Do Christian hypocrites cause atheists? Well, my dad was ex-Catholic because of his concerns about levels of violence in Christian history. I never got into it much with him, nor let it do more than steer me clear of persistent contact with churches.
Yet, while God is significantly expressed through people, the big, beautiful world around us wasn´t created by itself. Nor can "humankind live by bread alone." Well, I noticed the soundness of some of Jesus´ talk, after all. I did embrace the Chinese Tao in high school, because it was a non-objectifying view that led scholar Huston Smith to describe it as "a creative continuum that is always accessible." That´s more contemplative transpersonal introspective activity, though. More metaphysical is that the Big Bang seems such a thing of grandeur that it almost could make a thoughtful person forget to ask, "Where did it come from?" Clever people keep talking about multiverses with cool TV series and sci-fi. Yet, where did it come from?
"Time" itself is linked to the motion of matter-energy in this Universe. The antecedent cause was essentially "timeless." Whatever is the "absolute ground of being" is timeless, and somehow, eternal. When something is like that, it is not mechanical, and any action then occurs by some impulse that we understand as "random," except that space and matter-energy also only came into being at that moment and event. If not "random," an impulse by an incredibly powerful cause at a higher order of existence smacks then of "intention," not physical-mechanical causation either timed and programmed or random. That makes sense moreover when we wonder, where does our human experience of "intention" fit in this physical-mechanical material Universe? In addition to that, since when does "intention" not reflect intelligence?
Now, that´s just following the logic from Aristotle, Aquinas, Craig, and the like. Nothing yet on Fritjof Capra´s Systems Theory and emergence. Or, ready to talk transpersonal psychology and historical sociology? Let´s just say that Harlow´s monkey studies had him battling the psychological establishment around the concept of "love." Jesus, let´s recall, "quipped" 2 loving Commandments (for Moses and God) as part of his legacy of loving integrity. I like the ring that has, with a vengeance while observing the profiteering corp exec funding of fundies and post-Cold War coasting of passive liberals generating the wildly polarized and paralyzed hell-in-a-handbasket fundie-secular momentum of society.
Now, any Buddhist-yoga-tai chi etc practitioner worth their salt has been breathing healthfully all this while. I suggest that we fit that together with a reclaimed and loving Jesus. Greenpeace, Oxfam, food co-ops, and credit unions and the World Social Forum need all the help they can get. Mobius strip- and tesseract- style from the early Christians, Jewish diaspora-returned, and on through modern UN human rights.
OK, OK, my dad was an ex-Catholic atheist humanist. Mom an agnostic. Dawkins et al´s rabid anti-theist atheism just galvanized me in my interfaith UU, touchy-feelie, hippie-dippie, book-wormy, bongo-banging, open-mike-rocking, frontline-doorknocking-for-Greenpeace and-Oxfam, teach-in-Africa/homeless shelter-volunteering, food co-op-loving Christianity, to be clear. Amen?
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