Intangibilism
14 09 11 - 04:21
Staring at the sky, wondering:
Eagleman defines a "possibilian" as someone who enjoys holding different possibilities in mind. This stance is opposed to an atheist or a believer, who commits to a particular story, like "There is no God," or, conversely, "There is a God, and let me tell you exactly what he thinks." A possibilian is also not, simply, an agnostic who considers some questions unanswerable. A possibilian believes in science and encourages people to think and explore realms even beyond science's current boundaries to actively seek out new possibilities to consider.
...
In perhaps his most disarmingly simple study, in fact, Newberg asked people to draw an image of God. The result could have been embarrassing for believers: If the cartoonish version of the religious advanced by new atheists were true, Newberg would have been left with numerous images of an old man with a beard. But it turned out the most likely test subjects to draw such a God were first, children, and second, atheists. Believers in fact most often drew the sun, light, mirrors and even nothing -- abstract images that reflected a conception of God as vast and unknowable.
In short, the God the new atheists so vehemently reject is perhaps not the one held closest to believers' hearts. The God Newberg found in his test subjects is instead an array of possibilities in a wider field of possibilities. - HuffPo
Kind of ironic, but by trying to make spirituality binary, we've made a hash of it.
There are reasons to seek clarity on this issue. As one former skeptic recently noted, the more experience one has in life, the more one looks for patterns that explain life as a whole -- and linear thinking does not help.
This doesn't mean an acceptance of religion as socially defined. For example, most people (being idiots) want to believe that God accepts everyone equally; that way, there's no barrier to entry into heaven. Thus they invent versions of the modern morality, in which equality is more important than reality, and talk fondly about a dualistic world where paupers hang out with kings and other socially-flattering stuff that's really nonsense.
People like me will always be extremely skeptical of Christianity for this reason. While it is like all other religions a vocabulary and description of a spirituality that exists outside Christianity, in the universe itself, it has contorted itself with some rules of prole-derivation, and as such, become a destructive social force as well as a chance for focusing people on something other than themselves. That's the big problem with atheism -- it leads directly to individualism, and from that the socialism/consumerism hybrid that the modern society adores.
On the other hand, we like the idea of religion. We're just not big fans of egalitarian religion.
five comments
however, the bible has many striking examples illustrating the ruthlessness of 'the lord' who, in one parable, rewards the servant who was entrusted 5 silvers and won their double. he then punished the servant who was entrusted the silver he buried for he was to scared to invest it. josef H (Email ) (URL) - 15-09-’11 04:23