"Freedom? Oh Really?"

Exercise great care in your choices--in particular your choices of the prejudices you choose to embrace.
 
Choices have consequences which at times are subtle and unnoticed and at other times claim almost all of one's life and living.  

How often a person can claim freedom only to be hemmed in by biases, claim insight only to be bound by partiality, claim autonomy only to be trapped in self imposed limits, claim independence from faith and yet be trapped in prejudices against faith, and the list goes on and on?

It is as if one is caught in a vortex of understanding and then while being carried about in that vortex claims all reality outside of that vortex does not exist. That is the freedom some loudly proclaim.  However, the reality is that such freedom is not freedom at all but bondage. 

Any sincere seeker of truth and thus freedom takes down all preconceived notions and follows the trail of truth to wherever it may lead. If one cannot in all honesty say that they do so then such seeking is not legitimate.  

Most often when that trail leads into the arena of faith and in particular Christian faith, one's preconceived prejudices against Christian faith will block one's way. Such a person can be carried along by the trends and current of their prejudices without even knowing it. 

When such is the case they are by choice, blind to all that lies outside of their reality and rather than making a sincere effort as a seeker of truth they loudly make proclamations of special truth, superior insights, experience, and science. 

In doing so such a person purposefully turns a blind eye to that which is not in in one's your knowledge-comfort zone--even going on the attack. Such is not freedom but an enslavement to one's own limited understanding. These are the choices one has the freedom to make however one has no control over the outcomes of those choices.

Chose carefully as there are eternal consequences for how one decides.

Criterion to Examine Various Religious Narratives

Most interesting argument for the veracity of the Torah by a Jewish fellow who has studied the major religions of the world and applies a very interesting criterion to the various narratives.

His lecture can be found at the following.

http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/proof-torah-true/

A Few Questions...

From the book, The Devil’s Delusion by David Berlinski,

A secular Jew, Berlinski nonetheless delivers a biting defense of religious thought. An acclaimed author who has spent his career writing about mathematics and the sciences, he turns the scientific community’s cherished skepticism back on itself, daring to ask and answer some rather embarrassing questions:

• Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close.
• Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.
• Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.
• Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.
• Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough.
• Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good? Not even close to being close.
• Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences? Close enough.
• Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even ballpark.
• Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.

Berlinski does not dismiss the achievements of western science. The great physical theories, he observes, are among the treasures of the human race. But they do nothing to answer the questions that religion asks, and they fail to offer a coherent description of the cosmos or the methods by which it might be investigated.