From: REXLEX@linac.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: There is no god
Date: 20 Nov 92 05:14:06 GMT
Organization: FNAL

In article <Nov.18.01.23.05.1992.6880@klinzhai.rutgers.edu>
msh9848@hertz.njit.edu (-Unknown-) writes:
>This is a challenge to Xtians out here. Convince me to believe in Xtianity 
>without quoting the bible. If you prefer , do it by email. 
>
>I do not believe that "god" gave man the bible nor do I believe in
>god, heaven or hell. Also I can not be convinced using hell fire and
>brimstone fear tactics.
>
>Matt Harelick
> 

How about doing it another way.  Lets say there is no God!  I mean it. 
Everything that He stands for, lets lay it aside, because if there is no God,
then they are baseless to begin with and just opiates as has been suggested
before.  

The 1st thing you have to do away with is the reality of order.  Man is a
machine and he merely a cog in the mechanics of the universe.

If I should cast off this tattered coat, 
And go free into the mighty sky;
If I should find nothing there
But a vast blue,
Echoless, ignorant--
What then?   (Steven Crane "Black Riders & Other Lines")

Everything is gratuitous, contingent.  Nothing has meaning, no statement has
validity. In truth, there is only despair, anxiety and ennui! You should see
Samuel Beckett's "Breath".  Just don't blink.  It's only 35 second long.  It
has no juman actors and the props are a pile of rubbish on stage, lit by a
light which begins dim, brightens (never fully) and then receds to dimness. 
There are no words, but there are two sounds.  At the begin there is heard a
breif cry (like a worried inhalation); at the end the is another cry, this one
is an exhaled breath.  I thought it was brillant.  

If you've studied philosophy, you'll recognize this to be a nihilistic view. 
However, few people give much time to figure out just were this "philosophy" (I
think its more emotion than thought) is borne from.  Mihilism is the natural
child of naturalism, which in turn was the enlightened read-out of the assured
results of science and open intellectual inquiry.  As a world view, however, it
did not account for man, his uniqueness, his value adequately.  It did make man
the lord of the universe, free to value what he would, and that most
naturalists are satisfied enough to end inquiry at this point.  

However, there seems to be a growing number of people that feel that the
results are not so assured, as the closed nature of the universe is perceived 
to be confining, the notion of death as extinction, and no basis for hope other
than alienation from the universe.  

If God is dead, then everything he stands for is dead.  Men just do not know
what "caused" them or their decisions.  Man is a conscious machine without the
ability to effect his own destiny or do anything significant.  Therefore, man
(as a valuable ) is dead.  Instead of have the breath of God, you have
Beckett's breath.

If you choose not to believe in God (What do you want us to do, put Him in a
bottle like some firefly?), then if you don't cop out, you have to disregard
all the freedom that Form gives you.  Wasn't it Nietzsche that said, that when
God is dead, the only sanity was insanity.  I say this much for him, he was
true enough to himself that he lived, or rather died, the reality of his
conclusions.  Are you?

"God created Arrakis to train the righteous.
 One can not go against the hand of God." 
Paul Muad'Dib (Frank Herbert's "DUNE")

"All we are is dust in the wind"  (Kansas)

Rex