An Atheist's Journey

Case for A Creator 1




Case for A Creator 2



Case for A Creator 3



Case for A Creator 4



Case for A Creator 5



Case for A Creator 6



Case for A Creator 7



Case for A Creator 8



Case for A Creator 9



Case for A Creator 10

Re: Call To Action

Charles:

You are obviously an intelligent individual, Brian. However intelligence is not perfect and is not supreme. There are intelligent people on both sides of every issue. 


That is why belittling [which you are NOT doing right now] is absolutely wrong. It does nothing to uncover the real truth just to put the other person on the defensive so they will forget to keep discussing the issues.

Let's take your final statement below as an example.

Most atheists believe absolutely there is no God. They also usually believe absolutely in no absolutes. Somewhat of a conundrum. However there is usually MORE than one way to see things. 

The 6 Blind Men of Hindustan comes to mind. I am quoting this because you are giving absolutely one answer below instead of the alternatives. And your ONE answer is always slanted in your bias against Christians beliefs. Do you even know you are biased or do you have the attitude of most atheists that you have a superior reasoning power and anyone who is Christian believes in leprechauns and fairies? 

There were six men of Hindustan,

to learning much inclined, 

Who went to see an elephant,

though all of them were blind,

That each by observation
might satisfy his mind.

The first approached the elephant,
and happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
at once began to bawl,
"This mystery of an elephant
is very like a wall."

The second, feeling of the tusk,
cried, "Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear,
This wonder of an elephant
is very like a spear."

The third approached the elephant,
and happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
thus boldly up and spake,
"I see," quoth he,
"the elephant is very like a snake."

The fourth reached out an eager hand,
and felt above the knee,
"What this most wondrous beast
is like is very plain" said he,
"'Tis clear enough the elephant
is very like a tree."

The fifth who chanced to touch the ear
said, "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
deny the fact who can;
This marvel of an elephant
is very like a fan."

The sixth no sooner had begun
about the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
that fell within his scope;
"I see," said he, "the elephant
is very like a rope."

So six blind men of Hindustan
disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
exceeding stiff and strong;
Though each was partly in the right,
they all were in the wrong!

I will take your statement first. Time is limited but here ....

  

"If you believe in Jesus you may come to the conclusion that those that killed him are hated in the sight of God and need to be killed. This seems to be the conclusion of Martin Luther according to his writings and also of Adolph Hitler according to his.

If you are an Atheist and don't believe in God or Jesus Christ why would you hate Jews and call them the murderers of Christ. There would be no action to take."

Martin Luther like you and I and all humanity is flawed. We are far from perfect, we make mistakes. Some of those mistakes are just mistakes or misunderstandings. Others are called by the Bible "sin" because society will break down if they become the accepted practice as you have seen it doing since the 60's. Divorces, runaways, broken families, drugs and much more are all commonplace now.

Was Martin Luther perfect? Not on your life! I totally know that his anti-semitic attitude was wrong. Does that mean we write off everything he did? You have the choice to write off people and ideas if you wish, but I cannot. 

I don't write you off because you are an agnostic disguised as an atheist. There is still hope for you.

Luther's contribution was to break the corruption in the then Roman Catholic church and declare that "faith" not all the rituals were the answer to belief in God. That was his contribution. Was he right? Sure. Were all his followers right? Not on your life. 

Let's take your statement one part at a time to uncover the truth.

"If you believe in Jesus you may come to the conclusion that those that killed him are hated in the sight of God and need to be killed."

OR you may NOT come to that conclusion at all. 

But if you do, how can you then believe in the 10 Commandments one of which says to not commit murder and how can you believe Jesus who said, that those that live by the sword will die by the sword. How could a Christian believe Jesus and commit murder when they have the example of Jesus stopping Peter after he cut off a Roman ear?

When you fragment the truth, instead of looking at the whole teachings of Yeshua, you get a lie just as when you separate the hydrogen from the water, you do not have water any more.

Second Part:

If you are an Atheist and don't believe in God or Jesus Christ why would you hate Jews and call them the murderers of Christ. There would be no action to take."

My comment: What if you are a Christian and believe there is NO action to take?


That is me and many others. In fact many Jews in and out of Israel realize that evangelical Christians are their best friends. I belong to an organization called IPW [Israel Prayer Watch]. We meet monthly and pray for over 70 Christian ministries in Israel who are there to help the downtrodden and the have-nots. That comes from what Jesus said when he was in the synagogue very early in his ministry and this happened.

Luke 4:14-21

14  Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. ¹⁵He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

16  When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 

¹⁸  'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

   because he has anointed me

     to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,

     to let the oppressed go free, 

¹⁹  to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.' 

²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'

Most Christians [or the PREPONDERANCE of Christians (:-)] would tell you THAT is what Christianity is mainly about. That is why there are so many Christian organizations and/or churches doing exactly that.

So what action do you take to benefit the world Brian, as an agnostic-atheist? Just asking.

The above scripture explains Albert Schweitzer, Mother Theresa, Mark and Hilda Buntain and countless more. Those are just ones that stand out in my mind right now.

If you read more about Hitler on the wiki or elsewhere you will see that he left the teachings of Christianity and formed his own set of beliefs like atheists do, which feels right according to their intelligence" and therefore became an "A-theist" = without God. Not blaming all atheists for Hitler but he was one as he created his own "religion" or set of beliefs.

There is certainly no need to cover the other famous atheists who destroyed great masses of people in USSR, Africa and East Asia.

-Charles

Brian's Comments:
[My comments are in BOLD after Brian's point]

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 11:25 AM, BC wrote:

When you believe something strongly it can be a call to action. OR NOT

If you believe in ghosts it may drive you to run from the spooky house when you hear a noise.

You may hold a seance to contact a dear departed. OR NOT

If you don't believe in ghosts there is no action to take.

If you believe in communism you may fight and kill to force those who don't to accept your belief or die for the common good of all. 

If you don't believe in communism and no one is forcing you to then there is no action to take.

If you believe in Jesus you may come to the conclusion that those that killed him are hated in the sight of God and need to be killed. This seems to be the conclusion of Martin Luther according to his writings and also of Adolph Hitler according to his.

If you are an Atheist and don't believe in God or Jesus Christ why would you hate Jews and call them the murderers of Christ. There would be no action to take. OR NOT

[So Brian are you saying that ALL atheists are NOT ANTI-JEWISH? Be ABSOLUTELY SURE before you answer even if you believe in NO ABSOLUTES. Time to 'man up' and realize that EVERYBODY BELIEVES IN SOME ABSOLUTES, ABSOLUTELY!]

It is hard to create an action from a disbelief. INCLUDING GOOD ACTIONS! 

That's why I doubt Hitler was an atheist or that Stalin and the rest did the evil that they did in the name of disbelief. It's nonsensical. If you substitute communism for religion and promote it like a religion and make your leaders into the divine like in North Korea.  Then you've just created the religion of communism which can be used to drive action. Atheism by itself does not and can not lead one to major action like war and genocide. 

Brian you can doubt anything you want but THAT DOES NOT MAKE YOUR DOUBT TRUTH.

Brian you are living in a Bubble of self-imposed indoctrination if you believe that !


It is obvious Hitler was an atheist. He made up his own religion just like atheists. How much more evidence do you need than this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_views

You won't find this idea in Christianity [comes from Wiki above]

"To the extent he believed in a divinity, Hitler did not believe in a "remote, rationalist divinity" but in an "active deity,"^[72] which he frequently referred to as "Creator" or "Providence". In Hitler's belief God created a world in which different races fought each other for survival as depicted by Arthur de Gobineau. The "Aryan race," supposedly the bearer of civilization, is allocated a special place:

What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and the reproduction of our race ... so that our people may mature for the fulfilment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe. ... Peoples that bastardize themselves, or let themselves be bastardized, sin against the will of eternal Providence.^[72]

OR Hitler's contact to Lanz von Liebenfels makes it necessary to examine how far his religious views were influenced by Ariosophy, an esoteric movement in Germany and Austria that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. (Whether Ariosophy is to be classified as Germanic paganism or Occultismis a different question.) The seminal work on Ariosophy, The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, devotes its last chapter the topic of Ariosophy and Adolf Hitler. Not at least due to the difficulty of sources, historians disagree about the importance of Ariosophy for Hitler's religious views. As noted in the foreword of The Occult Roots of Nazism by Rohan Butler, Goodrick-Clarke is more cautious in assessing the influence of Lanz von Liebenfels on Hitler than Joachim Fest in his biography of Hitler.^[78] A Hitler biography by John Toland that appeared in 1992 reprints a poem that Hitler allegedly wrote while serving in the German Army on the Western Front in 1915.^[79] This poem includes references to magical runes and the pre-Christian Germanic deity Woden, but it is mentioned neither by Goodrick-Clarke nor by Fest.

While he was in power, Hitler was definitely less interested in the occult or the esoteric than other Nazi leaders. Unlike Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess, for example, Hitler had no interest in astrology. Nevertheless, Hitler is the most important figure in the Modern Mythology of Nazi occultism. There are teledocumentaries about this topic, with the titles Hitler and the Occult and Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail.^[80]

OR

^ "Closely related to his support of education was his tolerant skepticism concerning religion. He looked upon religion as a series of conventions and as a crutch for human weakness [rather like atheistic beliefs] , but, like most of his neighbors, he insisted that the women of his household fulfill all religious obligations. He restricted his own participation to donning his uniform to take his proper place in festivals and processions. As he grew older Alois shifted from relative passivity in his attitude toward the power and influence of the institutional Church to a firm opposition to "clericalism," especially when the position of the Church came into conflict with his views on education." - Bradley F. Smith: Adolf Hitler: His Family, Childhood and YouthStanford/California, 1967 p. 27

Brian. Only someone looking to blindly blame Hitler on religion would come up with such an idea that he was NOT ATHEISTIC. Again .... Hitler made up his OWN SET OF BELIEFS. So do atheists. Do you see a connection?

The atheistic "religion" has formed its own beliefs mainly concerning the non-existence of God. Hitler made up his own religion relating to superior races [sounds a bit like Dawkins and C. Hitchens], and inferior beings [those that disagree with you or don't understand your beliefs]. 

That is why undoubtedly he was atheistic .... he made up his own religion.

Christianity on the other hand got theirs from the son of God, Yeshua.

Stalin and communism were and are the largest atheistic-state-believing nations of all time!

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One Grateful Life

. 

Do You Choose LIFE or Death?
 

It's my birthday today, November 18th. It has been that day as long as I can remember and maybe even before I could remember!

It ALSO is my mother-in-law, Katie Noake's birthday and also my grandson Ian's birthday.

 [Grandma Katie Noake with her great-grandsons, Nathanael and Andrew Guinn]

.
 I call Ian, Professor Dougie [Remember Dougie Howser, M.D.? Ian reminds me of him in a non-medical way.]
 

.Ian with baby brother Nathan and reading


[Brian brings up an interview with some nobody clergy guy who says that many clergy don't even believe in God and we never really know.]


My Answer:


Hey Brian

It simply means you are tapping into the dying church, not the living one! 


It's sort of like going to the cemetery and reporting that there are a lot of dead people there (:-) How unusual! 

Where are the living people? In the hospitals, in the houses and schools, in the living churches, and yards, on the fields, in the air and on the water, having fun, enjoying life. If you go where life is, you experience it with them. Are you enjoying your life?

All death causes recycling. Recycling causes new life. There are dead "living" atheists and dead "living" priests and clergy. They are like hybrid cars with no source to renew their power. They have forgotten where the power outlet is. Their minds have taken them to the end of their resources and there is nothing left to resource.

Many of the dead have already been recycled and become part of the living church.

Do you need some more reminders about the LIVING CHURCH?

World's largest church in Seoul Korea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoido_Full_Gospel_Church

This is part of the living church. 

Pastor David

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Yonggi_Cho

Or you might try

http://www.sermoncentral.com/articleb.asp?article=top-100-fastest-growing-churches

Nothing like the church that you or I attended Brian. I have attended a church of about 10,000 in Colorado. A great place where many people and groups are being helped to lead a more productive life. Also this year a church of about 1500 in Nashville.

New Life Community Church - Colorado Springs

http://www.newlifechurch.org/nln.jsp?id=203

Some of the activities to help outsiders:

Local Outreach Opportunities

OUTREACH OPPORTUNITIES- What can you do to serve in our city?

ONE(CAN)PAIGN

Local Ministries is collecting non-perishable food items. Check our donation trunks in the foyer for more details on the most needed items that we can give to bless families in our city. Please call Rina at 265-3180 if you have any questions.

NOVEMBER MONTHLY FOCUS
Teens are often times overlooked during donation drives. Let us show these students how much they are cared for this month by donating items that mean a lot to them. All donations will go to the kids at Carmel Middle School south of town at Christmas time. Donation bins are available on either side of the foyer outside the living room. On the donation bins you can find lists of supplies needed. Please call Rina at 265-3180 if you have any questions.

SHOW MILITARY FAMILIES HOW MUCH WE APPRECIATE

THEIR SERVICE - NOVEMBER 7-30

You can donate suggested items or money to create care packages for members of the 4th Infantry Division deployed in Iraq. We also need volunteers to assemble and ship the care packages.  Please drop off your item donations or checks to the church from November 7th through 30th.  For more information about volunteering go to our event listings (www.newlifechurch.org/outreach).  Questions? Call Jill at 719-645-9777.

BUILD CARE PACKAGES FOR OUR SPECIAL NEEDS FRIENDS

Our special needs friends are an integral part of our church family.  They will be so blessed by a practical sign of our support.  Helps us assemble care packages, shop for fun items or donate towards the purchase of items.  For more information call Rina at 719-265-3180

 New Life in Action - what have You been doing to meet the needs of our city?

• Launched a Local Ministries Prayer & Information meeting (including Dream Center updates) on the first Wednesday of every month in the WPC, Room 107, at 7pm.The next meeting is on September 8th.
• 
  
• Served dozens of elderly folks in the Knob Hill area on July 31st by sprucing up their homes and yards.
  
• 
  
• 100 volunteers prepared Queen Palmer Elementary for the new school year.
  
• 
  
• Partnered with Springs Rescue Mission to improve their grounds.
  
• 
  
• Donated school supplies to Northern Churches Care's Back to School program.
  
• 
  
• Donated a couple of hundred pounds of food to Northern Churches Care and Springs Rescue Mission.
  
• 
  
• Celebrated hundreds of military families at a reception on August 29th.
  
• 
  
• Provided 176 deploying soldiers with gift bags to support them during their tour.
  
• 
  
• Started the first children's running club at Queen Palmer Elementary.

Or this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecostalism

But numbers don't mean everything do they?

It is how a group contributes to or advances society.

Atheism or agnosticism is much easier to believe in because there can be NO absolutes of which most atheists are ABSOLUTELY certain. {ok i guess there is ONE absolute}

Just imagine living life only to die. What a wonderful future. Why not die now and avoid the rush? It's like skipping grades in school, you get to the end sooner. Isn' that better? (:-)

You see Brian every week I have an exciting week, Sunday great services, Tuesday practise our pro drama "A Time For Christmas" being put on Dec. 10, 11, 12. Even agnostics and atheists can attend. It comes in a plain brown wrapper and no one will know where it came from. But of course an atheist cannot be part of this season, but an agnostic can!
 (:-)

Thursday, just got through practising the music for Sunday worship choir AND the drama.

That was a fun birthday! 

Friday [now!]

I look forward to helping people with their finances through coordinating a Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University in our home. Last time for this year starting again in January.

People are getting out of debt and feeling FREE!

And then professionally I get to help people occasionally buy the right life insurance for them or help them set up a savings plan for retirement ... the younger the better. See Financial Peace Now

In between times I shop for my wife, take my mother-in-law to her appts, have coffee with my friends, of my age and one gentleman from our church who is in his 83rd year and enjoys life to the full, Sander DeGroot. 


He is one of my heroes. I told him so today at Tim's. I told him I want to be as active helping others at 83 as he is.  

Helping people is VERY satisfying. I'm not rich but I have been blessed with 67 years of good health and been able to travel to the most amazing places. Some of which are in Trip-Ways.

I have two great daughters and 5 "GREAT" grandsons [not my grandsons sons]. I have been blessed. But maybe an agnostic would say "chanced". I like blessed better. (:-)

You see Brian I do not believe it is what you indoctrinated yourself with that steers you. It is usually a reason NOT to have the standards that are clearly laid out in the Bible. 


Oh yes you can nitpick but they are the basic standards that most people are happy that others live by! Even if they don't. 

And if you don't believe the Bible you are free to do EVERYTHING YOU WANT. You don't have any standards to live by except what you decide and what if they are faulty standards and lead to a sad life like the 3 most famous atheists of the last 100 years?


 I would think at least ONE of them would be happy but they seem not...

You can also choose NOT to BELIEVE in the laws of physics such as gravity and in your non-belief, step off the CN Tower [guess I will have to find out the name of that larger one in Dubai, is it?]. I think you still might fall, belief or no belief.

But just because you don't choose to believe something DOES NOT make it untrue. 

So enjoy your trip and I hope your life turns out as well as mine!

Feeling gratitude for my past AND future years!

We will talk again.

-Charles

BC's EMAIL


On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 9:38 AM,


Brian asks, "Is your pastor an atheist like me?" He forgot that I taught him he was an agnostic. Oh well. I know my pastor's are not because they are part of the living church. And I have NEVER heard sermons from Brian that even compare in a thousand years to the sermons I hear from Pastor Randy and Pastor Cuke. It is certainly obvious what they believe. Now in the dying church, it may be hard to tell. (:-)

Here is his conribution to that thought.

A Godless Clergy: Faith in God—and holding fast to it despite your fears and doubts—is a central tenet of nearly every religion. But what if the head of your church doesn't believe? Tufts University professor Daniel Dennett joins us to talk about the growing number of priests and clergy who no longer believe in God. Why do they continue to preach? And what does that mean for the people they serve?

http://richarddawkins.net/audio/549045-a-godless-clergy-interview-with-dan-dennett

Editor: The dying church does not have to lie down to die. One can feign life quite well by standing up and still being dead. Of course not physically dead, but dead spiritually. No power source. Sad but true.

BC: Before

[This is My Response to an Email from BCReason]


He says the idea of there being no proof for God "STRUCK" him one day just like ghost stories. In baseball strikes are bad, aren't they?


BC:

When the "idea" struck you it must have landed too hard. Do you not see a difference between ghost stories and God stories?? Come on Brian. You are smarter than that.

So have you been to Rome?

If not, how do you know it exists? It may all be an elaborate conspiracy by world leaders to keep us subjugated.

There are many parts of an atom that no one can see. But there is EVIDENCE that they MUST be there. Just like Pluto, [I forget who but ...] a scientist did the math and said, THERE HAS TO BE ANOTHER PLANET OUT THERE. Eventually it was found.

You can look FOR or you can look AGAINST. Whatever you generally look FOR or AGAINST, you usually can find evidence to support it.

Have you ever read Christopher Hitchens?

Have you ever read Peter Hitchens?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/rage-against-god-peter-hitchens

I think he may know from personal experience something about being communist AND atheist.

A quote from the review

 "On the whole, it is religion's cultured despisers, not Christian apologists, who now display greater shrillness. As the author argues in his foreword, "the difficulties of the anti-theists begin when they try to engage with anyone who does not agree with them, when their reaction is often a frustrated rage that the rest of us are so stupid.

But what if that is not the problem? Their refusal to accept that others might be as intelligent as they, yet disagree,

leads them into many snares."

Hitchens does not seek to mount a comprehensive defence of Christianity. He is wise to avoid deeper philosophical and theological waters, because his strengths lie elsewhere. His more manageable aim is to expose what he holds to be three major fallacies underlying God Is Not Great: that conflict fought in the name of religion is really always about faith; that "it is ultimately possible to know with confidence what is right and what is wrong without acknowledging the existence of God"; and that atheist states are not actually atheist." 

And Brian I am sure you are smarter than that email below. To say that this Randi guy offers a million dollars for proof of a supernatural is like ME offering ONE MILLION DOLLARS for proof that there is no God! 


They are both impossible but they SOUND impressive! They are empty words.


No one can prove to another what the OTHER does not WANT to believe. That is why I have not tried [much]. You are not interested in evidences for God even tho I have given several.


Your interest is in backing up why you should be free to do as you want with people of like ilk. You have NO interest in evidences FOR God even tho they are all around you every day.

-c

[Note from Editor:
This is the email I was responding to, above.]

BCREASON: [explains how he became an agnostic]

A few years ago I used to believe in a lot of things.


I used to watch these shows where investigators would look for ghosts in haunted houses. I'd get frustrated when they wouldn't find anything. They'd always have [a] psychic who would know learn about the history of the place from the ghost. But no real evidence.


I started researching this stuff on the Internet and found out it was all fake. One of the researchers made up a story about a place they were investigating and told one of the crew.  Later during filming the psychic repeated the fake story thinking it was real. So the crew had been feeding him info not the ghosts.


I started reading James Randi's web site. He offers  a million dollar reward for proof of the supernatural.
From this and others I learned critical thinking and how to analyze paranormal claims. For a long time I didn't put together the biggest paranormal claim there is. Of course God exists. Everyone believes in God. Then One day it struck me to examine God the way I did the rest. I took off my God glasses and examined the world as if God did not exist. What I saw made so much more sense that I left the God glasses off for good.




Sent from my iPhone

--
Sincerely
Charles G. Pedley
905-228-2161


================
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