# The God sent atheist



## Israel (Oct 25, 2014)

God, and many of you know, I get wordy. It doesn't help at all. I keep looking for the words that may help shed any light on the thing I see. 
It's like a buncha guys (see: The Hangover) waking up from a stupor, trying to piece together what happened, what's happening.
Or, maybe, a buncha guys waking up wearing football uniforms...in the middle of a stadium...dumbfounded, looking around at one another, while seats full of fans holler and scream for us to play...and we look at the opposing team...quizically, and figure "I guess we're here to do something like that other team...let's mimic their moves...and do what the crowd seems to be calling for...something called "play football?"

We are, in some senses, thrust onto a field, this field of earth, we have all had coaches, moms and dads (some for what we may even consider better or worse, some for longer, or shorter duration), teaching us, coaching us, even before we knew we were...being coached and taught. Stuff went in; unbeckoned, unjudged, unsought.
Then...somewhere along the line...we got a sense of "self". 

But this self has already got tons of stuff scribbled upon it, and try as we may, we may never know who...or what...we truly are as a blank slate, though we try fervently at every turn to be "ourself". Are we acting from? Reacting to? 
Why am I so stupid? Why am I smart?
Why am I mean? Why am I a sap? Why do I laugh when that one falls? Why does that "other" one help that person up? Why do I seem to succeed at this where another seems to fail...why do I fail at this...when that other makes success look so easy?
What we seem to most often take for granted, even in all of this, is our "being".
We may take for granted the questions..."why am I this way or that", or even "why are THEY this way or that" as something we have a right to...because we, fundamentally, take being for granted.

But the question of "why am I this or that" or "Why are THEY this or that", can never really be separated from the niggling underlying one...far more broad in its scope, with far greater possible implications "why am I?"...at all?

To some perhaps...it's a fool's errand..."you are because you are, buddy...if you poke around there too long...weirdness awaits." Yes, it does.
Scientifically (so to speak) one may ponder the outcome of a faster sperm. Faster at least, than the one that resulted in "me". To you, it's moot, I'm still just another face in the crowd. You don't care, and neither, probably, should you. 

But regardless of that weirdness, "would the "I" then being have like half my consciousness? (my mother's constant donation...just the "one" target) Would that "I" go about like someone suffering phantom pains...of the "me", I am, but "then" isn't, that might have been?

Uh oh...another possible Pandora's box...consciousness.
I "think" I have it.  But...do I? Am I the one not "meant" to be...and I am "the one" suffering those phantom pains?
Practically speaking, if we are even able to speak...to communicate (is that an illusion?) am I the only one who has ever "wanted to be different"? Am I the only one who has ever surveyed this thing I call "myself" and said, "I really don't like this so much...I wish I were "different?" But how? Richer (gee, that's a very superficial thing...isn't it?) Better looking (how vapid)...taller? Even...smarter?
Because I assume I am speaking to "thinkers"...the poverty of these changes, I again assume...is apparent.

But...the things that have "hurt" me most, caused the deepest longings for change, have been the interior decorating changes...of disposition, of reaction in mind...of "Character"...of "my" nature...and back I am...again to the fundamentals...did nature (That sperm I now may wish would have come in "second"...at least) and nurture...different "parents"...different "nanny"...different family altogether?
And yet, in it all, I still presuppose my "being"...even if only in wanting to be a different "being" ...it is _assumed_...affirmed. 
I can't seem to escape this fundamental assumption...that because "I am"...I am...purposed to be.
(Yes, at this point, you may all look at one another and say...or point to your heads and make that circular motion...while the other fingers points at me)
I'm sure no one else has ever thought this way, right?
Again, I am just a face, to you all, in the crowd.

To you...my leg is plainly not there...and so I am diagnosed with "phantom pains". But...your diagnosis does nothing for this face in the crowd. Your telling me "it's all in my head" does nothing for me, and I even learn enough about science to tell you..."guess what, ALL pain is always "in your head".  But even my rejoinder to you does nothing, even though entirely true, to ease my own pain. Soon, in despite, I will learn to call it "your science".

And then I meet another. In the crowd. Just, at first, to me, another face. He tells me this...something I hear from no one else, "You know that assumption you have? You know...that one of which you seem so sure...that one you cannot seem to get past? That you "have to be"?
What if I were to tell you...it's been granted to you? What if I tell you..."your being"....is not an independently affirmed (by you) thing, but owed, and at the disposition of another? And just as surely as you now question your own being...you will question my being of who I am to tell you this? You won't be able to help yourself...but, it's OK, because of who I am...telling you this. I'll help. In everything"
Yeah, I say, "right"...(making swirling circles around my temple)
"You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free"
Yeah...sure...whatever you say, I've heard that from a buncha folks...already. It's quaint...it's trite." I think. I say.

"OK, now you are on the road...you think I'm crazy...good...baby steps at first are good. It's a start, and it's always the same for everyone...you "doubt me". I can live with that...have actually...forever. It doesn't hurt, really, the way you presently experience everyone elses doubt of "you"...you'll get over it. I know who "I am"...but you...not so much...yet." He says.
"Just remember this"...he adds as I try to scurry away , not wanting too much to be seen with a "crazy" lest I be seen to be a friend to such, and quite possibly catching it "from him". (yes, I am very concerned, despite the "crazy" in my own head...of being labelled such by the family, the friends, the multitude of faces in the crowd upon which I have labored long and heard to win a smile, not a frown...or worse...that "circular motion")

"Just remember this" he says..."because I want to help you with that question about your "own being" and your surety of "having to be"...when you experience it...you won't like it...but it's a great help, and don't worry, your doubt will take you there, but it's also the way doubt is killed" 
Huh?
"When you get a small taste of this in your doubt, don't worry, I'm there to help...you know my name...just call...trust me...I won't let you down...even though you'll be sure at that time...of nothing except that experience...I've been there...taken care of it for you..."

"For the Son of Man is to go just as it is written of Him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born."

So much for my "having to be"...it all kinda evaporated...and yet was also strangely affirmed...when I called out that name...from a place of my own surety...that I "had to be...because... "I am"...but tasted in the tiniest bit I now know was by grace to a doubtful heart...that I would come to a place where my being was wished against...wholeheartedly...by me.

"Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men"
Goads are quite used to being kicked at, but hard, nevertheless.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/owZc3Xq8obk" framebor>der="0" allowfullscreen></iframe

It's wonderfully funny to me, how God sends me brothers, disguised...to see if I can recognize myself....now.


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## bullethead (Oct 25, 2014)

> God, and many of you know, I get wordy. It doesn't help at all. I keep looking for the words that may help shed any light on the thing I see.
> It's like a buncha guys (see: The Hangover) waking up from a stupor, trying to piece together what happened, what's happening.
> Or, maybe, a buncha guys waking up wearing football uniforms...in the middle of a stadium...dumbfounded, looking around at one another, while seats full of fans holler and scream for us to play...and we look at the opposing team...quizically, and figure "I guess we're here to do something like that other team...let's mimic their moves...and do what the crowd seems to be calling for...something called "play football?"
> 
> ...



The above was a good read.
After that the asserted fiction kicked in and it went from relate-able to another Sunday morning televangelist preaching to the choir.


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## Oak-flat Hunter (Oct 25, 2014)

*nature*

Nature is not inundated with dogma..


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## atlashunter (Oct 25, 2014)

Worst case of chronic verbal diarrhea I've ever seen.


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## gemcgrew (Mar 8, 2016)

Well said!


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## bullethead (Mar 9, 2016)

Sounds like the single set of footprints in the sand story. Entertaining, thought provoking, but totally made up in order to sell more snake oil.


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## WaltL1 (Mar 9, 2016)

As for Penn's point about "how much would you have to hate someone".....
The insinuation being it's done out of love for the other person.
My experience has been that's only true or maybe evident would be better word, a small, small percentage of the time.
Israel see your list of man's attributes and apply to the above.


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## ambush80 (Mar 9, 2016)

Penn would also say "You better be able to prove what you believe is real."


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## Israel (Jun 25, 2022)

ambush80 said:


> Penn would also say "You better be able to prove what you believe is real."



I have some hope that he come to the place where he say "what is real is proving me".


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## oldfella1962 (Jun 25, 2022)

"Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men"
*Goads are quite used to being kicked at, but hard, nevertheless. *

I do not understand what you are trying to say in that last sentence. 
Is "goad" a typo or just a word I don't understand? I have heard "goad" used as a verb meaning to egg someone on, but that wouldn't make sense to me in this sentence.


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## oldfella1962 (Jun 25, 2022)

Oak-flat Hunter said:


> *nature*
> 
> Nature is not inundated with dogma..



And humans are a product of nature. Ergo, we are not inundated with dogma unless we choose to be.


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## RegularJoe (Jun 25, 2022)

The original post reminds me that everything _learned through my senses_
has gotten there routed thru my senses (duh? : ),
in other words,
things learned have been learned not thru being directly connected with reality.
Thus, my said 'learnings' are only as good as my sensory system 
is accurately perceiving and delivering 'reality' to my brain.


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## Israel (Jun 25, 2022)

oldfella1962 said:


> "Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men"
> *Goads are quite used to being kicked at, but hard, nevertheless. *
> 
> I do not understand what you are trying to say in that last sentence.
> Is "goad" a typo or just a word I don't understand? I have heard "goad" used as a verb meaning to egg someone on, but that wouldn't make sense to me in this sentence.


In the most basic sense I presently understand that might have any hope of common understanding, there appears in me a "need to know". Does it in you?

And I (we) need not here specifically be referring to what we both might agree are called spiritual matters, even if one is persuaded of them or not.

As I watch my great granddaughter try to fit this soap dishy kinda thing together till it snaps rightly in place (as she knows, and has seen it does)...and ends up again and again with it slightly askew till she utters frustration, (I do the same when dealing with a nut on fingertips reaching for the unseen end of a bolt buried in a car frame) I see a commonness...trying to make "something work" by the knowledge it does, but needing in any particular circumstance to know how to make it work. Or work better.

So everything around us. From when to plant and/or harvest, how to aim a rock, an arrow...or hold over at 300 yards...(and yes, every bit of minutiae sought out in and for preparations of those endeavors.) How a muscle contracts and is countered by others (what good is holding a rock to throw if you can't release it?) why a straight arrow is preferable... and fletching also, energy stored in a bent bow transferred "back" to the string by which it was bent...and that certain stuff burns so intensely and rapidly as to create enough pressure to "push" a 140 grain projectile (what's a grain anyway?) down a tube with enough speed to make that 300 yard journey...if held rightly enough to offset all the other stuff we have investigated...gravity, etc.

Yes, I know what a grain is...but the moment we discover a thing (and all these "things"...bows, rocks with mass, seeds, hands/arms... gunpowder..."worked"...well before some were provoked to understand the why of it, the need to know (the how of their working) even to the defining of certain laws and properties (hey, why doesn't gunpowder work when wet?) right down to (or is it up to?) the search for Higgs Boson. And what goes on in black holes, anyway?

Admittedly a .270 will work, and could with just as much or more accuracy for a guy who couldn't care less about pressures created by combustion or rotational axes.

And, to the extreme for illustration (and God forbid it be taken as derision) if hungry you wouldn't try to hand Stephen Hawking that rifle to fetch dinner. But you might sit with him for a while if you wanted to know how such a thing could reach out and stop a hog or deer before it even heard the shot to respond to. And I know I am being so very simplistic and bordering on the tendentious. What don't we "have a need to know" about? Even what _afflicted_ Stephen Hawking.

Again, not everyone may have this to the same measure, Bubba the crackshot may not care at all about pyrolisis at certain heat, but he knows he doesn't like his venison burnt to black...so he removes it when browned. He learned, through his need to know...the "when" by visual cues...aromas, etc.

And again to extremes...so yes...even a Bubba may make a gazillion dollars also selling (but is that advantage?) his recipe for "Butt Rub" while the guy who went to the finest culinary school is still struggling to land a job in that field.
Again...too simplistic?

What haven't we...what haven't _do we_...not touch with this? What haven't we investigated...by some sense of their _working already_ down into some form of laws applicable (even laws of merchandising and advertising...)? And it doesn't matter how outlier an outlier might be, rare, all but impossible to discern, or even only momentarily flickered to a few, or one, once it is surmised as being, or even possible it might be...we (or a someone) are on the hunt with a need to know.

And of course this makes no case for God or even "a" god. I cannot even make a suitable case that any "need to know" can be agreed to for its placement. But if, even just you and I have some recognition of a common driving toward an understanding (finding the laws governing) and admit that, at the very least, once we admit we are manifestly in pursuit of such "laws" we also are in the quandary together?

Shall I lie? Say "There are laws" (made obviously true to, by, and of me in my pursuit of them, sure, maybe not like an Einstein) "but laws can exist without a governing authority"?...which is what makes them laws to begin with?

Shall I pretend my "doing" is all not to do with any of such...as though I have, or was formed...fully knowing?

I learned how to hold a nail and swing a hammer a bit better than at the first when a throbbing thumb provoked my need to know.

End user looking for why and how. Condemned to it?

Or something else?

Could it even be...?

That what condemned me to such a thing was not a need to know...but my own need to think I know?

And there cloak myself with an illusion of control? 

But how can it be safe to come out of that? Can it be? 

If I know anything, have learned anything...it has always been at the expense of someone else.

Sometimes I think about Oppenheimer, too. And folks like him.
Is it always (ever?) better to be victor when needs be others must be made prey? 

By what one knows?


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## oldfella1962 (Jun 25, 2022)

Israel said:


> In the most basic sense I presently understand that might have any hope of common understanding, there appears in me a "need to know". Does it in you?
> 
> And I (we) need not here specifically be referring to what we both might agree are called spiritual matters, even if one is persuaded of them or not.
> 
> ...



   You lost me at "in the most basic sense". The word *Goad *means what exactly? I googled it and it said "to guide or push someone into something" and also talked about herding oxen.


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## oldfella1962 (Jun 25, 2022)

RegularJoe said:


> The original post reminds me that everything _learned through my senses_
> has gotten there routed thru my senses (duh? : ),
> in other words,
> things learned have been learned not thru being directly connected with reality.
> ...



That is true! The human brain is constantly bouncing all incoming data against your own unique version of "reality." The brain just can't keep up. That's why five witnesses will often give vastly differing testimony on any unplanned & sudden event.


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## Israel (Jun 25, 2022)

oldfella1962 said:


> That is true! The human brain is constantly bouncing all incoming data against your own unique version of "reality." The brain just can't keep up. That's why five witnesses will often give vastly differing testimony on any unplanned & sudden event.





> your own unique version of "reality."




Yes, this in part was what I'd hoped to imply (in the OP) by man's necessity of a _clean slate_ and therefore an indirect experience prior to that (clean slating); its being filtered/colored/adulterated (if you will) by all the writing done upon him prior to the discovery of his will to decide what to "let in" or reject.

What a good boy!

What a useless rug rat!

(As examples of extreme)

Could be equally useless to knowing, depending.


By the time we grow to a conscious judging of matters we are already skewed to ourselve's experience that nothing thereafter can ever be touched cleanly or first hand.

It would...if there could be such a thing (which could be much of what we contend over)...require an intervention, a debugging, before direct informing could take place.

And if even that were agreed possible, what form would such a thing take?

Could a corrupted/skewed system perform it upon itself?


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## oldfella1962 (Jun 25, 2022)

Israel said:


> Yes, this in part was what I'd hoped to imply (in the OP) by man's necessity of a _clean slate_ and therefore an indirect experience prior to that (clean slating); its being filtered/colored/adulterated (if you will) by all the writing done upon him prior to the discovery of his will to decide what to "let in" or reject.
> 
> What a good boy!
> 
> ...



You would have to wipe a person's past experiences clean, but their personality would be wiped too! That would be the dilemma.


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## 1gr8buildit (Jun 25, 2022)

Israel said:


> God, and many of you know, I get wordy. It doesn't help at all. I keep looking for the words that may help shed any light on the thing I see.
> It's like a buncha guys (see: The Hangover) waking up from a stupor, trying to piece together what happened, what's happening.
> Or, maybe, a buncha guys waking up wearing football uniforms...in the middle of a stadium...dumbfounded, looking around at one another, while seats full of fans holler and scream for us to play...and we look at the opposing team...quizically, and figure "I guess we're here to do something like that other team...let's mimic their moves...and do what the crowd seems to be calling for...something called "play football?"
> 
> ...


Context aside, I'd like to meet you one day. To see if your normal in person. LOL, no offense, but you brain works differently than mine. I like to consider myself a thinker, yet, compared to your typical  post, I realize that your like a nail gun compared to my hammer.


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## Israel (Jun 26, 2022)

oldfella1962 said:


> You would have to wipe a person's past experiences clean, but their personality would be wiped too! That would be the dilemma.


Yes! You got it.

That is/would be a great puzzle to admit to. How to keep in any form an identity of self, and I believe you rightly call it personality, if such a clean slating could be applied/take place. How would "I" then know me as me?

It's good (to "me" at least) confirmational bias gets hammered away at so often in these discussions. And I think that's precisely what you addressed and were addressing here:



> That is true! The human brain is constantly bouncing all incoming data against your own unique version of "reality." The brain just can't keep up.



It's like we holler across chasms at each other "that's not the view from here" from inescapable vantage points (if we but change the your to "our" in that statement)



> your own unique version of "reality."




Would we deny we each have it?

But there's something more, isn't there? Cause if we concede the vantage points as inescapable, immutable, why do we bother (as the hollering manifestly shows) some attempt at communicating...even if it only be from "You should see what I see from here"..."NO! you should be seeing what I see from here!", so yes, that too is now a dilemma.

And if we enter that question (for ourselves) all sorts of other questions open up. To even more dilemmas. "I don't holler at everybody, I have friends" so maybe this idea of chasms is faulty. Can more than one occupy the same plateau or at least some "close enough"? Or at least in such similarity as to not have to holler?

Am I able of honesty? At 4:50 this AM while I hear my wife's gentle breaths in the next room I think I have had no better friend who has "stuck with me in my being "me"...even through the dropping of many guards...than she".

But man! I could tell you of firefights and fire works within and without, so that at times if witnessed (or witnessed through a window to my soul) you'd know..."there are times I see this guy has been convinced he has no greater enemy than she, herself". Yeah, a dilemma. For as much as I am convinced she is, and has to be very special to endure me...why am I not able to lie that I have seemingly had the red nuke button pushed in me...thinking it was her _intentionally _doing the pushing? And me as ready to say "If it's fire you want... It's fire you'll get!"

Talk about perceptions of chasms between! Launch the ICBM's!

Maybe some "letting go" of my personality that may seem impossible, I cannot now bear as an immutable thing.

But yeah...this is "my reality" and as much as some might say..."well, we all know what it is to have disagreements in a marriage" it is still something of a dilemma...how the greatest heat seems generated in relationship with those "closest".


And I can't help but imagine if anyone reading has never had a blow up with a friend, never shuffled through the knife drawer of their own mind searching for the sharpest, they must think I am beyond crazy. Ha! But if you were on this plateau!

I have nothing to say to any man who has never found contradiction in himself except "how is that? What is that _even like_?"

But here's the thing...(is it another dilemma?) once I/we admit to it, the seeming chasms, the seeming all out desire to maintain our position of not "losing self" by some surrender, giving not one inch of that "hard earned" ground of own vantage point...I find I am just like any other man for the most part...and suddenly what once appeared chasm (I've come to appreciate Ambush's frequent appeal to what must have appeared my eccentricity) "talk to me like we are in the same boat on a fishing day"

Yes. Tell me what you see in the bow...and I'll tell you what I see from the stern.

Yes, each of us is unique.

Just like _every other man._


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## Israel (Jun 26, 2022)

1gr8buildit said:


> Context aside, I'd like to meet you one day. To see if your normal in person. LOL, no offense, but you brain works differently than mine. I like to consider myself a thinker, yet, compared to your typical  post, I realize that your like a nail gun compared to my hammer.


I'm in!

I'm about 40 miles north west of Savannah...and if some time we can shrink the distance between us, or a bunch of us...or it just "happens"...


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## gordon 2 (Jun 26, 2022)

I find this post-tread interesting because it is about the existential nature of man and it paints a picture painted a few times in scripture especially in the Old Testament texts of a man who's frames are limited to knowledge of things gleaned from a direct observation and his attempt at objective assessments regards self and everything else.

Job and Ecclesiastes come to mind.  The authors of both these books have faith and in this  is the only thing that really separates the observation of reality from theirs' ( the Old Testament's wise men) and the assessments of the atheists today. Both dudes are basically with the same consciousness minus faith in one group.

We love some but not too much and we hate  some also but not too much is where it's at with both. Such is the denominator or corral or form and content of the consciousness of the Christian without Christ ( there is such a thing) and of the atheist which by definition is without this God therefore without Christ as well. This observation, the thing itself, is the frame and content of human consciousness. It is the first substance of consciousness. We are who operate between the two lobes of love and hate and so to moderate them, we call ourselves civilized and individual as to person and individual as to kind-- a kind able to reflect on their own collective and individual consciousness. The man that loves too much is an outcast and the man that hates too much is crazy or "goes crazy" and so we have jails and hospitals and prisons .

Both group can fellowship with each other in that to all there is a season, as they can agree to this and so hunting is in the fall within rules and regulations and eating berries and sports fishing is in the summer with some Health Department-DNR oversight...  etc... After all we must be guarded against each other and ourselves. One never knows when our consciousness might step over the line by some lapse  and get shot at.

And then there is the consciousness formed by the corral of Christ...which comes with a warning like the smarts of a fine breed of sheep dog:   "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot." It is a call to both the man with faith that was before Christ was, a Christian that still has the consciousness of the Old Testament saints despite that he puts forward being birthed new, modernity's saintly Solomon's,--- a wise guy with faith mostly and the atheist a wise guy with none.

(For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness" )


"That we have nothing to loose"  is an interesting concept.


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