What sort of god are we talking about here? The infinite god? The Very finite "good human person" god? A creature with a highier intellect? let us first define god here - Mr Dark's last post shows that our understanding of the word is not uniform. I would tend to disagree with all but a very real (ie, non-metaphysical) being who knows more than we do - but is not apporaching infinity in any way.

You guys should watch "The Life of Brian" to see how myths are made.

Cheers, Translator

I love that movie... I'm talking about the same sort of god that you are. Because I do not believe in god at all I have brought no new ideas of god to the table... Whatever god it is you believe in, define and prove it if you would like, but I'm not going to trouble myself with defining what I don't believe in.

Somebody once asked me "If you're a true agnostic, then why are you so afraid of 'those idiots who believe in God'?" My reply was: "Because there's so many of them."

Hey - they may yet be right. Agnostic means that you don't know for sure. I am one myself. I don;t know. I'm more ceratin about there not being God than anything else in the world, but I can never be 100% certain. Which means there is a small chance that they're right. Trust me,
I'll be the mose surprised person of all, but it's not entirely impossible.
Cheers, Translator

PS - this degree of certainty is just about the only thing that seperates one view from another. My level of ceratainty on this is near nil, but not zero. I'm more ceratain that Hitler was my son (mind you, I'm 21), than that there is a Christian God, but hey, anything is possible.

Gothic:

Go to the icon (the little drawing) with the the pencil and the little piece of paper with lines on it, right above your post section, ... click on that... and you can "erase" your duplicated posts, or edit them.
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Gothic:

You say you don't believe in God. Even the devil believes in God. That's nothing new.

You reject the premise that you are born with the knowledge of God, as being the fundamental character of human beings thruout history.
Well, something either happened to you so you no longer understand, or....???

Understanding what is meant by God may help. To say God is the creator, and etc etc etc... is to give all the cliches, and who wants that?

I'll give you a little twinkle off the rock, a simple look inside the window....so you can at least get this idea of what the heck is going on with this God thing. (I'm not going to get into the realms of a person being born a sinner, whereby it is impossible to understand God unless He first seeks us. Or other such stuff.)

...so consider this:

This is like scratching at the surface, but it's an attempt to show you something about what God looks like:

_______

Think of the the most cherished moment in your life, an afternoon, or a situation, a day when all the things seemed to converge upon an incident, or the moments of some hour that seems undescribable. Or how about an evening with the family somewhere back when you were growing up, when the world seemed to go on forever, you were a part of it, and you will never forget.

Well, you are begining to get a glimpse of the character of God. You must remember. We are made in the image of God, but it's a 'fractured' image in our lifetime.

I'm leaving it like that. It's the best I can do this morning, Saturday.

Thanks, Nard & Mr Dark. Doesn't seem to work, though.I click on the icon, then alter (or erase) the massage; do I click on the Submit Reply button again after that, or what?

Thanks for the beautiful simile, Nard, I'm not impervious to that sort of thing - hey, I'm a Bradbury fan! Only, I get such feelings almost exclusively from a Burkean sense of the sublime. If you choose to call that 'God', that's entirely ok with me.

". . . alter (or erase) the MASSAGE . . ." What was I thinking?!

Btw, it's just past 21:00 here now.

Gothic,

Yes, after you delete your text, hit the submit reply button. Oughtta work.

Everyone,

Re: Bradbury and God. Hasn't Bradbury written somewhere about optimism and marvelling at the world around us as being our purpose? To do otherwise would appear to be ungrateful to the Creator? (Or am I channeling Peggy Noonan?) Anyway, from prior discussions on this board about Bradbury's beliefs, I thought we'd concluded about what Mr. Dark had said.

Best,

Pete

One more time:

Ray is considered by Unitarians, as one of them.

Does Ray consider himself a Unitarian?
I don't know. I do know he has spoken at Unitarian churches.

Ray seems to have had some sound Christian influence in his upbringing. Ray has written about Christ, in poetry and short stories. But does he believe the basics of the faith today? I'd venture to say, No. Doesn't mean he can not regain what he probably knew from a distance when he was much younger.

I'd say today he leans a great deal to a 'liberal' view of spirtuality, whatever that means...

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[This message has been edited by Nard Kordell (edited 07-31-2004).]

But Bradbury does not remove responsibility from religion, like SOME liberals do.

In case anyone finds this confusing...I deleted the actual duplicate posts, but left all the discussion about them for future reference. It's a pretty common problem on this particular board. Part of it has to do with the page "refreshing" faster on one system than on another.

Ray attended Sunday School every week until the age of 13. After that, he was an atheist for awhile. What he may be now is hard to define but is nothing if not unconventional.

For what it's worth, how many times in Bradbury stories do we read: "Yes, we'll gather at the river..." (quoting the old hymn)?

Twice that I can name. At least, it was in the TV version of "The Cement Mixer" but I don't know if it's in the printed story. Are there more?

Off the top of my head - I believe there's a story with this as the title (about the town along a main highway; then the traffic's rerouted); and, of course, "Dandelion Wine" (Great Grandma sings this as she's fixing the roof).

Wow. I gotta say you guys are a cast of characters for real! You're nothing like what I thought people who hung out on a Bradbury site would be like. That's cool, though. Bradbury's certainly about surprises. This discussion would be perfect if it gets around to addressing (as it seems about to do) the presence of spirituality in Bradbury's work. For my money outside of Saramago, Kazantzakis, Kundera and Mishima he is the most spiritual of writers. I think it's one of the most neglected aspects of his writing and yet possibly the one that gives his work the most richness. I didn't know Ray used to be an atheist and I admit I'm not entirely clear as to what beliefs Unitarians subscribe too. Can anyone enlighten me on those subjects? One of the fascinating things to me about spirituality in Ray's ("Ray", like I know him) is that though it seems firmly rooted in old school Christianity it remains fluid and inclusive of several different takes on reality itself--and the role that human beings play in perpetuating it's infrastructure. The one constant seems to be that it is not based in fear but in hope. That's something that all that talk about Hell seems to be sorely lacking.