I get it...I see how intellectual everybody is and how "intelligent" all these arguments are. I hear how "God gave you a brain" and how you're using it to ask all these questions to which you will never get an answer.

Don't bother. I have a dog. He's a very smart dog. But he can't tell me what 1 + 1 is. That's the easiest question ever and yet my very smart dog (which a brain that God gave him) cannot hope to answer.

Why I put this on my wall instead of my blog, I'll never know. Moving it here to make it easier to link to.

I post this so often, I'll just stick it on here for quick reference. It is by Robert T. Weston and has been a reading in at least two UU service books, including the current hymn book Singing the Living Tradition. It captures my thoughts on the subject so perfectly that I can't see any reason to write any commentary on it.

Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the handmaiden of truth.

In  another thread, the idea has been raised that asking questions about one's faith, and finding an answer in some other source than sacred writ is somehow wrong, sinful, or detrimental to one's faith.  (Also there is another thread that wonders if preaching from the Lectionary leaves impirtant truths [i.e. presumed answers to questions] out of the picture altogether.)  Just wondering if anyone had questions of faith that sacred writ doesn't address.

I could have taken the cloth. When I was sixteen, our tiny church (Crystal Springs UC in Montreal) had a dynamic minister who convinced eight of us to enter the ministry. I was all set. But there was a catch. Rules for theological school were tough, then. You had to have a high school leaving certificate. I didn't. Still don't. So I had to become an office boy instead.

But if I had made it....

The US military which had been developing as a largely mercenary force of hired thugs, is now moving in a different direction. The new wars are being fought by small groups of assassins and terrorists known as special ops. Theres was one of the few budgets that was actually increased in the current US budget proposals.

Very powerful video. A new twist on "We Are Not Alone"?

In her opening words to the COP17 this morning Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) quoted Nelson Mandela, “It always seems impossible until it is done.”

‘We have faith’ is displayed boldly in every corner where the Faith Secretariat has a considerable presence here at the COP17.

The first and only other time I’ve visited Africa was in 2000, in Ghana representing The United Church of Canada at a gathering of African lay centres. And as soon as I stepped onto the continent again yesterday, memories of witnessing the deep faith of Africans were rekindled.

YOU

I get so angry with You

I keep chasing You and You keep hiding from me

Like a child playing a game

I hear you whispering my name

And then I run after you

Only to turn the corner and see that You are gone

I’m getting tired of this

When will this stop?

It is no game

It’s the only way I can lead you from out of the prison

The maze of your self

I have come, after much thought, to the realization that there is (for me at least) a fundamental flaw in the atheist-theist debates that rage on Wondercafe and elsewhere. The problem, as I see it, is that both positions, especially in the extreme forms that tend to start and get involved in these debates, are based on an old-fashioned notion that one's faith is binary: one either believes in God or doesn't. In computer interface terms, it's a checkbox labelled "God" that you click or you don't.