Comments by flying goose

Conversations about mountains lead me to some rather interesting conclusions.

Comment #86749 by flying goose on November 10, 2007 at 3:59 am

What I like about the conversation with others is that the encounter can change the way I think. Therefore my knowledge, as opposed to that which I have learnt, increases.
Dialogue increases our knowledge of the other and of ourselves.
Dialogue is perhaps also a cooperative means of working together to further our knowledge about our existence on this small speck of dust

104. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86747 by flying goose on November 10, 2007 at 3:52 am

bonzai
'If you understand "God" as a product of human imagination, a literary device that is employed to focus our thought and to articulate truths about the human conditions, an imaginary skeleton that needs to be fleshed out and reworked for each individual and each generation, I am 100% with you. But then theology would become a branch of literary criticism.'

I think I agree so far, but if there is a God, that God is more then just that. At this moment in time I think God is found in encounters with that which is beyond as well as that which is deep within me. Words are blunt tools here, which is why music is better. This is a bit lame I know but it is the best I can do to describe that which is going on for me.
Theology covers a whole range of academic disciplines which is why it is a none subject even if there is a God.

105. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86719 by flying goose on November 10, 2007 at 2:48 am

Bonzai

Just a quick word,

I am an Anglican priest, that is Episcopalian to those in the states, as a member of the church of England I think I can comment about some of the Christians in the world. I think I think that we are called upon to interpret the mythological truths in fresh ways to each generation giving due respect to tradition, reason and scripture.
That can lead us 'christians' to some interesting conclusions. All truth is contingent on new facts.

106. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86708 by flying goose on November 10, 2007 at 2:34 am

Goldy 'But maybe there is a existential truth here, namely that "'Man' had to pronounce the name of woman before he became conscious of himself as man.'
Let me put another way it is the 'I' in me knowing the other, whatever that other is, it is the knowing of the other that gives me a sense of who and what I am.
Also Genesis 2 doesnt have to be read in a patriacal way. As I think I have demonstrated. But lets not get bogged down in the detail, the point was about mythology. It can, I would argue, contain truth.

107. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86697 by flying goose on November 10, 2007 at 2:01 am

Steve N comment 302

Does mythology always have to be dismissed as un factual and therefore untruthful.
Mythology can I think tell us something about ourselves, not least because it is a product of the human imagination.
Take Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 for instance. Unlike Genesis chapter 1, in which humanity is created last of all, in Genesis 2 humanity is created before the animals.
First things first, the adam is not a male, but a creature made of earth.
It is not good, says God, that the adam should be alone, and a whole host of creatures are created. It is only after the adam's deep sleep, and the removal of the adam's rib that the male and the female are created.: the words Male (Ish) and female (Ishah) make their first appearance here in the hebrew text. The male names the female "woman"
Non of this is factually true.
But maybe there is a existential truth here, namely that "'Man' had to pronounce the name of woman before he became conscious of himself as man. He had to know otherness before he could know himself; he had to discover that he was not alone before he could realise what, uniquely, he was." (Jonathan Sacks "Christian-Jewish Dialogue. A Reader. Ed. Helen P. Fry p.xiv)
The bible is not an authority but the product in its writing, editing and interpretation of a particular community of human beings. This community transcends time, location, and I would argue theologies. This community gives the bible its authority. Those outside that community have no need of accepting its authority.

108. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86687 by flying goose on November 10, 2007 at 12:53 am

thank you Corylus,

I will try it when I get a moment.

Flying Goose

109. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86674 by flying goose on November 9, 2007 at 11:58 pm

If there is no historical fall, no original sin, then why the need for a saviour?

This question I think remains unanswered so far, unless there have been developments over night.

I suspect that it rests on unpacking the words 'sin' and 'save'.

Sin.

The Germanic sund from which the English sin derives, is about relational brokenness disconnectedness, or separation. Hence, asunder, breaking something apart, Plymouth Sound, a stretch of water separating two headlands.
If I think about it, most of my relationships are broken, non of them are complete. Non of the people on this site will know completely what I am trying to communicate, intellectual disconnectedness, there are wars all over the place, international disconnectedness, our relationship with the planet is broken, environmental disconnectedness. Etc etc.
The fall, and sin might just be a description of an aspect of the human condition, our sense of disconnectedness.

Save

The word in the greek New Testament, for save, can also mean heal or make whole. Hence 'your faith has saved you go in peace', could also be your trust has made you whole.
Relationships require both love and trust to stay connected. Peace or rather shalom derives from a word meaning completeness.
Does that mean we need a saviour. Perhaps, if there is a God from whom like everything else, we are disconnected.
Hence, Athanasius 'God indeed, assumed humanity, that we might become God'

110. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86522 by flying goose on November 9, 2007 at 1:00 pm

'Its nine o clock time for 'Have I got news for you' bye everyone.

111. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86521 by flying goose on November 9, 2007 at 12:59 pm

ps how do you get an avatar

112. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86518 by flying goose on November 9, 2007 at 12:55 pm

ADH,268
does it have to be fictional/non fictional
can it not be a mythological, therefore, an a historical account of my, your human condition.
My thirst for knowledge leads to a fall from my blissful naiveté, but also helps me grow up.

Steve 99 you made me laugh out loud by the way, thanks

113. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86510 by flying goose on November 9, 2007 at 12:44 pm

Ronald Hutton, Professor of History, Bristol University, early modern specialist and expert on contemporary paganism has said, roughly, 'There is no such thing as Christianity, many Christianities exist and have existed throughout its history.'

Like any phenomena that arises out of the human condition, like language, religion is always on the move.

'Mony aunterez here-biforne
Haf fallen suche er þis.
Now þat here þe croun of þorne,
He bryng vus to his blysse! AMEN.
HONY SOYT QUI MAL PENCE.'

114. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86502 by flying goose on November 9, 2007 at 12:27 pm

Answer to 251
Timothy Ware
The Orthodox Church p 222-225
Penguin Books 1997

115. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86498 by flying goose on November 9, 2007 at 12:23 pm

Orthodox Christians say I hope I don't misrepresent them,
'God indeed, assumed humanity, that we might become God'
S.Athanasius
'De Incarnatione Verbi Dei'
ch 54

116. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86492 by flying goose on November 9, 2007 at 12:17 pm

PS ADH
If there is a God,
and that God is infinite,
then it will take an eternity to know that God.
The bible would not then be the final word.
would it?

'Thou sayest that the apostle sayest this and that the savior sayest that, but what canst thou sayest.'

with apologies to George Fox.

117. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86490 by flying goose on November 9, 2007 at 12:10 pm

I am not a Jew so my expertise is limited, I am just student of the history of religion, amongst other things.
Early Judaism had no belief in life after death, so hell if it was real was in the here and now.
Belief in life after death came about during the time of the Jewish revolt against Greek rule. The Greeks having done their comparative religion rather well, knew that if they attacked on the Sabbath, the Jews would not fight back. They were thus killed by the Greeks. Pious Jews then thought, hold on a moment, we are being killed because we are being pious. An existential crisis ensued. They figured out that reward and punishment must be deferred to another life after death, hence heaven and hell.

118. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86485 by flying goose on November 9, 2007 at 11:49 am

Bonzai 215

''If they accept the Genesis account of creation as factual''

I will try and answer your questions, albeit from a different point of view, I think.
There are at least four accounts of creation in the Bible, Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 2, psalm 104, and one of the final chapters of the book of Job. It seems to me that the editors of genesis, never intended its two creation accounts to be taken as mere metaphors. But I cannot think that they intended them to be seen as factual either, they were not stupid, they could see the two accounts were different and contradictory. It just was not a problem for them.
It is a problem for western Christianity because it is an inheritor of a Latin intellectual culture.
The language we think in does, I would argue, form the thoughts we have, given that until the 18th century most intellectual discourse was in Latin that language is bound to have influenced the way our intellectual culture thinks. Latin, according to my classicists friends, is a 'either or' language. It is either right or its wrong.
The biblical culture is very different, more 'both and'
'it is both accurate and inaccurate.'
A rabbi once said to me, ask three rabbis, get four answers. Fundamentalists have a Latin mindset.
Two creation accounts in genesis,
'no no no,' they cry 'God would not contradict himself.'
Which is why they try and harmonise the two accounts.
On original sin.
Judaism does not have a doctrine of original sin so it is not a necessary product of Genesis.
It is a relatively late arrival in Christianity, Augustine of Hippo 354 -430 CE formulated it.
Eastern Orthodox Christians don't accept original sin either so it is not even a necessary part of Christianity. I hope that this is not too long winded an answer to your question.

119. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86112 by flying goose on November 8, 2007 at 6:58 am

Good speech,
However,
On the moderates and floods
Not all anglican Bishops are moderates.
Richard Harries, now he is a moderate.
Others????

120. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81220 by flying goose on October 24, 2007 at 12:50 pm

That the theist body count might lower than the atheist body count seems to me to be irrelevant to the question does god exist? I am not sure it is lower. I don't believe for one minute the Hitler was a Christian, but is seems arguable that the Nazi antisemitism is built upon two thousand years of Christian anti judaising and antisemitic polemic.
Does God exist? Non of these debates help me answer this question. McGrath and Dawkins are polite to one another and their conversation hints at something deeper, it might be god or just as easily be something else. Many of the other debates are just slanging matches. I don't have that sort of time to waste. Anyway polemic just gets people beaten up both metaphorically and sometimes physically.
Richard Harries and Richard Dawkins have a real conversation between friends and that gives me hope.
What I would love to see more of on this site is stuff like this
'We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here..'RD
Richard Dawkins often quotes these lines of his, and they really speak to my condition, so does Sam Harris when he writes about contemplation.
So please please please let's have more conversation, less polemic, less pointless debate between people who will never agree. Dialogue is so much more life changing.
I might not become an atheist, might not, but if I remain a theist I will stay the changing, doubting, questioning one that I am now.
'In a higher world (if one exists) it is otherwise, but here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.'

121. The Fleas Are Multiplying!

Comment #69335 by flying goose on September 10, 2007 at 11:52 pm

Northern Light
further to my last which was a rather hurried response.

Richard Dawkins says something similar to you about the privalage of existence, in his new preface to TGD and at the very end of the 'Root of Evil'.

I do not disagree either with you or him on this. More of that in a moment.

It may helpful to know, and I can write this because nobody knows who I am. I am suffering from a mild depression. I think the Knight/death dialogue is more an expression that, then of my true position on life and death. Your post has helped me to begin to retrieve this.

So back to it.

I think what I believe about death is summed in Phillip Pullman's 'Dark Materials'. Lyra the main character of the book releases the dead from the world of the dead in to this world. They experience the world for a moment then become dust. This is a great joy to them to be back in the world even as dust with no consciousness.
I take this as metaphor. What I am made of has always been here, and always will be even surviving the heat 'death' of the universe. For all the time that I am alive, this stuff can eat drink love, listen to Bach, think and understand. When I die it stops. If resurrection happens, it is a bonus I do not expect. I cannot begin to understand how that might happen.
This belief is found in the Hebrew Scriptures.
(I don't like the term Old Testament, it arises out Christian antisemitism. It also implies a single coherent body, which it isn't.)
Until about 200BCE the Jews didn't believe in life after death. You got your 70 or 80 years and that was enough. Witness the end of Psalm 39. 'For I am but a stranger with you, a passing guest as all my forebears were, Turn your gaze from me that I may be glad again, before I go my way and am no more." It is of course speaking to God, It might just as easily be speaking to the cosmos.

Got to go now, school run work etc.

122. The Fleas Are Multiplying!

Comment #69307 by flying goose on September 10, 2007 at 1:01 pm

Thanks for your response Northern Bright, no I don't feel like this most of the time I have plenty of things to live for spouse, children, it is great to be alive, I shouldn't be so maudlin.
That is how I felt this morning.
That said I do find myself in that marginal space between belief in God and unbelief in God. An interesting yet uncomfortable place to be.

Enough of existential angst, here are two poems about today.

Green drained,
Brittle browns,
Eddy silently
To rest.

Their crackled dance,
Waits

anticipates
Lovers' feet?

Or earth's embrace?

A humble union,
With death

Giving life.

Look,
Listen,
Taste,
Touch,
Scent sensing.

Then think,
Reason,
Question
Receive
Share.

Stop

Sense again,

Wonder.

Enjoy.

123. The Fleas Are Multiplying!

Comment #69205 by flying goose on September 10, 2007 at 2:18 am

Pewkatchoo, point taken.

Owen M and Veronique,

...then why are the theists so worried about Richard's book?

...They're not...

some are

me for one, imagine you've believed something from childhood, sometimes hanging on by your fingernails, but hanging on none the less.
Now Richard's book comes along, you feel compelled to read it. Dare you, the book might be nail clippers.

'Knight: I call out to Him in the dark but no one seems to be there.'
Death: Perhaps no one is there.
Knight: Then life is an outrageous horror. No one can live in the face of death knowing that all is nothingness.' Ingmer Bergman

It is all very uncomfortable, my heart races as I write.

existing universe,

absent god,

and yet,

and yet.

124. The Fleas Are Multiplying!

Comment #69187 by flying goose on September 9, 2007 at 11:25 pm

A lot of you suggest that many of TGD's critics have not read it. I must confess that I have not read it. Not because I don't want to, but because I have not yet made the time. I am currently reading God and the New Physics by Paul Davies, but I have just read the first chapter of TGD online, poetry I think would be a good word to describe it, as well as good science and philosophy I am sure. Next time I am in Sainsbury's I will buy it, and after finishing Paul Davies I'll take the plunge.
Now Ewan D I take your point. My point is this. It is not just the views we express that are important, it is the kindness or not with which we express them, and the attitude we have to those we oppose. If the first chapter of TGD is anything to go by RD perhaps believes this too. Pewkatchoo's lack of kindness in cyber space will win no converts.

125. The Fleas Are Multiplying!

Comment #68997 by flying goose on September 9, 2007 at 12:44 pm

"papabryant
central argument against religion the root of war and violence!

You have clearly not read The god Delusion. Now be a good chap and fuck-off before I click the Troll button."

Please!!!

What ever hppened to free speech without the threat of cyber violence?

126. The Fleas Are Multiplying!

Comment #68925 by flying goose on September 9, 2007 at 6:20 am

Science and arts again, I did school science and no more so please forgive my simple example, which of course could be and probably are a travesty of science.

Are there two mindsets?

What is 1+1? 2
What temperature does water boil at in 1 atmosphere? 100°C.

How do you translate this?
'kai eis eme pisteuete.'
Believe also in me.
Trust also in me.
Have faith also in me.

The words believe trust faith may have similar meanings, but they are not the same, they all can translate pisteuete. You have to make a choice, and have a mindset that can live with the fact that your choice could be wrong.

Maybe the two mindsets are not divided on a science arts basis, rather, some crave an assailable certainty, others can live with questions and doubt.

There are certainty junkies and then there are doubters.

Doubt is not the enemy, it is a partner, it steers us away from certainty.

127. The Fleas Are Multiplying!

Comment #68745 by flying goose on September 8, 2007 at 11:54 am

response to steve 99 ref CP Snow, this is only in my experience, but some of the most conservative evengelical christians I have come across, have either been science under graduates, or science graduates. They have seemed so certain of their religious beliefs.

128. Honest Mistakes or Willful Mendacity

Comment #68517 by flying goose on September 7, 2007 at 11:40 am

re my above. I am really refering to the responses to madeline bunting, not to most of the above. Not really used to this yet, sorry.

129. Honest Mistakes or Willful Mendacity

Comment #68514 by flying goose on September 7, 2007 at 11:31 am

Heard the debate, I didn't think RD came over badly, neither did he seem defeated in his argument despite being cut off.
That all said my comment would be this, the media, any media, seems to thrive on conflict. Judging by the heat above the first causality of that conflict is courtesy, the second, attentive conversation. Truth, if there really is a truth out there to be 'dis covered' remains obscured by point scoring and vitriol.

130. Atheists for Jesus

Comment #64065 by flying goose on August 17, 2007 at 1:29 pm

As to whether or not Jesus existed, I don't know of any current New Testament historians who would dispute his existence. Would he be an atheist if he lived today? He doesn't live today, in the flesh at least, so how can we know? Of course in his own day the Romans would have regarded him as an athiest, he didn't believe in idols. Slippery word atheist. That said I liked the article. If Richard Dawkins wants to be an atheist for Jesus, its a free country.

More Pages: Previous | 1 2 3