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It is true that modern society is the most sinful ever.
But this is misunderstood because 'sin' is misunderstood.
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To say that modernity is sinful without previous equal does nor mean that modern people commit more sinful acts than ever before.
I do not think this is true; and anyway it is impossible to establish; or perhaps even meaningless to quantify and calculate numbers and severity of sinful acts.
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When sin is recognized as a perspective or orientation, then the statement that modern society is the most sinful ever becomes clear - and obviously correct.
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Sin is to be orientated away from God; and modern society is exactly that.
Modern society does not believe in transcendental reality; does not believe in the soul; does not believe in life after death; does not believe in any kind of God; does not believe in a personal God - concerned by individual salvation; and does not believe that Jesus was the incarnate Son of God.
That is to say that modern society, in its public discourse, excludes (and implicitly at least, often explicitly) the reality of any other than the material.
That is to say that modern society is not capable of the kind of relationship to reality of the ancient Greeks (who believed in transcendent reality, and in an impersonal God); nor are we animistic - like hunter gatherers; nor pagan; nor monotheistic; and certainly not Christian.
Modernity cannot be Christian since modernity lacks all the simpler, more basic orientations to which Christianity historically was added, which Christianity historically completed.
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This is why modernity is the most sinful of all human societies - not from what we do, but from our social orientation.
Modernity is turned-away from Jesus, of course, and turned-away from any conception of God - and not only from God but from all the other transcendent realities of every previous society.
Not only is modernity turned-away from transcendent reality, modernity is turned-away from reality: denies that reality is any other than an arbitrary social construct; and denies the existence of anything other than the immediate material world.
In other words, modernity is nihilist - not superficially nihilist at the level of conscious and explicit claims or statements; but denying of the reality of the real at the deepest level of assumption and action.
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Indeed more even than this: it is not just denial, but incomprehension. Modernity does not even comprehend that reality could be real - it does not know what this means.
Modernity is without any doubt the most sinful society ever - not just because it denies vitrue (which it does) nor even because it embraces sin (which it does), but because it cannot even comprehend the meaning of sin.
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Note: Modern scientists believe this nihilism as much as everyone else - modern scientists implicitly believe (as demonstrated by their actions) that scientific 'reality' is defined by peer review, that is by a consensus of experts. They believe that the process of peer review can be shaped to yield a result, then that result is regard as scientific truth - the meaning of 'sceintific truth' is not that it is reality, but that other people should defer to it.
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Probability of God arises from atheists' own thoughts.
ReplyDeleteAtheists, whether scientists or not, accept the thinking of scientists and our surrounding realities, so:
1. We know intelligence exists and large differences in intelligence between species. Intelligence has increased considerably during the existence of life on earth.
2 Atheists define god as a superintelligence.
There might be some tipping point, after which intelligence increases irresistibly and fast to the level of superintelligence, resembling a material object approaching then passing the speed of light. It's at least apparent mass increases very fast and the further acceleration becomes increasingly difficult, but if it can be accelerated past the speed of light, the velocity of the object starts to increase automatically, to gain energy from the environment. The object would have to be special or somehow insulated to withstand this, because normal object would lose it's electromagnetic field and fall apart in such a situation. Another more closer example to our reality is the tipping point in the spread of epidemics. Small differences in various factors can create a fast spreading epidemic or extinguish it.
Or there is just the normal intermittent development to superintelligence level.
3. Many science fiction writers, many of them with scientific background, have imagined people at some point reaching superintelligence, and thus supercapability and superquality level. Some scientists, especially physicists, have speculated with these ideas. These have been accepted by all kinds of atheists as normal and reasonable thoughts, that could be the ultimate goal and destiny of humankind. In my atheist period, when I talked about these ideas to other atheists, they were accepted by all of them, and the reception ranged from accepting neutrality to enthusiastic embrace.
4. To explain our universe, physicists use various explanations that go beyond our universe (imaginations, story telling in modern form, without any concrete scientific evidence, although it is possible they are true), or they accept our universe as defined by observations and studies of scientists. In the latter case fine tuning of many factors are so precise, that intelligent design is a plausible explanation.
Explanations that go beyond our universe include huge numbers of multiple universes; repeatedly expanding and contracting universes; inflatonary universe of which our visible universe is but a microscopic part; the original energy sea giving rise to universes and to which all dying universes sink again; universe arising from absolute nothing (yes, even this); etc., and some combination of these.
Continued ...
Part 2.
ReplyDelete5. Scientists admit that beyond our universe and in relation to our universe there can be things that are beyond our capabilities and possibilities of comprehension.
We are tied to our material and energy surroundings and extrapolations made out of them. If something radically different exists outside or in relation to our universe, it might be impossible for us to even imagine it. With this I don't refer to the differences between universes in multiverse; or to differences between our reality and the original energy field; which are radical, but at least at some level possible to imagine and understand.
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So, at the same time atheists accept the development of god to be normal (if it is man developing to the god level); they accept such enormous timescales, and number universes and realities that they make the development of god/God somewhere at some previous point likely; but they deny the possibility of god/God. Their thinking is self-contradictory, confused, self-deceptive and dishonest. In their thoughts god is already true, but they are fearful of something outside themselves that would correspond to it in the real world.
If we would ask them, "Do you admit that the probability of God in rational analysis is at least 1%?", they would deny this, because nothing would then prevent this probability rising to 49%, 51%, 99% or 99,9999999999999999999999999999%. They are already very uncomfortable with the 1%. Their denial becomes absolute and irrational.
I don't claim in absolute way anything about the origin of God, but I sense it might be beyond our capabilities and possibilities to deduct or imagine it, because of the limitations inherent in our universe (the nature of matter, energy, geometry and dimensions; or if you wish, all this can be reduced to pure geometry).
It is possible that God meant that we someday reach the level of god in our development and perhaps then are ready to communicate with God in a concrete way in this world. But we will still honor our Father, God, always.
I think you are reasoning about God in the same kind of way that the ancient Greeks did, and Aquinas did.
ReplyDeleteSuch a style of reasoning does lead to several concepts of God as a unmoved mover etc.
However modern humans are apparently unable to think about metaphysics at all, ever.
Reason does not seem to lead to a concept of God as creator of everything - that is a rather unusual idea among world religions - most religions seem to regard the universe as always having been there.
(Indeed there are some Christians, such as Mormons, who pretty much believe this.)
But the idea of a 'personal God' concerned with our individual salvation, comes only from divine revelation - communication with humanity from deity.
How to prove the validity of revelation?
Well the very first step is that there must be admitted to be at least the *possibility* of revelation - and that first step is where modern atheism falls.
Modern atheists deny the possibility of revelation, so any and every individual piece of evidence produced in support of revelation is known in advance to be wrong, hence explicable in other terms.
Debate cannot even be begun.
I wrote: "the original energy sea"
ReplyDelete- Strictly speaking, this theory talks about fluctuating quantum field, and there are no dimensions, no matter, no energy and no time (or perhaps there is small cyclical "time" fluctuating back and forth between some variating points) in the same sense than in our world. The idea is based on mathematical models, and the physicists don't understand concretely the nature of the field, if it exists at all. I use "energy sea" to describe and give a mental picture of restless field, whatever it is and why it is and why it is the way it is.
But, if modern scientists would tell about the original quantum sea to people who lived thousands of years ago, and they tried their best to comprehend it from their level of understanding of the world and things around them, and they then wrote it down, I think it would sound like the following:
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
Many physicists agree, e.g:
Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics."
Robert Jastrow (astronomer, physicist and cosmologist): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
Addition:
ReplyDeleteSo, we can ask; "Did someone tell that to the writers of Genesis?" and "Who told that to the writers of Genesis?"