I used to be a de facto atheist. Sure, I called myself an agnostic, but I had no reason to believe that there really was anything there. Yet, I have never had a commitment to materialism as an ideology. That's what separates the rational rationalist from the irrational rationalist. The former does not twist and contort himself when faced with a seemingly irrational explanation that is supported by an incredible amount of circumstantial evidence. If 100,000 people have a seemingly wacky experience at Fatima, Portugal, that's not necessary a sign that something was in the water. Only a fool would believe that that many strangers are either conspiring to deceive or coincidentally having nearly the exact same mass hallucination. There is no hallucinigenic that has the ability to cause such a focused phenomenon across so wide of a population.
This random musing came to me when I was thinking about how the materialist atheists are trying to "debunk" Jesus walking on water. Somehow Jesus apparently stood on a huge block of ice that he managed to surf out in the Mediterranen SeaSea of Galillee while convincing his disciples that he was just leisurely strolling toward them. There are three possibilities here: Jesus was one hell of a surfer and they didn't see his surf board, this event never happened or it did happen because he is the Son of God. Take your pick. An ancient Jewish man surfing a block of ice off the coast of an arid desert nearly two millennia before ice could be produced by humans is not a viable explanation. It is the sort of thing that passes for post-modernist creative writing, not a scientific explanation.
This is one of the reasons I ended up abandoning atheist-leaning agnosticism. I was quite frankly embarrassed by how far most of my fellow travelers would go to explain away the seemingly Lovecraftian great unknown. It's not a new color we've never seen! You're just hallucinating! Cthulhu doesn't exist, even though he's tearing the crew apart! There is a rational explanation for it all! The most rational being that you're not hallucinating, your brain is accurately receiving signals from its sensory organs and there is no materialistic explanation for what is happening right in front of you. I've seen spiritual beings before. I've felt their presence. Even as a near atheist I never discounted their existance because I had rational proof, albeit non-empirical evidence.
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Cool. Thanks for being honest.
My former heathen status is not exactly something that I hide... or something that those who've known me over the years have been particularly surprised about... ;)
I believe the walking on water incident happened in the Sea of Galilee, not the Med.
*Slaps forehead* Sorry, I wrote that post in a hurry. It's been a while since I read the gospel story on that, so in my haste I didn't even bother to check if that sounded right. I guess this must be the fact checking that the blogosphere is so famous for :-D
I was just listening to the Hawaii 5-0 theme song in my head and picturing Jesus catching a wave.
Ya know, maybe the ice thing is just his way of accepting a miracle. He didn't want Jesus to walk on water, he goes more for the superhero thing. Iceman or something.
Cold as ice.
Ice, ice baby.
Sorry, I'll stop.
So what kind of X-Man costume do you think Jesus should get, if their theory is true?