Once upon a time, way back when, there were those who paid lip-service to the higher ideals, but could never live up to them...They spoke of generosity and self-restraint, while privately obsessing over money and searching for the next secret thrill...They praised others for their "clean living" but privately ridiculed these "simpletons," "bores" and "straight-arrows"... They spoke of love and friendship, but privately they gossiped and picked apart the flaws of their neighbors and co-workers...coveting and comparing notes, ah yes, holding grudges against their so-called friends. They kept their minor "bad habits" in check and in plain sight, but kept others well-hidden under the rug or in the closet...Filled with restless curiosity and wanderlust, they looked for places, for locales where the normal rules did not apply... Rhetorically, they lauded and affirmed the self-enforcement of chaste and civil comportment between the sexes, but after sunset they still hit the dance floor... In bars and hotels, in other towns and other cities, well, there was no need to explain away or even remember such dalliances... Discretion was the watchword of the day...To know how to keep secrets... To know how to live double-lives, keeping some people in and some out of the loop... When it simply became too hard to hide all manner of nocturnal involvements ranging from gambling to carousing to seduction, to fly-by-night affairs, to dangerous brief encounters, when it grew too burdensome to compartmentalize one's life and one's brain for the sake of "decency" and "respectability," someone came up with the brilliant idea that maybe they should just admit to these "petty vices" which if, everyone was indulging in - on the side, well then....And soon everyone started doing just that (admitting to them...) until the general public forgot that there were any vices in need of hiding...And so nowadays we talk of revolutions that have come and gone, hang-ups and inhibitions falling by the wayside, new paradigms emerging, new rites of passage...but have the secrets themselves disappeared, or the need to keep secrets...I ask you...
There is a way to talk and think about God that should not make anyone feel uncomfortable....a philosophical method that encourages open discussion... There is a way to ask questions (hypothetical inquiries) about the divine attributes and the divine nature, to investigate our "ideas" of God and what we are in fact saying when we posit "God's existence" ... One can delve into such matters without feeling obliged to arrive at hastily-conceived answers to specific questions...There is affirm possibilities and probabilities without landing upon anything definite....There is a way to recognize, problems, puzzles, contradictions involving God...There is a way to admit ignorance and uncertainty about the ultimate reality without anyone turning into a dogmatic atheist....There is a way to avoid false claims and misconceptions about God...Attacking such misconceptions does not make one an atheist - but rather helps to defeat superstition and idolatry (two of the misshap...
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