10.27.09
Mother Nature and Father Time
Check out this video on what kind of “God” cannot logically exist…
I remember when I wrote about these ideas sometime ago in my novel-in-progress. The end result was, however it came to be, that I couldn’t think of “God” (I was a christian at the time) as being the creator of all things ex nihilo (out of nothing), but rather the creator of all things in the sense that he/she worked with material already existing. So, “God” to me was a “God” that could NEVER have been “omni-present”, nor “omni-potent” (unless whatever is, logically, the most powerful being ever to exist could be called “omni-potent”).
These changes in my theology also included a limitation of “God’s” knowledge. I couldn’t see “God” as a supreme being living outside of time. And assuming time is never without an end, it was impossible for me to picture “God” with the ability to know the future. And so, my novel-writing process led me to re-interpret my theology into one of many “Open Theist” interpretations.
I never even considered the fact that I had stepped into a “liberal” understanding of christianity (though I had yet to see the bible as a strictly human artifact) . From my perspective, I was only trying to see God in a logical manner because I assumed he/she thought of him or herself as logical. Even when I started reading Brian Mclaren’s books while entering into the “Emerging Church” scene, I never realized that I had liberal leanings in my christian faith. Looking back, I can see now that I could have easily labeled myself a Liberal Christian much earlier than I did – which was right after I left the church for good.
09.29.09
Stephen Fry on the “Divine Fire” and Human Imagination
I feel like I’ve been posting far too many youtubes on my blog, but I also feel that it would be wrong not to post them. Here, again, is another youtube, and it has made my copy of Shelley’s Frankenstein call out to me for another read. I can’t remember how many times I’ve read this favorite among favorites of mine because it’s been so long since I’ve touched it last. And I’m afraid it will be some time longer before I get to it again.
04.06.09
Touching, But Can’t Be Touched
I couldn’t tell you how many times, when I’ve talked about the lack of EVIDENCE for the supernatural, I’ve been given personal testimonies from people who think anecdotes should be more than enough for me to commit myself to THEIR belief in the supernatural (even though, the more personal testimonies gathered from people NOT sharing the same spiritual family, the more the contradictions among the testimonies).
Check out this video –>
03.24.09
…Pants On Fire!
It was more than 30 years ago that I started praying on my bed every night of my childhood…
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Amen.”
It was more than 25 years ago, while reading over, again and again and again…
“For God so loved the world,
That He gave His only begotten son,
That whosoever believeth in Him
Should not perish,
But have everlasting life.
John 3:16.”
…I cried through a prayer, thanking Jesus “for dying for my sins”.
It was more than 30 years ago that I started praying before every meal up until my late teens…
“Come Lord Jesus, be our guest,
Let this food to us be blessed.
Amen.”
During my teens my bed-time prayers became increasingly personal, expressing many of the thoughts some may write in a diary (or fear to). Many of those prayers were filled with emotional expressions like a warm smile or a flood of tears.
I was born into a family and culture that have been Christian for generations. I was not taught that I should skeptically look for empirical evidence of the existence of God. I was taught to develop critical arguments to defend the particular version of theology passed on to me from family, church, and Bible School. But questioning the existence of God or the bible as God’s revelation wasn’t a consideration. And while playing guitar and singing songs (some written by yours truly) in at least 4 Christian Rock bands across Canada and into Australia, I still never considered acknowledging the viewpoint of those who haven’t taken on the presupposition that God is real and he reveals it in his Son and the Spirit that worked through the Biblical writers.
After about the first 6 or 7 years of Bible College I came to an understanding that it is healthy to listen to everything others say with a skeptical mind in order to have an informed sense of trust or mistrust (or both) in what they say. After a summer of preaching, leading worship and youth groups at an average-sized church in Winnipeg, I continued to pursue a Master of Divinity. When my pride in my acquired seminary training in theology had somewhat subsided, I re-discovered that it was also healthy to be skeptical of my own assumptions – not just for intellectual growth, but also to benefit how I relate to others.
Just recently it has been suggested to me by someone who has known me (or at least about me) since I was born that either I’ve been lying throughout my two active (ie.blog) years as an atheist about being an atheist, convincing all those close to me..
OR
I lied throughout my 30+ years as a Christian about being a Christian, convincing all those close to me.
Maybe I lied about both! That’s right, folks! I am THAT good of a fraud! I have consistently fooled all those close to me through every word and action of mine concerning my heartfelt fundamental beliefs!
03.10.09
Coleridge Said That?
I stole this quote from Becky’s blog. Every time I read it, it leads me to different thoughts. You gotta like that in a quote.
He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
03.02.09
Old, Old, REALLY Old Sex
Here’s an article sent to me that I thought worth posting. I’ve quoted passages that I think are particularly valuable for someone who is about to read biblical passages used to condemn homosexuality…
Providing a Historical Context
Biblical writers had no concept of sexual orientation or sexual development as we understand those today. Therefore, passages that reference same-sex sexual activity should not been seen as comprehensive statements concerning homosexuality, but instead should be viewed in the context of what the ancient world that produced the Bible understood about sexual activity…
..Biblical scholars have employed the social sciences to study the relational and gender patterns of the ancient Mediterranean world—the world that produced the Bible. Professor Mary Tolbert summarizes that research with the following words:
The single most important concept that defines sexuality in the ancient Mediterranean world, whether we are talking about the kingdoms of Egypt or of Assyria or whether we are talking about the later kingdoms of Greece and Rome, is that approved sexual acts never occurred between social equals. Sexuality, by definition, in ancient Mediterranean societies required the combination of dominance and submission. This crucial social and political root metaphor of dominance and submission as the definition of sexuality rested upon a physical basis that assumed every sex act required a penetrator and someone who was penetrated. Needless to say, this definition of sexuality was entirely male—not surprising in the heavily patriarchal societies of the Mediterranean.
Genesis 19
This story is not a condemnation of homosexuality, but is a story about rape and inhospitality. In other biblical texts (Ezekiel 16:49, Luke 17:28-29) Sodom’s ‘sin’ is not identified as homosexuality, rather, their sins were pride, failure to help the poor, and lack of hospitality to foreigners.
Leviticus 18:22; 20:13
…this prohibition in Leviticus was an attempt to preserve the internal harmony of Jewish male society by not allowing them to participate in anal intercourse as a form of expressing or gaining social and political dominance. These verses in no way prohibit, nor do they even speak, to loving, caring sexual relationships between people of the same gender.
Romans 1:26-27
The “natural intercourse” of that day which Paul was referring to was “among unequals with the dominant partner always an adult male.”
In other words, all of today’s sexual acts between partners of equal status would be considered “unnatural” to biblical writers. Male and female may have been considered spiritually equal before God in the first century, but when it came to sex.. equal status was a sin.
So for all heterosexual wives in today’s church who think the private lives of our contemporary society should only have sexual practices in the biblical sense, I ask you, “Will you welcome others to judge whether your husband is truly dominant over you, greater in public and private status?”
01.10.09
The Mystic Route
What is this video telling you?
First of all, it’s obviously an allegory. Flies don’t grow back half of their bodies when they’re cut off, or disappear into a painting. For that reason (and the title of the video), the fly is our clue to understanding what the video is about. And remember, it’s an allegory, so the video is not saying, ‘Don’t kill flies.’
The beginning of the video introduces a contemplative, sword wielding warrior who sees the life of a fly in his practice area to be his enemy (a destroyer of the peace the warrior possesses), and assumes the life of the fly should, therefore, not exist.
I’ve interpreted the fly to represent all enemies (destroyers of the good we possess) that live within our environment, or our selves. And, to destroy what we believe to be our enemy multiplies evil rather than saves the good because any living thing we think to be evil is never without possessing good (life itself, for example). Therefore, destroying our enemy makes us an enemy of good too, and subsequently, multiplies the evil rather than saving the good.
A fine lesson, in some respects. Although, anyone’s welcome to present a different interpretation.
Where I take issue with what is being taught in the video is when a fly lands on a beautiful painting and transforms into something beautiful within the painting. And the warrior learns from the fly that to overcome the presence of a living destroyer of peace one must create an ideal (heavenly) reality apart from the one actually experienced. Then, by using some mental gymnastics, the warrior re-interprets the not-so-ideal (earthly) reality as an ideal one. In other words, he deluded himself of what is really going on – a la mysticism!
Why? Why take the mystic route? Why must we think we can know or even imagine the one and only, highly improbable, ideal reality, and think it should, and WILL, replace our lowly earthen reality soon, making EVERYTHING completely good?
Why couldn’t the warrior direct his efforts to a realistic pursuit of peace? Like trying to gain a better understanding of his present reality, achieving a greater awareness of the good that is within his enemies, finding what already exists to be “heavenly” within our earthen reality? No, instead, the mystic hides by overshadowing the real with an illusory veil, whitewashing what he or she doesn’t want to work through.
And we can find this happening throughout many of the religious communities, people who believe in a supernatural reality that sets themselves apart from the rest of the doomed world. Just recently, a Pastor explained to me that people who continually reject God’s goodness are creating their own irreversible destiny for complete evil. And God will “honour” their choices, while “redeeming” the lives of those who didn’t reject God’s goodness.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s admirable for anyone to want to change the life we have for the better, moving it closer to an ideal world (however unlikely an ideal world is). But until humanity is able to actually calculate a highly plausible future, we have no reason to assume that the universe will bow to our wishes.
The universe does not revolve around us. And yet there are many who believe that “God” (Creator/Creation or just Creator) made the universe suited for humanity, like a womb suited for a baby. Even in the empirical sense, some believe the whole universe (especially the planet earth) was ‘fine-tuned’ for humanity instead of humanity being ‘fine-tuned’ for the universe.
Look, I’m not saying there wasn’t a time in the journey of our species that we shouldn’t have thought and felt as if a loving, superior consciousness created a universe (or “womb”) for the benefit of our maturity. What I’m trying to draw attention to is that first, we all know there is a time when a child recognizes that he or she is not the center of the universe, and second, we also know that there is a time when a child outgrows the physical, mental and emotional needs to remain cuddled in the center of a loving, superior consciousness.
12.11.07
Defining Love
“Love” is one of those words that are mutually expressed in conversation despite a lack of mutual understanding in its meaning.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:7-8 NASB)
According to this biblical passage, either there’s no such thing as an atheist or atheists cannot experience true love. Both are presupposed fallacies and possible explanations for the confusion over “what I believe”. I assume, when people say they just don’t know what I believe anymore, what their really wondering is where does my heart find meaning and purpose, what is it attached to or what does it rest on. In other words, where does my heart find security and significance?
I find, though, when I respond to this concern my answer is never good enough for a religious person. Maybe it’s because a religious person sees my life as cheated out of the extras in their lives, I don’t know. They have an extra reality called the supernatural. They have an extra life beyond the grave. They have an extra Being who is extra extra powerful and extra extra knowing. And because of all these extras, they have extra hopes for the future.
I think my life has just as much depth and fullness (sometimes more, sometimes less) than any religious person. So, if I do the math, I can only assume that I’ve been able to take greater advantage of the meaning naturally gleamed from this world than some others have. But my point is not to create a hierarchy of meaningful lives here. Rather, it is to emphasize the opportunities atheists have to enrich their lives here on earth. Now, to answer the interest in where my heart finds security and significance: I believe in Life and the Love it creates.
Whether life is intelligently designed or love is attributed to a god (Ishtar, Aphrodite, Freya, Radha, Jesus, Kama, and so on), I find security and significance among all the living and a world of exploration in the love that life creates. That’s right. I think life, good old fashioned naturalistic life created love. Yet some have told me that the evolutionary reasons (survival) for the naturalistic world to have created love diminishes love’s meaning. I fail to understand this kind of reasoning because I just don’t see how the evolutionary process diminishes love’s meaning – unless your losing some mystical extras presumed in love’s definition.
I think a close association between God, Life and Love makes some worshipers feel that an attempt to clarify what ‘love’ is would be irreverent or impossible because the true meaning of love is ineffable in the mystical sense. And even for those of us who feel our experience of real, beautiful love cannot be diminished by any explanation of it, we fear the loss of our own meaning of the word, our own poetical definition from the depths of our being that need not be mystical to be ineffable.
Sometimes I wish we could just eliminate words like ‘love’ and create a new word for each of the many meanings that can be found in it. Some languages do this already. Take the five Greek words for ‘love’, for instance. In the Greek, the words “Xenia,” “Storge,” “Eros,” “Agape,” and “Philia” are all translated into the English word “Love”. (If you’ve grown up going to church, you’ve probably heard these definitions with extreme emphasis on Agape as Godly love that completely outshines all others, even though the others, we are told, are not without purpose.)
After re-exploring the five Greek concepts of love, I discovered I already had my own personal revamped definitions of love too:
XENIA (known as love offered to strangers) = a consented act of service between those of their own species.
STORGE (known as family love) = a consented act of service between those considered a refuge.
AGAPE (known as unconditional love) = supporting humanity’s instinct for Xenia and/or Storge with a dutiful commitment to the political/social necessity of Xenia and/or Storge despite the lack of happiness found there in.
EROS (known as erotic desire) = a consented act of service between those with a mutual sexual attraction.
PHILIA (known as friendship love) = a consented act of service between those with a mutual attraction of minds; ’soul mates’
(Notice how my definitions of Xenia, Storge, and Agape do not require or rely on the consciousness of physical or emotional feelings to perform the acts of love. Eros, however, does require a consciousness of one’s physical feelings; and Philia requires a consciousness of one’s emotional feelings.)
Now that I’ve articulated my current definitions of love, I’ll be analyzing them, contemplating overlaps or the lack there of, and looking to read material out there that will restore the true definitions of the greek words while helping me to develop my own.
11.30.07
Everything is Permitted
I just finished reading Philosophers Without Gods (subtitled – Meditations On Atheism and the Secular Life) edited by Louise M. Antony. It was a good read. Funny thing, though, while I read it I couldn’t help but think about another book I read years ago (which I may have to visit again for old times sake). And speaking of re-reading, there may be a few chapters from the former book that I might have to give a second read as well.
One common subject discussed (and apparently written about in a novel I never seem to get back to), is the assumed non-existence of morality if God were not to exist. I was getting tired of hearing about this subject (especially from Christians) until I read the last line in the last chapter, written by Jonathon E. Adler. Adler turns the tired adage “If God is Dead, Everything is Permitted” on its head by writing: “If God is Alive, Everything is Permitted.” These words stood out to me more than anything else he wrote in the chapter.
Saying that everything would be permitted if God didn’t exist means that not only would you be able to do whatever you wanted, but everyone else would be able to do whatever they wanted to you. Really? Would anyone let anyone one else do anything to them? Come on, let’s be realistic here.
But on the other hand, does Adler have a valid point? If God exists, is God permitted to do everything? Now let me clarify. I didn’t ask – if God exists, doesn’t he permit himself to do anything? I’m talking about the human perspective, a perspective we can all acknowledge exists.
God is free to do anything without question from his followers. According to his followers, God is accountable to no one. Why would he be if he is believed to be omni-benevolent? His holy and perfect righteousness affords complete trust, doesn’t it? What could be considered by non-God-followers as evil committed by God will always be considered by his followers as a righteous act perceived as evil by non-God-followers, who need reminding of their human ignorance and fallibility.
For example, I have yet to find an adequate ethical justification for the genocide acts condoned by the God of the Old Testament. Why is it wrong to commit genocidal acts in the twentieth century, and yet permissible (and justified “for that time”) millenniums ago? Or, why is torture considered wrong by most of the world, and yet is accepted as a valid form of ethical reckoning in the afterlife for anyone who is not a follower of a certain religious creed?
I don’t see how the same evil behavior committed by human beings becomes “good” when it is committed by God. Calling inhumane acts “Divine Justice” doesn’t make them just. But no true follower of God would ever say they don’t permit God to do certain things.
And so, for God, from the perspectives of his followers, everything is permitted.
09.13.07
Placebo Paradise
More dialogue with fellow blogger that makes me want to record some of the responses. Although, due to either technical difficulties or censoring, this response has yet to be published on Ryan’s blog… [Edit: It was in fact a technical difficulty. And I assumed censoring my comments was an option Ryan might consider (lumping him with others who have indeed blocked my comments). My apologies to Ryan.]
Ryan,
You said, “Affirming a strong connection between goodness and truth doesn’t change the fact that the world is not yet as it ought to be, nor is this affirmation invalidated, from my perspective, by specific instances where good results come through less than ideal means or sources.”
I think it has been a consistent characteristic within the history of humanity to want to know that the trouble in our lives will be resolved in the end and everybody (at least, everybody that ultimately matters) will live happily ever after.
And when an individual/community cannot find strength and hope in the present goodness of life, false hope (like a placebo of “illusion or the projection of human fantasies”) is a life saver, providing badly needed comfort and security.
These fantasies of salvation may require a lot of mythical/philosophical abstractions – which can be a great exercise for the mind – as Freud pointed out. Although, ideally, I think people should outgrow the need for a placebo. But until then, trying to reveal the placebo may be detrimental to their overall health. Perhaps, Freud knew this as well.
A pleasure as always,
Jerry
