Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Thu Oct 09, 2025 1:18 pm
Many New Agers like Neale Donald Walsch are ex-Christians who still mention Christ, use many bible quotes, and walk on both sides of the street, traditional and New Age.
No, that's not the case. It's certainly not "many," if any such are around. I think you're being confused by the Gnostic strand, which is an old pseudo-Christian, cultic belief...occultic, really...which is the progenitor of the whole New Age movement. It has no compatibility with real Christianity, though it does use its language.
For example, in Gnosticism, the creator is not god. He's a "demiurge." Material reality is said to be delusory and bad...a trap of the soul. Special "knowers," Gnostic priests or the "illuminati" are said to know the route to transcendence of the material realm and return to the undefined divine (sometimes called Abyss), and so on. Nothing in this really resembles Christianity.
For the New Agers, god is the Guru.
They have quite a weird and non-Christian cosmology, actually. They're clearly not at all talking about the Christian conception of God.
God being a mystery is one of the central themes of Christianity.
Not really. In Christianity, God is self-revealing, rather than the sort of Gnostic "mystic unspeakable." He's a God of revelation, of communication, and of involvement in History, rather than a Gnostic transcendent blank.
But there are things that remain mysterious (though Christians do not use the word "mystery" in its Gnostic sense -- Gnostic "mysteries" are perpetual, whereas Christian "mysteries" are temporary and issue in later reveling of their meaning: see, for example, Eph. 3:9, Col. 1:26, etc.), but since we're speaking of an infinite God, it would be problematic if there were NOT things we don't yet know about Him.
Quite contrary: most of the Christian believers are "elementary school or less" category, never read the bible, and just follow the clergy's orders. For them, they themselves are a mystery, let alone god.
I guess you don't know the right kind of "Christians," then. It's certainly not the case that they're all clerical followers. It's true that the Catholics, for example, are taught to be that, except those admitted to the priestly and theologian castes; but you won't find that's the case among the many Protestant groups. You'll find that many of them are rather diligent readers-for-themselves...which was actually one of the hot points in the Reformation, as you may recall.
Still, what you allege could easily be said for Atheists. Most of them are not scholars-of-Atheism, and have never read Voltaire or Nietzsche, Marx or Hume, even in snippets. They just don't like the idea of God, and for them, there it stops, really. That's just how people are: most are not scholars. It's not much of criticism if they're not: we need all kinds in this world. So long as there ARE some scholars among them, we're moving as might be expected.
About Christian "deep thinkers": William Lane Craig,
Wait. You just said that they're "elementary school." And now you mention one whom even you would have to admit is not?
...a Christian "philosopher" and apologist who runs the "Reasonable Faith" website, said that he would continue to believe in god despite being presented with valid evidence that god does not exist.
I'm pretty sure you're taking him out of context, and thus putting a spin on his words. I know Craig, and he's not an unthoughtful person, as even his enemies would freely recognize; for they take him very seriously, and put their best up against him.
I'd like you to show the context in which you found this quotation, because I'm willing to bet he said it in the context of what he would NOW do, now that he already knows God, rather than in a context of uncommitted uncertainty.
But we'll see, if you'll point out the place where you found the quotation.
Meanwhile, I found he says this, in response to that very sort of critique: and this would seem to cast serious doubt on your objection, I would say.
In the context, he's refuting the critic's claim that we would "evolve" a belief in God regardless of the truth of that belief.
"Perhaps the problem raised by these accounts is something different altogether. We might put the worry this way. In the case of our natural disposition to believe in rocks or human minds, the beliefs we formed are caused by rocks and human minds acting directly on our minds (through our senses, for example). But in the case of religious belief, belief in God arises from our “agency detector” firing off in the presence of the wind and the waves. That makes these religious beliefs very different. Rock beliefs are caused by rocks, while God beliefs are caused by . . . the wind. So, one might say, we would believe in God, even if there were no God there. And that is a problem.
This critic is right—that would be a problem. But it is not clear that what the critic is saying is true. Is it true that:
(6) Human minds would exist and believe in God, even if there were no God?
I don’t think so. I don’t think there would be a universe if there were no God. I don’t think the universe would be fine-tuned for life if there were no God. And I don’t think there would be any actual life, believers, human beings, or religion either if there were no God. Am I wrong? If I am, nothing about evolutionary or cognitive psychology indicates that I am. So, contrary to our initial conclusion, evolutionary accounts do not teach us that we would have religious beliefs whether or not they are true. As a result, this argument fails."
W.L.C, at https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writing ... ro-science
Is that deep? Is that reasonable?
Before you decide, you'd maybe better show that what you quote is what he says. I've provided the whole context, so you would know I'm representin his view rightly.
