Dawkins says anyone who has faith is a fool - this is because he is stuck in critical thought - One source for the theory of post critical naivete is Borg and another is Ricouer

Ah I see, that makes more sense now.  Thank you.

Happy Hannukah, Shalome

-Omni

On the surface this sounds like a good thing.  Really though Santa was never real.  Most kids do not become all depressed and disillusioned when they find out Santa is not real.  They become part of the myth and help their parents keep the secret from younger siblings.  Santa does not serve a great purpose.  He brings toys to "good little girls and boys" in middle to upper class neighbourhoods who have too many toys anyway.

So are you suggesting that one stop believing in God, become an atheist for awhile, and while knowing that God is not real start believing again?  How would that be possible?  Would it not be like a woman who has caught her husband in bed with another woman?  She throws him out.  Then after awhile takes him back in and turns a deliberate blind eye to his affairs?  I mean she would have to crazy to take him back and keep catching him in bed with other women.  That marriage is over so why pretend?

Arminius

And that can be one heck of a bumpy ride.

IT

Russ

Derrida had this important thought - religion is impossible without uncertainty. God can never be known or adequately represented by imperfect human beings ..... Religion does not always give clear meaning, purpose, and certainty by providing secure foundations. To the contrary, the great religious traditions are profoundly disturbing because they call certainty and security into question. Belief not tempered by doubt poses a moral danger. The alternative to blind belief is not simply unbelief but a different kind of belief - one that embraces uncertainty and enable us to respect others whom we do not understand.

I felt pretty disillusioned. But I guess I'm just some wierdo. Yeah, that's it.

Santa does serve a great purpose. Any kid will tell you that.

Because once you become an atheist, you become a more critical thinker and then when you go back to believing in god, it's a much more developed and logically sound belief. It's not impossible.

That is more like becoming an atheist and then reverting back to the old belief system that I had before, which was inconsistant and just felt stupid.

A more accurate analogy would be a woman who has caught her husband in bed with another woman, who throws him out and because of that experience, decides she never wants to be in a relationship again. But then she somehow ends up realizing that not all men are cheating bastards and she finds someone else who is faithful to her. This new relationship happened because she learned from the problems of her old relationship and has accepted that not all relationships will have these kinds of problems.

ShamanWolf: Well, it did bump the topic to the top!

But every reply does that. So if you want to keep bumping your favourite topic, keep replying!

Starlight: I agree with killer that we need to re-define God from supernatural to natural: God as the self-transcendent universe.

If not believing in a supernatural God is atheism, then this is atheism.

Amen.

I think this journey away from God and back to a different faith is a form of maturation. We grow up taking what our parents tell us at face value. Then we rebel as teens, and hopefully come back to a more adult to adult relationship with them. That is how I see my faith journey. I grew up in the United Church with some Anglican influence from my maternal relatives, and accepted what I was taught. I went to university, moved to different communities and life happened. People I loved died. I experienced disappointments in my life. I learned from other denominations, and different world views. I feel that now I have come to a different place. I have a stronger quieter faith now. I am still a questioner in some ways, perhaps more. I hope I am more mature. I know I do not believe in a Santa Claus type of god anymore. I like the concept of Creator God from my First Nations friends. I continue to evolve and grow.......and now ramble.

Oh ya......I have learned that God is not limited, and what I had thought were my limits were illusions.

I agree Northwind, that's a good philosophy to live by. Ramble on.

Now you're talking.

 Ah, the miracle of the coming together of minds 

Perhaps if we view the word miracle in its wider definition it can be saved from removal when talking about God - One that excites admiring awe. See synonyms at wonder.

The universe is miraculous, wonderous and awe inspiring and I think deep inside each of us is the capacity to marvel at it.  How that is done is irrelevant as long as it includes reverence for the value of creation and all that is found within.

LB

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.       Anton Chekov  1897

Hi Birthstone:

A lot of Christians don't believe in the OT sort of God any more, but in a self-creative, self-transformative or self-evolutionary universe.

This, of course, is nothing new. Many Eastern religions have been a-theistic or non-theistic all along, just believing in a spiritual universe. Even leading edge scientists now agree that our universe is innately self-transformative and sared.

This need not mean that God doesn't exist. We merely re-define God, from the supernatural Creator who stands outside the universe to the natural, self-transcendental and self-evolutionary universe.