not deciding is a decision

Many atheists decide there is no God without defining what they mean by God. They just assume it means Supreme Being, look at Christians holding God up to ridicule and expect a more moral informed response to the world around them. Notice their definition is either borrowed or lacking since they cannot prove a negative. Proving God is a contradiction in terms and shows that since we know so little compared to all that can be known, that they are ignoring our ignorance of all that we do not know. They do this all the while we are learning there is even more that we do not know than we knew before. They cannot make an informed decision even as we are forced to make a decision without all the provable facts. Atheists are often humanists who believe in themselves rather than God. If one does not believe in God then they must, by default fill the vacuum, believe in themselves to make an informed decision and substitute Their religion for a belief in God. So it seems like a rather pompous position that accounts for their attempts to substitute their own religion of disbelief for a belief in God opposed to what the Founding Fathers incorporated in our Constitution.

lifting God up lifts us up

My mother used to say God loves praise, whereupon I would ask why? Does God have a self-esteem problem? What I did not understand at the time was that God wants us to praise Him for our own benefit. When we lift Him up, we lift ourselves up. And this is true when we speak well of every individual, here too we benefit. We can even see this linked to capitalism, when we help others the marketplace rewards us according to the extent others benefit from our help. We are rewarded for success, unlike those in the current government who reward failure.  

love in a fist

There is one single reason underlying many atheists denial God exists. It rests primarily in the example the church gives them, the witness by individual church members. The over riding impression most have is that many churchgoers either have a weak witness or no witness at all. Churches themselves seldom even broach the subject. More than a few churchgoers have an outright negative witness which in turn under girds much of the atheist position. Almost all negative witness involves the lack of love as Jesus taught it. The main fall down of followers of the letter or the law only is that, lacking the spirit of the law, they lack love. So separating the view of atheists from their view of churchgoers becomes paramount. Unfortunately perhaps this does nothing for church attendance.

starving in the pulpit

Speaking to a pastor I said, if Jesus walked in the front door of many churches 70% of those inside would run out the back door. The pastor responded, I would speak like Peter, stay away from me Jesus for I am a sinner. Notice that Peter's sins were not yet taken away on the cross. Notice that the Holy Spirit had not yet come over him. Notice it was the same for that pastor. Today we were already healed on the cross, and our sins were already taken away on the cross. I've heard boasting in the pulpit and the boaster was proud of still being a sinner and said plainly, by using the if word, that being a proud unworthy, even after reading the Bible, he had no idea of what God's will was. Many in the pulpits are fat in learning and starving for a lack of understanding.

the church as a lodge for the social life

The real Pulpit Rock was a natural rock that gave the appearance of a pulpit with off to one side a place for a choir. As children we used to pretend on this rock we were delivering sermons like the adults. This rock went back plenty far but children playing church on it went back to the 1700s when the rock was first encountered. Today the rock is gone but children continue to play church as before, only now as grown ups in real churches constructed for the purpose. As originally, the main activity is to socialize, have fun and get along with each other. Spiritual matters do not all that often come to the fore.

the spirit depends on the Spirit

The Spirit leads the Body or the Body will lead the spirit into the final end for all bodies. The concrete world is a magnification of the spirit world. Older people over 70 often encounter inexplicable depression, and as someone who has dealt extensively with old age in others and is now engaged in the same struggle, one can find events overtaking one that are overwhelming. The only help we can count one is from the spirit and the Spirit of Existence which placed us in the orbits of life. Concentration on the Spirit is vital. There is no way out of the predictament of the crumbling body concrete other than the Spirit. Nothing ends in the concrete and nothing came from the concrete.

faith is everyone's final decision

Everyone is forced to operate on faith whether they understand this, like it or not, for the reason that none of us know all that there is to be known to make a final decision. All our new learning increases our knowledge, including the knowledge that we learn that there is yet much more that we did not know than we realized before. Answered questions reveal more questions so that increasing our knowledge increases our knowledge of our ignorance. Since this means we must make a decision right now without the benefit of all knowledge, then we close the gaps in our knowledge by assumptions which must be taken on faith. Even the knowledge we have now is subject to over riding new knowledge. Anyone rejecting this definition assumes by their own definition that they know all and all there is to be known. They are then locked into this mind set until the next increase in knowledge comes along to unset this.