Many believe science has disproven God. This is not possible, even in principle.[1] The truth of the matter is that advances in science are providing more reasons to believe in God, not less. While scientific discoveries cannot prove God’s existence, they can be used to support premises in arguments that have theistic conclusions/implications. For example, science has discovered that the universe began to exist. Anything that begins to exist requires an external cause. Since the universe encompasses all physical reality, the cause of the universe must transcend physical reality. It cannot be a prior physical event or some natural law, because there was nothing physical prior to the first physical event, and natural laws only come into being once the natural world comes into being. Whatever caused the universe to come into being must be transcendent, powerful, immaterial, spaceless, eternal, and personal, which is an apt description of God.
Or consider the fine-tuning of the physical constants for the existence of advanced life. For example, the cosmological constant which governs the expansion rate of the universe, is fine-tuned to 1 part in 10120. That is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
For perspective, there are only 1080 elementary particles in the universe! Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind writes, “[T]he discovery that the value of the cosmological constant – the energy of empty space which contributes to the expansion rate of the universe – seems absurdly improbable, and nothing in fundamental physics is able to explain why.”[2] And again, “It’s one of the greatest mysteries in physics. All we know is that if it were much bigger we wouldn’t be here to ask about it.” [3] The best explanation for why the constants have assumed the values they have is that they were designed by an intelligent agent.
It’s not uncommon when making a case for the existence of God or a Designing Intelligence based on scientific findings such as these for an atheist to respond, “That’s not science.” What they really mean, however, is “That’s not naturalism.”
One needs to be aware that the word “science” has two different meanings, and the one is often substituted for the other. On the one hand there is science as method. This involves making observations, predictions, doing experiments, and drawing conclusions – what we typically think of when we think of science. But there is another definition of science, often lurking in the background, which is science as philosophy. The philosophy of science involves what one thinks the purpose and goal of science to be. For nearly 200 years now, the reigning philosophy of science is naturalism (methodological naturalism). On naturalism, the purpose of science is not to discover the truth about the workings of the physical world via empirical methods, but to discover natural causes for natural phenomena. Intelligent causes and theistic conclusions are ruled out a priori.
Scientists have been quite clear of this. For example, philosopher of science Michael Ruse has written that “science simply does not allow God as a causal factor.”[4] Kansas State University professor, S.C. Todd, wrote in Nature, “Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.”[5] Harvard professor of genetics, Richard Lewontin, is very candid that scientists are guided by the philosophy of naturalism, not pursuit of the truth, and are unwilling to consider intelligent agency even if it is the best explanation of the data. In The New York Review of Books he made this remarkable admission:
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs…in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.[6]
According to Lewontin, the game is rigged against theism by definitional fiat. When paired with naturalism, the scientific method is no longer geared to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, but rather to produce philosophically acceptable answers. Philosophy comes first, and then the empirical data. And when the empirical data seems to conflict with the philosophy, the philosophy will always win the day. Whereas most people think of science as a discipline free from bias and prejudice, Ruse, Todd, and Lewontin make it clear that modern science is defined by prejudice: only natural explanations for natural phenomena are allowed, the evidence be damned!
If you arbitrarily define science as the pursuit of natural causes, it should be no surprise that drawing theistic implications from scientific discoveries will be ruled out of bounds, and why theories like Darwinian evolution will be the undisputed king of the scientific hill. If your philosophy of science restricts the pool of causes to natural cause, then something like Darwinian evolution must be true. It’s the only game in town. Intelligent Design is excluded by definitional fiat, not empirical analysis. ID is dismissed as unscientific, not because it fails to properly employ the scientific method, but because it does not subscribe to the philosophy of naturalism.
This approach to science does not make sense because it arbitrarily restricts science. Given naturalism, the goal of science is no longer to discover the truth about the physical world, but to come up with the best naturalistic explanation, even if it is not true. Admittedly, the domain of science is the physical world, not the supernatural, but if the evidence points to an intelligent or supernatural cause as opposed to a natural cause, then scientists should be able to conclude that an agent caused the natural phenomena based on the empirical data. As Greg Koukl noted, “The object and domain of science should be the physical world, but its goal should be truth, not merely physical explanations. Though science is restricted to examining physical effects, when causes are inferred, there should be no limitation.”[7] The modern philosophical definition of science is incomplete in that it excludes a priori a known source of causation – intelligent agency – and thus may lead to mistaken conclusions.
Consider the situation in which a chemistry teacher leaves a solution in a beaker overnight.[8] The next morning, when he returns to class he finds an Oreo in the beaker. The students demand that he provide a scientific explanation for the origin of the Oreo. He immediately concludes that it was placed there by someone the night before. The students cry, “Foul! By invoking an outside agent, you’ve broken the rules. You’re not being scientific. This is a chemistry class, so let’s stick with science. You must provide a naturalistic explanation for the Oreo’s origin.” He would be hard pressed to provide a plausible naturalistic explanation. It’s obvious to all that the best explanation for the physical phenomenon under question is not a naturalistic cause, but an intelligent cause. And yet, the philosophy of science he subscribes to prohibits him from accepting the obvious and best explanation.
Can you imagine if this philosophical presupposition was applied to natural phenomena? What caused Stonehenge? “People made it,” you say. No! That is not a scientific explanation because it invokes an intelligent rather than natural cause. As a physical entity, it must be explained in terms of naturalistic causes. “But,” you say, “it has all the elements of intelligent design: The arrangement of parts is both complex and specified to an independent pattern.” What if I responded by saying, “But this is just the appearance of design, not real design. While we may not yet know the natural process that created Stonehenge, scientists are busy working on the answer. We cannot give up on science by appealing to some unknown ‘designers.’ To do so is to employ a people of the gaps argument, and is not befitting of science.”
If someone argued this way he would be laughed out of court. So why is it different when it comes to the biological world, which bears all the hallmarks of design? If we recognize the presence of design by the presence of specified complexity, and at least parts of the biological world exhibit specified complexity, then it is rational to conclude that those features were caused by a designing intelligence. If methodological naturalism prevents us from concluding the obvious, then so much the worse for methodological naturalism! Such a philosophy of science is too restrictive. While we ought to look for naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena, we should not rule out the possibility of intelligent causation in the physical world a priori. The most important thing about a scientific explanation is that it is adequate to explain the physical effect in question. If no known natural cause is adequate to explain the natural effect, and an intelligent cause best explains the evidence, then it should be permissible for scientists to conclude that an intelligent agent caused the effect in question.[9] Science should be more concerned about finding the right answers, and less concerned with finding the right kind of answers — ones that comport with their preferred philosophy of naturalism. The evidence should drive a scientist’s conclusions, not his philosophy, otherwise the philosophical tail ends up wagging the scientific dog. As Michael Behe writes: “It is often said that science must avoid any conclusions which smack of the supernatural. But this seems to me to be both bad logic and bad science. Science is not a game in which arbitrary rules are used to decide what explanations are to be permitted. Rather, it is an effort to make true statements about physical reality.”[10]
This is not a debate between science versus religion, but a debate over the very definition of science itself. It is a debate concerning the philosophy of science. For those who are committed to the truth rather than a particular philosophy, there is no reason to restrict science to a search for natural causes. Science is a method, not a philosophy, and when the methods of science lead to discoveries with theistic implications, so be it. That is science!
[1]The supernatural is beyond the scope of science. The inquiry of science is limited to the physical world. While empirical discoveries could have atheistic implications, the findings of science could never disprove theism since the tools of science are limited to induction and abuction, which only provide you with probabilities, not certainties.
[2]Leonard Susskind, in an interview with Amanda Gefter of New Scientist, “Is String Theory in Trouble?”, December 17 2005 edition, p. 48; available from http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18825305.800.html; Internet; accessed 5 January 2006.
[3]Tim Folger, “Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: the Multiverse Theory” in Discover magazine; available from http://discovermagazine.com/2008/dec/10-sciences-alternative-to-an-intelligent-creator/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=; Internet; accessed 11 November 2008.
[4]Michael Ruse, “Intelligent Design is an Oxymoron”; available from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/may05/intelligent-design-fuller-creationism; Internet; accessed 05 May 2010.
[5]S.C. Todd, “A View from Kansas on That Evolution Debate,” Nature 401 (September 30, 1999): 423.
[6]Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New York Review of Books, January 4, 1997.
[7]Greg Koukl, Solid Ground, July/Augusts 2005 issue, 3.
[8]This illustration is credited to Greg Koukl.
[9]Naturalists argue that this is “giving up on science.” I disagree. It no more gives up on science than concluding that the pyramids were created by intelligent causes gives up on science. It’s a recognition that when the evidence points to an intelligent cause rather than a natural cause, we should adopt an intelligent cause. Arguing that we should not accept a theistic explanation of physical phenomena because science will probably discover an answer in the future. This sort of “science of the gaps” is a leap of faith on the part of the naturalist. We must make conclusions based on our knowledge in the present, not some possible knowledge that may be acquired in the future. To do otherwise would be like a defendant in a murder trial demanding to be acquitted even though all the evidence points to him perpetrating the crime, on the basis that someday in the future evidence might be discovered that proves him innocent.
[10]Michael Behe, “Molecular Machines: Experimental Support for the Design Inference”; available from http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=54; Internet; accessed 01 January 2005.
Thinking to Believe 
November 18, 2013 at 11:22 am
Methodologically naturalism is the idea that it’s imprudent to invoke supernatural intervention as an explanation when such miraculous intervention may not be necessary. This is a pillar of mainstream science.
And how do you determine whether supernatural intervention was necessary for some observation? By assuming, for the sake of argument, that something supernatural did not intervene, and then genuinely attempting to find a sufficient natural explanation.
-= The Relentless Robot Thought Experiment =-
You live on planet Chalybos, and you’ve been taught from birth that the core of the planet is made of an indestructible substance. You begin an endeavor to search for that indestructible substance.
You’re not the first Chalyban to have this idea. Many people have before begun similar digging adventures. The first such explorer hit a really tough substance 50 meters down. He was convinced that this was the indestructible core. He wailed on the substance for weeks, but it wouldn’t break. Finally, after failing to dig any deeper, he proclaimed that he had, indeed, found the core.
Later, a different explorer brought a team along with him. After months of working at the stubborn material, they broke through. The material wasn’t indestructible at all; the core had not been reached.
This happened again and again in the history of Chalybos. A team would reach a layer seemingly invulnerable, and proclaim their victory in terms of having discovered the planet’s core. But then a subsequent team would work a little harder and longer and break through what before was claimed to be the core. And then, the cycle would repeat.
To deal with this, you decide to build a robot that is programmed to dig downward. Even if the robot hits a surface that he has trouble with, he never gives up. He always treats anything he encounters as if he can break through.
— In some ways, this robot has a weakness: He is stuck in full-throttle dig-mode. He has no perceptions and no decisionmaking faculties. Furthermore, if indeed he does hit the true core one day, he’ll continue digging into it, fruitlessly, forever.
— In other ways, this robot has a strength: He will never give up too soon and falsely proclaim victory, as so many explorers before you had done.
Here are a few opinions of fellow Chalybans:
— Seeing this repetitive pattern of false victories and deeper digs, some conclude that there is no indestructible core at all. There is only an “indestructible core of the gaps,” shrinking every time a team breaks through and digs deeper.
— Eventually, the robot hits a surface that he spends years working against with no success. Some, at this point, say, “We believe the robot has finally arrived at the core — but we must keep him powered, forever, because there is a chance that we’re wrong.”
— Others say, “He has certainly arrived at the core. We should save our energy and shut the robot off. His job is finished.”
Can you see the reasoning behind the skeptics who reject the idea of an indestructible core? Can you see the reasoning behind those who believe the core has been found, but refuse to disconnect the robot? And can you see the reasoning behind those who believe the core has been found, and thus the robot should be disconnected?
I can see the reasoning behind all of these perspectives. None of them are completely meritless nor certainly meritorious.
Methodological naturalism is like the relentless robot. It chews through superstition and baseless supernatural conjecture. Layer after layer, it refuses to quit. To some, this is evidence that there’s no indestructible core at all, that is, there is nothing in existence that does lacks an mechanistic and explanatory underpinning. But I don’t think that necessarily follows.
I say, “keep the robot going,” while simultaneously putting faith in a God who I believe has interacted with my life in a meaningful, powerful, and efficacious way. This is what Gould meant by “non-overlapping magisteria.” My beliefs about the core are orthogonal to the activity and revelations of the robot, though they are revised based on what that robot reveals.
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November 18, 2013 at 11:27 am
Science continuously provides civilization with certainties based on reason, experimentation, research and implementation of same. From flight to microwave cooking, generators powered by water converts to electricity, magnetism and motors performing all kinds of tasks, medicinal advances for cures and management of diseases. On every front science is advancing civilization.
Religion has provided us with the the supernatural, the paranormal, prayer, myths and miracles that cannot be supported by anything but conjecture and anecdotal promotion. Religion has never advanced from pre and post stoneagism, has never changed from exorcisms of demons, prayer and wailing for interventions that never saved anyone from anything at anytime. On every front religion is losing the battle.
At the very time of it’s obvious demise in the world, religion now tries to embrace science which it has constantly rejected, trying to garner support for its ghostly supernaturalistic belief system based on nothing but belief and magic foundation. Using science today when only a few hundred years ago it condemned and arrested the Great Galileo because he supported Copernican heliocentrism, the sun as the centre not the earth. To the present day religious Muslims killing Pakistan volunteers administering polio vaccines, to the persecution of witches to the persecution of gays to denying women reproductive rights, contraceptives and stem cell research.
Opposing every scientific advance has been the thrust of religion because it saw science as the antichrist of religious belief offering practical science progress instead of cave mode prayer seances that did nothing but promote religious insanity.
Remember this:
Science has questions that may never be answered, immediately; religion has answers that may never be questioned fornever and never.
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November 18, 2013 at 12:16 pm
Stan,
No, methodological naturalism is proceeding to do science as if no causal agents are involved in natural phenomena, even if they are.
And I do not disagree that science should first explore natural causes for natural phenomena. What I disagree with is the notion that when the evidence points to an intelligent or supernatural cause, that the “rules” of science (i.e. the philosophy of science) do not allow one to draw that conclusion.
Jason
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November 18, 2013 at 12:16 pm
SonofMan,
Science is incapable of providing civilization with certainty about anything because science works on induction and abduction, not deduction.
There’s no question that science has brought great advances to civilization, but notice the nature of the things you list. They are all advances in understanding how things work, or how to manipulate physical reality to our benefit. Explaining/discovering how things work is very different from explaining how things came to be.
You need to study up on the history of the relationship between science and religion. Your “conflict thesis” is not borne out by the facts of history. The Christian worldview provided the necessary worldview for modern empirical science, and many of the first and most important scientists were committed believers. There is no conflict between science and religion; only between naturalism and religion. And it’s only in recent centuries that science has become identified with naturalism.
Jason
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November 18, 2013 at 1:10 pm
This sort of arguments are patently ridiculous , I was an atheist until I got to college ( I am studying biology) and it was due to my scientific education that I now am 100 % sure that there is no way that there is no God.It was when I really studied biology that I realized that evolution is dead and my teacher who is an atheist said she only believes it because she cannot and will not believe in God.She admits that there is no evidence and that a person who is open to the possibility of God will easly conclude that it was and is God but she simply won’t believe no matter the evidence.This was horrific to me at the time when I became an agnostic,and later on when I got cured from illness over a week even tho doctors said it cannot be cured , I simply prayed God if you are there I trust You and with full confidence I prayed and God cured me,it happened to many times to call it an accident and that the my doctor became a Christian when it all happened after speaks volumes (he was agnostic/atheist).I know so many people that started beliveing in God merely because of science.It is God’s command to study the universe He has made so it would be kind of a sin not to do science
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November 18, 2013 at 1:16 pm
Vika, what you have posted is absurd and clearly a lie. I’m not sure how much of it is actually true, but you obviously did not consult a biology teacher who told you there “is no evidence of evolution.” You just told us a “Semper Fi / Einstein” fable.
I know the temptation can be strong to increase His Kingdom by means of unscrupulous things like exaggeration and story-making, but that’s not the means for which we’re called as Christians. Please don’t do that kind of thing again.
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November 18, 2013 at 4:00 pm
God of the Gaps is incorrect; God is in the details—it is just our corrupted nature that will cause most humans to believe in the “flying spaghetti monster” (a Dawkins quote) before giving any divine attention to Intelligence (and/or a God). Well, believing in a flying spaghetti monster takes more faith (it takes blind faith) than using Occam’s razor to reach an inference to the best explanation in…God. Any designer (mortal or divine) leaves a trail behind (some mostly hidden and for others totally open) that all humans can realize was caused: Gutzon Borglum carved Mount Rushmore (aaah, the wind and rain did not do it); if you see “Johnny love’s Mary” scratched in the sand at the beach…it is best to infer that crabs did not do it (and that Mary and Johnny are real people and know each other), and if you’re a preteen and see your favorite alphabet cereal box tipped out with its contents poured on the table…and some of the letters just happened to scatter themselves to reveal, “take out the trash”; then you’d better not invoke chance and ignore the direction; further if you’re an anthropologist searching for Indian arrowheads (because they clearly stand out as intelligently designed even though you will never find the Indian responsible) you should also be able to find (if you’re a good scientist) the chippings (flakes) that would also indicate where the arrows were made (even though you won’t find the arrows…or the Indians). Now if you’re a criminal, then you want to hide the deliberate design of your crime and/or come up with a designed alibi…yet forensics (the science of criminal investigation CSI—Crime Scene Investigation) however is getting to the point where ‘they’ say it is impossible to do anything “deliberate” without leaving something (a trail) behind. Chance does not build buildings, artists do not paint by mistake, and a jewel thief (if he expects to continue in his “career”) had better be a better designer and planner of his crime than the forensics scientists are at picking-up on his trail. Nothing is done without leaving a trail—even the wind leaves a trail; even plate tectonics leaves a trail. The only real question is, is there intelligence involved?!!!
Science has painted itself into a corner—it has become its own dogmatic inquisitor; tying itself to the stake for a roasting. It is not that religion should take over and control science; those who are Christian must NOT stop learning—our large capable brain is the one very unique thing about our species…that allows us curiosity (sometimes though curiosity does need to be guided by an active conscience). Galileo stated that: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.” Even the Bible states we are to seek knowledge in our youth; to come let us reason together; and to call on Me and I will tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know. The Bible is NOT into the numbing and dumbing down of its followers—if a church is doing this than it is as a means of control, and it is WRONG…if Religion is dogmatic then it is not correct! Further, science itself deems material as being 99.9999% empty space (not material!), and what we deem as our knowledge of reality is based on only 4% of the entire observable universe (Dark Matter and Dark Energy make up the other 96%…and we can NOT even sense it)…but worse this is just the OBSERVABLE universe (there is a bunch…we will never see or ever know scientifically). And what of the quantum world?
Our existence is getting very suspicious and smacks more of conspiracy than coincidence. Why is there something rather than nothing? The answer is: nothing is nothing; that is, there is no such thing as a thing: No THING exists. You’re in a giant hologram—a spirit in an earthsuit… and that which you perceive needs to be reevaluated in the extreme! If we are created in God’s Image then we do not ‘look’ like God (God is spirit) rather we have inner spirit too (on loan sort-ta) that possess a sense for God’s attributes: like fairness, justice, perfection…and even love…or the unwelcome insidious itch of TIME (which our body is ‘forced to dance to’ but our spirit is not). None of those five can be proven by science yet many scientists know these five conditions as mostly valuable and strive for them…WHY strive for them if life is just materialism? J.B. S. Haldine (a British geneticist and evolutionary biologist) stated (in part), “Our existence is not only stranger than you suppose…it is stranger than you CAN suppose.” Pascal Wager has merit: Belief in God is the better bet (Google it)! Like many things (now in time) it is a choice you will either make or not make but at least YOU have this choice…for when your spirit graduates from time there can then be no change allowed—eternity does not have time.
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November 18, 2013 at 4:48 pm
Jason (your post of Nov 18th at 12:16) to SonOfMan
I hope that you both will (and Jason you must) Google up the following: “Andrew Dickson White science and religion”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis . There are two individuals who are mostly responsible for igniting a conflict between religion and science (in the publics ‘eye’)…in brief I quote (the pics and reading on the web is astounding and few people could hardly know this):
It was in the 1800s that relationship between science and religion became an actual formal topic of discourse, while before this no one had pitted science against religion or vice versa, though occasional interactions were expressed in the past. [5] The scientist John William Draper and the writer Andrew Dickson White were the most influential exponents of the Conflict Thesis between religion and science. Draper had been the speaker in the British Association meeting of 1860 which led to the famous confrontation between Bishop Wilberforce and Huxley over Darwinism and in America “the religious controversy over biological evolution reached its most critical stages in the late 1870s”.[6] In the early 1870s, Draper was invited to write a History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874), a book replying to contemporary issues in Roman Catholicism, such as the doctrine of papal infallibility, and mostly criticising what he claimed to be anti-intellectualism in the Catholic tradition,[7] but also making criticisms of Islam and Protestantism.[8] Draper’s preface summarises the conflict thesis:
There is much more about these two and the whole situation is similar to the removal of George Lemaitre (from public knowledge) who was the founder of the Big Bang model (but not the Big Bang name) Giving instead the credit to Fred Hoyle (who ridiculed Lemaitre). Why? Lemaitre was a Belgian Catholic Priest! If you look his name up you will see pictures of him and Einstein…I have Lemaitre’s ONE and only book “A Day Without Yesterday”.
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November 18, 2013 at 8:28 pm
Jason:
“…..many of the first and most important scientists were committed believers……”
You cannot seriously believe this statement, since death for blasphemy is not a new phenomenon. Would you make that statement based on Galileo’s dilemma, for example? After all Galileo was forced to recant or face death so who would give his life just to deny supernaturalism? Well except the disciples and other questionable characters from the embellished past?
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November 19, 2013 at 12:22 am
SonofMan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_science
Not including Einstein, Max Planck, Mendel, Boyle, Newton, Blaise Pascal, Galileo himself, and Copernicus all were believers and many were theologians as well
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November 19, 2013 at 11:43 am
Mark: Welcome to the Circle “HUH” Rants Ranch
As it is today in Muslim countries where one can be killed for blasphemy; so it was in the Christian world that one could be put to death for any number of religious contraventions, not the least of which were the first four religious commandments: capital offenses for blasphemy against God and/or Religious Dogma.
With that noose at the ready for one’s neck, naturally there were not too many people in all walks of life who would openly and publicly come out against the dominant religious values of their generation.
One of the few men who did come out of the atheist closet to take on the religious establishment was Jesus and we all know the story of how he was hounded for three years of his ministry by the religious fanatics who plotted to kill him. We have all read the story of how Jesus had to hide, escape from, avoid, disguise himself, retreat into the desert, take a boat on the water, trek about in the mountains, give them the slip, exit by the back door so he wouldn’t be arrested, beaten, mobbed, stoned, shamed.
HOW JESUS STARTED HIS MINISTRY:
According to custom, Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the scriptures from the book of the prophet Isaiah that was handed to him. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind (blinded by clergy and religious insanity) to set at liberty those who are oppressed;to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
He closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. He said, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
He went further and denounced the clergy’s supernaturalism with two examples regarding the famine and a cleansed leper after which:all those in the synagogue,when they heard these things,were filled with wrath and rose up and thrust him out of the city;and they led Him to the brow of the hill………to throw him down head first over the cliff but he gave them the slip and was on his way.
That was the beginning of the mission to help the poor and bring back the only God there is, the “Father” within you that is the spirit guide inside every human being, not the supernatural magical hocus pocus gods created by the clergy for pence and power. His mission was to open the eyes of the people to the reality that Truth was the authority and not the Authority of the clergy as truth.
From that day forth Mark, the Jews plotted to silence Jesus because he testified to the evil of their ways and for the next three years Jesus dodged and darted about mingling with the oppressed masses, helping them, feeding them (by natural means, I hasten to add not by picking bread and fish out of thin air) and showing them what compassion and forgiveness and love of the Law was supposed to be like; in the meanwhile, dodging the religious wingnuts who sought to imprison him, throw him over cliffs, stone him, whip him, beat him, mock him and eventually crucified him for blasphemy because he exposed the evil ways of all organized religions of the world mainly because Jesus did not accept the supernatural gods that men have written about for centuries.
Jesus said to the regular people: “The (religious)world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.”
You may be interested to know that even today in this enlightened Age of Modernity:
Atheists can’t run for political office or hold jobs in 7 US States?
Arkansas, Article 19, Section 1:
No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.
Maryland, Article 37:
That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God; nor shall the Legislature prescribe any other oath of office than the oath prescribed by this Constitution.
Mississippi, Article 14, Section 265:
No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.
North Carolina, Article 6, Section 8
The following persons shall be disqualified for office: Any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.
South Carolina, Article 17, Section 4:
No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.
Tennessee, Article 9, Section 2:
No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.
Texas, Article 1, Section 4:
No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.
So, what do you think of these laws? And how much worse was the religious world operating when witches were sought out and burned at the stake? Just a few hundred years ago.
Is it any wonder that Galileo the Great was convicted of heresy and forced to spend the rest of his life under house arrest for going against scripture as perceived by the righteous religion?
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November 19, 2013 at 12:10 pm
vika:
Any normal intelligent person will understand this video. You need to understanding.
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November 19, 2013 at 7:30 pm
What a sterile video and typically childish…your comparison have no link (tying material horseshoes with spiritual prayer (are you thinking at all?)!
Why would anyone pray to God for six sixes?! You seem to making God your own vallet. Cancer or sixes or whatever…God is not interested in your boxing Him in so that you can then “scientifically” bounce God out. Is the Bible an incantation and chants manual and that if it does not give you what you want then bouncy bouncy it goes in the trash? I’m not sure what your goal is here and how it is that spiritual manners tally up to horseshoes and superstition. I’m not sure you can scientifically debate the situation of superstition as superstition is not materialistic and so you’ll have to find another way (GOOD LUCK). Further, probability and universal constants (of nature) work for you as an atheist and me as a Christian … so again what’s your point?
So let me help you sum up your situation (your world view):
1) you are a materialist, 2) anything that can not be scientifically tested is not real, 3) you can not have therefore any belief in love, fairness, perfection, or any other abstract concept…for if you do then you must be able to falsify them (and what’s your base line standard…YOUR feelings?!!) and that is not possible with abstract (infinity type) feelings. 4) you’re a darwiniinist and so that means you’re are basically a meat robot…coming from nowhere and going to nothing…periodic table material lost to the dustbin of history. 5) you are a relativist, your truth is good for you and you believe that my truth is OK for me…as long as I do not impact your truth. (and if that is so then why do you care if I pray or not….you don’t get any advantage in your Darwinist gain for survival…in fact, you’d be better off letting me waste my time praying while you went out and took on a second job so you’d have more money than I do and so you’d have a better survival advantage).
You’re not going to throw the million-monkeys typing for a million years to prove that the universe is just a fluke of chance…ghiissssh, not that again!
YAWN and YAWN YAWN.
No one here is going to try and convert you to pray (or make you believe something you do not want to believe). If your curiosity is no inept that all you’ve got is materialistic venue then well…good luck. The only one who changes your mind is YOU (oh and that’s Biblical too). God will not and can not change a hard heart or a closed mind…so you are very ‘safe’ in your materialistic worldview. Oh and BTW, prayer is not an exercise done in a certain manner so that God will pick up the ‘line’ and ring-in. You are in prayer (like it or not, believe it or not) as soon as your eyes are opened each morning when you wake…and you are then ‘back-in-time’. God hears ever thought (including the road rage and curses tossed at other drivers) and there is nothing you can do to shut Him out…that which makes you (you) inside and not me (spirit) is on loan…and will, “return to him who gave it” (also Biblical).
You should look up “Pascal’s Wager” seeing as how you like probability (in your video) so much.
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November 22, 2013 at 10:41 pm
Gordon:
What kind of God do you believe in that hears your every thought and if that is so then explain it in reasonable terms not supernatural hocus pocus imaginative fiction.
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November 22, 2013 at 10:44 pm
I can explain the Father of Jesus and the Father of I and it’s easy to him who has open minded understanding but if you are stuck in the stoneageism of supernaturalism you can explain nothing and and no explanation is possible to you.
And who are you, the creature, who presumes to defend the creator if that were true, ego notwithstanding.
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September 14, 2014 at 4:54 pm
To presuppose a God violates Occam’s Razor. Unless you provide some explanation as to why we should disregard this oft-used principle of hypothesis-sorting, there’s no reason why we should consider God specifically as an explanation, especially given the enormous complexity that would be associated with such an entity. In fact, I doubt you used Occam’s Razor at all when choosing to first study theosophy; more than likely you were Christian first, and then, upon encountering atheist arguments, you decided that your faith needed defending. That’s the opposite of how the process of obtaining knowledge should work; you have to let the evidence choose your side for you, not choose a side first and then start constructing all sorts of clever arguments, because to do that is to engage in rationalization.
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September 14, 2014 at 8:29 pm
David Xu:
I responded to your post on “Science alone can never justify materialism.”
# 11 but neglected to address the reply in your name.
You said: “……to let the evidence choose your side for you, not choose a side first and then start constructing all sorts of clever arguments,…..”
This is an interesting point because it is exactly the way lawyers make their decisions about which client to prosecute or defend much like a high school debate when teachers sometimes choose what sides the students will be on without allowing the student to choose for themselves in the interest of educational experience in “contructing all sorts of clever arguments,….” because there are always arguments able to be put forth regardless of what side you would actually pick if you had a choice.
Religion unfortunately gives people very little option of the sides as you point out:
Clearly those early few months and years of life are a very sensitive time and whatever ideas are imprinted into the soft putty of the unformed mind at that stage stays there pretty much forever and yet for some reason, here in the civilized world, it’s still perfectly legal for us to indoctrinate our children with the most hateful and divisive absurdities it’s possible to imagine, creating in them not young, vibrant, healthy, inquiring minds but rather stunted little freakish minds that are no use to anyone but a preacher.
We not only allow this abuse, we actively encourage it; we throw public money at it.
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September 15, 2014 at 4:46 am
Dear SonOfMan.
I decided to try and find out why you are so darned angry…I suggest everyone who cares to reply to SoM first go to his web page at (http://en.gravatar.com/littleleothetruthfairey) which is also accessible by clicking on the som hyperlink to any of his posts.
In the left margin is a very long rant of his beliefs (aaaah, his religion). Someone is really angry and probably has some negative experience to back it up—I understand that, for we all have issues and disappointments and we all do not function correctly (ever single Christian falls short of being perfect—that includes me. We don’t remove our sinful condition; Christ does that via God’s grace—it’s a GIFT!). In fact, lack of fairness and abusive ‘life’ situations are paramount to most peoples’ anger. Religion has NOT typically served mankind well—there are many abuses (and bad news makes news…religion has done much GOOD too). Such failure of religion is based from people using it for their own greed and gain and power trips (just look at the foolish murdering/fighting done by ISIS and the Islamic radicals). It is people who are wrong, not ‘necessarily’ religion–just like it is not the gun that kills it is the one who decides to pull the trigger.
Religion should be a way to have people get together to understand what science cannot provide…there IS a metaphysical part to our existence; and Noooooo, I can’t prove that with science( duuhhhh). Religion should NOT control but rather build relationships whereby people work for a better life and further their understanding and it is entirely possible to link in together: science with philosophy and too religion (frankly, I believe this MUST be done or a continual fracturing will widen and make life even more difficult). Christianity states (in the Bible) that we are to “seek knowledge”; “come and reason together”, “test everything…hold on to the good”, and even to “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know”. Christianity (at least) demands we USE the brain we have; it does NOT want us to be puppets—mindless zombies waving incenses burners and selling indulgences! GO…find a church that opens your mind rather than the typical old controlling types!
SonOfMan; blow all this off if you want– no Christian is here to change your mind (Romans 12:2 states only you can do that) only you can change your mind, only you can have an open mind, only you can use conscience to guide your curiosity. By being hard-hearted and pushing away religion you are limiting yourself to only science (and so become close-minded) and yet much in science is past the physical (quantum mechanics…things at the plank limit and energy (matter) reduced to the energy or waves…in short). Do yourself a favor drop that sidebar to your web and open up your mind to new ideas…test, reason, ask, learn, relate (with others). If you find we are wrong and you were right all-along then, you can always crawl back in bed and pull the covers over your head…where you are ‘safe’…but ignorant of anything other than what you call (your) physical (only) world.
G
PS: it’s your sidebar, do not respond with attacks: for I will not answer if you do! The comment above is observation–you’re not the only one who thinks and acts the way you do…and that’s OK…if that’s what you want to be like…but if you’re here to reach-out then come-out and drop the hard case act. If you’re here to change US then you don’t change our minds any more than we change your mind–ya got to do it via REASON and LOGIC etc etc
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September 15, 2014 at 1:16 pm
OMG Gordon:
I appreciate your attempt to show me some reason and logic and your kindness is not lost on me but you do have a few short comings as you confessed, as we all must do. But I was delightfully amused on your take on my “rant”, inferring that I am full of anger. Indeed I am one of the happiest people on earth.
But I must say you are a perfect example of how you managed to misunderstand everything I wrote in my “rant”. Now I can only guess as to why but I submit that my guess would be “you got religion”. You see I have no belief system; I have no religion; I am an atheist.
However the person in my life, since I was 12 years old, who has had the most profound influence in my life and in my understanding, is Jesus. Not the Jesus that religionists portray him to be as a fanatical street preacher regurgitatiing on and on about the supernatural gods in the northern sky; not the Jesus that clergy go off on tangents about: shedding his blood for our sins, son of God and God himself, miracle worker, walking on water, defying the laws of physics and on and on. The clergy knows nothing about the real Jesus and you yourself Gordon, seem to follow along cleric lines because what you called my angry “Rant” is not even my rant it is the rant of Jesus himself and I wonder how in the world you could have possibly missed that as I gave you ample scriptural verses and quoted them in some places almost verbatim, from the very words of Jesus himself.
So it makes me wonder if you ever read about Jesus yourself. And if so what eyes were you reading from?
“……….Religion should NOT control but rather build relationships whereby people work for a better life and further their understanding……..”
Well sure, I agree with that too but religion cannot do that and has never been able to do that. Those are the words of the Scribes and Pharisees and Jesus said listen to the words they “say” but don’t follow them because they are liars. So just because you say the words that are necessary to say, religion is not fixable now, anymore than it was fixable in Jesus’ time and if you want to read a rant that’s no more wonderful a rant than the rant of a man full of love and compassion, common sense and understanding read the Jesus Rant. Take some time and read it again (for the first time) and see the parallels in The Jesus Rant and the Son Of Man’s Rant you wrote me about.
In summation, your disparaging remarks about me were all the more laughable because your remarks were really about disparaging the Rant of Jesus in Matthew chapter 23 which I merely translated the text using my own Précis to describe the Jesus Rant without neglecting to mention a few other passages that fit the context of Matt 23. The Temptations for example. Read the rant for yourself in a slightly different precis than my own as you noted on my WordPress Webpage (http://en.gravatar.com/littleleothetruthfairey): I encourage everybody to read the Jesus Rant on my web page.
Religious Fashion Shows
23 1-3 Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.
4-7 “Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’
8-10 “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.
(And where is the Kingdom? Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom(Heaven) of God is within you. LK17:21)
11-12 “Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.
Frauds!
13 “I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won’t let anyone else in either.
15 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.
16-22 “You’re hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, ‘If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that’s nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that’s serious.’ What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: ‘If you shake hands on a promise, that’s nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that’s serious’? What ridiculous hairsplitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless.
23-24 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God’s Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that’s wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons? (That’s religion for you, wrong from start to finish)
25-26 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.
27-28 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.
29-32 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You’re cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count.
33-34 “Snakes! Reptilian sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It’s on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.
35-36 “You can’t squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah’s son, whom you murdered at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I’m telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation.
37-39 “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God’s news! How often I’ve ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn’t let me. And now you’re so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say? Only this: I’m out of here soon. The next time you see me you’ll say, ‘Oh, God has blessed him! He’s come, bringing God’s rule!’”
Thus have I returned to retrieve fools from their folly. SoM
“When you see clouds coming in from the west, you say, ‘Storm’s coming’—and you’re right. And when the wind comes out of the south, you say, ‘This’ll be a hot one’—and you’re right. Frauds! You know how to tell a change in the weather, so don’t tell me you can’t tell a change in the season, the God-season we’re in right now.
So you My Mission is: To Start a Fire
“I’ve come to start a fire on this earth—how I wish it were blazing right now! I’ve come to change everything, turn everything rightside up—how I long for it to be finished! Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Not so. I’ve come to disrupt and confront! From now on, when you find five in a house, it will be—
Three against two,
and two against three;
Father against son,
and son against father;
Mother against daughter,
and daughter against mother;
Mother-in-law against bride,
and bride against mother-in-law.”
I accept that your words are sincere but you can’t hide behind a religious mask.
You can find me in Luke 12 too. The world is upside down because religion is wrong from start to finish but you won’t find too much agreement with that sentiment as it will disrupt avarice, deceit, and the money making racket about a supernatural belief system. When Jesus came out of the closet he exclaimed in John 7: 1 – After these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for He did not want to walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him. AND in John 7:7 – “The world (of religion) cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil.”
Take care and thank you for your interesting comment.
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September 15, 2014 at 6:24 pm
“You see I have no belief system; I have no religion; I am an atheist.” then you have a belief…everyone has a worldview belief…some can’t define it perhaps but everyone who is human has an inner thought system (an I…inside the self) that is unless you are just a meat robot…or a rock…but rocks don’t dream. And I know you are not a meat robot because you care about fairness (or when it is unfair) and even strive (search) for perfection (even though entropy demands it can’t be entertained) and time…well, our inner spirit does not know how to deal with that issue (it’s frustrating)…even if you want to equate time to just entropy.
If there is no God (you said you are an atheist) then why the “OMG Gordon” at the outset of your reply…did you have a brief bout of belief…or a slip of the fingers? I just see your comments all over the board…they try to fit a physical scientific venue and yet (to me) fail…that is they fail because they are limited (only) when in a physical world. Material (you know) is mostly empty space…there is no such thing as a ‘thing’ in deep reality. OUCH!
I’m sure Jesus was frustrated. I’m sure God is/was frustrated with our screw-ups and I’m sure that our mutation of religion is not correct either…religion is mans answer to the god they try to define within the parameters of a scientifically limited system. We can no more know God from science than we can know the artists’ thoughts by looking at the paint he applied to canvas (we might know some attributes but not much more). I believe that God is more a mathematician in operation (if I must put Him in my worldly box) and so I’d prefer to let His language tell me who He is (“he” only to make this personal…calling God “it” misses something). So mankind’s religions…are troubled from the get go. They have done some good but they have also done harm…such is the human way (it’s the human action that does the harm not the gun or the religion/belief…via greed and ego and power trip).
Not a meat robot but a conscious observer and moral agent knowing the difference between right and wrong immediately and intuitively…no need to search the cosmic fairness codes. We come here in some manner of intelligent manner (Spirit in an earthsuit…no tabular raza) and we are here as if on a camping trip…seeking a ‘home’ where that fairness and perfection and time (is not in affect) makes more inner-self sense than anything that is here…in the so called materialistic world.
My beliefs do not fit the standard Christian view but they do not dismiss them for its mere longevity and history…I listen; then I think. I fit the data and look to the most logical conclusions. Arthur Eddington (I believe) said that the universe is stranger than we can suppose…and that has been found out to be true…with the advent of quantum mechanics the ‘world’ foundation (at the very small) functions totally out of whack with what the ‘normal’ folks “believe”…especially at the Plank limit where all distance and time and fall away into indistinguishable…’what’? A spiritual worldview digs deeper where science can’t go. Have you any sense to that? If so then that is a belief…you have.
Glad you are a very happy person.
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September 15, 2014 at 8:18 pm
Oh My Goodness (OMG) Gordon, you are entertaining. I really don’t know about the deep Cosmos; I don’t even understand entropy although the black holes may gobble it up like a Dyson vacuum cleaner, and the Universe’s GEM operatives, gravity, electricity, magnetism, elude my understanding, I just know I, you and we have to operate within their parameters. OMGoodness Gordon what we do not know is phenomenal but it is true that I have beliefs, just not about the supernatural caricature concepts ancient imaginations invented before they got around to the wheel or control of fire which that in itself seems weird to imagine, humankind dragging things around on the ground and not being able to eat “burned offerings” (cooked food) until the Israelites discovered fire and stoked the embers in the Covenant of the Ark continuously so they may not go out by day or by night and appointed the Priests of Levite to the the task. Lev 6: 12 And the fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it; it shall not be put out. And the priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and lay the burnt offering in order on it; and he shall burn on it the fat of the peace offerings. 13 A fire shall always be burning on the altar; it shall never go out.” Unfortunately the Israelites also turned the rage of uncontrolled fire on their enemies and fell into such disfavor because of their use of fire against their enemies and their claim to justify the fire was the sign from God to the Israeltes that proved they were the Chosen People; the Jews have been hated ever since although most people today do not know about the fire reason. I believe I know that.
AND I have a spiritual worldview but the “world” is such a speck to simply dwell on that. I believe in iimmortality and I believe that we should be able to live many lightyears and remember them easily once we overcome world diseases, learn how to manipulate and control the life cycle as I imagine that fire itself was manipulated, controlled and even able to be started when man learned about friction and magnification of the sun’s energy.
As a child I was eager for knowledge. I was most impressed by such a simple thing called a “tinderbox” that was a mainstay between stoking the embers day and night, 24/7 until Eddy invented his match sticks
Life is wonderful and the sanctity thereof most revered by myself and I love people and want only to contribute what good I believe that I can pass on according to the good knowledge as I understand it. When I see you in the sreet, I see me and therefore the treatment I expect is the treatment I’m prepared to give, with the caveat that one does not throw that which is holy to dogs nor throw pearls in front of of swine; vibes and discretion satisfy that proverb. Life is sacred but if a mosquito lands on my arm or neck I do not hesitate to swat it; neither do I hesitate to take antibiotics if I have an bacterial infection and I thank the immune system when it overcomes a virus that wants to eat me from the inside out or warts that want to eat me from the outside in.
I believe the Nig Bang Theory is false and that life had no beginning but always existed; one may extrapolate therefore that humankind goes through many, if not all, life cycles to arrive at the human level. With respect to that I believe one could argue that we were the amoeba of old, the worm and the fish, the beaver, the reptile and indeed the dinosaur, the rabbit and the butterfly but I wouldn’t dare argue that we were mosquitos, bacteria and viruses though I wouldn’t rule that out either. This may touch on the “Reincarnation” Theory.
And when it comes to such non material things such as light for example; well, there are 8 points of light and all start with “G” like God, Gordon and Good (You name puts you in Good company methinks and I claim those 8 points I have coined as my own caricature concepts: Glare, Gleam, Glisten and Glow, Glimmer, Glitter, Glossy and Glint. Light however, as I learned in science class, actually exerts pressure so I wonder how pressure can come from a nonmaterial “thing” as light can on tinfoil in a vacuum? But it does.
Thanks for your reply comment, I don’t harbor any ill will or anger toward you, be assured of that but I agree with Matt 23 and I believe “ISIS” is a few genes short of a DNA Profile.
HUH!
Humanity Uniting Humans!
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May 23, 2017 at 8:13 pm
Gordon:
Please don’t quote Paul when telling me about religion
or the truth about humanity….quote Jesus. That’s the unfortunate way of Christianity, always quoting everyone except Jesus because they don’t know anything about Jesus so they have to quote Paul who thought he knew Jesus without ever meeting him! But he did not! Forget the hallucinogenic dream or fiction.
You said:
“By being hard-hearted and pushing away religion you are limiting yourself to only science………….”
You could have said the same thing about Jesus..do you think Jesus did not push away religion? Jesus is the one I follow not Paul……so quote Jesus. Unfortunately unless you welcome the paranormal you say nothing about Jesus whatsoever.
Want to know what Jesus said about religion check out Matthew 23, the entire chapter..the Woe to You Believers of religious insanity………don’t please tell me not to push away religion that’s like telling Jesus to follow Paul or to follow you because you think you know anything about Jesus, especially his own common sense understanding and humanity.
My trucking brother says:
All here say Trumps The Man, God’s Secret Weapon *=)) rolling on the floor laughing my head off at that one.
Now these days (23 May 2017) It’s:
Former CIA director John Brennan said on Tuesday he had noticed contacts between associates of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia during the 2016 election and grew concerned Moscow had sought to lure Americans down “a treasonous path.”
“They (the Russians) try to suborn individuals and they try to get individuals, including U.S. persons, to act on their behalf either wittingly or unwittingly,” he said, adding that “individuals going on a treasonous path often do not realize it until it is too late.”
Flynn, Manafort, Roger Stone, Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner and the head treasonist-in-chief? Donald Trump…..
God’s secret weapon just shows the extent to which believers will collude with the devil and claim it is God’s plan!
OMG
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