Re: Atheism and Experiencing God

The posts to this blog also go to my Google Group - reasonablemystic@googlegroups.com. "Dr David" posted the following comment to that group:

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"because God cannot be logically proved without being experienced in relationship"

Spending time looking at this issue of "proof" and "relationship with God" can lead one to some interesting conclusions regarding being "prepared to be reasonable mystics"

It is not possible for me to recount in this reply decades of research along this avenue but I can make a few points. 1) the terms relationship, mystic and proof need definition 2) the links between the terms need clarification, and 3) the application of these concepts to humanity and well being need to be further expanded. I have attempted to do provide some material to address each of these points on my website www.SacredHealingNow.com

I think that any one on the path of the "reasonable mystic" is taking apath that few have traveled with widom and compassion.
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Here is the gist of my reply:

Dr David, you might like to outline briefly how you believe your work relates to the subject of this group, keeping in mind its purpose. I quote from the group website "The visible trail of my journey from reluctant fundamentalism, through evangelical by conviction of Jesus as the only way, charismatic through encounter with the Holy Spirit, postmodern by choice, to protestant mystic as the only sensible response to the presence of God. "

In the context of this group, and the blog that it is fed from, www.reasonablemystic.com, I would define a "reasonable mystic" to be one who seeks an intimate and experiential relationship with the Living Father God, with Son Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, but who does not at the same time neglect clarity of reasoning and the expectation of learning more about who God truly is and how God relates to his children and the world.

By "relationship" I intend to include all aspects of how two or more beings may interact in ways that enrich each other and bring life rather than death.

I would not wish to separate the terms "reasonable" and "mystic" because then we are talking about something else entirely. For example, I am convinced that true "knowledge" is attained more through the spirit than the mind, whereas the mind is good at remembering, making connections and decisions, and initiating action. The two working together promote understanding. If we focus on the mind as the knowledge source then we are not considering mysticism but materialism and humanism. If, on the other hand, we neglect the mind in this relationship, we are into superstition and ultimately occultism.

However, we can gain much from studying both reason and mysticism in isolation (using both spirit and mind to do so, of course), while keeping clear in our minds that not everything said about either of these is necessarily life bringing.

Having said all of that, and it is necessarily superficial but I hope it gives the general drift, then I must say that I am convinced that such a true "reasonably mystical" relationship with God and the world can best be explored by interacing with and relating to the one true expression of God in the world - Jesus Christ. If God has deliberately revealed himself in this one, then is it reasonable to avoid him in our search? And, since the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, is the presence of God in the world, and has been promised by God to indwell followers of Jesus, then surely the easiest way to get in touch with God is to interact with that Spirit, not some other spirit - human or otherwise.

In the light of this, I did a quick scan through the website you refered us to, Dr David, looking for the terms "God", "Jesus", "Christ", and "Spirit". There is much material on your site, and I have not been able to read it all. However, I was rather surpirised at the results of my search. I found references to a great many areas of investigation that I would be hestitant to embrace, having seen the mental, emotional and spiritual damage such experiementation caused to many of those troubled souls who come to us for ministry and healing. I found references to "God", but in a fairly non-identifiable form as to who this "God" is. I found "Spiritual", etc, but nothing that would point me to the Holy Spirit of God. And I did not find "Jesus", or "Christ" or "Jesus Christ", except in one or two quotes from other people.

Could I invite you to respond to the above so we can beter understand your position.

Atheism and Experiencing God

You must be wondering what happened to My Spiritual Journey, after more than a year! It hasn't finished - I've just been rather busy doing it. More will come, I promise.

In the meantime, I've just begun reading Alistair McGrath's The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World.

What has atheism got to do with being a reasonable mystic, you might ask? Well, I discovered something interesting. For a long time I have heard atheists using the words of people like Voltaire and Descartes to bolster their cause. Now I discover that neither of them were atheists. In fact, they were deists. Not only that, but Descartes was actually trying to prove that God does exist, not the reverse!

Anyway, let's go back one step so we can see what this has to do with this blog.

How many times have you heard someone say that Voltaire said God was an invention of man? They quote him as saying: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." On page 25 McGrath gives this line along with the other four lines it belongs in:

If the heavens, stripped of their noble imprint,
Could ever cease to reveal Him,
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him,
Whom the sage proclaims, and whom kings adore.

In fact, Voltaire was as antagonistic to atheism as he was to the brand of Christianity exemplified by the corrupt hierarchy of the French Catholocism of his time. Far from wanting to remove Christianity, he actually wanted to remove this cancer that was forcing the loathed atheism to appear.

On pages 31 and 32 we meet Rene Descartes, famous for his "I think, therefore I am". He was aware of the threat the new ideas of atheism were to Christianity, and with others set about trying to provide a philosophical proof that God did exist. Unfortunately, in order to make his "proofs" more palatible to his readers, who were more inclined towards science and natural reason than to religion, he decided to not make any appeal to experience of God. Of course, as this makes any such proof impossible, because God cannot be logically proved without being experienced in relationship, his efforts only succeeded in making the existence of such a hamstrung God seem even more unlikely.

The nail in the coffin came from the way other "Christians", equally devoid of true experience of God, fought with each other in popular journals to demonstrate that their proof of God was better than anyone else's proof. Atheism won by default, without hardly having to strike a blow.

So, it is clear that if they had realised the crucial need for experience of God as well as reason and understanding of his nature and ways - in other words, they had been prepared to be reasonable mystics - things could have turned out somewhat differently.