Snyder Than You
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Bagan, Mandalay, Myanmar
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My mom was a baby when the Golden Gate Bridge first opened. My Grandparents took her with them and joined the throng of people,...
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Homemade ice cream from Sick Science! A perfect DIY for a long weekend…
When I was a kid in high school it used to be really popular to wear little buttons on your coat that said, ‘Smile, God Loves You.’ And that would always hack me off, ‘cause I go, ‘You know what? God loves everybody. That doesn’t make me special. It just means that God has no taste.’ — Rich Mullins
(With thanks to Howard, the friend I’ve yet to meet IRL.)
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
written by Steve Taylor - one of my top three musicians
as performed by Fleming & John
Nothing is colder than the winds of change
Where the chill numbs the dreamer till a shadow remains
Among the ruins lies your tortured soul
Was it lost there
Or did your will surrender control?
Shivering with doubts that were left unattended
So you toss away the cloak that you should have mended
Don’t you know by now why the chosen are few?
It’s harder to believe than not to
Harder to believe than not to
It was a confidence that got you by
When you know you believed it, but you didn’t know why
No one imagines it will come to this
But it gets so hard when people don’t want to listen
Shivering with doubts that you left unattended
So you toss away the cloak that you should have mended
Don’t you know by now why the chosen are few?
It’s harder to believe than not to
Some stay paralyzed until they succumb
Others do what they feel, but their senses are numb
Some get trampled by the pious throng
Still they limp along
Are you sturdy enough to move to the front?
Is it nods of approval or the truth that you want?
And if they call it a crutch, then you walk with pride
Your accusers have always been afraid to go outside
They shiver with doubts that were left unattended
Then they toss away the cloak that they should have mended
You know by now why the chosen are few
It’s harder to believe than not to
I believe
As I have gone through the last few years of spiritual struggle, looking at godlessness and Christianity and wondering what, I have always had this odd thought struggle. Part of me seems willing to agree with Atheism, but not wanting to, while I have these other thoughts. I want to research people who have gone from one to the other and especially any who may have gone from Christianity to Atheism and back. I want to find strong Christian refutation to Atheist arguments. And I have always had this project in the back of my mind of reading through several translations of the Bible and molding my own interpretation with hundreds and thousands of footnotes on translation, history, and theological interpretation.
The only thing I truly know right this moment (having done none of the above) is that the most satisfied and content I have ever been in my entire life was living in a 500-acre forest on the shore of Lake Huron cleaning bathrooms and selling books and clothes to campers, taking walks through untamed woods and talking to the air, feeling that there was a response and a purpose and a reality to the spiritual and to the deity that Atheists so vehemently disagree with.
I want that again. I have been looking for it for several years now, which has led to the doubt and the seeking and the conflict that none of my family or closer friends—all strong Christians—know much about. This has to be answered on a personal, individual level, but how do I do that when I’m just struggling to get through each day?
Right now, I’m listening to a “worship” band called Sojourn and their song, “Lord, please don’t leave me” just finished. Seems appropriate.
Oxymoron. The single word that best describes me, top to bottom, front to back. And there are times I wish I would get away from that forever.
Oh, and one of the prompts for this blather? A quote on a friend’s Facebook profile.
Makes sense.
The skewed viewpoint. The mocking tone.
Yet God did not create humans with original sin. “Adam” and “Eve” chose to sin. You know, the whole “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and the “apple”? The one tree they were supposed to not eat of. One simple rule was all they had.
But then, why did God put the tree in the garden in the first place? Why even allow the temptation in the first place? (Hmm. Have you watched Biggest Loser?)
Obviously, this is presented as literal translation of Genesis 2 because that’s all I have.
… .
And yet, Christian theology says that obviously God expected that “Adam” and “Eve” would sin, so perhaps that is accurate?
Still my views of God’s omniscience and human freedom of choice says that God knew all the options, whether “Adam” and “Eve” chose to eat the “apple” or not.
Maybe that’s an alternate universe we have yet to find.
(via usgroovykids)
“Atheists are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it, especially a religion that backs up the orders with threats of hell. Believers, listen to me carefully when I say this: When you use this argument, you terrify atheists. We hear you saying that the only thing standing between you and Ted Bundy is a flimsy belief in a supernatural being made up by pre-literate people trying to figure out where the rain came from. This is not very reassuring if you’re trying to argue from a position of moral superiority.”— 10 Myths Many Religious People Hold About Atheists, Debunked (via hellbentforleather)
You only need to look at some of the leading “conservatives” and “religious leaders” of the last 20-30 years to see that even that “flimsy belief” doesn’t restrain a lot of the religious from sin.
For me, it’s the recognition that anyone, including me, is capable of heinous things. The methods of torture and murder that my imagination has conjured would make Sun Tzu and modern horror writers proud. Why I do not act on such things is not merely this “flimsy belief” in a “made up” deity, but I think that the existence this deity explains why I have a conscience even better than it explains the water cycle.
To simplify, it’s not that the morality requires a deity or that the deity demands a morality, but that the morality attests to a deity.
Of course, I think that actually still plays into the original quote. Oh well.
“Since the publication of my first book “The End of Faith,” thousands of people have written to tell me I am wrong not to believe in God. The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously intolerant of criticism. While we may want to ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that such hatred draws considerable support from the bible. How do I know this? The most disturbed of my correspondents always cite chapter and verse.”— Sam Harris (via thatbeardedatheist)
“He that screameth the loudest has the least confidence and the least knowledge of the matter.” — Gospel of Snyderly 2:26
As many of you know, I am a Christian. Therefore, I do think Sam Harris (and you) should believe in God. The thing is, there is no way I can convince him (or you) of that with my words and hostility. If Christians are supposed to be living like Christ, they need to be loving like Christ.
“… and the greatest of these is Love.” — Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:13
“I think God is kind of like Santa Claus for adults. Otherwise, God is kind of a jerk, isn’t he? I mean, he makes me gay and then he has his followers going around telling me it’s something that I chose. As if someone would choose to be mocked every single day of their life… You can’t prove there isn’t a magic teapot floating around the dark side of the moon with a dwarf inside of it that reads romance novels and shoots lightening out of its boobs, but it seems pretty unlikely doesn’t it?”— Kurt Hummel, ‘Grilled Cheesus’ (via frodoswaggins)
Yeah, three things are obvious to me:
- Mr. Hummel definitely needs to study a little more theology. Although there are way too many Christians who seem to treat God like Santa Claus, too.
- He also needs to meet a few more Christians outside of Westboro.
- I think it would be pretty easy to prove there’s not a magic teapot floating around the dark side of the moon. Unless he said it were invisible, of course.
And now I’ve got a song in my head. I think I’ve posted it before, so I’ll have to try to look that up. (If not, I will post it soon.)
Another thing that’s funny: I always thought “Hummel” was an Amish Country name. I grew up with several Hummels in school and the area. But I’m weird like that. (It took me years to realize that “Miller” was not strictly an Anabaptist name, too.)
(via usgroovykids)
Not fond of the “Belief-o-matic” name, but whatever.
I’d be interested to see what usgroovykids gets. And you, too.
I’m somehow either Seventh Day Adventist (100%? How?) or Orthodox Quaker. Maybe Eastern Orthodox. I’m not sure I agree with that, although I kinda like the Orthodox Quaker designation. I thought I’d be one of these guys.
“I’m very angry always inside me whenever I hear someone make claims for God. If there is a God it seems to me so obvious and so absolutely clear that if he does exist he is capricious and mean and willful… When a child has bone cancer how can you say there is a loving God I know it’s a cliche, but I’ve never hear a satisfactory answer. Yes there may be a creator, though I don’t think it at all likely, but to say that he’s loving, to say that he’s benevolent, to say that he cares for us, or to say that having made us, something we never asked of him, that we should spend our time on our knees in front of him, well it’s outrageous.” — Stephen Fry
I think Stephen’s problem is that he is either forgetting or not willing to accept the added concepts that this benevolent God wants relationship with his creation, not as automatons but as freely thinking and responding intelligent beings as he created us. This requires free will, which allows us to freely reject.
And this freedom to reject a good and loving God creates a space for indifference, hate, and evil. As scientists know with “black matter”, there is no true vacuum, right? So where there is not good there must be something. And where there is not this good and loving God, there must be the antithesis.
But perhaps that’s the answer that is never satisfactory. Perhaps he wants this love to be so completely overpowering that we can only respond in the one way we are supposed to, thus rendering our choices nonexistent.
(And now I must wrestle with the concept that I’m calling all Atheists indifferent and evil, which I know to be quite inaccurate.)
By the way, USG? Did you copy and paste that quote or type it yourself? There are several grammatical errors. Whoever typed it should have really reread what they did. Of course, I’m no better with my own writing.
