Agnostics/Atheists, more knowledgable than adherants...

[The Consul]

You coud pick any other jesus who didn't write a word and with that life entertain a heart full of bibles, whether they believed in jesus, meher baba, elvis, bucky fuller or Burger King. At least buddha, when he came down from the mountain top kept his mouth shut. But whatcha gonna do? Buy a pig farm and dress like Marylin Manson? So, the closer people say they are to god, and the more they say others have to be closer to god, and well, really, how do they know? Did they get a god blogged by St. Paul? Oh my son, the truth is I don't know the truth, I could be in the hands of Mephistopholes and not even know it, or I could be like that true cedar outside the window in a sundown gone Vlaminc behind. What love can I hold forth from the nest and tangle of words so often used but to slake more blood for war? Does the Christian epoch ultimately mean more or less than and extension of the hellenistic epoch? Do you understand the aleph? If your world is who you live with rather than what was, could, or will be; if you are guided only by voices on the other side of the fire and at dawn before you awake, who's to say that is not god, if god can't be defined and if you don't see it as god being in you, but you being in god, a mite in the spiritual compost of the universe far away from all the cultural agues that distracted you from your quest.

[brainpanhandler]

No, Christians are people, Christianity is an abstraction that means something different to all of us. I mean that the tone of Atheists my age, the confrontation, winds up having the opposite effect of making delusion stronger instead of being a catalyst for actual reflection.

Perrhaps if the tone of atheists your age was more condescending and patronizing they'd have more luck?

I do agree completely that targeting the Pat Robertsons and Council for National Policy is more effective, but I'm pretty sure that's best accomplished with "journalism" not Atheism.

Yes captain obvious. Thanks.

No need to be targeting their victims just because we're frustrated and can't lash out far enough, is what I'm saying.

Understood, but the worst I've ever targeted their "victims" (willing participants) with is a boring debate.
Occasionally when I meet a christian that strikes me as having a truly sincere interest in compassion and reason and justice I feel as though I want to understand what they think of the likes of George Bush for instance. My curiosity becomes overwhelming and I just have to try to understand how they reconcile what seems to me from the outside to be a lot of cognitive dissonance. That can sometimes lead to a wider conversation about the nature of faith, but that's not my aim anymore.

Occasionally I forget the utter failure of my attempts to persuade christians of their own hypocrisy and find myself attempting to exorcise the Pat Robertson's from some misguided soul.


But I don't even bother with that much anymore.

[Wombaticus Rex]

As usual, bph, I don't grok what I've done to bother you, but I am an asshole so we'll just chalk it up to that. I stand by everything I said: shocker, right?

[Simulist]

I used to be a hardcore atheist. It was all I could do, given my upbringing -- not necessarily my parents, but the innocent importance they put on church attendance. I wound up making a lot of friends in church -- their parents' were the ones I had to deal with as I grew older and rebelled from "the system" and more and more began to only attend church functions as a way to be near girls I had crushes on. When Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot came out I got head over heels into being an atheist first and then became this youthful prodigy for the Colorado Humanists. I even manned a booth or two for their presence at festivals. In my early twenties I had all manner of atheist bumper stickers on my car. I was a total dork. I lived, LIVED! to get into debates with Christians. I was probably very hurtful to some of the guys I would get into go arounds with. I had so many books and pamphlets and arguments to read and use. I became obsessed.

There was this church, a really sketchy church that basically tried to swallow up all confused souls on my college campus. Anytime they would approach me, I would take them on. They never knew what hit them. I would even attract a crowd as I completely obliterated their beliefs, in public and quite ostentatiously too. I attended atheist meetings with a bunch of grumpy old assholes. Like I said, they were fascinated by me. The atheists and humanists wanted to know how the fuck they could attract more people my age into the group. I said they could begin to sponsor punk shows and shit -- stuff like that. Never went anywhere of course, because I grew tired of it, tired of their negativity, they were all such ugly people -- physically and spiritually. Not lying. Everybody had some chip on their shoulder.

Anyhow, I remained atheist for quite some time, probably until the age of 30 or so. Then I was turned onto PKD and began to consider everything under the sun as I read more and more. Started reading my Elaine Pagels and Karen Anderson. Became acquainted with Rupert Sheldrake, etc etc. I became more fascinated with how it is we can sit here today belittling belief systems of the past and yet here we still sit. It couldn't have been ALL wrong!

As I sit now, I think myself more "Christian" than any self proclaimed Christian there is. I follow as best I can in the steps of Christ. I describe it as becoming a Christian "through the back door". I don't think myself better than anyone. The question of whether god exists or does not is the most stupid question I ever concerned myself with in life. Yes, it was completely by route of studying PKD for a number of years that "proved" to me that Christ does exist and he exists within me and I am that Christ. Christians are accustomed to judging people who may say something as I just said as psychopathic. The way I look at it, is I would tell any of those smarmy motherfucker psychopaths who preach and make money on it is that they are wrong and they don't believe in Jesus any more than in equal parts they have a problem with me using profanity. Creationism is a willful lie meant to control the underclass by the empire, which never ended. No true Christian church would support any war or any system which seeks to uphold the mysteries of the class based occult.

The role of the church has been supplanted by technocracy and the church, as a parasite has attached itself to its host, which is the empire -- an old empire and constantly seeks to emulate what it is the ideal role of such a church or religion would be. Christianity is a simulation within the processing powers of a mind occluded from the true nature of creation. Time does not exist, only entropy. Creation never happened. Time is an invention of what would eventually come to be called capitalism.

Creation happens within every thought an entity has. If nobody is thinking there is thus, no creation. Never was and never will be. There is only obedience to a finely honed machine conceived of long ago which the gnostics were able to detect, for which, they were thusly, only briefly, exterminated. Yet as PKD writes, the knowledge, the information is alive and cannot be killed.

I really appreciated reading this 82_28. I've returned to it again and again ever since I first read it.

Different itineraries. Different "flights." Similar destinations, it appears.

[82_28]

Thanks man! Just don't tell a certain member that kinda sounds like the opposite of summer and is 1 added to 1 about it. He knew it was coming anyways and may accuse me of plagiarism.

[yathrib]

If you ask me whether I believe in God, I'd ask what you mean by God. I'm just about 100% sure the Jewish/Christian/Muslim Old Nobodaddy doesn't exist. I'm attracted to heretical or mystical forms of Christianity/Judaism/Islam, but in the final analysis find even these largely irrelevant. It utterly boggles my mind that people would still make their lives and thoughts adhere to ideas and books written thousands of years ago by agenda driven control freaks who understood little or nothing about science, life, the universe, etc. Sorry, but that's honestly what I think.