{"id":858,"date":"2012-03-25T19:07:39","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T02:07:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=858"},"modified":"2013-01-07T00:12:01","modified_gmt":"2013-01-07T05:12:01","slug":"858","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=858","title":{"rendered":"Reason and the Reason Rally"},"content":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/martystone\/7023976153\/sizes\/m\/in\/photostream\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-965\" title=\"7023976153_06cd5564fc\" src=\"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/7023976153_06cd5564fc2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"275\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/7023976153_06cd5564fc2.jpg 500w, https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/7023976153_06cd5564fc2-300x165.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a>\n<p>Today being Sunday, I thought of the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/H4bDOM\">Reason Rally<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 That was the rally for atheists on the Mall yesterday that headlined scientists Dr. Richard Dawkins, comedian Eddie Izzard, and magician James Randi. \u00a0That and yesterday a good friend sent me a piece that appeared in the New York Times by Gary Cutting with the provocative title, \u201c<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/nyti.ms\/H4bOtm\">Does It Matter Whether God Exists<\/a><\/strong>?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The event and the article got me thinking about all my atheist, agnostic and theistic friends and as a Christian, the many wonderful and oftentimes impassioned conversations we\u2019ve had about God, faith and religion.\u00a0 As I thought about my friends and read through Gary Cutting&#8217;s article I also thought about how many things atheists and Christians can actually agree on (that is of course, putting aside the question of whether there is or is not a God.) and how\u00a0silly it was that we can\u2019t embrace our agreements and move on to more interesting discussions and do so as Peter admonished Christians in \u201c<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/bg4.me\/H4cfnI\">gentleness and respect<\/a><\/strong>\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Here are at least three things on which I think many Christians and atheists can agree.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>You can be religious and spiritual without a God<\/strong>.\u00a0 This is most certainly true.\u00a0 There are many people who are religious and spiritual and don\u2019t have a belief in a God. \u00a0At least not the God that I know. \u00a0Now I\u2019d be quick to say that most Christians wouldn&#8217;t advise this.\u00a0 Jesus criticism of the Pharisees was, in part, that religiousity and spiritualism absent God quickly leads to legalism.\u00a0 But \u00a0people can be spiritual and have a sense of ethic and moral rightness without a belief in creator God. \u00a0I know because I&#8217;m friends with many!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>You can be a \u201cgood person\u201d without believing in God<\/strong>.\u00a0 Absolutely!\u00a0 I know a lot of great, wonderful, decent people who are atheists.\u00a0 They are honorable, trustworthy, and people of integrity.\u00a0 Moreover, I\u2019ll be the first to admit that there are a lot of people who believe in God (e.g. Christians) and who fall woefully short in this category &#8211; that is, behavior. \u00a0You have to go no further than me. \u00a0I\u2019m a really good example. \u00a0There are a lot of people I know who are not Christians and behave much better than me. \u00a0I&#8217;ll be the first to admit that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>\u201cBeing good\u201d is important<\/strong>.\u00a0 Or as philosopher John Gray closes in the BBC article, \u201c<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/bbc.in\/H4cP4F\">What matters is how we live<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 Totally agree.\u00a0 (Note that Christians would challenge the prior statement\u00a0 &#8211; that what we believe doesn\u2019t matter &#8211; but that&#8217;s a whole different issue.)\u00a0 A good part of the book of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/bg4.me\/H4d4g6\">James <\/a><\/strong>talks about behavior. \u00a0What we do. \u00a0And if anyone wants to read the Gospels they can count how many times Jesus said that \u201cif you love me you\u2019ll do what I say\u201d. \u00a0He said that a lot. \u00a0I don&#8217;t think he was kidding. \u00a0And what did Jesus say?\u00a0 \u201c<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/bg4.me\/H4dovj\">Love your neighbor as yourself<\/a><\/strong>\u201d &#8211; a pretty high standard of \u201cbeing good\u201d in anyone\u2019s book.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So on this Christians and atheists can agree:\u00a0 (1) you can be religious and spiritual without a God; (2) you can be a good person without believing in God; and (3) how you behave is pretty important.<\/p>\n<p>On this, we agree.<\/p>\n<p>All I\u2019d ask of friends at the \u201cReason Rally\u201d to consider, is that belief in a God is a quite reasonable and logical conclusion when working through the answers to three important questions about life.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>How did life come from non-life?<\/strong>\u00a0 This is a tough one if you exclude a Creator.\u00a0 We can say we don\u2019t know.\u00a0 But the conundrum of how animate, sentient, spiritual life came from a big blob of earth, water and air is a tough one without injecting a Creator God.\u00a0 String theory?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 But isn\u2019t it reasonable to think belief in string theory is as much of a faith leap as believing in God?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Are there objective, irrevocable, eternal moral truths?<\/strong>\u00a0 Is it right to tell the truth?\u00a0 Is is bad to murder someone?\u00a0 Is love the highest ethic?\u00a0 And are these things all true regardless of when you were born or where you lived throughout history regardless of our evolutionary state?\u00a0 God explains eternal truths in a very compelling way.\u00a0 Without God we are left to genetics, evolution, and societal norms which by their very nature have and continue to change over time.\u00a0 Without God eternal moral truths are hard to reason or logic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Is there a purpose and coherence in life?<\/strong>\u00a0 Absent a God, purpose and coherence become a struggle. \u00a0That&#8217;s not just me. \u00a0It is everyone from Darwin to\u00a0Nietzsche\u00a0to Sartre to Betrand Russell. \u00a0They understood, recognized and openly spoke about it.\u00a0 One can conclude that purpose and coherence is self-made.\u00a0 But then man becomes the measure of all things and its reasonable for some to worry which \u201cman\u201d becomes that &#8220;measure&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can disagree with ALL of the above. \u00a0All I&#8217;m trying to do is suggest to atheists, agnostics and those who challenge faith in God that (a) we agree on more than you might think we do; and that (b) while you may not agree or believe that a God exists, belief in God is indeed a quite reasonable thing.<\/p>\n<p>And if you\u2019re interested, read the thinking of legendary British philosopher and former icon for atheism Anthony Flew \u2013 \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/H4eyHn\">My Pilgramage from Atheism to Theism<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0We\u2019re not that far apart.<\/p>\n<p>Really.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today being Sunday, I thought of the Reason Rally.\u00a0 That was the rally for atheists on the Mall yesterday that headlined scientists Dr. Richard Dawkins, comedian Eddie Izzard, and magician James Randi. \u00a0That and yesterday a good friend sent me a piece that appeared in the New York Times by Gary Cutting with the provocative&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1143,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions\/1143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}