why do you think this is how you answerd.....not what you have read or have been told...or is that where the answer comes from...


do you have a idea of how and who would be chosen and why...again from just a free thinking gut level answer...or are these answers from book and taught over years...

EH framed a number of "simpler" questions to which he requested "simple" answers. I complied with the request.

The problem is, I do not think that the simple answers mean very much. When someone asks "Is god a "being" that exists in this or any other reality?" then the answer is, obviously, yes, since the words "any other realitly" must include (even for the most athesitic of atheists) a reality in which the gods are real.

Hoist on his own petard.

I do not think that the answer is very informative, but any other answer must be framed as an "I think.." or "I believe", to which the inevitable repsonse is "I do not think..." or "I do not believe..." (Of course, if you are one of the televangelists, who claim to have daily face-to-face meetings with YHWH, I may be wrong. (But it seems odd that they can never produce eye-witnesses wo their encounters.))

In the end, I think I would say that it is certainly beyond my ability, beyond my senses, to know the answers to EH's questions. I believe that one should answer the first three in the affirmative. (I submit the fourth is unanswerable, unless one is a god.) But even my beliefs are not "simple" things that can be "simply" expressed; I struggle, at the best of times, to frame some of the clearer ones in words, and mostly fail to really convey what I mean. Most other people's efforts seem, to me, to fail in much the same way.

I understand that, for those who have no such a belief, and see others insisting upon belief (which I think is a wrong thing to do), they want to understand what people are going on about. They want it expressed in clear words. But many things cannot be expressed in clear words, I'm afraid... try explaining "love" for example; one falls back on well worn similies and cliches, but nothing that is very clear or simple...and nothing that really explains what it is to love.

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Grassaf, Eolas

I don't think I would go quite so far as to say I've been hoist on my own petard. When I used the word "reality," I did not mean inventions. Gad, we'll be back at Anselm and his "God is that which nothing can be greater than" before you know it.
You may laugh, but I really am struggling to figure out what is wrong with US. And I'm beginning to think it has everything to do with the idea that somehow (either through God or through science and reason, pick your religion), the human species can be perfected. It can't. Maybe that's what "sin" is about, that we are, as individuals and species, limited by human flaws and self-interest, never perfectable, never free from the taint of self-interest -- even when seeking heaven, or nirvana, or enlightenment.

Let me quote from the new book, "I Don't Believe in Atheists" by Chris Hedges (yes, I read opinions quite different from my own):
Now, do you see how I can read that as saying that every notion of god is simply another attempt by one or some of us to understand ourselves? That need for understanding is a reality, but it does not -- at least to me -- give rise to an independent being or spirit or substance. It is, rather, completely and inextricably dependent.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

I do apoligize.....you are saying I have hijacked the thread....this is not my intent...I just read and respond with where I am at that moment...I am going to have to be more carful it seems that most here are far more serious and formal.....I do take the posts very serious and what is shared by all ....

I really liked your response...thanks...

Was just trying to clarify what I had said....

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Grassaf, Eolas

Sendy, you have not hijacked the thread. Please don't feel intimidated. You have as much right to see things your own way, and to respond in your own way, as anybody else. Keep on posting!

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

In one sense this is absolutely right. Every notion of God is an attempt by humans to understand ourselves and our reality. The need for understanding does not give rise to an independent entity.

But perhaps it is that independent entity that gives rise to the need for understanding.

But of course; the fact is most human studies (science not least among them) are attempts to make ourselves intelligible to our selves.

But I think you miss an important point. There is something in the range of human experiences which seems common, which seems like it has an extrenal and, in some sense, "objective" reference. That "justice", "mercy", "love" ,"benevolence" and the rest are not merely abstractions, pigeonholes in the human mind, but things that have being in themselves.

We scarecly understand such things; our attempts to define them are, at best, halting and stuttering. Philosophers have struggled with the language needed to explain such things clearly, and are not closer today, after 2500 years of effort, than they were in the days of Socrates. Treating them as "concepts", as mere conventionalities of human speech, seems unacceptable. There is a numinous quality to them, a reality, that many "real" (that is quantifiable and observable) things seem to lack.

When people describe those things as deities, or being the constituents of deity, they are trying to put their feelings about these matters into something that we can grasp, however dimly.

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Grassaf, Eolas

I realize that was my words...



thanks to both of you...

The why of my answer is complex and personal. Not something that I necessarily want to give a lot of detail to.


I think we are all chosen, that God speaks to us, if we are willing to listen. I am not talking about in that crazy way of hearing the voices of beyond, but maybe with things that a child says, or things from a friend, or even a pet.

The things that I answer are not from books, even though I do read quite a bit. These things have come from my life, my experience. So God does play a role, and God speaks to those who need to know the message. And sometimes that message is hard to hear.

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"Philosophy is a walk on a slippery rock
Religion is a smile on a dog."