religion.

Sunday 31 October 2010

okay, i sent my last post to my grandfather, who i hold in VERY high regard.

and here is his response

Dear Harry

Oh Dear!
I was worried by your Blog - it looks as though you are turning into your Grandad. Is there anything I can do to help stop the rot?

Despite that I liked what you had to say and the way that you said it.
Religion and Belief Systems are really important aspects of human existence and we have to try and understand them both for our own sakes and so that we can understand what makes other people tick. Unfortunately you are likely to spend an awful lot of time and effort before you reach the conclusion that it is all based on nonsense. God (at least the version who is an old man with a white beard wearing a dressing-gown) is a delusion as Dawkins keeps pointing out. I believe (!) that you can’t just take someone else’s word for that. With religion or anything else for that matter you have to go back to the source material to find out the facts. Do not believe anything you read in the newspapers (or books) without checking the facts.
(I coined an aphorism once: ‘the spurious authenticity of the printed word’ by which I mean that if you see something in print you are inclined to believe it to be true, just because it is printed.)
Your Blog:
First of all, according to fundamental Christians, (ranging from Jehovah’s Witnesses to the Salvation Army), the Bible is the Word of God, no human involvement at all except for the few who were in direct communication and could write very quickly. (Digression: the advantage of theC.of E. as a Belief System is that you do not actually need to believe in anything to belong to it - there was an Archbishop of Durham called Jenkins who went on record to that effect).

So yes, according to the Bible, God was bored and lonely so he created Angels, Seraphs and Cherubs before he created the Earth: these were the ‘Sons of God’, thousands, maybe millions of them. They included Jesus (called Michael, confusingly) and Satan. See Job1:6, 38:4-7 Isaiah 6:1-3,7 Ezekiel10:1-2 Genesis 19:1-26 for starters. Maybe God just liked to party? However, if he was perfect then He didn’t need to party to take His mind off things.
Do not agree that humans are motivated by a pursuit of perfection. Here I might digress onto a different subject but I’ll try not… essentially the vast bulk of humanity do not aspire to anything beyond gratifying their immediate physical needs. It is only the Europid branch of humanity, and precious few of them, (starting off with the Cro-Magnons) who are imbued with a sense of dissatisfaction with their lot. That is why we invented art and technology. The problem with Pot, Hash, Mary-Jane is that it removes the sense of dissatisfaction and the possibility of personal and human progress.
More on that if you want it.

The Bible lays down that all of God’s works are perfect and that all of his intelligent creatures are endowed with free will (Deuteronomy30:19, 32-4, Joshua 24,15). Satan was created perfect but used his free will to go his own way. In the Garden of Eden he argued that God wasdepriving A & E of their rights (Genesis 3:1-5), they agreed, went on strike, ate the apple, made the Boss cross and the s*** hit the fan (Genesis 3:6-19). So Satan is the cause of human suffering - a dodgy argument when the Boss is supposed to be all-loving, all-powerful etc.
Incidentally, a load of other Angels joined the Satan party to ‘satisfy their sexual cravings with the daughters of men’ (Genesis 6:1-4) - the Bible is full of good stuff, you really should read it. They became Demons and are responsible for some of the problems we have to put up with (Mathew12:43-45, Luke8:27-33).
Strikes me that God runs a pretty slack ship.
Despite which I don’t entirely rule out the possibility of a celestial watchmaker who set the whole shebang ticking…
More if you want it?
(Boring boring boring - but I spent a year reading the Bible at bedtime so’s I could argue with a couple of Rev gents and quote the facts at them - they wanted to recruit me but gave up)


i thought you lot would like to hear what he has to say, i think he makes a few good points as well as adding a bit of humor :)

Harry

7 comments:

  1. It seems that your grand father is a respectable man whom many can trust

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm so happy that I came across your blog, I've been going through a religious quest of my own

    ReplyDelete
  3. With no disrespect at all intended to your grandfather, he is wrong about his doctrine to a level that any Christian would define "heretical."

    Also, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, etc. are NOT Christians. Christianity becomes null and void the moment Christ ceases to be fully divine.

    My advice would be to find a book of some sort on the orthodox, classical Christian teachings on the attributes of God. Consider those your "givens," and then work from there to the present day. This is the only path. If you try to start with present day and trace a path back to a god, you will find yourself looking at a god who is not the God of the Bible, as many agnostics and atheists have done. In other words, approach it like this: "If God is who He says He is (based on a list of classical attributes), then..."

    ReplyDelete
  4. SY, thanks for your interest :) I would be happy to have a little look at yours and to see what you have to say! I hope you come back here and read some more of my posts.

    "With no disrespect at all intended to your grandfather, he is wrong about his doctrine to a level that any Christian would define "heretical.""

    None taken :) could you please expand on it? i find my self hard pushed to understand what you mean? Sorry.

    I’m going to read two versions of the bible, one that my granddad is lending me; the other is my girl friends parents’ bible (if they will let me read it that is)

    I wish to really look at this in detail, as my granddad said in an earlier email "the bible really is a magnificent piece of literature."

    “This is the only path. If you try to start with present day and trace a path back to a god, you will find yourself looking at a god who is not the God of the Bible, as many agnostics and atheists have done.”

    I think this is what I have managed to do, I’m going to start reading the bible this week, and I will post on here what I find intriguing or confusing, I hope you will be here to reply.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sorry it took so long to get back to you! Ever since there was sin (which we've seen is a conversation in and of itself), there has been a disconnect between God and man. After all, if God is holy, He cannot be near sin (or, more accurately, sin-stained creation). And although He did not need His creation to fulfill something lacking, He did create with the desire of having a creation that would behold Him and give Him the praise He is due. (This is justice and not vanity or self-centeredness.) To bring His creation back to Himself, He had to pay (or make atonement) for sin. If the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), then something must give its life to pay for sin. This is the point of the Old Testament sacrificial system. But each of those creatures was itself imperfect due to sin, so God honored the faith of those bringing the sacrifice--until He offered a once-for-all sacrifice that was perfect and unstained by sin. This is the significance of the virgin birth. Jesus was born pure and sinless.

    Also significant is that Jesus was never created. He is the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form (Colossians 1:15-20). So God Himself, seeking to redeem His fallen creation, came to earth in the form of the Son, Jesus. He gave His life as the only pure sacrifice for sin--the only sacrifice that could actually atone for sin (unlike the symbolic sacrifices of the Old Testament days).

    So Christ is God. Christ was not created. Christ came from Heaven to earth by the supernatural conception of a virgin. Christ was sinless in Heaven (as God is sinless), and He was sinless on earth.

    To say He was created undermines the central message of the Gospel. Sin could only be atoned for by God Himself.

    To say He was not born of a virgin undermines the central message of the Gospel. If He was born naturally of a man and a woman, He would have been born into sin and, therefore, not holy (denying His divinity) and unable to atone for sin.

    Hopefully that makes more sense, and, again, I'm sorry for the delay.

    ReplyDelete