<div dir="ltr">R Wolpoe wrote:<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div dir="ltr">I
don't believe that these people really do not accept God. I have
listened to well-known Atheist Ron Kuby wax positively mystical and
rhpasodic in describing Yankee Stadium and its history and tradition.
<br clear="all">
<br>My karate instructor Chaim Sober claimed HIS teacher denied the
denial of God. to paraphrase "not deny God but ANGRY at God" So
Atheists are Angry at God is HIS way of phrasing it.<br><br>IMHO most
contemporary Atheists don't really deny God. They deny religion, any
religion and any religiously based dcefinition of God. But deep down,
I'll bet that 99% of them are more akin to the 18th Century Deists than
they are really positive atheists.<br>
<br><br>Anyone who listens to thei "consience" is in asense listening to God<br><br><blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">
<font>Yet still there whispers the small voice within,
Heard through Gain's silence, and o'er Glory's din;
Whatever creed be taught or land be trod,
Man's conscience is the oracle of God.</font>
<br>
<font>Author:</font> <a href="http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/Lord-Byron-%28George-Gordon-Noel-Byron%29/1/index.html" target="_blank">Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)</a><br>
<font>Source:</font> <i>The Island (canto I, st. 6)</i></blockquote><div><a href="http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/Conscience/index.html" target="_blank"><br>http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/Conscience/index.html</a> <br>
</div><br><br>Of course Atheists might DENY that their consience is
from God, but some people are in Denial of their obesity, aclohlism,
gambling problems etc. So I would venture to say that anyone who does
the "right thing" becuase they have an active consience are realyl
Listening to the voice of God within in even if their conscience is
unconsious of the connexion.<br>
<br>Only a psychopath could deny God and REALLY mean it.<br>
<br><br>That said, I don't deny that denying God is undeniably heresy!
I jsut deny that the deniars are denying God so much as that the yare
in denial of their "goodness" of their "Godness"<br><br>
<br>In New Age Terms, those Atheists who are moral/ethical and
listening to thier inner voice are in touch with thier HIGHER SELF.
This is AIUI a manifestation of HKBH within us, perhaps part of our
soul structure, akin to he Super-Ego or simply the yetzer tov but it is
more than JUST a yetzer tov it is something spiritual rather than
merely an advisor.. <br>
<br><br>-- <br>Kol Tuv / Best Regards,<br>RabbiRichWolpoe@Gmail.com<br>see: <a href="http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/</a><br>
</div>
</blockquote><br>I'm sorry to say that I disagree. The Big
Three: Richard Dawkins (author of "The Blind Watchmaker" and "The God
Delusion"), Christopher Hitchens (author or "God is not Great"), and
Sam Harris (author of "The End of Faith") most certainly do not believe
in God. They are even angered by the suggestion of G-d, not only
because they have a negative view of organized reliigion, but because
they are frustrated by what they perceive as superstition controlling
world affairs and governing the way people treat each other. As
secular humanists, they believe powerfully in the emotional reality of
empathy and compassion, but they ascribe the physical causality of
those realities to biological sources of matter-energy, chemistry,
genetics, and natural selection. They do not deny their own
conscience, but rather they deny that the human need for morality,
meaning, and transcendance are anything more than evolutionary
leftovers. Freud believed that love was a manisfestation of the sex
drive, but he didn't deny its power in the mind of man.<br>
<br>Perhaps at certain moments the order of the cosmos, the wonder and
diversity of life, the beauty of a sunset or the depth of a tragedy
will spur feelings of transcendance in the hearts of these men, but
they will easily dismiss any theological claims of those feelings as
psychological or neurological phenomenon with little perceptive power.
Frankly, in my own relationship with and search for G-d, I have
repeatedly shifted my position on the perceptive accuracy of such
feelings, so that I no longer accept or deny them at face value. On
the extreme of belief in total metaphysical parallels for all our
emotional constructs, one must inevitably betray some of those
constructs to fit everything together rationally. On the other extreme
of purely emotional, subjective view of religion, one must of course
betray some of the perceptive feel of those emotional associations.
All of this is true with or without belief in G-d, because G-d can be
defined in so many ways as to fit either view or any view in between,
even if G-d is as real as you or me. Certainly for these men, without
more empirical evidence of G-d, they will choose to deny any perceptive
accuracy of these feelings, from the claim that G-d exists down to any
definition of G-d based on emotional experiences.</div>