D P wrote: Either you believe in the bugger upstairs, or you don't. If you don't, it doesn't matter. If you do, you have a few choices. To like him, to dislike him, or to not give him the time of day. Only if you've signed a contract with him, can he hold you to anything. Otherwise, no debts to him are owed.
This is the problem. Both choices mentioned can only be the result of blind belief or blind denial which are both emotional judgements. I am returning to the OP. Simone Weil wrote:
"In order to obey God, one must receive his commands.
How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism?
To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled--that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist."
- Simone Weil, First and last notebooks (last notebook 1942)
(Oxford University Press 1970) p 137
"No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshiping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater--unless he is worshiping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters."
- Simone Weil, First and last notebooks (last notebook 1942)
(Oxford University Press 1970) p 308
Simone Weil has observed: "There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God."
- William Robert Miller (ed.), The New Christianity (New York: Delacorte Press 1967) p 267; in Paul Schilling,
God in an age of atheism (Abingdon: Nashville 1969) p 17
Is an atheist open to the potential for a source described by Plato as the “Good” Not for a blind denier. But yes for an atheist. Their objection is to idolatry. Idolatry can be intellectually denied while the “Good” cannot. Einstein, Jacob Needleman, Simone Weil and others all opposed idolatry. Simone and Prof. Needleman admitted to have been atheists. But in truth they were opposed to idolatry as was Einstein
Simone is saying that the intellectual denial of idolatry serves to purify religion of emotional blind denial. The problem is that atheists, at least those on this thread, have become emotional blind deniers and leave themselves only two choices in respect to higher consciousness, the source of consciousness, and objective human meaning and purpose. They become emotional blind deniers as a matter of principle and for self justification.
My objection is that advocates of blind denial have taken over the school systems and infect the young with their negativity. The young need alternatives to psychologically protect themselves from spirit killing. IMO we need more like Prof. Needleman in education who respect the questions of the heart but where can we find them and how can they enter into the field of education when the governing powers are against them?
