What is a/the “Divine Weasel.” Just give me the shortest answer possible.
To all, especially Poly: I just wish to talk to Glitch on a personal level. No challenges. No set prayers. No two week schedules. I do not even consider what I plan, to be witnessing, even though that’s what it may amount to. As seen in recent days(think Phaedrus, Opalcat), there are some things that should not be shared with the whole world, the entire MB. I believe this is one of them.
Glitch: I don’t mind that everyone knows I’ll be talking to you in the future. But, I’ll give you time to wait before we begin e-mailing. Take as much time as you need, and then email me first.
Adam, the term is one I coined which has gotten some general acceptance here for a particular view of God. The Divine Weasel is the version of God who, claiming to love all mankind, created the world in six days and all animals on the last three of them, planting evidence of a 4.6-billion-year-old planet, a 12-to-20-billion-old universe, and a sequence of fossils in it so that a reasonable man studying them would conclude that is their actual age and that Darwinian evolution did occur, hides himself from a fair chunk of mankind and demands adherence on “faith” without proof, and then sends all who use their reason and don’t jump blindly into belief in him to eternal torture. It’s sort of a straw-man caricature of the god of literalist fundamentalism, and I admit as much. But it makes a very clear distinction between that belief structure and the one I adhere to, of a God that so loved the world that He sent His only-begotten Son… Who dispenses His grace to all who will accept it, Who sincerely loves and works for the best interests of all men, and Who did not lie in either the Bible or the Universe.
Lib, I may not “owe” then to you, but I wish to offer them none-the-less.
My impression is that you and Polycarp feel that if a sincere request to God is made for faith, that it will be fulfilled, but you must also believe that it will be fulfilled.
I feel like, if not in this case, that I know of a specific time in the past where this is true.
If God didn’t come then what hope do I have?
Jeffery also says I must believe in order to make contact. Thanks to past failures I no longer believe, and I likely never will again. That doesn’t prevent me from making an open-minded, sincere request. However, because I will never believe again this implies a level of hopelessness to my cause.
I mean no offense by this. But the reasoning suggests such a case.
Also, I was extending this to imply that only the Divine Weasal would ignore these requests. Poly has above posted some other options, which I am considering, so that implication may, in fact, be wrong, so feel free to ignore it.
On my (revised and present tentative) thesis, God will grant a request made for faith, at a time and place of his choosing, not necessarily at the time and place it was made. It is not necessary to “have faith” to receive it – that is almost self-contradictory – but simply to be sufficiently open to avoid blocking what you are asking for. That’s my $0.10 on it; others’ opinions will no doubt differ.
Poly: Interesting. So if I die without faith then this hypothesis is wrong?
Should I add a clause to my will that a letter (email) be sent to you upon my death detailing whether I believed or not? The real funny thing is I probably would do this, if Poly really wanted me to.
I guess what I don’t understand is why that is surprising or only just now occurring to people. For everything there is a season, isn’t there?
I would encourage those who profess atheism (and those who profess theism too) to look to Gaudere’s example for understanding. Be content where you are and what you are. When God speaks, it won’t necessarily be what you were expecting. But if you’ve asked in His name for faith, then be patient. That doesn’t mean go sit in a ditch in a sack cloth and wait. It just means go on about your business and leave your heart open to Him. That’s the belief part. What you’ve left open, He will fill with love. That’s the faith part.
Glitch: I’d welcome getting that answer then if I don’t beforehand. However, I neglected to add one side point, in which I differ from most Christians: IMO, Death doesn’t matter to salvation. Whether you die before or after coming to know and love God is totally incommensurate with the whole question at hand.
To make my point, consider the following hypothetical situation: God’s Plan calls for an atheist, who we’ll name Cain, to have a conversion experience. This is so essential to His Master Plan that He is even willing to go against free will and make Himself so obvious to Cain that he will be forced into belief. The trouble is, Cain is suicidal. So as God preps to make His theophany, Cain takes his trusty pistol and blows his brains out.
On the traditionalist view, Cain has just thwarted God’s Plan, and sent himself to Hell. Death becomes stronger than God. On my view, God manifests Himself to Cain after his death.
:::walks away, whistling the world’s most overplayed Celine Dion song:::
Huh? Why the twists and turns around free will, Poly? Wouldn’t you agree that all who love, when they see Him, will recognize Him as what was in their hearts all along? I agree with you that it has nothing to do with biological death any more than eternal life has to do with biological life. But nothing special is necessary.
We die and are reborn spiritually whenever we first believe, even if that’s after our bodies have died. This physical stuff is for moral context only. That’s how I see it, anyway.
If you read that passage carefully, you note that we read things into it. Death, followed by Judgment. OK. But the word “immediately” doesn’t appear there. Further, we are all to appear before him at the Parousia (Second Coming in the broad sense) for judgment, and you’ll note that the same passage says that “he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” My inference is that those who had not known Him in life will receive His salvation when they come to know Him then. We’ll see. I’m content to trust in and wait on His mercy.
I, for one, am not at all surprised to hear the “god will come to you in his own time” response. After all, what else could a theist say? But this, to me, refelcts far more of the divine weasle characteristics than those of the loving god Christians speak of. I often hear Christians saying that their lives are so much better becasue of their faith (not in a materialistic sense, but in terms of peace of mind (for lack of a better term)). All right. So, having god in my life will immesurably improve my life, grant me eternal salvation, and all I have to do to recieve this gift is to ask with an open heart. Been there, done that, nothing happened. Why does this loving god who wants nothing more than for his people to come to him look at someone who is suffering and begging him to come into their life, and decide, “Na, maybe in another 10 years?” For a god to say that he will come to all who seek him, and then leave some poor bastard wondering what the hell happened when, after trying his damnedest to seek god he finds nothing, is tyrannical. To me, this is god setting people up to be condemned. When he says he will come to all who seek, and then lets people go on for years seeking without finding anything, he must know there will come a point when the poor slob gives up. In my particular case, I know he knew because I prayed about every aspect of my struggle. He was apparently not impressed. Possibly becasue he wasn’t there to hear any of it, as I’ve now come to conclude.
So far, I’ve gotten: 1) If god doesn’t come to you, you must not be praying with an open heart/mind; 2) If god did not come to you, he will do so in his own time; and 3) You must believe in order to, well, believe.
Ya, I know, God works in mysterious ways.
On a side note to Glitch, I really didn’t mean to drag you into this part of the discussion or to imply that you were offended by any remarks made here. My intention with StrTrkr was only to point out that what he said to you has been said to me many times, and I wanted to give my take on it. I didn’t mean to speak for you and I apolgize for causing you to have to clarify this.
“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal
No worries, and no apologies necessary. I knew that this thread, upon my return, would contain alot of “Glitch this” and “Glitch that”. So, I knew that I would have to clarify differences between what somebody might state about me (hypothetically or otherwise), vs. what I really think.
Orangecakes: The offending remark (calling you a he) is in “Calling Great Debaters to Vote”.
I find salvation after death interesting, but odd. If I am still around after death, this will immediately tell me that something is up. Afterall, it isn’t what I expect to happen. So, note to self, if you die, and you are still able to “sense” and “think” … start believing, big time. But seriously, don’t you think that any kind of real after-death experience is kind of a big giveaway?
Well, start believing in what? Life after death, certainly, but there needn’t be a deity for that, although it would be a bit of evidence for those religions that claimed that there was life after death (all hundred thousand of 'em). Still, I can see a non-deity based “life after death” scenario.
Well, it would certainly prove to you that Materialism (the philosophy, not the lifestyle) is wrong. But the conclusion might still be up in the air: is it the God Poly and Lib. were telling you about? Or the Divine Weasel? Or maybe Phouka’s deity/-ies? Or maybe the Wiccan Goddess? When God shows up, should I pray the Christian Sinner’s Prayer? the Sh’ma? the Act of Contrition from the Catholic Rite of Penance? “Allahu akbar”? “Om mani padme hum”?
The real funny thing is I probably would do this, if Poly really wanted me to.