A dialogue...

The atheist and the theist, where was I. I put some history about a witch hunt on here because some of the facts will enter the dialogue.

So, the atheist was saying,
"....my empirically based criticism and demand for observation remains because we must use the visible formation to judge information. Come to think of it, that's the point of science. So you can see why I would note that God ought to come to dinner, then by observation I could know."

"So you would agree that information is invisible but award primacy to the visible. Actually, it seems to me that all the things we really care about are invisible such as mercy, hope, love, duty and honor. Insight is not sight, yet you seem to say that it ought to be. Perhaps it ought to be, and our sense of what is right should comport with what actually is. Perhaps it was meant to be, for us to have a sense of everything being in its right form instead of the universal perception that things are deformed or 'wrong.' But instead, there seems to be a difference between our conception and perception."

"I guess what I am saying is very simple, seeing is believing. Sight...yes I know about insight. But what is that, really? I know something when I see it."

"To be clear, I also have the desire to see. For instance, I would like for God to role back the sky as a scroll and come down as some type, some manifested, 'real' form....and then say, 'Yes, I exist. So shall we garden my garden the way I made it to be?' The thing about that is, what if God is going to do that but not yet? And what if the pattern in ancient stories is true? I mean true the same way you do, an actual observation beings of light creating or setting things right. Let's say for the sake of argument that ancient stories are true to one degree or another. Perhaps some were changed with the re-telling, yet they are not all superstition....and there were beings from the sky, like the tales of UFOs and so on. How would we know, having not experienced anything of the sort? How would we know about any type of anomaly, for that matter? Do you have to experience everything or see it, to know it? Again, I do want to see, just as you do. But in dealing with the things we are talking about much is insight, historical types of arguments and philosophical. It is not as if you can put such an experience in a test-tube to test it. The time of its observation, whatever it was, has come and gone. It is not amenable to observation and testing. Yet that is what you demand. I should note that we do not live by sight, not at all. There is space in us for the invisible reality of everything we cannot visibly see at the moment."

"Okay, some things are invisible....and we do base a lot of our lives on things that are invisible, I suppose. If I turn my back on you, then you are invisible. I suppose what I am saying is along the same lines of God letting suffering happen. It's a bit much to believe that God is powerful enough to stop evil and manifest before us, yet does not. Hmmm, I said if I turn my back on you, then you are invisible to me. What if God has turned his back on us?"

"Maybe he has."

"Then why do you support God?"

"Look at us and the great mass of humanity, its selfishness, greed, murder and envy. Its gluttony as it eats itself to death. Its narcissistic hedonism as it loves itself to death. The human spirit is capable of overcoming, being creative, beautiful, charitable and noble. Yet it is also marred and scarred. Look at Nature, it is red in tooth and claw. It degenerates and falls apart. One creature lives as a parasite on another, it cannot live on its own. Viruses, disease and Death make their home in Nature. Creatures are going exctinct as one tiny speck of a planet that is such a tiny isolated garden of green plants and blue waters where Life yet lives, awaits its ultimate extinction event. Shall I support and have faith in the Good or the Evil? In Nature as in man, there are also the remnants of something good adapting to degeneration and Death. Each spring, things are born again and the generation of the generations continues. So I support being born again as Jesus said, because it is Good. Good has not totally turned its back, unless you overlook a lot of Good. Besides, shall I support Evil? I think a better question than why do I support God is why do you support Evil?"

"I don't support evil! Didn't I just get through questioning God because he does not do something about it? He's the one who let evil happen, not me."

(Well, no time to continue...I did some writing on Right2Left today too. It's just obvious things like the complementarity of men and women, the Yin and the Yang and Romance. But sometimes people cannot admit to the obvious for reasons that are not so obvious.)