I came across this meme the other day while looking for something else. It's from a local Lutheran church. It's a nice church. I have friends there. They do good things. I don't know who put this up or how many of them would just agree to it without thinking. Hopefully not too many.
I couldn't confirm the exact quote, but it does paraphrase a work by Augustine, The Confessions. Augustine was born after Christianity was made legal by Constantine and contributed greatly to the work of trying to figure out what St. Paul meant and what the gospels were trying to say. Things like the Trinity were still being hotly debated at the time. Unfortunately, the people who won the debates were from some of the worst, most extreme forms of Christianity. The ones we would today call The Fundamentalists.
They wouldn't have called themselves fundamentalists, because they had not yet decided on what the fundamentals were. Today we define fundamentalists by those who call the Bible the literal word of God and consider Jesus to have been a real person, the son of God, who actually died and bodily resurrected . Back then, they were still debating which writings belonged in the Bible and if Jesus was a man, fully human and fully God, a spirit, a man who was born then possessed by the holy spirit, or what. The difference then was, people on all sides of those debates had some degree of power and influence. Today, suggesting that Jesus was not a physical human, walking around and talking to people, will get you laughed at in most circles, even outside of church.
So, why am I bringing this up? Sure, it's from 16 centuries ago. But here it is on a modern "wall". It's posted by a church that was founded by a guy who protested against a church that was corrupt. The Catholic Church claims to have it's roots in communities founded by all those writers from the first few centuries that Augustine was debating about. Those communities were protesting the corruption in the Roman Jewish community in their time. Churches today will often claim that they are challenging the world order, that they are uncovering the corruption of power, that they are symbolically turning over the tables of the money lenders in the Temple. And sometimes they do. But they also will tell you that you are not good.
Whatever other traditions churches might have, the legacy of them telling you that you are not good enough for God has endured throughout all of them. When you do that, when you convince people that there is something they don't know, and they need to keep coming back to you to figure out what it is, you can get them to do anything. In the case of the late 4th century Christians, they got people to burn the scripture they didn't like, tear down the churches that didn't teach the right brand of Jesus, and to do the same to people who sat in the wrong place and read the wrong books or said the wrong things.
This is not some alternate history. It is well known. It is the beginning of what came to be known as "The Dark Ages". I'm not blaming the Christians for this. The Romans started their own downfall when they kicked out Aristotle and gave power back to corrupt rulers instead of promoting democracy. Something would have replaced that, and we could have done worse, but we could have done a lot better.
After about a thousand years, we did start doing better. Instead of reading interpretations to people, we taught them to read. We didn't treat people like slaves, we encouraged each other to work for each other. We found out genius and inspiration was everywhere if you just gave it room to grow. Seems pretty obvious now, but it was a struggle to get where we are. People like Susan B Anthohy, Rosa Parks, Ghandi, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali continue that struggle today.
All of them fought using reason. They read, understood and developed philosophy that valued human dignity and human feelings. They didn't try to figure out some logic that explained why a God who claimed to be ultimately good could allow for evil in the world. They acknowledged that there is good and evil and they tried to find ways to deal with it. They didn't provide simple answers. They asked for the right to ask the question. They claimed the right to participate. If someone claimed authority by referring to someone from the 4th century who said they weren't good enough, that they could never measure up to some ultimate authority, they questioned that authority. It's the basis for the world of freedom we have today.
Keep what's good from religion if you can find it, but get rid of stuff like this.
I don’t shake my fist at the radio as much as I use to.
Partly because I’m listening to Podcasts so I can turn off what I’m listening
to at anytime. If it is the person doing the show that bothers me, I can email
or comment on the show and get some satisfaction. The ones that still disturb me are
the commenters. They are harder to reach, too anonymous, and they are legion.
Particularly the ones that repeat the mantra, “you won that debate because you
were debating a fundamentalist who doesn’t represent the true interpretation of
the Bible.”
So here I’ll straighten this out, once and for all.
To get us all on the same page, I’ll refer to a debate about
the slaughtering of the Amalekites featuring one of the podcasters at
Reasonable Doubts. These guys are good. They take on respected theologians and
support their arguments with data. The debate actually was aired on UK radio on a
show called “Unbelievable”. Also a great show with a balanced approached. The
Reasonable Doubts podcast included the follow-up comments read on on-air and
some summary by the atheist debater, Justin Sheiber.
Here’s an important point: the only reason that people like
Justin Scheiber make logical arguments against God is that there are people out
there making illogical arguments for God. These arguments cause problems for
individuals, governments and cultures. It is usually a fundamentalist/inerrant
type of believer that agrees to engage in these debates, but it wouldn’t matter.
They just happen to be the types who would try to defend obviously abhorrent
actions of God. It is not the fault or the problem of those making the logical
argument that other, more liberal debaters, don’t step up.
It wouldn’t matter partly because the believers are already
arguing amongst themselves. It is very common to hear the kind of follow-up
emails, tweets and letters that came to the “Unbelievable” show after the
debate about the Amalekites. Those listeners were hoping for something better, but
instead they got a guy who came out and said he believed the Bible as history
from the get go. I can feel for them and I cringed right along with them.
What most of them did not supply is a counter argument; most
simply said that the guy on their side, the believer side, presented a poor
argument. I agree with that too. They then go on to say there are better
arguments. I felt that way once. I attempted to develop that counter argument.
I’m now convinced there isn’t one. Justin is right, it’s sick. If you are worshiping a being that directed those actions, there’s something wrong with
you. If you worship that being because of other things it did, and you just
didn’t know about these parts, that’s excusable, unless you are reading this,
then you are no longer off the hook. If you are trying to compartmentalize
these actions or hoping that someone can explain them or justify them, stop it.
One of the comments after the show did supply a pastor and
even a specific sermon and book that just came out. This is where you can find
an example of Christians arguing amongst themselves. I looked up an earlier
book of his, “Letters from a Skeptic” and perused the comments on Amazon.com.
Most of the negative comments attacked his theology. That is, they were happy
that the skeptic in the book was convinced by the letters that Boyd addressed
modern theological questions, but they didn’t like that he redefined God to do
it. And, as this reader review points out, the so-called skeptic was very open
to deistic ideas in the first place, and he had a weak scientific background,
so the entire exercise has very little value.
So the question is, do we have a new emerging theology? Is
there one that can reconcile the God who commands armies to the one who loves
all his children? People clinging to the old agree that this theology is new
one and they say it does not speak to the all-knowing all-powerful God that
they know. This is as much a split as was Christianity from Judaism or
Protestantism from Catholicism. The new does not seek the blessing of the old.
It criticizes it just as Jesus criticized the Pharisees and Luther criticized
the Popes. It posts its theses in public and invites you to read the scripture
yourself and decide. And just like Luther and Christ, it claims the connection
to the same old scriptures. It just knows them better and understands God
better and is giving a better, more modern interpretation, or so they say.
If the emerging theology did not claim to be connected to
the original story of the creation of the universe it could not make any claims
about the uniqueness of Jesus. At the very least, it would have to disclaim the
genealogy in the gospels that connects them. It would then need to provide
reasons for disclaiming that and not other claims and the whole mess would
start to crumble. Everybody knows this is happening.
To prevent the house of cards from falling, some have pointed
to the fundamental cornerstones and said you must believe these or you’re out.
They have returned to the repetitive claims of the end of times. Others are
attempting to build new structures and scaffolding to hold up the old. Neither
will allow the teachings of Jesus to compete in the full marketplace of ideas,
because that would make the pastors and theologians redundant. That would
require they support their philosophy with logic and that sounds like work.
It is possible that we, the skeptics, the a-theologians,
could just stand on the sidelines and watch the two teams continue to carry off
their wounded players. The danger is, in this world of modern warfare, allowing
such battles to escalate could lead to unthinkable consequences. The
fundamentalists are making themselves the easier target, but if they win, it is
doubtful that we would have a just and peaceful world, unless you consider a
world where women are not allowed to choose their careers and homosexuals are
considered mentally ill a just world.
For the moment, we find ourselves in an uncomfortable
alliance with the emerging liberal theology. They don’t seem to want to debate,
at least not often, and we have no reason to force them into the open. If they,
on occasion, speak out against the Westboro Baptists of the world, we
acknowledge that. If they are offering classes on the true history of the
church, that’s great. The good news, when they are ready to engage us, their
lines of reasoning are nothing new.
The comment about Greg Boyd that was read on “Unbelievable”
said this is the best reconciliation of OT and NT he has ever heard. If it is,
then we don’t have much to worry about. I have examined many sermons, blogs and
books like this and find this one a little better for its cleverness and the
use of a new analogy. All of them are pretty much the same. I was unfamiliar
with Boyd specifically, but a quick check shows he has a couple best sellers, a
successful church, and he was a classmate of Bart Ehrmann.
In the recommended sermon Boyd begins by explaining that he
will not be preaching dogma, that it will be opinion, and you can wrestle with
it as you please. He opens with Colossians
2:16-17, where Paul talks of the shadows of the old laws. He relates this
to the Jungian view of the shadow self, although he doesn’t mention Jung and I
think he does a poor job of explaining the archetype.When discussing the OT, he is completely open
about how abhorrent the behavior is and berates a current pastor for suggesting
the use of imprecatory prayer (Psalm 109)
to wish death on Obama. He describes his own journey of attempting to reconcile
this schizophrenic God who saves with one hand and smites with the other.
As an analogy for how God acted, he tells how missionaries
today need to act. If they go to a village that is performing female genital
mutilation as part of their rituals and traditions they can’t simply say to
stop it in the name of God. If they were to do that, it is doubtful they would
be welcomed to stay. Missionaries today need to gain trust over a matter of
years and hope their teachings about the ways of Christ will lead to them
choosing to treat their young women better.
The irony here, not mentioned of course, is that this is a
modern phenomena required due to missionaries not having the force of a
military to back them up and enforce God’s will. Christianity is being forced
into taking these steps toward competing in the marketplace of ideas because it
is losing its power. In a remote village, they can still control the
information they are using to discern the quality of their ideas. As modern
ideas spread, this will be increasingly difficult. Greg Boyd is seeing that
trend and applying what he sees as sophisticated arguments to the bigger
questions that educated American church goers are asking. I’m sure he believes
he can head off this drive toward a world where books are considered special
based on their quality, instead of their being in the liturgy.
He applies this missionary analogy to the OT God. God was
the enlightened American (these are my sarcastic words, not his), going into
the poor village and seemingly condoning abuse of women, but he did it only to
gain their trust. As Boyd says, “God enters us” as we are, at whatever stage of
development we are, “and slowly transforms us”. Today, we should only judge
those missionaries on the results of their work. If in the end, the villagers
stop their ritual circumcisions, we should not look back and berate them for not
producing those results quicker. For God, we should judge him through the lens
of the sacrificed Christ, hanging on the cross.
He goes on to use more metaphorical language about crosses
and humble missionaries and weaves in some standard crapola about free will,
but I want to review up to here. I’m not sure if I’ll go into more detail in
the future or not. First, he has the balls to open with a statement about how
new his ideas are. He wants to say that you, the person who has given up their
Sunday morning to come listen to him, is special. You have made the right
choice about church. You’ve come to the smart, cutting edge place and are about
to hear something that very few others have heard. IMHO, what he says in this sermon is no better than any old
church or for that matter a late night TV infomercial.
This is why people write comments like they do about debates
with fundamentalists. They are parroting these opening lines even though they
don’t really understand the arguments. They were told their knowledge is
special and they never checked it out. They can’t repeat the logic because it
doesn’t follow in a logical manner. But they are convinced that Greg Boyd gets
it and could explain it. They think they just need to study some more, then
they’ll be able to talk like Greg. Meanwhile, they'll just suggest you listen to his sermons. I wish more would do that study because in
the process they would find out how full of it he is.
The second thing he does is classic emerging church
manipulation. He admits the bad stuff is bad. He admits he spent years trying
to figure it out and couldn’t. He engages your intellect, the part of you that
has logically determined that there is something wrong here. He also knows you are
sitting there in his church. You must want this to work. You want the good
things about Jesus that you’ve heard about. You don’t want to be told to simply
believe it and it will all work out. You want a mechanism. He provides the
missionary work analogy; he provides the powerful images of a crucified Jesus;
he calls the OT stories that you don’t like “a negative contrast”; he says they
point to the “real” God in Jesus just like a shadow points to the real thing.
Each step seems to have some logic to it but none is any better than the
speculation of a third century Origen trying figure out what the gospels mean
with little knowledge of the context of the history of the first century.
At the end, he blasts the congregation with a list of
scriptures that seem to be as good as any scholarly footnote that would prove
that Jesus is the “real” God. He focuses on the latter half Colossians chapter
2 where Paul says “These (the laws) are a shadow of the things there were to come;”
and makes this rather bizarre statement, “The portrait of the law giving God is
wrapped up with the nationalism which is what the violence is all about, so if
one of them is the shadow, they’re all a shadow.” He gives you permission to
dismiss anything you don’t like. His cadence quickens as he rattles off chapter
and verse:
Jesus says, If you see me, then you see the father, don’t
look anywhere but the father. This appears to be some paraphrasing around John
14:19 or so.
Matthew 11:27 No one knows the father except for the son
John 14:6 I am The way, I am The truth; and Greg emphasizes “The”
and pauses to point out the singular is used here
Hebrews 1:3, the son is the one and only radiance of God’s
glory and the exact representation of his very essence
John 1:17 The law was given through Moses, but grace and
truth was given through Jesus Chirst.
Greg used “but” in this one, which seems to be a KJV
invention. Other interpretations use a semicolon or comma indicating these are
two separate functions, not one negating the other.
1 Timothy 2:15 There’s one mediator between God and humanity
and it is Jesus
He also says, “There’s one word between God and humanity,
it’s Jesus.” I couldn’t find a separate passage for this one. I guess he was elaborating
on the one above. Later in 1 Timothy there are instructions for women to learn
in quietness and full submission, which seems more “law-giver” to me, but
whatever.
He finishes with, “One saivour, one revealer.” This could be
the classic John 3:16, but hard sayin’.
He keeps repeating “Do you believe that or not” after each
one. This is a very old technique used by preachers for centuries. It is
semi-hypnotic. Then he gives the answer, just in case you don’t feel like thinking
for yourself, if we believe those passages, then there is no way to look at the OT except
as a shadow.
Of course, there are many scriptural references that claim
the Old Testament God is the one and only “real” God. Greg Boyd does not mention those in this sermon.
Deuteronomy 4:35
Deuteronomy 4:39
Deuteronomy 32:39
2 Samuel 22:32
1 Chronicles 17:20
Psalm 18:31
Isaiah 44:8
There are also passages that say faith is the only way to God, or you can’t get to
God without works, or that the end times are near, or just about anything else
you might want to say is true.
After that, he practically admits that his “shadow” metaphor
is a trick. He says he couldn’t figure out how to reconcile these passages,
then he gave up, and click, the shadow. But he’s already drawn you in with an
hour of Christian symbolism combined with pseudo-psychology and rapid
repetition, so you’re left hoping that you’ll find time to read the book when
it comes out and hammer through the details for yourself. He has convinced
himself that this trick works and he is so energetic, animated and entertaining
it just must be true. Plus he says he has an open door policy. Email him any
time and he will consider your question. He must be right if he is so
confident. Right?
I am glad that I did not pay full price for this book, and that it is short. I offer this review as a public service. I hope it saves you the 6 or 7 hours of life that I will never get back. I won’t bother to offer my own thoughts on the theology of the book. Others have already covered that, here is one: A theological review of the The Shack
Premise
Although the main character, Mac, seems to be someone who has separated himself from God, that is, he is a non-believer, this book is definitely for believers. By the end, Mac is brought back fully into his relationship with God, but he never would have got there if he didn’t have belief to begin with. This book does not explain God or The Trinity or answer questions about of why God allows evil to exist. Mac is not a non-believer in the sense that an atheist is. He is a “lost sheep”, someone who is angry with God and is struggling to understand what he has been taught about what God is.
I doubt the book would do much for a Christian that is angry with their church or disappointed in their religion. There are a few lines here and there about relationships and forgiveness that could be helpful for someone who has experienced a great injustice, but there are much better sources for that. It might be useful for someone who is hanging on to a little bit of belief, but wants to see a miracle to be convinced. Mainly, it will be embraced by those who are already full believers and want to hear another story of someone returning to the fold. They also get some modernized analogies for God along with it.
The problem of evil
It really can’t be ignored in this book. The shack is the place where Mac’s daughter, Missy, was murdered, at 6 years old, by a serial killer who is very good at covering his tracks. He attempts to confront God several times with his anger over how God did not protect his child, which is also clearly stated to be His (God’s) child also. Each time we hear that Mac is not ready to understand, or that he will never understand, or that it can’t be explained, or that God was “especially fond” of Missy.
Eventually, Mac’s anger is revealed to him as covering up his guilt, and he sees that no one else blames him for his daughter’s death, only himself. Mac is cleansed of the guilt, and we never have to worry about that pesky problem again. Near the end of the book, there is a short, but very good discussion about forgiveness. It talks of how holding on to anger toward the killer gives the killer power and that forgiving does not mean that anyone has to forget what the man did, or allow him to walk around freely. That conversation gets cut short and returns to the same old “let God rule your life” conversation that pervades the rest of the book. Relationship
There are a few fleeting moments where it seems like an honest and truthful expression of the value of human relationships will take the spotlight, but they pass so quickly I suspect they are just accidents. The text always returns to Jesus telling Mac that he must have a relationship where Jesus “lives through him and in him”, where he completely submits himself to that relationship. No mechanism is described. No methods are presented for how this relationship with an invisible entity is carried out. To the atheist, this is obviously not possible to describe, since no mechanism exists, but someone seeking spiritual guidance may continue to look for clues in this book.
In the most frightening part of the book, Jesus even describes being in relationship with Missy as she is being driven by the killer to the place she will die. This is not frightening because of descriptions of gruesome acts, there are none. It is frightening because Jesus talks of the love and warmth that Missy felt while this was happening. We are spared the details of the murder act itself, and we are denied the details of how Missy’s relationship with Christ made any difference. We are just told that it did, and that she is happy in heaven now and she is a spirit with great wisdom. What frightens me is that the author didn’t put down his pen or shut off his computer and say, “this is completely incoherent, who is this Jesus character, I can’t possibly make this story work.”
The Shack gets it right that our relationships are important. It is true that the power of our being in relationship with our fellow beings, human and otherwise, is difficult and perhaps impossible to describe, explain and teach. They are what binds us to our past, comfort us in the present, and give us hope for the future. They also cause us pain and no system of rules or guidelines has yet been able to prevent that. The solution the book gives for this conundrum is to have a relationship with characters from a series of very old books. I understand and appreciate the value of relating to characters from ancient stories, but I would never submit myself to one of those characters or depend on them for anything except perhaps some temporary comfort.
Euthyphro’s dilemma
The problem of evil has a few solutions, each with its own problems. You can say that we are we too limited to understand why God does what he does. That answer is presented more than once in “The Shack”. Or, you can say that God actually is the source of evil. No theologian, amateur or otherwise will ever come out and say that, but William Young does offer the Zen version when he has Jesus say, “it is what it is”. Jesus denies being a “Christian” or any affiliation with any institution and claims he comes to the world through the path of all religions and viewpoints, once again avoiding any explanation of how that works. Then he says he “has some things to do in the shop”, and excuses himself. The concept of God as everything, presented in a folksy Bob Vila like caricature.
Another answer to the dilemma is to say that God is limited, that evil exists and God can only do so much about it. It is not stated explicitly, but this book comes pretty close to saying it. It also does the classic Christian turnabout and puts the blame back on us independence seeking humans. Because Adam, with a little encouragement from Eve, decided to eat from the tree of knowledge, we live in a broken world. We complain and fight and struggle when all we need to do is get back to a dependent relationship with The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost and everything will be okay. God is good, and we take that goodness and screw it up.
At one point early in Mac’s talk with God, God explains this using the Adam story and says, “and Adam did what we expected him to do.” He never addresses why He didn’t create a different universe or a less stupid Adam, other than to say something better is coming and we can’t understand it. We are left as we always have been, alone in a universe that has unbelievable joy and energy and one that has unfathomable and unexplained horrors.
50 Blogs on Disbelief My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry. p. 157 Gregory Benford “Evil and Me”
Gregory was raised Christian and in a military family immediately following World War II. He saw some rather gruesome scenes in Japan and Germany at an early age. So, as like many of the essayists, he confronted the problem of evil. He covers it quickly and succinctly.
In this century, he lost his wife and his father in a matter of months. When he took no comfort with them being in a heaven he couldn’t believe in, it was the “emotional conclusion” of his loss of faith.
He concludes with a paragraph on the possible genetic origins of religion, ideas that are covered in more depth in other essays. And that he now does not believe evil is a problem to be solved, “It’s just a feature of our world.”
The machinations that people go through to solve the problem of evil can get rather out of hand. It seems we might have better things to do. The only solutions are choices of faith; that is accept that there is a plan you don’t understand or is beyond human conception. Sin and free will get used to create some logic, but get complicated when concepts of heaven, hell, redemption and End Times get thrown into the mix. The Bible can be most unhelpful in sorting all this out.
Gregory has pondered these ideas and concluded his experience of the universe makes more sense without God. I don’t think that is a necessary conclusion, but we could put aside the arguing about it for a while.
50 Blogs on Disbelief My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry. p. 118 Christine Overall “Unanswered Prayers”
This one was unusual in how personal it was. It recounted some fears she experienced as a 9 year old at Bible camp, afraid of the dark. She covers some of the positive aspects of prayer that don’t require the existence of a deity; it gives one the feeling that they are doing something to help themselves and that you have someone to talk to. She also points out that in the case of opposing sports teams, only one will have their wish granted.
So, this early experience started her pondering about the “favoritism” of God. As an adult she sees this as part of the “argument from evil”, or the “problem of evil”. In this case, the problem is not just that there is evil in the world, but that God only does good things sometimes. It seems to expose some weakness of God. It gradually led her to believe that the Christian God has no sense of justice. She concludes she might as well believe there is no God “of the sort to whom I thought I was praying when I was a lonely and frightened little girl.”
I think I have spoke to this line of logic enough to not have to repeat it here. I don’t worry about Christine or her soul or have any desire to attempt to convince her that some other sort of God is worth praying to. I do hope that religious leaders will read this book or similar essays and give some consideration to what they are saying to 9 year old girls who are afraid of the dark.
50 Blogs on Disbelief My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry. p. 168 Julian Savulescu “Three Stages of Disbelief”
Nothing terribly new in this essay, but it is beautifully written, a testimony to the frightening yet exciting experience of life. I won’t try to recreate any of that, just cover the three stages.
Before the disbelief, came belief, at an early age. He was a good Bible student and even made up his own prayers. Religion was a welcome comfort against the fear of death. By age 16, he started seeing the whole project as an invention, a way to exercise control. I think this is inevitable for many in the modern world who become believers when they are young because it is comfortable and reassuring. That was the first stage, he calls physical implausibility.
The second stage lasted quite a while, through different concepts of God including ideas from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Then came medical school and internship, and direct experiences of suffering and death. He calls this the existential senselessness stage. Through this stage he “continued to want to believe”. He spoke to philosophers and other “received sensible, reasoned lines of advice which conflicted.”
The final stage doesn’t have a label, but he presents some interesting questions about how we decide what is morally right and how do we face our eventual demise while enjoying the beauty and fulfillment of our time alive. He has what seems to be an appreciation for tradition, but now finds God irrelevant. I find the questions he asks and the discussion he opens up much more interesting than arguments about existence.
50 Blogs on Disbelief My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry. p. 28 J. L. Schellenberg “Why I am a Nonbeliever? – I Wonder…”
I haven’t found any free articles by this author, but there are plenty of reviews that might give you a sense of what he has to say. I will keep looking and attempt to summarize it. I don’t know if I can do it justice.
“Plato says that philosophy begins in wonder.”
So begins this essay, rather innocently telling the story of his very religious upbringing in rural Manitoba. He felt the wonder of the world through the lens of Christianity. Through post secondary education he discovered,
“The New Testament was a decidedly human construction, a shining record of personal liberation in places, but also pockmarked with all the prejudices and proselytizing aims of it authors,…”
He goes on to tell about his discovery of Buddhist and Taoist wisdom as well as others. He spent time in the library and discovering new people on the streets of the city. He knew he had learned humility, honesty and commitment from his Christian upbringing and he struggled to integrate this with his new found knowledge. As he says,
“It hurts to have your neat picture of the world torn to shreds; your emotions left jangling. But no one said that a commitment to live in wonder, straining for real insight and understanding, comes without cost.”
His new views of the world brought the problem of evil and hiddenness argument for atheism into focus. At the time he was asking these questions the term “hiddenness argument” hadn’t been coined. Up to this point, this seemed like just another essay. It seemed he was going to miss the point about the value of his upbringing and how it led to his later insight, but he did give it a nod. Then he started talking about his recent thoughts and said,
“And through yet another strange twist that I am still in the midst of navigating, it appears that in the depths of evolutionary religious skepticism can be found the seeds of new life for religion.”
I had to read that a couple times, “evolutionary” what? To clarify it, he first covers some basic science. Scientists pretty well agree that the earth will be around for another billion years. Let’s put that into perspective.
Earliest human ancestor walking upright 6,000,000 million years ago Homo Erectus (walking upright) humans 2,000,000 million years ago Homo Sapiens Sapiens (that’s us) about 130,000 years ago Oldest beads 80,000 years ago Cave painting 30,000 years ago – that is, scribbling on a wall Human agriculture 10,000 years ago Pyramids built 4,780 year ago
Years remaining that we can continue to create a better world 1,000,000,000
30,000 years to get from scratching on a wall to watching Avatar in the palm of your hand. What could we do in 30,000 more years? How about 30,000 times 30,000 years?
Getting back to the essay, he says, “Apply this now to religion.” Although we have dominated and altered the planet, our maturity is still questionable and our propensity to violence hard to excuse. Those cave paintings are evidence that we humans started thinking about something beyond our own existence long before we could preserve those thoughts in writing and at a time that violence was the solution to most of our problems.
Given that we have created not only language but ways of communicating across language barriers, including instant communication around the globe, we can not only think about how we might evolve, we can affect the course of our evolution, setting a pace of evolution faster than previous generations.
He says all of this better than I ever could. I have added a few of his books to my reading list
Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion 2005 Available in Google books Divine hiddenness and human reason 2006 The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticisim 2007 The Will to Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion 2009
50 Blogs on Disbelief My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry. p. 16 Nicholas Everitt “How Benevolent is God? An Argument from Suffering to Atheism”
This is an excellent essay. If everyone came to this discussion with the same level of intellectual honesty that Nicholas does, we could wrap this situation up toot sweet. He carefully frames his words and uses qualifiers like “so defined” when necessary. This makes it clear that his statements are directed to a particular definition of God, as he calls it, the “standard” one, the one used in these essays. At the end of the essay, he talks about his own life and how he became atheist. This is also an admirable reflection on his personal thoughts.
The bulk of the essay itself is another discussion on the problem of evil, but breaks it down better than any I have read so far. For some, there may be too much logic and it may seem petty, but it leads to a conclusion that makes it worth sticking with it. I have covered what the problem of evil is already, so let’s jump to his discussion.
He looks at how it is defended, first with the “greater good” argument. This says that evil has to exist as a counter balance or we couldn’t have good. In other words, “I don’t know why God sent that tsunami, but he must have a reason, because I know he is good.” Further explanations break off into, “we just don’t know what the reasons are”, and “we are limited beings, we can’t know” or “God is revealing himself to us over time, we will eventually know”. Mr. Everitt pretty well rejects these.
Nicholas acknowledges that it is a tribute to a good sense of morality that people don’t attempt to explain evil. If you followed the recent comments by Pat Robertson about the earthquake in Haiti being God’s retribution for some evil done by people 200 years ago, and the reaction by most religious people that it was crazy talk, you get the sense that most people understand that God is not an angry man in the sky sending down fire bolts.
Here’s Jon Stewart, an atheist of Jewish descent, sorting that out:
The other argument is “free will”. We are free to exercise our sense of good, but we often abuse that and create evil. Of course in practice, one person exercising their free will often harms a perfectly innocent person. Nor does this speak to natural disasters that inflict evil consequences on good and bad alike. There really is very little counter balancing going on here.
So he makes his argument very well, that the existence of suffering “therefore remains a compelling reason for denying the existence of a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.” I did not get the sense that he had considered alternative definitions of God. I still have some essays to work through, but I hope to get to that soon. One other important comment gets slipped in at the end of this essay. It is a significant statement and the basis of much of the debate about morality and universal laws. It comes at the end of the discussion of suffering in nature, something that appears to be natural and inevitable, but as he points out:
“At least in the case of humans, the flourishing of some does not require the suffering of others, even if in practice the two go hand in hand.”
With increased pressures of population and increases in consequences of the creation of our own creature comforts, we have to deal the NYMBY phenomenon every day (Not In My BackYard). Early tribes just moved further up river after they had polluted one area. We can’t do that anymore. Domesticating wild boar in a few places in Europe and Asia might have made sense at one time, but now my simple choice of bacon or no bacon at Perkins has world-wide ramifications.
A lion has to kill to survive. I don’t. That may be debatable. How we will handle that debate will determine our future. Next
50 Blogs on Disbelief My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry. p. 226 Peter Agedoke – Kicking Religion Goodbye…
Continuing the multi-cultural theme, Peter is from Nigeria, a very religious nation. He admits his scientific education was stunted. Somehow his creative mind developed skepticism at early age. His cultural bias was strong however and at 19 he went to Pentecostal Baptist Bible College hoping to discover the truth of Christianity. He loved the orchestra of the Apostolic Faith Church, but was disturbed when he read of a woman who died because of birth complications because that church chose divine healing over a medical doctor.
He continued to read and visit other denominations, eventually landing at CAC Theological Seminary. There he had a common experience of 20th century seminary students. He learned the difference of actual church history and what most people think. For example, that there is no “original Christianity”, it did not start as an organized movement, it had “a lot of colorations” and influences from Eastern and Western cultures. It was influenced by the works of Plato and shaped by Constantine.
This and the behavior of classmates and teachers exposed him to hypocrisy. Already frustrated with the classic problem of evil and seeing poverty all around him with no sign of salvation, he kicked religion goodbye.
I can’t say that I blame him. In John Shelby Spong’s book, “Jesus for the Non-religious”, he discusses how seminaries came to this curious situation where they teach things about Christianity that very few preachers repeat to their congregations. Most of this is now freely available although without the context of 4 years of study, I think it causes confusion for many. Spong makes some recommendations on how the Church needs to change its message in a more enlightened world. If it doesn’t, the world will go the way of Mr. Agedoke. Next
50 Blogs on Disbelief My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry. p 252 Edgar Dahl “Imagine No Religion”
I was drawn to this title because I am a John Lennon fan, but the essay never mentions him. It turned out to be the type of essay that I expected to find in this book, covering the standard for and against arguments. Happily most of them have not followed this same pattern. It does have a few surprises, and the author has an easy style, so it is enjoyable.
He starts with his own history, and says that where he is from, East Germany, most people don’t bother with religion at all. Usually I find these broad statements about people of a certain country inaccurate, but I was convinced by Mr. Dahl. He never even met a Christian until he was 12. He usually went to movies on Sunday mornings. One day he missed the beginning of the movie, so he wandered around until he happened upon St. Paul’s Cathedral. Imagine his shock when he overheard them talking about eating a body and drinking blood!
Surprisingly, he studied theology. He found it an excellent education in the humanities and several other disciplines. He then covers a few of the arguments for God, “The Ontological Argument” - God is that which nothing greater can be conceived, “The Cosmological Argument” - God is the prime mover, and the “Teleological Argument” - the universe is amazing, someone must have been behind its creation. It is a good quick history and introduction to these arguments and their refutations. He then covers an argument against God, “The Problem of Evil”.
His philosophical training led him to work with ethical issues relating to new biological and medical technologies. At first he thought this would take him away from religion, but he quickly discovered that not only do religious leaders have an opinion on these matters, they are taken seriously. He understands that religion and ethics are inseparable, but he can’t figure out why. He can’t figure how this idea that God and the Bible have the final answer on ethical questions has survived.
To discuss this, he uses the “Euthyphro Dilemma”, from Plato’s dialogue about a conversation between Socrates and a young man named Euthyphro. This was mentioned in Pete Singer’s essay, who Edgar Dahl has worked with, but Edgar spends much more time with it. The dilemma is:
Does God command the good because it is good, or is it good because it is commanded by God?
Either God is irrelevant, because good exists outside of Him, or God is an arbitrary law giver, and even cruel things are good because He says so, or they are good is some way that we have yet to understand. It is difficult for a believer to take either side, or to offer an alternative. Edgar explores this in more depth, and many similar discussions can be found on the web. It is worth thinking about and worth exploring.
In this case, the author of the essay leads to the conclusion that “morality is independent of theology”. That may be, but I think he takes this a step too far when he applies it to a subject he has worked with extensively, physician-assisted suicide. Dahl says,
“But who is the Church to tell those who do not subscribe to their religious views how they ought to die?”
I agree there are times when someone is suffering and continued efforts to keep them alive will result only in more suffering and needless expense, however, Dahl’s statement is an oversimplification. There is much more to this discussion than just what the Catholics or others have to say about it. Perhaps that is the nature of a short essay, but he could have used his allotted space to cover it in more detail, rather than leaving it until the last paragraph. And in his final sentence,
“A liberal democracy based on a strict separation of church and state ought to enable all of its citizens to live and die according to their own values.”
This also sounds simple and practical, but taken to its extremes, could result in family members condoning medical procedures that they don’t fully understand. I don’t agree with a strict interpretation of “Thou shalt not kill”, but once you start trying to find where to draw the line, it gets very complicated very quickly. Edgar Dahl seems to imply that just removing religion from the equation would somehow make it all so easy.
The Bible does not provide an easy answer. Theologians have tried for centuries, but often disagree. Biblical stories present the moral dilemmas, but do little to sort them out. Samson is chained between two pillars by his enemies. He pushes them apart, killing many of his enemies, and himself. Saul was wounded in battle, rather than be tortured by the Philistines, he chooses to fall on his own sword. Even the great Elijah prayed to the Lord to take his life. Catholics may consider suicide a mortal sin, but I am hard pressed to see how they reached this conclusion. On this, Edgar Dahl and I agree.
I would be just as hard pressed to define exactly when it was time for someone to consider “death with dignity.” Dahl does not provide much help in this essay. He has written extensively on the subject, so I hope more answers can be found there. I often find that writing on ethical issues is long on problem explanation and very short on solutions. In this case, I am only reading his blaming. That blame may be well placed, but people usually need an alternative before they begin to change their minds.
50 Blogs on Disbelief My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry. P5 Russell Blackford “Unbelievable!”
Blackford is one of the editors of the book. Russell is another who had his doubts when he was young, but carried on with a serious effort to believe, until he was 19 or 20 when he finally gave it up.
He spends the bulk of his essay discussing the problem of evil and some logical inconsistencies. There is nothing new here.
He ends with an analysis of the last 50 years or so of the religious landscape. It may have seemed to some that religion was on its way out back in the 1970’s. Recent events have seen it come back to the forefront. It has become part of the debate over stem-cell research and cloning and other policy matters. For these reasons he calls non-believers to action, to challenge the claims of religion and the special authority given to pontiffs, priests and presbyters.
50 Blogs on Disbelief My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry.
P288 Peter Singer and Marc Hauser
As soon as it came in the mail, I sat down to read the first essay.Peter Singer had convinced me to become a vegetarian with his book Animal Liberation, so I started with that one, “Why Morality Doesn’t Need God”.It starts out with a discussion of does God support morality, did he create it, or did morality already exist and he is just pointing us to it. A decent philosophical discussion, including a mention of Plato’s Euthyphro.
They try to compare all religions and atheists and agnostics and look at its effect on different cultures. I think it breaks down for a bit here.
What they do not address is the question of whether or not, at some earlier point in our evolution, did religion contribute to our survival or would morality have survived as well without it, back when the world was not so rapidly changing. They also treat atheism as if it is some sort of genetic trait, referring to an online test of morality that showed that atheist or not, we all make very similar moral judgments when it comes to saving drowning babies and such. I don’t think that proves anything other than most of us were raised well in a moral society. It doesn’t say how that morality was passed on to us.
I don’t think a study is needed to determine what is moral and what is not. We know we should risk getting wet to save a drowning a baby. A poll can't make a complex moral decision. We all have to decide for ourselves if America should have used the atom bomb, for example.
The line that really bugged me was this one:
“If there is no evidence that religion generally makes people more likely to do the right thing, there is ample evidence that religion has led people to commit a litany of horrendous crimes.” and then lists the usual OT wars, the crusades and suicide bombers and others.
This is just bad science. When wanting to show that religion can’t be proven to be good, they look at the big picture and say America with lots of Christians is in some important moral ways worse than Europe, which is less religious. When wanting to say religion can be proven bad, suddenly they are inside individual’s heads and know that their motivations are specifically due to religion. I find it odd that anyone is still using the wars in the Old Testament as evidence of anything since the archeological evidence, or lack thereof, is proving they didn’t happen.
The essay was okay, but I’m hoping others are better. Much of it seems directed to someone who has never considered the sociological or evolutionary reasons for morality. I wonder how many people like that will be picking up this book? Here is their conclusion, with which I agree:
“We inherit from our ancestors a set of moral intuitions that, presumably, contributed to their survival… Some of them, no doubt, still survive, but others may be poorly adapted to our rapidly changing world. It is our task to work out which of them need to be changed.”
