“The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that , compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
Albert Einstein
Read more…
The end of this month marks the 7th anniversary of my Grand Father, John Steele Clark’s death.
He was a wonderful and inspirational person.
The Greatest human being I have ever known.
I was blessed beyond measure to have him as my Granddad.
I have not seen my own father since I was 5 years old and yet this loss was greatly mitigated by my Grandfathers Love and guidance.
I miss him, and still reverence his memory.
When I knew his time was short I did something a tad different.
I wrote a Tribute to his Life and death and sent it to him before he died so he could read with his own eyes what his Grandson thought! 🙂
My tribute was very controversial as it was *My take* *My perspective* rather than simply a concise record of his exact doings and faith.
That was another reason I sent it to him… to see if he would discuss what I had written.
We never did discuss it, and so I took that as a Tacit endorsement! 🙂 And this was important to me because I expected some of my family members to not be that impressed with my Rendition of things.
Thus with my Granddad’s anniversary in mind I have typed out my Tribute to him and posted it below.
I hope to post more about this wonderful man in the future.
I also hope my tribute is of benefit to people struggling with the Pains, trials, and tribulations of Life as this is not just the story of an individual’s life but about Hope and happiness in the face of death and loss.
Love You Heaps Granddad! XOX
Tim Wikiriwhi.
My Granddad. (Left) Married Me to my Wife Joy at Mclarens Falls Tauranga. March 2002.
Best Man: Bruce Davies.
Sergeant at Arms… My Son… James Fifield (Wikirwihi)
*********
Tribute to Reverend John Steel Clark.
Anglican Minister.
Thames/ Coromandal Peninsular.
New Zealand
1923-2006
Man of Faith and Reason.
A Christian view of Life and Death.
By his eldest Grandson.
Tim Wikiriwhi.
“For the Invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse;”
St Paul. Romans 1vs 20
“I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live…”
Jesus Christ: John 11vs 25
“for by grace are ye saved through faith: and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast”
St Paul: Ephesians 2vs8,
After an exemplary life, and a heroic fight against cancer, my beloved Grandfather has passed on.
There is not enough time today to fully express what he means to me, I therefore shall leave much out of this tribute for others to share.
I have chosen to focus on the most precious values that I personally treasure… that I see as the Greater part of his legacy.
My Grandfather was the Abraham of our family!
When I was growing up his word was Law.
He set the standards for manhood and he always stuck to his word.
His glory as a faithful husband to my Nana and as a father to his children (and Grandchildren) gave me such assurance that life makes perfect sense, and that all is well in the world.
Rev Clark was a man of Reason and a man of Faith.
He was a Christian minister, which is a huge testimony to the value of that religion.
Those who knew him and loved him, yet are not Christians ought to pause and contemplate the huge implications that such a man of great wisdom and integrity was not ashamed to wear the garb of a Man of God!
It is this truth that I hold dearest about my Grandfather, and it is in honour of his principled faith in God that I wish to write to you about life, religion, and death.
This is a fitting time to talk about religion and death.
If it’s not cool to talk about religion and death at the funeral of a preacher, then I ask when?
For many Death is the hardest most frightening reality we face.
How are we to deal with it?
We all must face our own mortality sooner or later and worse still we must face the mortality of those we hold dear.
Some like my Grandfather, live full term and death becomes a sort of mercy, yet many tragically die before their time and it seems a truism to say “Life’s not fair!”
Should we die from our own immorality or foolishness we may find small solace in seeing such deaths as justly ‘reaping what we have sown’, yet often death comes to the virtuous and innocent…at the hands of some evil, and so this rule appears violated.
The Soul that looses a loved one in such a way, or they find themselves facing an early death by some evil is in danger of becoming bitter and twisted, and a hater of God, even if they don’t believe in him!
Indeed they choose not to believe in him simply because they see life as unjust!
It is for this reason that a positive philosophy about death is essential for every one of us if we are to truly enjoy life.
Without a sure reasoned faith powerful enough to overcome these sorts of pain… bitterness and hatred of God are almost as sure to consume your soul as the sun will rise tomorrow!
Perhaps some may delude themselves into being happy by such base notions that ultimately ‘Nothing really matters’, but this can never suffice the deep hearted.
This can only leave you cold.
I therefore say True Religion is essential for the survival and happiness of everyone of us, and not to have such a faith is a disaster!
Pain bitterness, hopelessness, and hatred are the lot for the lost soul without true religion.
Rev Clark Knew this, and this was one reason he was a minister of God.
Peace, hope, and a clear sense of justice are only possible for the man of reason that has reason enough to have faith that ultimately all is well and that life has real meaning and value.
It is my testimony, and that of my Grandfather that reason enough does indeed exist for hope and belief in Divine Justice.
Tears. Knowing time was short. Me and Granddad shortly before his death.
Let me now share with you a tiny fraction of the logic for faith in God, faith in his goodness, and faith in Christ by a few self-evident truths.
What lies in that box is not my Grandfather!
That dead body is but the house he lived in.
Science tells us that we replace every cell in our body every seven years.
This being so, most of us have had many bodies in our lifetime already!
They are miraculous things that were designed by incredible genius, but they are not the essence of who we are.
What is missing from that corpse is the *Real Granddad* whom we all love!
*His Soul*.
A great portion of Mankind are suffering from the delusion that we are but soul-less matter.
This is a great inhuman and evil superstition that has the most evil consequences for those under it’s spell.
The fruit of it is nihilism and this lowers man down to the level of a germ.
Granddad knew this truth and was a minister of men’s *souls*.
Now think about love… what is the chemical formula for that?
Can chemicals love?
Can rocks feel?
Can robots be conscious of their own existence and care about the existence of other robots?
The man of reason and science, who holds that good and evil have objective reality must say no!
There is no Atheistic science that can accommodate the facts of reality or human experience!
All human invention is childlike when compared to such marvels as the human mind, brain, and hands.
The scripture that declares we are made in God’s image is the most rational statement pertaining to our existence!
I say that if the Earth was like the moon, and there was no such thing as mankind… then it might be rational to think ‘there is no God’ or that whatever is responsible for existence is dead not living.
But we live!… and science has proven that Life only comes from life.
It therefore follows that whatever is primary in reality must not only be alive, but also of supreme intelligence.
We call this Supreme being God…. who is before all temporal Laws and things.
The scripture wisely declares “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God”, and that mankind must beware ‘science falsely so-called’.
Don’t be deceived by *Fake Science* like Darwinism.
Understand the difference between science proper, and poor speculations that are contrary to it.
Darwinism is fatally flawed and already fading away, yet Christianity stands fast and ready for you to embrace.
It alone accounts for cause and effect, both Physical and Moral.
The foolish man builds his house upon the sands of man’s ever changing myths.
The wise man builds his house upon the rock of God’s sure word of truth, The King James Bible.
This article appeared in the Waikato Times.
Why must we embrace Christ?
It is because this is how God has declared as his only acceptable way of salvation, and it is God who sets the terms for such a thing… not us.
To be so vain as to believe God must accept us on *our terms* is to hang reality on our whim, and to Deify our pea-sized intellect!
Socrates, who believed in life after death, said it ought to be a man’s chief concern to ‘Know thyself’, and that the unexamined life is not worth living.
I say that if we dare to examine ourselves our need for Christ and God’s forgiveness becomes as clear as day!
What is wondrous about God’s salvation through Christ is that he has managed to satisfy both Justice and Mercy, and to reveal his loving grace towards us.
He has achieved this by giving us freewill, and the liberty to choose to accept his gift of salvation… or reject him.
For us to choose Christ we must recognize we are sinful and lost.
Do not hide behind such foolish cliché, as ‘Religion is the cause of all mankind’s woes… such as war.”
Sin and Evil are the cause of these and knowing this ought to convince us all of the need for salvation and God’s government!
The good news is “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Salvation is a free Gift!
The Bible says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.
Rev Clark believed in God and was a minister of this truth.
Was he an irrational superstitious Fool?
No!
He was a man of Reason and a true Humanitarian.
This is what Christianity is all about!
I don’t ask you to become a pew warmer.
I implore you all to ask Christ to be your savior!
Let us maintain our faith in justice in the face of every hardship.
Let us play the hand we have been dealt with dignity to the very end.
Let us love one another and cherish every moment we have!
I thank God for my Grandfather and trust his soul is now in a much better place.
And I expect to see him again!
Thank you Granddad for everything.
You are an inspiration to us all.
Amen.
I cannot finish without giving recognition to my Nana who is the best wife any man could have.
Thank you Nana for loving and caring for my Granddad.
We all love you so much!
“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness: but unto us which are saved: it is the power of God”
St Paul. 1 Corinthians 1vs18.
Contact Tim: 078498323ah, twikiriwhi@yahoo.co.nz
More from Tim…
Pink Floyd facebook… Today, in 2006, Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett sadly passed away. What Barrett song(s) are you playing today to remember him?
IMHO … Pink Floyd could well be the greatest band of all time and Syd Barrett was central to their formation… and yet… Though this may be a tad fickle… what I liked best about Sid Barrett is that he went mad.
Why I say this is because Pink Floyd got much better when he left and the loss they felt inspired some of their best work…. Shine on you Crazy Diamonds!
It doesn’t feel right sayin this.
Of course musical taste is to a large extent subjective…. culturally relative.. and the value of an Individual’s ‘contribution’ …the weight of their Soul…their humanity, character, and ‘light’ is generally speaking (but not always) best appreciated by those who knew them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLKiMbC6s2k
Pay no mind what other voices say
They don’t care about you
Like I do
Like I do
Safe from pain and truth and choice and other poison devils
See they don’t give a **** about you
Like I do
Just stay with me
Safe and ignorant
Go back to sleep
Go back to sleep
‘ll be the one to protect you from
Your enemies and all your demons
I’ll be the one to protect you from
A will to survive and a voice of reason
I’ll be the one to protect you from
Your enemies and your choices son
One and the same I must isolate you
Isolate and save you from yourself
Swaying to the rhythm of the new world order and
Count the bodies like sheep
To the rhythm of the war drum ….
Lyrics from Perfect Circles ‘Pet’.
I am *Very Sorry* to hear that after 125 years the Truth is going out of Biz… It was one of the few truly Independent Media voices in New Zealand.
It was Tits out!…. It covered ‘Nude’ stories the mainstream Media intentionally ignores for the sake of maintaining and pandering to the delusions of the ‘Populus’… the Mob.
It was Raw… seedy…. Real!
With the Truth gone there will be no *Real Free Press* left in NZ. Only Retarded State arse kissing PC wowzer Status quo Nannyist socialist Rubbish which functions like it’s a branch of government.
🙁
We will be reduced to Freedom blogs, and ‘Scoop NZ’ … and yet these rely heavily on Non professional Independent activists to supply their take on things.
Stuff article>>>> The Truth newspaper to stop publishing
The Death of the Truth Really is an indictment on just how mediocre minded and sheepish New Zealanders really are.
They are not interested in Independent thinking.
They lap up Reality TV… the kardashians… the Breakfast shows… and they Religiously worship Nanny State.
They believe all lifes problems have political solutions.
They believe in Totalitarian regulation of everything.
They absolutely deny an individual has inalienable rights which ought to be protected from Mobocratic power…. etc etc…
This is a society which tollerates Racist Law and Government.
This is a society of slaves which allows Rapacious Government to fleese them of 80% of their earnings and to give it to lazy bums who cant be bothered getting out of bed in the morning.
This is a society which allows the government to treat us all like children… banning our toys… etc etc…
In a society of sheep… an Independent Paper cant make enough to dosh to pay the lease.
How did New Zealand become so ‘Institutionalised’????
Read more… Lost Plot. World Press Freedom Day.
And it’s not just NZ but the whole of wester Civilisation!
They have allowed their Governments to become their OverLords… To spy on them… to probe them… to disarm them…
“Goodbye Truth! We have no need of thee BAAAAA BAAAAA”
The Theory of evolution is a bloody joke!
Yet it’s fanatical devotees infest our media and schools to the extent that those of us who don’t believe it are considered the Lunatic fringe.
And yet when ever you examine any of the so called evidences or rationale which under girds this Belief, all the thinking man finds is hocus pocus and minuscule facts stretched to their extreme.
The latest findings of the Mars Rover ‘Opportunity’ serve as yet another example of just how devoid of real substance the atheist naturalistic cosmology really is…
In an NZ herald article (pg A25) June 13 2013 a Cambridge Professor of Mineral Physics Simon Redfern talks about The Rover performing an xray on some Mars ‘Esperance’… rock which revealed mineral deposits within which gives plausibly to this rock having been formed via Water borne sedimentary action… muddy clays which absorbed water, rather than Sulphuric acid… as has been the interpretation given to the majority of other ‘hydrated’ rocks examined.
This discovery is in the words of the Professor…
“Powerful evidence that water interacted with this rock…”
Now that is interesting, and I have no reason to believe there is anything wrong with his conclusion… It is the fantastic conjecture which Atheists draw from this sort of thing!
Like squeezing blood from a stone… they then leap to the conclusion that
‘ROCK REVEALS LIKELIHOOD OF LIFE ON MARS’ (see Here)
^^^^ Is it possible to justify that statement … which was the actual title of the whole NZ Herald article… from the mere fact that this rock probably had contact with water of a potable quality?
Lets look at what the article says…
“It’s the strongest evidence yet for a past environment that would have been conducive to life.”
I can live with that Idea… I can conjecture that Mars may indeed have been a far more ‘hospitable place’ that had water… aeons ago.
Where did it all go?
Did Mars fall victem to a capitalist society causing catistrophic ‘Climate change’? 🙂
I digress.
It is at this point in the article we move from what I consider ‘fair’ scientific speculation straight into the extreme realms of Evolutionary Fairytale… The article continues…
“Speculation linking the origins of life on Earth to the presence of clays minerals has been something of a theme since it was suggested in the 1950s.
Swelling clays, like those seen in Esperance, demonstrate the presence of neutral water early in Mars history. But at the molecular scale the inter-layer structure of clay can also act as a template to any organic molecules present and potentially, promote replication of enzymes and proteins, which are necessary for life.
The findings back up earlier theories that the Martian surface once hosted an ocean , covering much of it’s Northern Hemisphere”.
Blar Blar Blar! There you have it!
The Wild and unfounded atheist conjecture as to the origin of life on Earth is used to vindicate further conjecture to Life on Mars!
There is no real science in any of this!
Atheism is a belief in Martian Sea-monkeys!
Just add water… and hey presto ‘Instant Life’…
These claims in fact prove how Baseless and devoid of Science the Naturalistic notion of the origin of life really is!
Their simpleton rationale goes something like this… “… Life needs water… Mars had water… Oh that means the probability of life having existed there ….’once upon a time’…is likely!
They are grasping at straws.
And they are guilty of the very assumption they accuse theism of… ie baseless conjecture.
There is *zero evidence for life on Mars*
End of story
This claim is pure whim! Pure pseudo science!
The latest discoveries of Genetic science explode the idea of a ‘simple cell’.
The Cell is super complex… a super organized structure, and knowing this ought to slay any remaining delusions that Life can spontaneously arise by fortuitous circumstances, and indeed explains why… even here on earth where conditions are perfect for life… abiogenesis/ spontaneous generation has never been observed, in fact Pasteurs Law is absolute… *Life always and only comes from life*… a sterile environment will remain sterile forever… unless ‘seeded’ from an external source.
Math destroys Atheism.
The impossiblility of spontanious generation is Scientific Reality. Abiogenesis is a mathematical absurdity…yet because these facts simply dont fit the irreligious opinions of the professor and his ilk, he chooses to ignore science and to substitute the facts with his own irreligious Bullshit… Blar blar “clays act as templates”, etc….and that folks demonstrates just how and why the theory of evolution keeps it legs and continues to be preached in schools and in the Media.
It is a Wolf in sheeps clothing.
St Paul warned us to beware ‘Science falsely so-called’.
Read more…
Pasteur’s Law, Creation Science vs Nose Bone Atheism.
What are the statistical odds-against the”spontaneous-generation theory?
What do the scientist say – John Eccles, winner of the Nobel Prize and one of the foremost brain scientists in this century speaks of one chance in 1010,000 as being “infinitely improbable…..Carl Sagan and other prominent scientists have estimated the chance of man evolving at roughly 1 chance in 102,000,000,000.34……Harold Morowitz, a Yale University physicist,calculated the odds of a single bacterium emerging from the basic building blocks necessary were 1 chance in 10100,000,000,000.24…….Dr. David J. Rodabough, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri, estimated the more realistic chance that life would spontaneously generate (even on 1023 planets) as only one chance in 102,999,940.21……scientists Walter L. Bradley and Charles Thaxton, point out that the probability of assembling amino acid building blocks into a functional protein is approximately one chance in 4.9 X 10191.16…..
Scientist Harold F. Blum, writing in Time’s Arrow and Evolution, wrote that, “The spontaneous formation of a polypeptide of the size of the smallest known proteins seems beyond all probability.”…..David J. Rodabaugh, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, shows the probability that a simple living organism could be produced by mutations “is so small as to constitute a scientific impossibility” — “the chance that it could have happened anywhere in the universe,is less than 1 [chance] in 102,999,942.”7….Moshe Trop, Ph.D., with the Department of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, concludes,”All calculations made of the probability [that life could evolve by chance, lead to the conclusion that] there could have been no possibility of the random appearance of life….(NOTE – All evidence cited orginates from the science community)….(continue)
Staggering complexity of the cell.
A discussion of the staggeringly complexity and elegance of the cell, which has been described as a nano-factory full of machinery millenia beyond what today’s brilliant engineers can produce.
Is this all the product of filtered, mindless, purposeless accidents or of brilliant design? You be the judge.
“Although the tiniest living things known to science, bacterial cells, are incredibly small (10^-12 grams), each is a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of elegantly designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world.”
–Michael Denton, Ph.D. geneticist
“To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must first magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is 20 kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would see then would be an object of unparalleled complexity,…we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.”
–Michael Denton, Ph.D. geneticist, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, pg.328
Read more…
The Walls are closing in on Atheism… not Theism.
The myth making processes of Pseudo Science. The Epic Tale of the Simple cell. (Part 1)
Multiplying Absurdities Equals Certainty… The Math Magic of Modern Atheist Astrologers!
^^^^This is quite funny, yet still the subject matter is mind blowing!
Many people probably mistake all this talk of Neurons, etc as evidence of real understanding.
It’s supposed to make Science ‘Poetic’ and profound yet is really a song of ignorance, myth and superstition.
“Our Reptile Brain”.
“It evolved from the inside out”
Quite pathetic.
This is a Materialist Hymn.
Why would anyone believe this nonsense?
The reality is Science cannot fathom how our Conscious Minds, our Self awareness, and freewill are related to our Grey matter.
They must wax lyrical about ‘Collage explosions’… I assume on the ‘Entertainment systems’ in our heads!
The closest these guys get to the Truth is when they call our Brains.. ‘an enchanted room’.
’20 million volumes of information… A very Big place in a very small space’
The confession… “It is the most mysterious part of our Body”.
The biggest questions of Consciousness are well beyond reach, and as long as modern science remains dominated by Monist Materialism they will never be able to understand the Mind/ Brain paradox because they have willfully shut their minds to non-physical spiritual realities.
I laugh at the ‘all to common’ claims these days that mankind has mastered how the brain works, and Technology … that scientists will within the next 20 years have invented ‘Conscious computers’ which will be capable of thinking ‘human’ thoughts, and ‘feeling’ human emotions.
It is mind boggling that materialists can be so Absurd as to be contemplating ‘ethical issues’ of granting Robots ‘rights’!!!
They have traveled so far into materialist fantasy that they have forgotten the reality that *’Robot’ and ‘Morality’* are Oxymorons!
Morality only being possible for Free willed beings which have a choice, and whom exist in a universe governed by Objective Moral laws.
All these necessities are absolutely alien to Materialist cosmology.
I have said many times before that mankind may one day make an imitation mechanical bird which may be able to fly and sing, and that a person may have trouble identifying it as being a fake… none the less that Machine will never be a real bird.
Likewise with a Humanoid Robot.
They may be clever enough to program a machine with human mannerisms, so that when we interact with it we can believe we are dealing with a living, thinking…even emotional and caring *Person*, but in reality that is all just a gigantic Deception… The Robot will not be alive… will not be conscious, will not be moral, will not care… etc etc…
It is staggering to know that these fundamental truths are completely ignored by materialist thinkers.
What is worse to contemplate is just what materialists believe our life and human consciousness is!
Death, the Materialist must believe is nothing more that ‘pulling the plug on your computer’!
And *you* literally ‘vanish’.
Materialism is one of the most powerful Opiates of them all!
It’s stupefying!
Why do they choose to think this way?
Simply because they desire to subject the whole universe …neatly into their own puny… small minded Naturalistic Rationale.
They allow themselves to be dominated by their own primitive theories.
It makes them feel good.
They refuse to be Objective and admit that there are plenty of things in reality which don’t fit at all well with their materialism.
The moment they admit this to themselves, their entire ‘religion’ falls apart… and that is what materialism is… a falce religion.
The moment a person awakens to the idea that there are greater realities than mere Matter and energy is the day that their subjective scales fall from their eyes and they appreciate spiritual truths, Free will, Consciousness, Love, …Good and evil, etc are not properties of matter… nor ever could be… and they are then in a much better position to appreciate the Amazing truth of the Bible.
Read more…
The Rusty Cage: Scientism…
Pasteur’s Law, Creation Science vs Nose Bone Atheism.
Monism: Evolutionary Psychology and the Death of Morality, Reason and Freewill.
Poster child for Atheism…Hannibal Lecter.
Biomimicry… Plagiarizing God’s designs.
The False Deity Called Evolution.
Planet of the Apes…whateva. 1Tim6vs20
Faith, Science, and Reason. The Pomposity of Atheism.
The Ludicrous Claims of Evolution! Why not ESP?
Russell’s Teapot really refutes Atheism not Theism!
Atheism has no basis for Rights… or Morals.
In this video from the 2012 Asia Consciousness Festival, AI researcher Ben Goertzel says
Imagine you had a collective of people, or they could be people and AIs, or some of them could be cyborgs (the people with brains jacked in to the computers), and imagine that they’re concerned with a number of things …
First, they’re concerned with measuring each other’s brain states and making scientific theories about what they observe …
Second, they observe more in the manner of a group of people meditating together, they’re actually subjectively perceiving each other’s consciousness while they’re doing this and so they can both measure each other’s states of consciousness empirically and neurally, or digitally if they’re AIs, and they can subjectively enter into collective mind states …
But there’s another ingredient, human beings have the annoying property that if you cut open our heads and mess with our brains we tend to die or become gibbering idiots or something but a computer program won’t necessarily have this feature and with molecular nanotechnology humans won’t necessarily have this feature either, so …
You can imagine this sort of ashram of consciousness scientists who are studying each other’s brains and minds and experiencing each other’s states of consciousness in a very refined way …
You can imagine this happening in a situation where the members of this community could actually alter and adjust each other’s brains experimentally and dynamically during the collective process…
Now, what you see here is the possibility of some form of collective understanding going beyond science as we have it now and going beyond religion as we have it now. Whether you can get this new form of understanding using humans as we exist now I’m not sure. It’s easy to envision with the AIs and cyborgs in the mix.
Artificial minds will be such that they can readily fuse into a single mind, or fissure into many separate minds. I suppose that in principle fission is easy, but that fusion is more problematic. An artificial mind may fissure into multiple separate minds, with the intent of fusing back into a single mind some time later, but the newly begotten minds, once split off, may have other ideas.
Here‘s what C. S. Lewis has to say about the super-personal God of the Trinity.
A good many people nowadays say, `I believe in a God, but not in a personal God.’ They feel that the mysterious something which is behind all other things must be more than a person. Now the Christians quite agree. But the Christians are the only people who offer any idea of what a being that is beyond personality could be like. All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Him as something impersonal: that is, as something less than personal. If you are looking for something super-personal, something more than a person, then it is not a question of choosing between the Christian idea and the other ideas. The Christian idea is the only one on the market.
Again, some people think that after this life, or perhaps after several lives, human souls will be ‘absorbed’ into God. But when they try to explain what they mean, they seem to be thinking of our being absorbed into God as one material thing is absorbed into another. They say it is like a drop of water slipping into the sea. But of course that is the end of the drop. If that is what happens to us, then being absorbed is the same as ceasing to exist. It is only the Christians who have any idea of how human souls can be taken into the life of God and yet remain themselves—in fact, be very much more themselves than they were before.
… The whole purpose for which we exist is to be thus taken into the life of God. Wrong ideas about what that life is will make it harder. And now, for a few minutes, I must ask you to follow rather carefully.
You know that in space you can move in three ways – to left or right, backwards or forwards, up or down. Every direction is either one of these three or a compromise between them. They are called the three Dimensions. Now notice :his. If you are using only one dimension, you could draw only a straight line. If you are using two; you could draw a figure: say, a square. And a square is made up of four straight lines. Now a step further. If you have three dimensions, you can then build what we call a solid body: say, a cube – a thing like a dice or a lump of sugar. And a cube is made up of six squares.
Do you see the point? A world of one dimension would be a straight line. In a two-dimensional world, you still get straight lines, but many lines make one figure. In a three-dimensional world, you still get figures but many figures make one solid body. In other words, as you advance to more real and more complicated levels, you do not leave behind you the things you found on the simpler levels: you still have them, but combined in new ways – in ways you could not imagine if you knew only the simpler levels.
Now the Christian account of God involves just the same principle. The human level is a simple and rather empty level. On the human level one person is one being, and any two persons are two separate beings – just as, in two dimensions (say on a flat sheet of paper) one square is one figure, and any two squares are two separate figures. On the Divine level you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who do not live on that level, cannot imagine. In God’s dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube. Of course we cannot fully conceive a Being like that: just as, if we were so made that we perceived only two dimensions in space we could never properly imagine a cube. But we can get a sort of faint notion of it. And when we do, we are then, for the first time in our lives, getting some positive idea, however faint, of something super-personal – something more than a person. It is something we could never have guessed, and yet, once we have been told, one almost feels one ought to have been able to guess it because it fits in so well with all the things we know already.
Is the mind of God like that of an AI? When, ultimately, we are “taken into the life of God,” do we become thee- or four-dimensional facets of the multi-dimensional being that is God? When God invaded his own creation, by sending his only begotten son to incarnate as a human being, was that a case of fission? I suggest that the person of Jesus was entirely separate from the person of his father when, on the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!” Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine.” If this thought gained power over you, as you are it would transform and possibly crush you; the question in each and every thing, “Do you want this again and innumerable times again?” would lie on your actions as the heaviest weight! Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to long for nothing more fervently than for this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
[Article by Mark I Rasskazov, Editor in Chief of the Transegoist Daily Journal. Syndicated.]
The Metaphysics of the Miraculous
My metaphysical model is monism, which means that I believe that there is one reality, and that everything in it is subject to a single set of physical laws (the Standard Model of Physics — until something better comes along). Now, most monists do not believe in miracles. Why? Because the term “miracle” typically denotes something which is supernatural — i.e., something which defies the laws of physics; something which requires that we appeal to metaphysical dualism: the idea that there are two planes of existence; a physical one, and a separate one, a spiritual one, which can override the physical.
The majority of people who believe in the existence of a Deity (or deities) accept some dualistic metaphysical model. I believe in God, and I accept a monistic model. I also believe in miracles. Is this a contradiction? No; but I’ve had to manipulate the concept of “miracle” somewhat.
It has been said: “That which seems miraculous is actually merely the unexplained.”
I consider that statement to be accurate.
I add one twist:
That which is, admittedly, physically explicable, yet is clearly not coincidental must be considered to be miraculous.
The Ten Plagues of Egypt can be explained as a severe natural disaster. Does that mean that it is coincidence that it happened to occur just as the time was right for the Israelis to leave?
The parting of the Red Sea in the book of Exodus has been explained as being the result of comet activity. Does this mean that it is coincidental that it occurred just as it began to look like the children of Israel had their backs against the wall?
When the Israelis arrived at the Promised Land, on two separate occasions, the walls of a city they were attacking spontaneously crumbled at a strategically advantageous moment. This could have easily been the result of seismic activity. Coincidence?
I think not.
What I think is that this entire universe is a magnificent machine, which operates in a flawless, albeit brutal and bittersweet manner.
God does have love for mankind. That’s not to say that He’s very nice. He’s not.
God’s miracles are physical events that He has set into motion long beforehand.
In that sense, inasmuch as God is sovereign, every waking moment that you experience is a clear and present miracle.
Do not squander the beautiful and terrifying miracle that is your life.
“Theistic Faith is Optimistic and springs from a Possiblity Thinker, whereas Atheistic doubt is Pessimistic and springs from an Impossiblity thinker”. Robert Schuller Senior.
