Just because you base a movement around God and it works, doesn't mean it shows God exists. Just as if you don't base a construct around God and it works it doesn't mean it points to God not existing.
So, in other words, it
is about proof. You're accusing me of not providing "proof of God," when I CLEARLY stated at the outset that there was none.
Arguments for God don't "show (prove) God exists." They
assume God exists, at least for purposes of the particular argument. That's what theology
is: talking about God. The efficacy of the construct isn't meant to "prove" God's existence. It's meant to improve our lives.
You explain power structures falling with an incredibly complex being working behind the scenes.
My argument here is not that "God causes structures to fall" -- even through human agency. My assertion is that, given a God whose attributes are life, love, freedom, equity, we can see such attributes at work through the actions of humanity, and that it is that humanity that provides a "rear-view" of God. When power structures that are life-taking, loveless, oppressive and unjust topple, it's because human beings who are tuned into life, love, freedom and equity have caused them to topple, and that very action points to the strength of those attributes present in the created order -- those attributes that we call "God."
Yes. Never have I attributed love or life to God.
And this is my fault in what way?
I attribute love to emotion and chemicals in the brain (on a scientific level) and life as an experience. Sure love is all fine and dandy but it doesn't indicate God for me.
And I'm sure that, when you're in the throes of passion, all you think about is the chemical processes and reactions going on in your body. The emotion you feel and the passion you experience goes completely unnoticed.
When you look at a painting, all you think about is the chemicals that made up the paint, and how light waves interact to produce colors that suggest form, and how that form stimulates certain impulses in the brain. The fact that it's stunning goes right over your head.
No wonder, no speculation, no expansion of awareness. No joy in the moment.
If that's the case, then I posit that you have
not, in fact, experienced life. Or love. You have merely apprehended them from a distance.
If you have let the joy and wonder capture you, if you have speculated and wondered and expanded your awareness, and you do not call it "God," then might I suggest that we're simply arguing semantics here?
Yes, while we're here. Why doesn't God make himself more apparent? He always works through people. That just makes it easier to claim people did it themselves, without God. He moves in mysterious ways. Why is god such an enigma? What would be so bad about him making himself known? It seems he likes being mysterious, playing hide and seek. Of course it's my fault. Silly me, I want evidence in order for me to devote portions of my life to him. What kind of absurd notion is that?
And you don't think believers struggle with these questions??? This isn't about blind faith, my boy, it's about discovery. It's about stepping into the Abyss and letting yourself
wonder at the vastness and incomprehensibility that lies beyond your ken. Instead of blaming God for that vastness and incomprehensibility, why not just live with the mystery and keep struggling toward it?
That's what the life of faith is! (Whether you call it "God" or not.)
You don't have a basis for saying God is life and breath. You can only make that claim from within a religion or having already had the belief.
So tradition, culture, intuition are a basis -- just not a "proper" basis?
There
is basis for that claim, as you just named. And that basis
is valid, because it is part of human experience.
God (at least for me) is not so much an observable particularity as God is life and creation. God is an attitudinal proposition and not an apprehensive proposition.
Your problem here is that even though you continue to say that "proof is unimportant," you still long for proof, as your diatribe here in this post indicates.
There is no proof. There is only mind-set, attitude, faith. That's good enough for me. I choose to cloak my awareness and my experience of creation in a construct of "God." How is that perspective any less reasonable or "blind" than cloaking one's awareness and experience in a construct of chemical reactions?
