"Mankind would be better served if it grew up, abandoned its infantile beliefs in supernatural parents, and realized that we alone are responsible for our own destenies. Mankind should have outgrown its need for this nonsense Century's ago. More harm has been done in the name of 'religion' and tribal god-images than any other cause save for passion and material greed."
I responded as follows. Let me know what you think...
Chuck:
It is so good to hear from you, and I thank you for sharing your views with me.
I have an unswerving devotion to the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness. Real religionists recognize that as a devotion to doing God’s will, and that could be seen as a devotion to seeking, finding, knowing, loving, becoming, and being like God.
Of course nobody has seen God, but it is logical that the first source and center of persons must himself be a person. And one of the main characteristics of personality is not only the ability to know God, but the ability to make and sincerely act upon moral decisions – doing the “right” thing to the best of one’s ability. It is insincere and hypocritical to do anything else.
You might therefore rightly consider that even though it is infantile to believe in supernatural parents, it is quite mature to believe in having a source of life and personality itself. Since the supreme source must itself be a person, what name would you give that person? I myself refer to him as my “Heavenly Father.”
Now Chuck, you have asserted that belief in “supernatural” parents is infantile. But I’m sure you agree that it is not infantile to believe in parents. I’m sure you also know that to the ignorant and immature child a parent seems very supernatural in nature, for the parent has apparently supernatural knowledge, wisdom, physical power, and mental power. The parent has provided a house, a car, food, clothing, and everything the child needs, including a genetic endowment that allows the child to grow.
You cannot, however, pretend to know that an earth parent is the source of either mind or personality, can you? There has never been proof of such a thing, and in fact there is significant evidence to indicate that your earth parents cannot be and are not the source of your mind and personality. The proof is that you are so much different from them in mental and personality expression, excepting of course the expressions you learned directly from them. Their personalities are their identities, just as you personality is uniquely yours. The only apparent mind-related endowment we get from our earth parents is intelligence, which is apparently genetic. I say it is apparent because exceptionally intelligent children are almost never born to stupid parents, and vice versa, but the children of intelligent parents are usually intelligent, whereas the children of stupid parents are usually stupid.
Back to the issue of supernatural, if a child thinks his natural earth parent is supernatural, that does not mean the parent is supernatural. Concomitantly, it is unreasonable to assert that the parent of your personality is supernatural. More realistically, the universal parent of personality must, by definition, be completely natural, not supernatural, but you are not yet mature enough to be fully aware of the power of that personality, nor of how that parent personality functions. In reality, therefore, you are just an immature “personality” and are “sub-natural,” while your personality parent is merely mature and wholly natural.
Would you be infantile for believing that? Its just a matter of perspective, Chuck.
Given that perspective, it is reasonable for us to see “God” as our Heavenly Father, and as his immature, sub-natural children, to seek to know him, communicate with him, and grow to be like him. That way we might someday evolve from being sub-natural to being natural, rather than (as you now might see it) to evolve from being natural to super-natural.
Get the idea?
Given the above considerations, doesn't it seem just a little infantile not to believe in God?
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