I was searching the Internet this evening; bad idea. I was searching on topics related to Freemasonry since, afterall, that is the wacky religious cult that I have recently joined.
Naturally I ran across lots of extremely negative material out there. Most of it from fundamentalist Christians. Again, no real surprise. What really freaks me out, and I never seem to quite get over this, is in the cases where these 'antis' use what I view as extremely uplifting and positive material as *evidence* that some organization is evil, bad, and wrong.
How completely discouraging.
You know, I have created a website that to some implies it has, at it's core, some atheistic philosophy. However, I have come to realize, with quite a degree of certainity over this past year, that I am most definitely *not* an atheist. I just don't agree with the definition of the word God promolugated by fundamentalist Christians. I have come to realize that I believe in my own definition of God most whole heartedly. I only had to recognize that for me to believe in *my* God does not actually require that I believe in *theirs*. What a liberating experience that is.
To be quite honest I don't actually believe anyone in the world is an atheist. All an atheist is, is somebody who states that they don't believe in your definition of God. In other words, they have a poor understanding of the semantics of the issue. This is, afterall, the completely negative position to take.
An atheist is usually quite willing to state what it is he or she *doesn't* believe in. He will often state it quite strongly and have endless Internet debates about just what all that it is he is quite certain he doesn't believe to be true. However, simply take any run of the mill text book atheist and ask him to say, with great clarity and certainty, exactly what it is he *DOES* believe in; to the core of his being.
Oh, I imagine many might talk about the big bang, about the laws of physics, DNA, evolution, whatever... It doesn't matter.
Just let him talk about what all it is that he *DOES* believe in for a while and then ask him, "Ok great, now I know what you believe in. Where did it come from?"
He will promptly reply, "It didn't 'come' from anywhere. It just 'is'."
And, if he has a brief moment of clarity, he will realize that he has just defined the G.O.D. word for himself. He is able to make a statement in the positive. He is able to assemble this collection of beliefs and associate them with these three human created symbols and realize that he does, in fact, believe in something very large, very massive, very creative, and very awe inspiring. Something he 'can' call God; but half the time won't. He will refuse to let go of his negative assertions. It's no fun to call his beliefs God. It's simply so much more fun railing against the many Gods he doesn't believe in.
Personally, I am often fond of saying that Christians believe in three God's, the Father, son and Holy Ghost. Unlike them I, however, am not a polytheist. I only believe in *one* of their three, the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is to me, in this case, the entirety of creation that is responsble for all that is, has been, or ever will be.
Nevertheless, as these heady concepts fill my brain with inspiring notions of the vastness of space and the complexity of the infinitesimal (I imagine images from the Hubble Space telescope and an electron scanning microscope coallescing about now), I hear the cries of my Christian friends who think that something as frightening as a Fraternity that let's homo sapians hang out, regardless of how they individualy choose to define the three letter word fomulation 'G' "O' 'D' is the work of satan, and it simply begins to blow my mind.
I found just such a website recently. Here is the scandalous link:http://www.conspiracyworld.com/index0055.htm
I felt so inspired that I emailed the web master the following tame troll:
I just read something on your website and the idea you seem to promote is
that anyone who might believe that God both loves and accepts everyone is, well,
somehow horribly wrong. I can understand you might hold a different
belief. That’s ok. However, can’t you sort of ‘agree to
disagree’ and recognize that, to some people, an idea of ‘God’ that is so large,
so all encompassing, that it includes all of humanity, all of the world's
religions, and all faiths, is a reasonable point of view to take?Haven’t you ever wondered when a Christian football player praises Jesus
after a touchdown? Haven’t you ever wondered, “Does Jesus really care
about who wins this football game?”Who knows, perhaps there are even Christians on the other team too?
Isn’t the God that created the heavens and the earth, and filled the void, just
a little big bigger, and grander, than all of that?I just feel like, you know, sometimes, people take something which is really,
really, really, really, *BIG* and try to make it something which is really very
small, narrow, focused and, to be quite honest, sometimes a little mean
spirited.Maybe God doesn’t actually care who wins the football game. Maybe he
just wants them to have fun.Thanks,
John
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