Quote from: JBR on January 07, 2016, 09:02:33 PM
Although I admit to being and atheist,

As a physicist who does not believe in a person who created the universe but a process which created the content of the universe, in terms of the addition and cooperation of matter, in recognition of the power of + between 1 and 1, that + being the creator . . . and in worship and attempted operation of that creator process am I an atheist or a believer?

Best wishes

David P

JBR

Quote from: David Pinnegar on January 08, 2016, 02:04:17 AM
Quote from: JBR on January 07, 2016, 09:02:33 PM
Although I admit to being and atheist,

As a physicist who does not believe in a person who created the universe but a process which created the content of the universe, in terms of the addition and cooperation of matter, in recognition of the power of + between 1 and 1, that + being the creator . . . and in worship and attempted operation of that creator process am I an atheist or a believer?

Best wishes

David P

I'd say you are an atheist.  A theist is someone who believes in a god or a supernatural being who has created everything and has the power to influence what we do.

It's a nice philosophical argument to determine whether the world (or universe) was created by a sentient being or by a coincidence of natural events.  In any case, I don't think anyone will ever prove anything as there is no evidence to prove or disprove either.

Having said that, I believe that organised religion can be a good thing or, conversely, a bad thing according to how man utilises it.
A missionary from Yorkshire to the primitive people of Lancashire