Hopefully my last post was responsive to your previous request. That was my only intent.

It’s inevitable that any thought at all would seem sophisticated in comparison to the sophomoric cant of the celebrity atheists, who not only remain stubbornly ill-informed but seem to wear their ignorance on their sleeves.

Hart was handy, but I could have cited anyone from Aquinas to Ratzinger. Like it or not, it’s pretty orthodox Western theology. And according to Hart it is “consonant” with other traditions.

As for what lay people supposedly think: So? If you are studying religious practice from a social or cultural perspective, then you would investigate the lived experience of ordinary adherents. If on the other hand you are undertaking a philosophical or theological inquiry, then you care about learned and authoritative opinions, not uninformed ones.

(That said, I’ll go out on a limb and claim that people in the pews — unlike the unsophisticated Richard Dawkins — know that God doesn’t actually sport a flowing white beard.)

So you’re a Sophisticated Theologian. (Someone has trademarked that term, but I don’t know who.)

I’ve seen that approach from Karen Armstrong too. I don’t know enough to discuss it, but whenever I’ve come across individual arguments in its favour, none have convinced me.

Further, it’s simply not what most theists think. Despite what STs like David Bentley Hart say, most believers really do think of God as a person.

Paraphrasing David Bentley Hart, if one could sort through all the physical objects and phenomena that make up the universe, they might come across any number of ancient gods with funny names (who knows), but they will never find God.

Rather than imagining God as a phenomenon within reality, it would be closer to what is really meant by God to say that God is Being Itself, the transcendent reality upon which contingent being depends. To be God, in other words, is to be, and by the act of being to bring about the “created” world of contingent things.

Moreover, God’s act of being is the wellspring of truth and meaning, inasmuch as truth is essential to reality, and rational meaning is necessary for truth.

Hart: “To speak of ‘God’ properly, then — to use the word in a sense consonant with the teachings of orthodox Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Bahá’í, a great deal of antique paganism, and so forth — is to speak of the one infinite source of all that is…”

I don’t understand where you’re coming from here. Perhaps you could explain what the word God means to you, and if He isn’t some sort of being in your understanding, what is He?

I’m with you totally on that — I don’t have any god. We deny precisely the same gods, and the same number of gods. God is not a “god”, nor a member of any other set or category.

Where we differ, if we do, is that I don’t see how it’s possible to understand anything without acknowledging the meaning, power and majesty of the verb “be”.

I don’t have the wrong god – I don’t have any god.

You’re too kind. (But quite insightful.)

Heather, that quote from the former Hebdo staffer does not even slightly excuse the terrorists; it doesn’t even address the matter. It says that Hebdo contributed to the marginalisation of Muslims in France. You can argue whether that is true or not, but it was not being used to excuse the murders.

I think his conclusion is too simplistic, but it is closer to the truth than what we read in the mainstream media at the time, that’s for sure.

What’s true is what j.a.m. says is true. He’s blessed, you know.

No, I don’t believe in one more god, or one fewer. If you’re counting, you’ve got the wrong God.

What atheists miss out on is everything. If one decides whom to trust by coolly weighing the evidence, they’re missing out. If one goes through life denigrating intuition, they’re missing out. If one tries to hold truth captive inside a box, they’re missing out on the whole truth.

Probably the only point we’ll agree on is that maturity brings a growing awareness of one’s own ignorance and limits. (There are oafish exceptions, of course, like Donald Trump and his evil twin Richard Dawkins.) But the rational response to this realization would be to become less settled in one’s convictions, not more so.

Not that it matters, but as you see, unlike you I have no compunction about telling strangers what to think.