Faith and Religion

[MikeInfinity]

The acceptance of a teaching as true is not faith; that is mere belief.

Belief is always limiting and binding; faith is expanding and releasing.

Faith is a traitor when it fosters betrayal of intellectual integrity and belittles loyalty.

Faith never shuns the problem-solving duty of mortal living.

Faith does not shackle the creative imagination, neither does it maintain an unreasoning prejudice toward the discoveries of scientific investigation.

Faith has falsified its trust when it presumes to deny realities and to confer upon its devotees assumed knowledge.

Do not make the mistake of judging another's religion by your own standards of knowledge and truth.

Reason is the proof of science, faith the proof of religion, logic the proof of philosophy, but revelation is validated only by human experience. Science yields knowledge; religion yields happiness; philosophy yields unity; revelation confirms the experiential harmony of this triune approach to universal reality.

Religion must ever be its own critic and judge; it can never be observed, much less understood, from the outside. Your only assurance of a personal God consists in your own insight as to your belief in, and experience with, things spiritual. To all of your fellows who have had a similar experience, no argument about the personality or reality of God is necessary, while to all other men who are not thus sure of God no possible argument could ever be truly convincing.

From the Urantia Book paper101

[austintorn@aol.com]

S.O.U.L — Spirits Of Unconditional Love

[labelwench]

A very well presented thread opening, of which this sentence stands out to me:

Reason is the proof of science, faith the proof of religion, logic the proof of philosophy, but revelation is validated only by human experience.

The journey. The human experience.

Within this biosphere, we are born to different parents, cultures and living conditions, and this phenotype is layered onto our genotype, shaping the person we are to become.

Science is only now beginning to prove that which the breeders of horses have known for long.

The personality of a horse is far more in it's breeding than in it's raising, although a kindly raising will do much to further same.

I would dare to extrapolate from personal experience, that human's also are born with a genetic program that bids them seek their origin, no matter one calls it religion and another names it science.

This seeking is entangled in the electro-magnetic energy that lights our way during our brief stay in this realm, before our body becomes ashes to ashes and returns to the clay.

The spark of our being is energy, and my faith is that the good that we can do will live on after us, no matter we have a body or consciousness to witness, or an ego to plump.

I commend you on your presentation MikeInfinity.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Perhaps philosophy and science ever begin where religion ends, they being of continuing inquiry rather than halting, as chemistry succeeded alchemy and astronomy replaced astrology.

How about: Universal facts found, reasoned first or not, are the proofs of the truths found by science; faith, not of truth and proof, but just pronounced and said, still brings happiness, which is a value of religion; logic of the mind leads to sensible but (some) unproved ideas of philosophy; and, the inner sensation of ‘revelation’ is validated only by individual human experience; however, often necessarily conflicting amongst, due to nature and/or nurture.

[MikeInfinity]

Men all too often forget that God is the greatest experience in human existence. Other experiences are limited in their nature and content, but the experience of God has no limits save those of the creature's comprehension capacity, and this very experience is in itself capacity enlarging. When men search for God, they are searching for everything. When they find God, they have found everything. The search for God is the unstinted bestowal of love attended by amazing discoveries of new and greater love to be bestowed.

From The Urantia Book

GOD: The Theory of Everything

I subscribe to "God" "Creator" "He" "it" "Love". What ever God is, He will be forever beyond our comprehension; which will make us forever reach for Him.

It is not needed for every one to find God for if one should find Him while yet in the flesh, that same one will have found everything and there would be nothing more to find. Remember The Apostle Paul said: "Run it like a race, yeah though all run, only one shall win".

And if this one should win the race would be over. The human race. That one winner would then need a new race in order to continue His career. Surely the valiant winner in such an epic race would love to...'race'. Some people would say, " Once a person reaches a certain level of knowing all that this world has to offer, they pass on." They Die? Is death then their reward for a life of overcoming? Because 'overcoming' is the path where all that is desirable is attained. Again I ask; they die? No. Our Creator is just. Our Creator is the same as the laws that govern our universe. Every action a reaction- you shall reap what you sew.

This victorious racer would receive his reward in the sight of all the runners.
For this place we call earth is nothing more than a stage. An obstacle course. A gymnasium. A track. A place to exercise those attributes that make us the universe's supreme life form. A place to exercise our humanity.

All evolutionary creature life is beset by certain inevitabilities. Consider the following:
1. Is courage —strength of character—desirable? Then must man be reared in an environment which necessitates grappling with hardships and reacting to disappointments.
2. Is altruism —service of one's fellows—desirable? Then must life experience provide for encountering situations of social inequality.
3. Is hope —the grandeur of trust—desirable? Then human existence must constantly be confronted with insecurities and recurrent uncertainties.
4. Is faith —the supreme assertion of human thought—desirable? Then must the mind of man find itself in that troublesome predicament where it ever knows less than it can believe.
5. Is the love of truth and the willingness to go wherever it leads, desirable? Then must man grow up in a world where error is present and falsehood always possible.
6. Is idealism —the approaching concept of the divine—desirable? Then must man struggle in an environment of relative goodness and beauty, surroundings stimulative of the irrepressible reach for better things.
7. Is loyalty —devotion to highest duty—desirable? Then must man carry on amid the possibilities of betrayal and desertion. The valor of devotion to duty consists in the implied danger of default.
8. Is unselfishness —the spirit of self-forgetfulness—desirable? Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor. Man could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-life to forsake. Man could never lay saving hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to exalt and differentiate the good by contrast.
9. Is pleasure —the satisfaction of happiness—desirable? Then must man live in a world where the alternative of pain and the likelihood of suffering are ever-present experiential possibilities.

From The Urantia Book

The winner would have mastered these attributes then, the world would have to change around him in order to facilitate his personality. Better yet he would change the world just to facilitate his own fancy. For he would fancy LOVE. He would have had obtained what others sought after throughout history-"The Philosopher's Stone", "The Golden Fleece", The Holy Grail", The Fountain of Youth"...

"The Theory of Everything".

[austintorn@aol.com]

If God is truly beyond comprehension, then no arbitrary attributes of Her goals, character, rewards, conditions, etc., could be invented. The mind, though, likes to attempt and then apply comprehension.

[MikeInfinity]

"If God is truly beyond comprehension, then no arbitrary attributes of Her goals, character, rewards, conditions, etc., could be invented. The mind, though, likes to attempt and then apply comprehension."
By austintorn@aol.com

"If an atheist and a theist were to argue about God, they both would be right and both would be wrong, which would make God the topic that would unite them."
By Mike Infinity

In my opinion, the latter quote would make you right about Her.
Can you comprehend how you could be right and wrong about the former?

[austintorn@aol.com]

[MikeInfinity]

Michael Crosby
Saved by God through Jesus Christ- from drugs and low self-esteem.
Born again Sunday morning 7:27am November 14, 2004
"Knowledge is truth, and truth will set you free."
I'm Not Who I Was.

[melanie]

Men all too often forget that God is the greatest experience in human existence.

Other experiences are limited in their nature and content, but the experience of God has no limits save those of the creature's comprehension capacity,
and this very experience is in itself capacity enlarging.
When men search for God, they are searching for everything. When they find God, they have found everything.
The search for God is the unstinted bestowal of love attended by amazing discoveries of new and greater love to be bestowed.

From The Urantia Book

This is a very beautiful quote.
It is also profoundly true, and can be personally experienced.
How many people find this higher truth that 'ironically' is their birthright.
Was that not the whole point of the spirit in the flesh?

As Drifter so eloquently 'tongue in cheek'

put's it in the following quote on quote.

I finally got divorced from my last wife..., number three...
every time I made love to her... she closed her eyes.
She couldn't stand to see me having a good time.

How many of us find that magic spark within us?
How much more bliss when both man and wife are living and sharing together the truth.
Could we bare that amount of light and love, are we ready for that?