Oh, God, "No God" and Twitter

So, here's my summary of the developing story from Foxed Blog.

This is a hot button issue, obviously, so do try to be civil. Please?

I can't really see the point in Twitter anyway.

I don't really see any point into getting into the religious half of the debate, and the other conclusion that the author of that article came to seems incredibly obvious to me. Of course you can't have a serious debate in units of 140 characters. You can barely type a complete thought without resorting to chatspeak or excessive acronyms; presenting a coherent viewpoint on an issue more complex than "What should I have for breakfast?" is impossible.

Without cake, you will not be full, and through eating cake, you will become full. Food doesn't factor in at all!

"Food"? I think "fork" might fit your analogy better.

If you think that God is somehow not a religious concept, then that explains the sentences, but not why you have such a crazy notion.

I meant that the saying did not mean religion, because obviously there's a history of religious violence. It meant God. Not to quote drop, but here's a Gandhi saying that epitomizes the difference: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

There's a semantic difference, perhaps, between God and religion, but I think the difference is the crux of the issue.

Being spiritual and being religious are considered two different things.

Gandhi was referring to the Christ as Philosopher and Priest character, not the Christ as God character. The one who's seen as advocating love and equality and nonviolence, not the one that gives you eternal life and pushes the planets around and whatnot.

You still haven't explained how you have God without anything religious; you just repeated yourself.

I'm not saying you have God without religion. I am saying that RevRunWisdom meant that through understanding God, you can know peace. He did not say that through being religious, the world will be at peace.

But then how do you "understand God" without being religious? Are you defining "God" as stuff like "love and kindness and happiness" or whatever?

I'm going to have to stand with MFD on this one. While they may be inseparably linked, God and Religion are two very different things. Religion is all the trappings and traditions. Typically the stuff that tends to cause trouble.

You can understand the nature of world and the ask questions like what is our purpose and meaning without being trapped by dogma.

You can also come up with answers that don't involve a watchful over-being taking interest in us and be at peace with that. But I doubt I could convince you of that over the internets. At most I could convince you that it's not a stance only unreasonable people take... which is enough that I risk talking about it even though some people turn it into a debate.

Arguing over twitter is indeed dumb.

I agree that what the original guy meant was inner peace, not world peace. But I do disagree with the statement. It's possible to know God and not have any inner peace; and it's also possible not think there's no God and have inner peace.

But I think you all are giving the reverend to much credit concerning what he meant. He didn't say "belief in something greater than yourself gives peace", or "belief in a supernatural world we can't explain gives peace", but that God gives you peace. With a capital "G". God and religion aren't equivalent, but just claiming that the quote is advocating some kind of new age spiritualistic interpretation of God rather than some form of mainstream Christianity is pretty naive.

PS: Did you say that's your personal blog?