DarronS - 26 July 2012 01:50 PM
What you are ignoring, Rev, is that 93 percent of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not believe in a god.
I appreciate the information. Well, I WILL not to ignore it here and now. I suspect that the members of the NAS, who you mention, are simply coming to the same conclusion I did in my high school days (1943-1946). The vast majority of the NAS no longer believe in a god (theos, in Greek) with dimensions—a human-like, theistic and superhuman being—like the one in the “God Hypothesis” Richard Dawkins defines in his book, The GOD Delusion (2006). On page 31 he writes what he assumes all theists believe
... there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.
Then, interestingly, he goes on to advocate an alternative view:
any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.
—this is, by the way, is the kind of God Hypothesis suggested by process philosophy/theology (Alfred North Whitehead).
In retrospect, when I think back to that year of work (1946-1947) that followed my high-school student days, here is what comes to mind.
At the end of that year I had saved just over $500. I took the risk of earning the balance while I was at MTA. I did.
Meanwhile, I did other jobs, but my minister—very pro-active in the whole community (50% Catholic) helped me get the better-paying job, in the mines. My older brother, and family, also encouraged me. He said: You do not need to pay us any room and board. Save everything you earn.
The goal was to get enough money to spend at least one year—the cost was $1000 (big money then) for tuition, room and board—at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada ... http://www.mta.ca At the Time, NL, was a British colony. I was paid 58 cents an hour to be part of a rock-picking crew. We spent ten hours a day, six days a week working at a moving belt of iron-ore that went by us. It was a slave-like, mind-numbing kind of work.
However, the work was such that I could, to the foreman’s satisfaction, do the job and enter into what I now know was a trance-like—and now call a META-tative state—any time I willed to do so. In that state, I went over the life I had lived, so far, and, encouraged by my minister’s sermons, books I read and movies I saw at the time, in my mind I “wrote” stories about the life I envisioned that was ahead of me.
From then on, this good fortune—I served in the army, the navy, in church mission areas, etc—followed me and my future life-partner, who I met on the way. With a small debt—paid by my new wife (1952), I was ordained in 1953, debt-free. Together, we went off to our full-time work. I “praught”—that is, preached—while she taught.
ABOUT http://WWW.FLFCANADA.COM —http://www.flfcanada.com
In response to your comment
Interestingly, 99 percent of the prison population in the U.S. does hold such a belief.
may I add: Part of my pastoral duties in Toronto 1961-1994 involved founding and developing the volunteer-based Family Life Foundation (1973)—a registered charity. We charge no fees. As part of the FLF, I spent a lot of time with criminals. Without going into details here, it is my opinion that virtually all criminals are what I call, pneumatologically insane—one of the reasons they turn to a “god”. I will now post this. Later, when I find it I will post a link about this idea.
