I Dont Believe Anymore

[Fire1sKid]

I dont believe that there is an imaginary sky-wizard that is going to come and relieve the world of evil. I was raised in a christian household and constantly reminded of right and wrong, but what really is right from wrong? Is it right that people continue to live without healthcare in this country? Is that really an example of christianity? How the most wonderful people in the world are the poorest and the most vile and sadistic people are the wealthiest. Sounds and looks like the christian community is definitely full of hypocrisy. What do you guys think?

[Deja Q]

1. Only when those who proclaim it are outright hypocrites...

Thanks, Reagan, Bush II, Gingrich... :puke:

[Fire1sKid]

3. True but,

If there really is a "God" then why is something like healthcare reform even a debate? Why are there millions of innocent and good people suffering?

[dysfunctional press]

6. don't you mean "if there really is a LOVING god..."?

the prick of a deity described in the old testament apparently got a lot of his jollies inflicting people with things like boils and sores.

[roguevalley]

45. because we have free will and we don't have enough guts to do

something about it. Why should God do it? Its our problem and its up to us.

[roguevalley]

44. I believe in God but I also believe he gave us all we need to fix

things ourselves. He isn't going to come down and do it. He expects us too with free will. We have to get up off our butts and do it. He isn't going to.

[laconicsax]

50. So malaria, necrotizing fasciitis, AIDS, and ebola are entirely our responsibility?

Your god just sits back and watches as millions of people die from these and other diseases because we need to fix it ourselves?

[roguevalley]

57. Malaria exists. It always has. so have other diseases. Why do we

need to expect rescue? We have all we need between our ears to fix all our problems. We just have to decide to have the will. Its our world, our life, our job to make our lives well. He gave us the tools. We just have to have the will.

[laconicsax]

61. I'll take that as a 'yes.'

By saying that your god "gave us" something, you're implying that we're here by his design. Whether he directly created us and everything else or just guided evolution as to lead to us, your god must have the ability to have either not created disease in the first place or have prevented its evolution (or at least reduced its lethality).

Since disease exists, that means one of two things:
1) Your god intended for us to exist in a world full of deadly diseases.
2) Your god didn't intend for us to exist in a world full of deadly diseases, but doesn't care to do anything about it.

Which is it?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I don't know how old you are...

But you've just joined the adults.

There is good in the world...

But you have to look for it.

[raccoon]

27. Great post. nt

[Solomon]

67. Let me second that.

Great Post.

[Zix]

4. The real revelation, once Christianity is shed, is this:

Even in an absolutely unconscious universe with no divine oversight whatsoever, life begins, good and evil emerge, beauty bursts spontaneously from the ground, kindness, innocence, heroism, romance, courage, imagination, decency and love still flourish, with no divine guidance whatsoever.

What does that say about the Abyss? It contains the seeds of its own redemption.

[Buzz Clik]

5. I'd agree -- you apparently don't believe anymore.

[Fire1sKid]

8. LOL!!

[Sebass1271]

7. There is a lot of good and a lot of good christians..

the problem is we only hear about the bad and loud mouth christians. But christians in general want good for society because they understand that Christ/Jesus was sure a liberal.

the propaganda christians are the bad ones... they are blinded by money, wedge issues and partisan politics at the expense of their own faith and jesus' word.

[FiveGoodMen]

20. The good Christians should be fighting to take their religion back from the bad ones.

Outsiders don't stand a chance.

[Buzz Clik]

25. This sounds a lot like the knuckledragger argument about Muslims.

Knuckledragger: "All Muslims suck! We should kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Rational Human: "Actually, the violence we witnessed (on 9/11, in Spain, by the Taliban) is contrary to the Koran. True Muslims don't believe in man's inhumanity to man."
Knuckledragger: "Well, the good ones sure as hell aren't shouting down the bad ones!"
Rational Human: "The 'good ones' frequently condemn these actions. You just aren't listening."

It's the same with some atheists and their despise of Christians -- they only pay attention to those who annoy them.

[Lerkfish]

30. neither do liberal christians stand a chance.

its a very dense mindset which nothing seems able to penetrate. Merely the fact that you're a liberal christian does not give you any cachet whatsoever to turn their minds. If anything, it works against you since they consider you "lapsed".

I don't find blaming the liberal christians for the rw christians to be productive at all, except to make the people doing it feel better.

[FiveGoodMen]

40. Let me clarify

I don't disagree with your post, but I don't think I made myself clear in the previous one.

Probably nothing is going to change the minds of the current crop of fundies. But they weren't always what they are today.

They grew up in churches. They watched televangelists. They absorbed the zeitgeist of their religious times and many of them turned into the raving maniacs they are now. (After all, none of them were born that way.)

It was easy for them to be assimilated because in many cases every representation of God and faith around them was of the blood-dripping, teeth-gnashing, ignorance-loving variety.

If they had heard other Christians yelling loudly and constantly, "No, no, no. These people have not understood Jesus. They are not following the God they claim to serve. THEY ARE NOT TELLING THE TRUTH!" then they might have looked before leaping and decided not to become the nut cases they are today. They'd have had a chance to think about it.

Too late for them. But not for the next generation.

But if I, as an atheist, start loudly proclaiming that Pat Robertson isn't teaching the word of the God I don't believe in anyway, who's going to listen?

Same thing if the message comes from Jews or Muslims or Buddhists.

Only the Christians who've read Mathew and 1st Corinthians 13 and so on can possibly point the next crop of Christians in a better direction.

No one else is qualified to join that conversation.

[Lerkfish]

52. ok, I get your point, but there isn't a venue for us.

by that I mean, I am not hanging in the same circles....ever. If I have a chance to say something, its usually to someone already predisposed.

I understand your frustration, but its mine too. I don't think there is that opportunity to tell them or yell loudly against them. UCC has made several commercials to do just that and I do not know how effective they are, to be honest.

I guess I'm saying you're overestimating our access and our influence, even though it might be fractionally more than yours as an atheist, it is still practically nil.

[FiveGoodMen]

54. What I had really expected at the time Bush was pushing for his unprovoked attack on Iraq

Was that people like my mother -- who certainly didn't support that sort of thing -- would stand up in church (at least the evening service) and say, "look what they're doing to our faith by claiming this war is righteous!" She didn't.

There should have been a ground-swell. Everyone should have been able to see that was wrong. And they should have been upset enough about it that they couldn't keep their mouths shut.

And especially from the pulpits across America there should have been a call to reason and decency if not love. Instead, there was support for the war.

The Southern Baptist Church in particular declared that God would approve! (How did they know?)

I know that individual Christians can't turn the whole thing around, but what happens in those churches that I've been avoiding all these years?

[Lerkfish]

55. it happened

you just didn;t hear about it in the media, except when bush admin was punishing churches that did by threatening to take away their nonprofit status (something that NEVER happened to RW churches, even when they had Frist and other rw politicians appearing in televised programming.)

it is happening, all across the country, but you're not hearing about it, sorry.

[FiveGoodMen]

58. Point is, it should have happened in EVERY CHURCH.

All of them. It's that cut and dried when someone claims that Jesus wants you to kill innocent civilians in another country.

It should have happened everywhere.

And if it had, I wouldn't need the M$M to point it out.

Everyone would be talking about it.

[Lerkfish]

62. yes, and everyone should vote democrat, every one of us.

its that cut and dried that everyone should not be republican.

:shrug:

what are you gonna do? You secular people are unable to change every republican into a democrat, but you don't see me blaming you for that.

The bottom line is there is free will, as much as I'd like to dictate to people how they should believe or act, I simply cannot.

[Lerkfish]

63. Well, I took your example, and look what happened to me...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=224024&mesg_id=224024

considering the outright hatred I was met with by using your suggestins against atheists instead of christians, you should consider yourself lucky.

[FiveGoodMen]

64. Hmmm. Yeah, that was kind of unpleasant.

Just so we're not talking past each other, I'm not in any way suggesting that any of this is your fault. As if you could have fixed this whole mess if you'd just tried a little harder.

I'm not denying that there are very decent people who are Christians and who have opposed all of this right-wing nonsense from the beginning.

In your link you asked the atheists why they couldn't control the votes of other atheists. You make a good point: Christians can't control the votes of other Christians (except for televangelists and megachurch preachers, who do seem to have many of their followers virtually hypnotized).

So no, I don't blame you or anyone else with your views for the mess that we're in. I do blame those who didn't care, or worse, supported the aggression-in-Jesus'-name thinking of the fundies.

What shocked me was that the churches -- groups of Christians with meeting times and Bible studies and leaders who are supposed to know better -- were for the most part either backing the wrong side or sitting out the game. And my point was that those churches can only be reformed from within. I didn't mean to suggest that no one was trying, but the good guys haven't exactly achieved critical mass yet or we'd be seeing an awful lot of regret around the nation.

To those of you who are trying to remind the churches of the love and tolerance and everyone-is-my-neighbor message that Jesus expressed: Thank you.

[Lerkfish]

65. No, I have appreciated our civil conversation here...

I posted the other thread as an experiment. I didn't mean to say that you were being that obnoxious, but I carried the rough idea you were referring to, that others have espoused here on multiple ocassions (much more obnoxiously, I might add)

And, for the record, I am as shocked if not more so at the RW christian mindset, especially concerning war and torture. I have always maintained that Jesus was the ultimate liberal. I HAVE discussed this with my cousin-in-law, who is a somewhat RW christian preacher, though he's nowhere near batshit crazy. I presented my side and my opinion of how RW churches seemed to have flipped from where they should be on key issues.

He was very polite, but I could tell it was like bouncing bullets off supermans's chest. I HAVE tried in the past, but I have never succeeded, that I'm aware of.


edited to change a "less" to "more', which of course, corrected the meaning 180 degrees

[roguevalley]

46. That episcopal priest on Colbert last night was what we are supposed

to be. TOo bad they don't get much air time.

[Lerkfish]

53. therein lies the problem.(or one of them) only the RW reiligious leaders get any

real access to the media.

[spoony]

9. Er, there have always been bad people and bad things

It doesn't sound like being "raised in a (C)hristian household" taught you much about Christian theology.

[Fire1sKid]

12. It honestly didnt

[Deep13]

33. That's a pretty presumptuous thing to say.

I really lose patience with the argument that Christian who believe and encourage harmful things are somehow not real Christians or are ignorant about its true message. What makes them and the two thousand years of ecclesiastical and Biblical teachings wrong and you right?

[roguevalley]

47. okay, lets clarify. they are Pauline Christians and the good ones

are Judeo-Christians or followers of the Messianic movement.

[Deep13]

60. What you call "Pauline" is mainstream, orthodox (small "o") Christianity...

...and has been since the 4th century c.e. Sure, maybe the "real" Christianity is one of the numerous heresies that were stamped out by the early church. Perhaps one group of Gnostics who thought JC could never have been a man or crucified because he was god was the "real" Christianity. Doesn't matter. The form of Christianity that nearly everyone who considers himself or herself a Christian is what you are calling Pauline. Paul's epistles are the oldest and most foundational documents of Christianity. And they are the most authentic. While there are significant doubts about the authenticity of the gospels, we can be pretty sure that Paul's letters are as he wrote them.

And anyway, so what? You are defining Christianity in a way that agrees with your own normal and decent sense of morality. Conservatives bend their otherwise normal sense of morality to fit what the Bible says (except for that part about camels and needles, apparently). They end up coming to reasonable and logical conclusions based on a delusional understanding of reality.

[JuniperLea]

10. Yin, Yang; Good, Evil...

It's all about the balance.

I was raised in a Fundy family too... one of my cousins is a Christian Missionary... there but by the grace of God go I:) We were raised in the same church... could have happened to me too.

Not all good comes from church/synagogue/temple/sacred cave in the woods... not all evil is of "The Devil" either.

I know many really good people, and many really evil people. Some are Atheists, some are devout followers of one religion or another. There's no guarantee a devoutly religious person is a good person, and no guarantee that a person who lives a life devoid of deities is a bad person.

While half the world is in sunlight, the other half is in darkness.

That's how we roll...

Welcome to the big kids' table:)

[NNN0LHI]

11. Is it right that people continue to live without health care in ANY country?

[Fire1sKid]

13. Exactly

I should have re-worded that part

[shintao]

14. Hey, you got me there!

The shame of Christianity is Americans lets it rule their political beliefs, or visa-versa.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

68. Actually, it's more like American chauvinism is their REAL religion and

they clothe it in religious terms, like the storefront church in Portland that had a flag-draped Jesus in its window after 9/11.

Look at the reaction to Kristof's NY Times column today (11/5). He states the obvious truth that the U.S. does not have the world's greatest health care system, and the freeper hordes tell him that he hates America, that he's a Communist, that Britain is Communist, and that he should go to Slovenia or Cuba next time he's sick.

These are people whose real religion is fanatical nationalism, whatever else they SAY they believe.

[conscious evolution]

15. Welcome to the ranks of the illuminati,kid.

Your toaster for signing up is being shipped as we speak.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Fire1sKid]

17. I know right

I was having a conversation with someone in my political science class once about how christians love to mention "God's Plan" and how some people's lives have been spared in life-threatening situations because it was in his "plan",and we both agreed that we guess the rest of the people whose lives were not spared were just fuckin here to die lol. I smell bullshit!

[raccoon]

26. I'll agree, that is bullshit. It is just random who was spared and who wasn't.

The result of laws of physics/nature.

[dschis]

18. I've been calling them 'professed' Christains

for decades. If Christ came back right now those professed ones would call on him and he would tell them that he never knew them. I can't even stand to be in the same church with them. Anybody got any ideas what to do?

[Fire1sKid]

19. Stop going to church

Its filled with hypocrites any way.

[FiveGoodMen]

21. Amen! (so to speak)

[struggle4progress]

23. If you find a hypocrite-free zone, do let me know. I think everybody I've ever met

has been a hypocrite to some degree, not always cynically, and often not even consciously

[roguevalley]

48. speak up and call out their errors. that is what I do.

[RC]

22. There is a small grey dot at about the 9:30 position between the rings.

That is the Earth. Us. Every place we have ever been, every place we will ever be. Every war ever fought for a piece of this small grey dot was fought here.
This view is well inside our own solar system. Imagine the view compared to the Milky Way? The Local Cluster.
There are almost 7 Billion of us. Most of us believe in some kind of deity out there. Can you imagine the crescendo it hears if it could really hear all of us billions
praying to it for all their selfish reasons?
We are such self-centered arrogant critters. As a species, we have real trouble seeing past our own finger tips. Past our own immediate needs and perceived wants.

[mikelewis]

24. I think that if you believed that there was an...

..."imaginary sky-wizard that is going to come and relieve the world of evil" then maybe your fall from faith is the best thing that could have happened to you. That sort of creature doesn't exist, not in any sense. If you should decide to take up a belief in a deity, then try and discover the God that is revealed through what you believe in your heart to be true, what you know in your soul to be true... even if it leads you to believe that there is no God at all. It's better to believe there is no God and shout that on the rooftops then to not believe in God and then say that you do believe only for vanity's sake.


You also wrote, "Is that really an example of Christianity? How the most wonderful people in the world are the poorest and the most vile and sadistic people are the wealthiest." Jesus said "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." That sort of makes it sound impossible for the rich man but you have to understand that the eye of a needle wasn't the sewing needle, it was a small door (the eye) in the middle of the big doors (the needle).



What he meant was that the rich man had to enter the Kingdom without his riches. America is in love with Riches, we worship a golden calf and our god is mammon. To us, there is no greater love than the love of money. The disparities were the same for Israel in Jesus' day. This is why he preached such an egalitarian doctrine, he believed that the lowest of all men could be just as great in the eyes of God as the greatest of men were in the eyes of Man.

[raccoon]

28. The book WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE by

Harold Kushner helped to clarify my thoughts/beliefs. I strongly recommend it.

[starroute]

29. Jesus said "the kingdom of God" is within you

You can pretty much forget the rest and hold onto that.

My sense is that "the kingdom of God" is a technical mystical term for the still center within you, the point of understanding and balance that you reach when you get past all the crap and jangle and find what really matters.

It doesn't even invoke a real "God" -- actually the opposite. It's saying there's no heavenly kingdom, no choirs of angels. All there is is what you find within yourself.

That place within each of us is where "right" and goodness come from. It's the place where we're all one.

[Deep13]

34. Forget the other 1300 pages of the Bible ...

... and the thousands of pages of commentary from Augustine, Aquinas, Luther to name just a few and focus on that one sentence.

"It doesn't even invoke a real 'God'" That much is true, so why call it that? A calm place within ones mind has nothing to do with a supreme being who governs the universe.

[dgibby]

41. Well put.

I never thought about that passage in that way, but you've summed up what I believe, not in an invisable sky god, but a spiritual core within us. Thank you!

[HughMoran]

31. Right-wing so-called 'Christians' are hypocrites

There are many liberal-leaning sects of Christianity that do seem to understand the actual (very liberal) message of Jesus though.

[Deep13]

35. How do you know?

If this is just a matter of faith, what makes your view of Christianity right and theirs wrong? Frankly, the Old and New Testaments and 2000 years of theology is squarely on their side. One has to be REALLY selective to take the liberal view. And even if one confines his reading to the purported words of JC, it is still a mixed bag at best. JC is the first to introduce the concept of the thought-crime of adultery (as opposed to actual adultery), unredemable damnation by disagreeing with his idea of the Holy Spirit and eternal, post-mortem punishment.

[HughMoran]

36. There is no Christianity without Jesus

...and for you to cherry-pick one supposed 'negative' from his massive amount of work is to miss the forest for the trees. Jesus was a liberal and you're conflating right-wing interpreters with the actual message.

[Deep13]

42. Eternal damnation is "one supposed 'negative'!?"

Holy shit!

First of all, you have no idea what Jesus said or even if he really lived at all. The canonical gospels were all written after the fact to codify previous oral traditions. They contain historical inaccuracies and contradict each other on important matters. Two of them mention the virgin birth, two of them refute it. Two gospels gives geneology for JC through Joseph's line back to Noah. They contradict each other. There was no empire-wide census and even if there was a local one, why would Joe have to travel away from his family and property (which is what a census is all about) to a town he had never been before)? Obviously, it is simply to comply with the preconception that the messiah has to come from the city of David. Others have explained this more thoroughly than I have time for here. And Paul, whose writing predates the gospels does not mention any details of JC's life. The point is, the gospels are not reliable accounts.

I am not cherry picking. You need to reread the NT with a skeptical eye. It's only virtuous if you start from the premise that Christian religious values are virtuous, including the idea that JC can't be wrong. Telling people to abandon their families (Peter for example) and not to take care of themselves (lillies of the field) while preaching that poverty is a virtue does not seem very good to me. And the whole idea about god becoming a man so he could be brutally tortured and killed as a blood sacrifice to impress himself to absolve us of "sin" vicariously is a monsterous idea. Assuming we really are evil in constant need of forgiveness (despite the fact that the god damning us also made us this way) why not just forgive us? The result of all of this is to make a virtue out of suffering. This central tenant of Christianity has caused people to suffer needlessly for 1700 years.

And that is just the NT! Christian theology borrows heavily from the OT and has developed since then, its morbid preoccupation. I really don't have time to go into the abominable writings of influencial theologians from Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and others, but suffice it to say, it pervades the history of Christianity.

The so-called conservative Christians are on sound theological footing, however divorced from reality they are. Moderate and liberal believers simply choose to ignore parts of their religion they don't like. You are free to do that, of course, and I wish there were more who did. Nevertheless, you really have no real basis to assume that you are right and they are wrong without resorting to evidence that actually contradicts the central tenants of Christianity in the first place.

[FiveGoodMen]

43. Enough good points in that one post to deserve being on the front page!

:applause:

[Sal316]

56. You can't possibly be serious?

The so-called conservative Christians are on sound theological footing, however divorced from reality they are. Moderate and liberal believers simply choose to ignore parts of their religion they don't like. You are free to do that, of course, and I wish there were more who did. Nevertheless, you really have no real basis to assume that you are right and they are wrong without resorting to evidence that actually contradicts the central tenants of Christianity in the first place.

Fundies are the theologically sound Christians?

Wow.
Just wow.

[Deep13]

59. prove me wrong nt

[roguevalley]

49. you have to understand that nothing in the new testament except

perhaps for James Letter is written by anyone who knew Jesus. The framework for CHristianity is Pauline, a man who didn't know Jesus, never heard him, wrote in letters that Jesus the man didn't matter and who fought with those who truly knew Jesus, including his brothers and other family. He also said in his writing that lying is fine if it advances their cause, even lying to the real church, the Jerusalem church headed by Jesus' surviving family.

You are mad at Paul. Don't confuse Jesus with Pauline Christianity. I just got through plastering Mormon missionaries over the flaws in their approach to God vis-a-vis Pauline Christianity. Read Eisenmann and know how it truly is. You will feel free.

[Deep13]

51. That may be true.

Paul may not have even been talking about the same man or any man at all. There was an idea back then about a son of god that was not a person, but rather a lesser diety who lived in heaven. I'll reference my note in response to the other response to my post that I got. If Paul doesn't know Jesus, then neither does anyone else. In any event, I was careful to confine my criticism to "red letter" NT. It's JC himself who defines thought crimes and lays out the idea of eternal damnation. In the OT, Yahweh's victims were left alone once they were dead.

I'm not mad at anyone. I'm simply pointing out that conservatives have at least as much claim to be the "real" Christianity as liberals do.

If the NT is a holy book, why is it necessary to read Eisenmann and ignore essentially everyone one else in ecclesiastical history to get the "real" perspective on it.

Do you mean I'll feel free to read Eisenmann? If not, I'm not sure I know what you mean. If you mean "feel free" in the sense of personal psychological relief, then I submit that will happen when we are no longer serfs to the rich and when my mother isn't crazy anymore. Since I'm convinced there is no god, all this is just an interesting acedemic discussion. No god = no word of god, no sin, no need for redemption and nothing for a messiah to do.

[Deep13]

32. The problem of theodicy has never been resolved...

...and the excuses religious apologists give are nonsensical.

[Silent3]

37. There are better reasons not to believe than being disenchanted...

...with the state of the world. Being disenchanted with a particular subset of religions (Christianity in this case) is even less of a good reason to disbelieve in a deity.

There are also poor people who are vicious and wealthy people who are fairly decent folk (unless you hold them to the standard that to be good they have to give it all away until they're poor).

To put it bluntly, you sound like you're in a (perhaps justifiably) bad mood, making a very emotional and overly simplistic assessment of things.

The state of the world (see "theodicy") is a good reason to disbelieve in a particular version of the idea of God: The all-powerful, all-loving God. The best way to salvage that God, and I think it's a pretty weak argument, is to rob the word "loving" of practically all meaning and use the circular logic that whatever God does and allows must be loving, and if it doesn't "seem" loving to us, well, that's because we mere mortals can't understand His Mysterious Ways.

I'm an atheist, by the way, so I don't believe in God or gods either. There are a lot of gods out there to disbelieve in, however, and the question of theodicy doesn't address all of them. There are also a few ideas of God that are more believable than others, but they tend to be so vague as to be practically meaningless, or simply gold-plated synonyms for words like "universe", but carrying useless extra baggage.

[Festivito]

38. Sounds like you were in a club with too many charlatans.

And, they actually believed in a wizard?
Who would relieve the world of evil?

Never heard of that one.

[screw-bipartisanship]

39. i think...

i think life is full of shit and you have to take that and interpret it how you want. Poor people are kind because kindness gets you nowhere in capitalism. Rich people are asses most of the time because they were born into mainly white communities and learned to treat others with contempt. If you chose to think of god as a sky-being do that, but to assume that all christians think of god as a bearded man who sits on a gold throne in the sky is absurd and a flat out attack on one of the most widely worshiped creeds in the world. In the end, everyone worships the same god. Whether he's called God, Yahweh, Alah, or Vishnu, eventually it'll boil down to the same cosmic force. Religion is just mans way of telling everyone he knows more about the world than everyone else does, and it gives someone something to follow. In the end, that's really what man truly needs.

[deutsey]

66. One of the reasons I moved on beyond Christianity

is that my experience of and awareness of a creative life energy permeating the universe was too large to contain within Christian beliefs of God.

I suppose the closest religious approach to "God" to my experience is Brahman in Hindu Advaita Vedanta philosophy.

I'm not a Hindu but this notion of God speaks to me most profoundly. Brahman is what all life and reality emerges from and return to. It's an impersonal life force that is beyond all concepts and the source of all existence in all its manifestations. We create, however, mental constructs and metaphors (including gods and goddesses) that help us perceive and understand aspects of Brahman's ultimate reality.

I'm not saying this very well, but look up Advaita Vedanta and Brahman for more information.

[Nihil]

69. I can identify with that ...

> One of the reasons I moved on beyond Christianity
> is that my experience of and awareness of a creative life energy
> permeating the universe was too large to contain within Christian
> beliefs of God.

:hi:

> I suppose the closest religious approach to "God" to my experience
> is Brahman in Hindu Advaita Vedanta philosophy.

Thanks for the suggestion - it'll go on the list! :-)