Comments on: Response to Hafidha: Atheism is all about Coke

By: chutney

chutney — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:20:28 +0000

“Mo and Jesus” is now my new favorite comic strip!

By: Philocrites

Philocrites — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:52:54 +0000

I’m really glad you like my essay, but it’s actually kind of old. (No one paid any attention to it when it was published back in 2003.) For a really old one, here’s an academic essay of mine about Tillich; I loved stumbling across the notion that a symbol is real even though it evolves and is situated in human culture.

By: Rev. Ricky

Rev. Ricky — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:17:54 +0000

theism simply means belief in a god, not belief in a particular god. how you define god is your theology and there are numerous theologies. I feel it’s very important not to cede the name God to the particular theology of what I call the “Omni-God” (omniotent, omnipresent, omniscient). God is the right word to point to the thing I want to talk about. But it’s important once we’ve identified the subject of the conversation that we do then go on and talk about it. For instance explaining why the Omni-God is bad theology and that much better theologies (that would overcome most objections of atheists, for instance) do exist.

By: Citizen

Citizen — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:40:43 +0000

Sofia: You and I are on the same wavelength.

Chutney: If you want atheists that will be on the same page as Sofia and I, you’ll find a great many of them here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=214

The reason leading atheists don’t get into this more often is what I suggested before: the face of religion is still supernatural believers, and their actions are most likely to be problematic.

By: Jaume

Jaume — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:33:47 +0000

Hafidha, does that mean that those who believe in Advaita Vedanta (the philosophy that denies reality as just an illusion that hides the One Ultimate Reality from our minds) are heretics from the Church of Reality? (Or Neo and the rest of Matrix-fighters for that matter.) ;-)

By: ck

ck — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:14:02 +0000

Hmm. Metaphors? God? See Mo and Jesus…

By: chutney

chutney — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:11:22 +0000

I agree that there are informed atheists who have no belief in any gods whatsoever. I have no doubt that your atheism is authentic and legitimate. I just don’t hear that often, certainly not from the leading lights of atheism.

Saying “I believe in Love” might be clearer sometimes, but then words like that can get fuzzy too. “Love” carries some bad baggage too. The word “god” is just so powerful and rich a metaphor that I have to go back to it from time to time. Sometimes “Love,” “Justice,” etc. aren’t big enough words for me. Sometimes I just want to take back the word “god.”

Tangent: I can’t say enough good things about Chris’ new UU World article on science and metaphors. He talks about Mary Midgley, who is one of my favorite philosophers. And I’m into the religious naturalism he talks about when he gets to Ursula Goodenough. (I don’t think Chris calls her a religious naturalist, but she’s usually the first one off the list.)

By: Jaume

Jaume — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:06:13 +0000

My experience with atheists is that, if they consider monotheism non-scientific and ideologically and socially dangerous, polytheism (this is not about several gods engaging in sexual activity together, it’s about believing in two or more gods ;-)) is just plain silly.

I would also define myself as a panentheist. Michael Servetus was also a panentheist, although he never used that word because it did not exist at that time. The word was invented in the 19th century by German philosopher W.F. Krause, who was a great source of inspiration for Spanish and Latin American religious liberals.

By: fausto

fausto — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 18:44:08 +0000

It’s further complicated by the differing ways in which popular writers have used the word. John Shelby Spong would probably not call Paul Tillich a theist, for example, but Tillich himself probably would.

(On most days, I am a parenthesist.)

By: hafidha sofia

hafidha sofia — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 18:07:17 +0000

The different gods that can fall under this broader theism arenâ€™t necessarily all-knowing, all-powerful or all-present, so there isnâ€™t necessarily an element of the supernatural for the various flavors.

At first this puzzled me, because it sounds like you’re saying there can be gods who aren’t supernatural. Are you saying that you believe in gods that aren’t supernatural?

At first I wondered at this, but after some thought, I can see how that’s possible. For example, someone could call capitalism their god. Or their laptop. Or physics. There is even a Church of Reality, comprised of people who believe in reality. None of those things are supernatural. So if you’re saying that you believe in something like “the workings of the universe” and you like to call it god, then I could see where you’re coming from. But if that is indeed the case, it would make things a lot easier if you described what you believed in. There are a lot of people who say “I believe in God. Because God is Love.”

Isn’t it clearer to just say “I believe in Love?”