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Author Topic:   No One Sees God
Spiritual Anarchist
Member (Idle past 3801 days)
Posts: 70
From: Raleigh NC
Joined: 01-27-2013


Message 1 of 2 (717365)
01-26-2014 5:58 PM


I have just began reading a book titled No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers by Michael Novak
(Please Post in The Book Nook)
If there is already a topic on this book please let me know.
I am not sure what to make of it so far. I bought the book to see what he says about the Intelligent Design Debate. So far I am not impressed. His book is very well written in some ways but his reasoning ability is lacking. Like other Christian thinkers he often frames topics with the word hate. Why do Atheist "hate" design for example. I will post more on here as I get through more of his book.
Here is a sample below
VI. CHAPTER SIX: NOTHING IS BY DESIGN, EVERYTHING IS BY CHANCE 203
1. Why Do Atheists Hate Design?
2. On Darwin
3. A Final Query
My main interest besides the ID debate is to understand how Christians think so that the book I am writing will not offend Christians so much that they think I have no compassion or respect for them.This is a bit hard for me because I have little respect for how Christianity was created out of other peoples myths historically and used to repress and conquer nonbelievers for a political agenda. Using historical data I can show that Christianity is based on Judaism which was based around Tribal Deities of the Canaanites and Babylonians. This is sort of an impasse for me having a dialogue with believers.
If you read this book "No One Sees God" you will see why. Michael Novak addresses the historical fact of the Philosophers God being with us very far back into history. But he fails to address the problems this raises. He seems to think along with many other Christians that this supports Theology of Christianity.
Richard Dawkins made it very clear he respects men like Einstein using metaphors to point to at least an appearance of intelligence behind the universe. But he also made it very clear that at best Einstein was talking about a sort of Pantheism. That is we are seeing a conscious universe because we are conscious and we project our intelligence onto the universe.
I think that Einstein really was a Pantheist just not one that used Pantheism to justify Jewish or Christian beliefs. Einstein was influenced by the writings of Spinoza who saw God as the Universe. But Spinoza tried to reconcile Pantheism with a Judeo personal God outside the Universe and a Pantheistic God that was the Universe and failed. I bring this up because in No One Sees God Michael Novak tries to use man's awareness of the Universe being more than stars and planets and random events to conclude that a Christian God directly follows from pure reasoning.
This is a problem because a Christian concept of a God man sacrificing himself to himself as a sort of blood offering doesn't directly follow from the Jewish Concept of God let alone from Pantheism. In point of fact no religion including Judaism directly follows or is anyway connected to Pantheism in any way. And to support this you will find that most Pantheist are actually Atheist.
Anyway I do not mind if you want to make comments on what I posted so far. But what I am really interested in is what anyone has to say after reading this book. What do you think of this book No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers by Michael Novak
Anyone?

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