This 'debate' is so funny; atheists and fundamentalists deserve each other. Surface scratchers arguing over gnats.
When did man stop being an ape? When did man become rational? Who said man is rational? Science tried...and failed. We are emotional beings that create (imagine, in the image of God) theories that create patterns to explain the chaos to ourselves, for ourselves. God is a personal being? That's personification, idolatry.
I find it all amazing that we can even explore these concepts as apes. I also don't see major contradictions between science and religion but then I don't think God is a personality in the sky. Pure potential? OK. An emanation, like a ubiquitous sonic wave? OK. The All? OK. Atman is Brahma? OK. I think the Indians, Advaita Vedanta specifically, cuts to the quick. That is, as humans, all we can conceive of in our LIMITED ape shape. We can imagine more than we are - for better and worse. We arrive from nothing and nowhere and that's where we return, in fact we never left. We get to be 'me' for a while...dance and sing if we're lucky but it's all temporary like a dream within a dream.
I think Pythagoras, Plotinus, Spinoza, Ramana Maharshi and Jesus would have got along just fine but then they all understood their exploration - the razor's edge. As the Sufis call it as-sirat. Heaven and hell are in this world...never mind the next.
“I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind...
Albert Einstein
When did man stop being an ape? When did man become rational? Who said man is rational? Science tried...and failed. We are emotional beings that create (imagine, in the image of God) theories that create patterns to explain the chaos to ourselves, for ourselves. God is a personal being? That's personification, idolatry.
I find it all amazing that we can even explore these concepts as apes. I also don't see major contradictions between science and religion but then I don't think God is a personality in the sky. Pure potential? OK. An emanation, like a ubiquitous sonic wave? OK. The All? OK. Atman is Brahma? OK. I think the Indians, Advaita Vedanta specifically, cuts to the quick. That is, as humans, all we can conceive of in our LIMITED ape shape. We can imagine more than we are - for better and worse. We arrive from nothing and nowhere and that's where we return, in fact we never left. We get to be 'me' for a while...dance and sing if we're lucky but it's all temporary like a dream within a dream.
I think Pythagoras, Plotinus, Spinoza, Ramana Maharshi and Jesus would have got along just fine but then they all understood their exploration - the razor's edge. As the Sufis call it as-sirat. Heaven and hell are in this world...never mind the next.
“I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind...
Albert Einstein