Ex Nihilo

See my replies in italics in the quote above.

I dig it.

A great website for this is http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1928/BCP_1928.htm If has many versions from around the world.

Beautiful!! I'm an Episcopalian and this is so awesome to me. If it's from 1952 that means its one of the older versions, most the 1928 version of the BCP. My favorite version. A great find!

Welcome!

I've never found it to be the case that people react negatively. Most often it is with curiosity. Usually the first question I get is "Of what denomination?" I usually reply, "whichever one you want." Which allows me a chance to tell them about the amazing doctrinal diversity and freedom of conscience in the ULC. I can certainly appreciate that some areas are not nearly so friendly to religion of any kind as it is here in south Georgia. I guess knowing your audience is important.

Well said!

I worship God wherever I am. I read Morning an Evening Prayers most days. I try to get to church but its been a long time since I was near a faithful local congregation.

Ive visited them. I had heard that people have weird vibes from them. Didn't tell my wife and kids. My wife got really nauseous when we got up to them and my daughter (3 at the time) ran back to the car saying she didnt like the "voices". Weird but certainly not conclusive. Folks around the Elberton/Athens area have a hundred stories about where the money came from to build them and even more stories about the stuff that happens around them. From what I recall, it was funded and as far as I know is still funded by a private trust. The commands don't seem that bad until you realize that achieving the goals it champions would require the elimination of nearly 93% of the world's population. I'd be interested in finding out how that's done without breaking rules 5, 6, and 7: "5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts. 6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court. 7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials." Maybe those rules only go into effect after the vast worldwide holocaust hits its mark.

I think at first blush it would appear to be false but when one looks closer one will find that changing religions is often more a reaction to and rebellion against parental worldviews and parents themselves than it is a rejection of the (insert religion name) spiritual/religious paradigm. To put it another way, it's not the god they're rejecting as much as it is the god they saw/see in their parents that they reject. I grew up around close-minded, fundamentalist families with hyper-critical parents. Children would grow up and leave the church/denomination and either leave organized religion altogether or join a church with a diametrically different culture/theology. When I talked to them, they'd call themselves a "recovering catholic" or a progressive christian... but the problems they would cite were not, strictly speaking, problems with the church or faith...rather they were deep-seated problem they had with their parents that bled into and colored the way they looked at the religion of their childhood. Even when folks reject the faith of their fathers (or mothers) it is often the family dynamic motivating and steering it. Jmo. Peace&Love -RR

We are all creatures stuck in the tar pits of space and time...even if only subconsciously, our families and their traditions, learnt during our formative years, will inevitably influence the belief system and worldview we develop as we mature....mom and dad are the first icons of God(dess) we worship and these old gods, for good or ill, cast their shadow over every view we have of Divinity afterward. Not an absolute but seems more or less like an inevitable... Peace & love! -RR

No but shoes can. Badumpching!

Very beautiful

I think he's what all are, a seeker of truth.

Very cool kingfisher, thanks for sharing the link. Notwithstanding your link. Here is Hawking's take on the issue (from his book The Grand Design): Do people have free will? If we have free will, where in the evolutionary tree did it develop? Do blue-green algae or bacteria have free will, or is their behavior automatic and within the realm of scientific law? Is it only multicelled organisms that have free will, or only mammals? We might think that a chimpanzee is exercising free will when it chooses to chomp on a banana, or a cat when it rips up your sofa, but what about the roundworm called Caenorhabditis elegansa simple creature made of only 959 cells? It probably never thinks, That was damn tasty bacteria I got to dine on back there, yet it too has a definite preference in food and will either settle for an unattractive meal or go foraging for something better, depending on recent experience. Is that the exercise of free will? Though we feel that we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets. Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that frew will is just an illusion."

But is god(dess?) bigger than the universe?

At the quantum level, what's the difference between the living and the inorganic? How does one quantify creative free will quantumly?

I agree...but then when I take a step back, I wonder if we are destined to think we are free. I read somewhere that Steven Hawking said that all things are predestined but that the roadmap is so complicated that we should just continue to act as if we have freewill. I guess it all washes out in the end.

Very cool prayer. I dig it.

Once upon a time in Bill Shakespeare's imagination, Cassius told his friend Brutus that the fault was not in their stars but in their selves that they were underlings. Is that true? Do we create our reality/destiny or are we trudging the path laid out for us by fate. There's comfort in both beliefs in hard times. One allows us to think that we dug ourselves into whatever hole we're currently in and therefore we are free to dig ourselves out. In the alternative, it's a solace knowing that even in bad times god is in control....well I guess that depends on how you view god...or is it somewhere in the cooperative middle? Sort of a bowing to the universe and universe bowing back scenario. Any thoughts?

I like Thomas Jefferson's quote: " It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." Who cares what somebody worships?

True kindness toward one another.

Not sure about the first part of this post, but the second part was very interesting.