Deep Space Nine Spirituality

There are ample sites that summarize Star Trek episodes, so I won’t repeat the entire story here, but there is part of one that I see differently than anything I have found out there. The episode I am speaking of is the 2 hour pilot of the Deep Space Nine series. This series was a significant break from other Star Treks. For one, it was a space station instead of a ship. It also focused more on politics and religion.

The opening scene a flashback to an important point in the history of Star Trek. Long time fans will recognize the battle at Wolf 359. But if you aren’t familiar with it, the figure of Locutus of Borg, staring at Benjamin Sisko with his red eye conveys the idea of looking into the face of evil. What we need to know for this story is that this is where Sisko’s wife, Jennifer, died.

When then return to the present time for this series as Sisko is taking his first tour of the Deep Space Nine space station. He encounters a Bajoran priest, the priest says, “Welcome, the prophets await you.” In a bit of foreshadowing, Sisko answers “Another time.” A few hours later, the Bajoran attaché introduces Sisko to her religion and tells Sisko that their spiritual leader, Kai Opaka could help unify their people, but she rarely sees anyone. Just then the priest returns and says, “it is time.” He is taken immediately to meet the Kai.

Sisko learns more of their religion and is told that his destiny is to find the Celestial Temple. This kind of thing is pretty common for commanders in the Star Trek series and they usually don’t like it. Sisko is no different, but in this case he is given a vision. Not just a vision, but he fully experiences being back on a beach when he first met Jennifer. The vision comes via a large crystal they call the Tear of the Prophet. Kai Opaka gives Sisko cryptic advice like “I cannot give you what you deny yourself” and “Look for solutions within.” She sends him back to the station with the crystal.

An old friend of Sisko’s, Jadzia Dax, joins the team and applying the power of the United Federation of Planets, immediately finds answers about the crystals. In short order, they head into space and a wormhole opens up in front of them. Not just any wormhole, the first ever stable worm hole. They are pulled into it and they “land” in it, which should not be possible. It probes them and sends Dax back to DS9.

This is where it gets interesting. For those of you who don’t read physics books as a hobby, a wormhole is a theoretical structure in space. For most of human history we have thought of the heavens as something above us. Within the last few hundred years, we have seen that as bigger and bigger, but always as basically a straight line away from us. Very recently, we began to understand that space and time are curved. I don’t really know what that means, but it allows for the possibility that there could be pathways that take shortcuts around those curves, a hole that drops out of normal space/time and takes you somewhere very far away. Science fiction writers love to play with this stuff.

Sisko is left standing on a rocky surface that he knows can’t be real so he just starts shouting, looking for answers. He starts to see what look like familiar faces, but they are talking about him amongst themselves, trying to decide if Sisko is worth interacting with. He manages to engage them but they want to be convinced that he is not a threat. They are non-corporeal and any corporeal being destabilizes their existence.

He uses terms like “experiences”, “memories”, “my past” when trying to explain that he is not a threat. They appear to not understand these terms but talk of living only in the present. Sisko tries to explain that, for him, the future doesn’t exist, that his existence is “linear”.

They show him that his wife Jennifer, is part of his current existence and Sisko argues that she “was”. They say this is inconceivable and act suspicious of him. Their actions are also suspicious although Sisko only expresses confusion. They seem aware of so much, even able to read his thoughts, but their first question is, “what is this ‘time’ that you speak of.” They don’t acknowledge that they know of the vision he has already had or what Kai Opaka said so we don’t know for sure what they know. They are no doubt what the Bajorans call the Prophets, but they don’t call themselves that.

In an attempt to explain himself, Sisko realizes how time is required for logic. He tries to explain how one day shapes another. How pleasure and happiness depend on this. They can see his thoughts and keep coming back to the day he lost his wife and refuse to accept that this is in his past. He is unable to explain “loss”.

They show him a pleasant memory of his wife, it is a sweet proposal, they are planning their future together, then return to the chaos and death at Wolf 359 and say “this is your existence”. They ask why this is difficult. He says he doesn’t want to be there, but they keep saying that he exists there. They ask why, if we can understand consequences, why can we not predict them.

Sisko uses the analogy of a baseball game to explain his linear world. He starts to explain the rules, but realizing that won’t help much, focuses on how each player studies the possible moves of every other player but they don’t know what will happen with each pitch. We use our knowledge of the past to predict outcomes but we enjoy not knowing what will happen in the future. Sisko says, “The game wouldn’t be worth playing if we knew what was going to happen.” And they ask with surprise, “You value your ignorance of what is to come?!” Sisko explains that is what makes us human, we are explorers. He says, "That may be the most important thing to understand about humans. It is the unknown that defines our existence."

They seem to understand this, and are convinced that Sisko and his linear brethren are not a threat, but they still want to know why he exists at Wolf 359. They bring him there again, and Sisko feels the pain again. He asks for the power to take them somewhere else, but they say that it is he who keeps bringing them back there. One of the Prophets appears to him as the Kai, saying again, “we can’t give what you don’t give yourself”.

Sisko finally starts to breakdown as he explains that he was ready to die at that moment. In a sense, part of him did die. He understands that he never really left that ship. His life has been defined by that moment from then on. The physical death of his wife resulted in a death of his spirit, his will for living. He never let go. His past did not prepare him for that moment. He understands his own non-linearity. He looks around at the faces of the beings and they acknowledge that he now understands them. They understood him all along.

Commander Sisko returns to the station with a renewed sense of life. The wormhole will make this distant outpost one of the most important in the galaxy. He reconciles with Picard and starts planning for the future with his new team.

Banned Questions II

A few more of the questions from the new book, "Banned Questions about the Bible"

What does the Bible really say about homosexuality?

They cover the basics, that the passages that do exist are most likely about rape as a humiliating tool used by militaries, or about ritual acts by other religions. Most important, that Jesus never directly addressed the issue. They note that the word arsenkoitai has disputed translations. All the references that I know of are included. That there are other laws near those references that are not followed today is also mentioned.

Several authors answer this question, giving it the attention it deserves, and they pretty well agree. I give them an A+ for this question.

What are the Apocrypha, the Gnostic Gospels, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and why are they considered holy or sacred by some and not by others?

An important, but fairly academic question, and it is handled as such. The second answer ends with “we know so little about their theological context and much of their meaning is so obscure, even to knowledgeable scholars, that their introduction into a religious community would be a complicated venture.” I would love to hear a knowledgeable scholar’s response to that. It has a hint of avoiding the question to me.

Doesn’t the Bible condone slavery?

The first two answers are more avoidance behavior, using the “it reflects an era” excuse. And of course it gets better with Jesus and Paul, who says to treat your slaves with dignity. Then Rebecca Bowman Woods does a nice job of first explaining how the interpretation of Ham changed over time and concludes with a reference to Tavis Smiley who has written and spoke extensively about how the Bible does not condone slavery based on skin color. Exodus 21 is not referenced which is a suspicious oversight. That includes a verse that says if you beat a slave and he doesn’t die right away, there is no penalty, since you have already lost some property. I don’t know what Tavis Smiley has to say about that chapter.

Rebecca also says, “The more familiar we are with the Bible and other religious texts, the more difficult it is for cultures and institutions to use Holy Scripture for unholy purposes.” The last one really brings it home when he asks you to look at what you are wearing and think about the conditions of the workers who made your clothes. “Slavery” is a term that includes the broader issue of “oppression”. If you are reading this, you are most likely benefitting from the oppression of others. Jarrod asks why we read scripture, “Do we read to justify the status quo that we benefit from? Or do we read the Bible through the story of Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s liberating purposes through [ancient] Israel for all creation?”

I would have added a third choice, do we read it to hear the voices of oppressor and oppressed across time and listen to what those voices say about us? I can no longer read scripture as the fulfillment of a purpose. There are too many definitions of that and many of them are not a purpose I can support. Jarrod at least offers an interpretation I can partner with, although without the “God” part. He says of his second option, “If we choose the latter, we will find ourselves feeding, not killing; liberating, not enslaving. We will become God’s nonviolent army of abolitionists for all who suffer, for all of creation.”

In the suggestions for discussion for this one, there is a good example of how this book teaches without providing a right answer. The question is “Do you think God cares about the equivalent amount of four jumbo jets of people (predominately women and children) that are kidnapped and “trafficked” each day?” That is the type of question that has caused many people to turn away from organized religion or completely away from God. It is difficult to determine the intentions of a book that praises God, but then asks that question. The answers they provide do not qualify as open debate or full disclosure but to ask that question and not follow it up with a lame statement about how we can’t know God or that he is slowly revealing his plan is commendable.

Banned Questions

I came across this book recently. It came out earlier this year. It presents many of the liberal interpretations that I have discussed in an easy to digest Q & A format. A free preview is available. I link to that and then review those questions.

Here's the preview.

Can I be a Christian if I don’t believe the Bible is perfect, handed down directly from God to humanity without error?

Craig Detweiler begins the book with the first answer to this first question with a series of non sequiturs about science, ending with “Surely the Bible operates on an entirely different plane and claim to authority.” I could discuss how we make claims to authority, but I would be wasting my breath because Craig, and I suspect most of the other answers in this book will always try to slip out of that discussion and simply state the Bible is different. Instead of “surely” in the above answer, I hear, “I really want there to be answers to things that science has not yet provided, so I hope the Bible might have them.”

He makes an analogy to love. Love is real and profound, but not definable. Being able to define love is not as important as practicing it. The Bible talks about love and gives us examples of practicing it. Beautiful. I wouldn’t argue with that. It does nothing to answer the implied question of this book; Why follow Jesus? I expect that will be a theme throughout this book.

Skimming through the rest of it, I see something else I expect to be recurring, a very brief mention of some scripture that is worth exploring in depth. That is not a criticism. The book is intended to be taken in short bits and used as a study guide, ideally in a group. The better the facilitator or student, the more they will get out of it. In this answer, Craig says, Jesus “gave little time or attention to those who tried to trap him into semantic arguments about obscure interpretations of the Torah.” That little statement has a lot of interesting scripture behind it. Mark 1:21-28 is listed in scriptural references that come at the end of each set of answers, but I’m not sure it is referring to this. Mark 2:27 would be a better choice. The point is, as with any Bible study, it is best done in a group. With the right people, you could spend many fascinating hours working through each of these answers.

The next answer draws the line that will keep this book out of many churches, “inerrancy… is not a requirement for salvation.” Amen Jason Boyett! He puts the Bible in historical context, a time when they wouldn’t have thought much about chronological or scientific errors. And points out that the discussion of inerrancy didn’t begin until the Enlightenment era (another one of those sentences worth hours of study). Then he slips in that the Bible is “inspired”. This means almost nothing, in that it still leaves you, the reader, free to interpret as you wish. Since it is a book written by mortal men, that is exactly what you should do anyway.

Next up, Jose F. Morales Jr. lays another wonderfully slippery, meaningless statement on us, “the awesomeness of the Bible is that it points beyond itself.” So, it isn’t the authority, it just points to God, who is the authority. He then gives a brief intro to “salvation”. There are lots of things to read about that, some of them are given in the notes that come after each question. I’ll give you a hint, the Bible is not clear on just how salvation works.

The editor, Christian Piatt, makes his first entry with an important piece of history about Martin Luther. Luther believed that people should not be beholden to the church. Piatt also makes an important point about psychology, “we humans aren’t big fans of letting go of control.” The next answer, by John Toulouse finally touches on where all the fuss comes from, and it is referenced later (Timothy 3:15-16). He then promptly dismisses it. The recommendations for further reading are excellent, and will be helpful if you are looking for an approach to Christianity that is comforting and semi-compatible to the modern mind. They will do very little to comfort or convince someone who does believe in inerrancy.

John Toulouse goes on to talk about how the Bible can still inspire us today, that it is a living text. This is a theological way of saying that you can read this book and apply its meaning to the world you know today. Theologically, this means God is inspiring us today. In modern terms, it’s a book, some books are inspiring. The next answer, by Becky Garrison, says it a little better. The Bible uses metaphors, symbols, poetry and literary devices. You need to be able to recognize those and sometimes know what a symbol meant 2,000 years ago to even get started with an interpretation of it.

The last entry, by Jim L. Robinson, opens up many more questions, some of them addressed later. Jim explains how the so-called “errors” could be in our “presuppositions about the texts”. Throughout history, some people “got” God and some of those writings were preserved. Scriptures contain truth, but God didn’t dictate it. My questions are, how do we know that the right words were preserved? What about all the translations? We have found books from that time that didn’t get in the Bible, was this a purposeful omission, or should we be doing the same evaluating that our ancestors did, and add these to the canon? Is it just a really old book and have we lost some its meaning to history? Given things were said by Presidents, Prime Ministers, Priests, Gurus, Kings and CEO’s just yesterday that we aren’t sure how to interpret, I think the answer to that last question is obvious.

My Answer: Yes. You can call yourself a Christian for many reasons.

If you want to join a church, they will ask you to participate in a ceremony that probably involves you saying that you give your heart, mind and/or soul to Christ. There also might be some statements about what you believe. There are a few churches that won’t do this. It doesn’t really matter. No matter what you believe, most people who call themselves “Christian” will say you are not a “true Christian”. If you are reading this book or this blog with an open mind, you are probably a “liberal Christian”, which indisputably puts you in a minority. If you are reading and sure it is blasphemy, you are probably a “conservative Christian”, a much louder minority, but still a minority. The middle ground is not that big either and very difficult to define. It is populated with a variety of denominations that don’t agree.

This goes for everybody, even if you are the Pope. The Pope is taking a lot of heat right now for his part in the child abuse scandals. Even many Catholics don’t think of him as a “true Christian”. If he can’t get the respect of the majority of Christians, who can?

If Adam and Eve were the first (and only) people on Earth, where did their kids’ spouses come from? Did they marry each other? And if everyone on Earth but Noah’s family was killed in a great flood, did Noah’s kids sleep with each other? Isn’t that a sin?

This is some more detail on the inerrancy thing and parts of the answers are similar to that first question. Christian Piatt does some interesting elaborating by discussing the roots of the name “Adam”, being “man” and “earth”, and a common translation for “Eve” being “life”. He also notes that there are many flood myths throughout history. A good thing to know, and something that should lead to more questions.

Then he says, these stories, “address the age-old questions of why bad things happen in the world and how we continue to endure them.” I would like to know what he is talking about. They do not address “why”, only subsequent interpretations say they do that. They say nothing about how to endure bad things, Adam, Eve, Noah and his family are simply commanded to do so. The second answerer seems to agree with me on this, although he doesn’t say much beyond, “don’t take them literally.” I suppose this could be seen as a positive, that the book provides multiple perspectives.

The creation story is a foundation for other stories in the Bible. It is crucial to the cycle of man’s fall from grace that is reconciled through Jesus. It is used to support creationism and anti-homosexuality. A critical examination of this story is important to healing the current conservative/liberal divide in the world of Abrahamic religions. Piatt takes a pass on that. Joseph Campbell, John Shelby Spong and Michael Pollan have all written about it, as well as many others, so there is no excuse for saying so little.

Aren’t women treated poorly throughout the Bible? Why would any intelligent modern woman today even want to read the Bible?

Rebecca Bowman Woods responds by first reiterating the questions she had since when she was eleven about women in the Old Testament. She then doesn’t answer those questions, but says it got better in the New Testament and that there are good stories about women in the Old Testament, although they are sparse. That’s it. That’s her thesis. Becky Garrison doesn’t do much better. Craig Detweiler again exposes some of the worst examples and again says, Jesus made it better. This despite the fact that he just quoted Paul saying women should remain silent. Note, Paul did not start his ministry until after the crucifixion.

Marcia Ford somewhat corrects Craig by noting that women did play important roles in the early church. The scriptural references and notes will help anyone digging for these hard to find passages. Marcia glosses over a couple millennia of history when she says, “While some see the Bible as condoning masculine control, others interpret the biblical perpetuation of patriarchy as a way of working within existing cultural norms.” Studies of the Minoans, Mycenaeans, Sumerians and other early Ancient Near Eastern cultures show women frequently playing more equal roles. One theory is that as war between Mediterranean cultures grew, men asserted their physical power and cultural norms changed. It was about this time that the Torah was written. Another opportunity for exploration that this book misses.

How can a God be all-loving yet allow people to be thrown into hell?

There are two answers given to this question. Jarrod McKenna uses “hell” metaphorically. He says it’s separation from God. God is love, and choosing to separate from that is hell. Jim L. Robinson answers by saying God doesn’t throw anybody anywhere. He gives the best explanation of grace that one could in just one page, then says, “I’m relatively confident that present-day teachings about hell will one day be revealed as human misinterpretation of scripture – either in the writing, the reading, or in both.” I would love to be a fly on the wall in a study group where some of the people are confronting that idea for the first time.

What does “apocalypse” mean, and does the Bible predict one?

Not much to say about this section, except I’m glad that Becky Garrison puts in here that the Left Behind series does not agree with scholars throughout history. All but one of them leave it way too open that Revelations might predict something that could happen. They at least mention other possible interpretations.

More questions

Pagans and Heretics IV

Part III in the series

Summer is over, and this might be the end of the Pagans and Heretics series too.

Hopefully I have made the case that any belief system includes an element of cruelty. In this part of the series, I will address that more directly. I covered this previously in The Cost with a specific example and will cover it more generally here.

The cruelty that I am referring to shows up in a couple ways. In a discussion of a belief system, at some point, the believer will have to rely on a statement of faith. The more obvious ones don’t need to be covered. The more subtle ones sound something like, “we can’t understand the mystery” or “the truth is being revealed to us over time” or “anything is possible”.

Perhaps anything is possible, but how then do we decide how to live our lives? If we accept that anything is possible, say for instance that setting a goal somehow alters the forces of the universe and brings that goal closer, how are we different from someone that claims their prayers can cure cancer? If you claim that a negative thought about someone actually hurts them, how is that different from Jerry Falwell claiming pagans caused the 9/11 attacks? Once you open the door to “anything is possible”, how do you then put a limit on any claim of cause and effect?

Before describing the effect of this type of thinking, I need to separate this built-in cruelty from an individual’s cruel personality. Regardless of belief, anyone can be bad at arguing, that is, they can use unfair tactics when arguing or worse, be completely dismissive of the other persons’ ideas, perhaps even calling them names. Some people try to equate this behavior to extreme religious behavior and label it “fundamentalist atheism”. I don’t see much point in that.

For the non-believer, cruelty is still possible. Someone can claim to be a better person based on the quality or number of their scholastic degrees. Recommending that someone read a book before they can discuss a topic intelligently can be done in a positive and encouraging way, or cruelly. But these are qualities of the individual, not necessarily of the educational system that taught them or the books they read.

A belief system, by its very nature, has that arrogance built in to it. People are of course free to believe whatever they want, but it usually does not end with someone simply choosing to believe a particular thing. Any claim of truth that is made solely by a leap of faith is a statement that the believer has something, knows something that the non-believer does not. The believer may be the most peaceful person and have the most helpful of intentions but their bottom line is that you just can’t understand.

We can look back on more ignorant times and see this clearly. Kings claimed to have divine knowledge and used it to enslave everyone else. As ruling structures became more complex, there were still only a few who could read and they interpreted the rules to benefit them. Fortunately there have been those who have fought against this. As more people have gained the ability to determine philosophies for themselves, more concessions have had to be made and how they compete in the marketplace of ideas has had to become more sophisticated.

This has led to a very confusing morass of philosophies that require more than a few quick searches with Google to sort out. If you are easily convinced, you might happen on this website and consider your work done. You might know someone with a story of a miraculous healing and consider that a valid source. If you are skeptical, you are left with the problem of how long do you need to look before you can say that there are no proven cases of limbs regenerating or prayers curing cancer? Maybe you have heard of the Miracle of Fatima, with thousands of witnesses and consider that ample evidence on which to base some sort of belief. As knowledge has become more easily accessible, it has become less acceptable to take such cases on faith.

Because most people still consider doing this research too much trouble, because the waters are so muddied, most of mainstream religion, including the spiritual but not religious, completely ignore this market. There are some classics in the genre, going back to ancient Greece, and more recent 18^th and 19^th century works. The mid twentieth century produced some foundational material such as Friedman and Campbell. Since 9/11 the market has expanded as more people felt the need to understand the role of religion in politics. For the believers, there are thousands of gods to choose from throughout history. As historians have attempted to explain their roots, believers in those gods have responded with claims of how archaeology and science proves that their god was right all along.

For most people, there is no need to look in to any of this. If you aren’t asking questions, there is no need to look into long technical explanations. If you have made the faith decision, you don’t need additional confirmation. The market of material on religion, miracles, faith and magic is aimed somewhat at those who are questioning their faith or considering a faith decision, but mostly it is there as a prop. Bookstore shelves are filled with works by the atheists; Dawkins, Harris, Dennet, Hitchens, Price and Ehrman, something has to be said in response. That it has no substance doesn’t seem to matter.

To illustrate, let’s examine a couple examples of recent big sellers.

A huge success for Christianity has been The Purpose Driven Life.This is supposedly a new way of studying Christianity. I have never seen anything about it that convinces me that it is anything more than the standard line of; read the Bible, follow the rules, and share the gospel.

In another recent work that received high praises, Paul Copan tried to defend some of the worst parts of the Old Testament in a book titled Is God a Moral Monster. It is endorsed by some of the biggest names in apologetics. If you think it would be hard to explain away the murder, rape, slavery and genocide in the Old Testament, you would be right. This book fails on every level, including just being able to accurately provide chapter and verse. However, since most people won’t read it, it doesn’t matter. It is simply claimed that the work has been done and this book accomplishes what it says it does. Most people won’t know that a Christian who has some integrity has published an extensive refutation of it.

The authors I mentioned in part 3 have many books that sell considerably fewer copies but are equal in that they provide little in the way of support for reasons to believe. These books don’t look at the more difficult passages, such as Moses ordering 3,000 to be killed or Jesus throwing the chaff into the fire. They just ignore them. I have found some really good interpretations in these books, and I enjoy them and share them often. The people of Canaan really did accomplish something 4,000 years ago and the story of a god coming to earth as a servant is pretty unique. But ignoring most of the Bible and claiming that the few stories you like exemplify Christianity really helps no one.

Further along the spectrum, you can find books that mix the familiar characters of religion with other history and other traditions and fill in the gaps however they please. These can be interesting stories and can portray insights into the human condition, but when they attempt to create new beliefs or prop up old ones their value diminishes. I give credit to Dan Brown for at least making a statement in the foreword to The DaVinci Code that it is fiction. Many authors skip this, or claim they have uncovered something that no one else has.

At the far end of the spectrum, beyond claims of specific gods or miracles are books like The Secret. These take bits and pieces from ancient texts and claim to weave a common thread of wisdom that only the authors of these books have figured out. Here’s the secret, set goals and stick to them, build a support network, nourish your body and your mind, acknowledge those who have helped you along the way.

Feynman

Somewhat on topic, but a slight departure from the series to do a book review.

One of the survivors of the 60’s counter cultural movement is a place near Big Sur called The Esalen Institute. From their own website, here is why people go there:

“They come for the intellectual freedom to consider systems of thought and feeling that lie beyond the current constraints of mainstream academia. They come to discover ancient wisdom in the motion of the body, poetry in the pulsing of the blood. They come to rediscover the miracle of self-aware consciousness.”

Esalen currently charges thousands of dollars for you to stay there and hundreds of dollars to take their courses. A few of them, such as yoga have continuing education credits, but most don’t. You might learn to paint from your soul though.

I heard of Esalen back in the 70’s but had forgotten about it. I’ve talked a lot about ancient wisdom and I’m going to just pass on the “miracle”. It’s the “lie beyond the current constraints of mainstream academia” that I want to address. What constraints? The constraint that if you are going to learn where stars come from you should know some Calculus? If you want to write some poetry, maybe you should read some classics?

I was reminded of Esalen while reading “Surely you are Joking Mr. Feynman.” This a collection of stories by Richard Feynman, the youngest physicist at Los Alamos when they were developing the atom bomb. He was a scientist and a bongo player and the book is divided equally between his cultural exploits and his scientific ones. I think there are better books on Feynman, but here is the speech I’m referring to.

He starts out talking about investigating some of these new ideas that Esalen was supposedly exploring and ends up talking about where our education system has gone wrong. He was born at the end of the time when science was respected, when it helped to unite a country, feed the world and defeat evil enemies. In doing that, it unleashed its own evil in the form of a mushroom cloud and there was a shift towards matters of the heart. The idea that science and capitalism could save us seemed like a lie.

The examination of the nature of that big lie is still going on. There is no simple way to account for all the harm and all the good that has occurred in the last century. Although I don’t come down on the side of war mongering and infinite expansion I also don’t come down on the side of the “miracle of self-aware consciousness.” It only took a few decades to examine astrology, out of body experiences, ESP, bending spoons, homeopathy and prayer to find that they are little lies. Claims of equal magnitude about these being our saviors have been made about these phenomenon. A few very serious people, like Richard Feynman, have looked into them and found them wanting.

Unfortunately, what Feynman suggested in 1974 has been ignored. What should be science’s greatest strength, that it admits what it can’t do, that it points to where it could be wrong, is seen as a weakness. Feynman exemplifies a man with intellectual freedom who considered systems of thought and feeling that lie beyond current constraints. Because he looked at the world that way and questioned other’s assumptions as well as his own assumptions, he won a Nobel prize for contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics. People consider things beyond the current constraints all the time, some of them get Nobel prizes for it. They don’t need to go to Esalen and learn reflexology to do it.

Feynman questioned people that he had a great deal of respect for, Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr. He didn’t reject their work because he thought it was limiting his space or cramping his style or killing his buzz, he acknowledged their contributions and used them to further our understanding of the universe. He wasn’t constrained by academia, he used it to explore the mysteries of the world he found himself in. He didn’t look at musicians and painters as weird people who didn’t get it, he hung out with them and tried to learn from them to be a better drummer and a better sketcher. It seems to me the people at Esalen are the ones creating boundaries.

To Pagans and Heretics III

Part II of the series

All of this defining I have been doing has been necessary to discuss the marketing of those ideas. I’m not talking about some conspiratorial campaign to market a new world over. Marketing includes the word of mouth exchanges that we all use. I will discuss the marketing of liberal Christianity, but I believe you will find parallels to the other groups I have discussed. I will also draw a connection to the fundamentalist beliefs.

More important than getting to know the ins and outs of this market is understanding who the market is for. Polls often cite the fact that 80 to 90% of Americans believe in God. However, time/use studies by the government show that only 25% of Americans are attending church on Sunday. So there is a majority in the middle that have a wide range of spiritual beliefs, but they are only expressed in polls as belief in God or not. When defending their Biblically based arguments, religious leaders will site that 90% figure, claiming that they are all in complete agreement.

There is one thing that the 90% do generally agree on, and that is a distrust of atheists. This was discovered in a poll somewhat by accident. They were attempting to measure feelings towards Muslims and included the Atheist label to increase the accuracy of the poll. They expected atheists to be statistically insignificant. Although that 75% that did not go to church this Sunday may not be comfortable with their clergy, or may feel that their church has become less Christ centered, or they like some of the ideas but not the rules, or just can’t give to an organization that covers up for child molesters, they still are less comfortable proclaiming that they don’t believe in God or even thinking about their sister marrying an atheist.

Another survey, discussing the growing group of "nones".

Churches have been aware of this for a long time. It is not stated in these terms and may not even be conscious for most. It is stated in terms of the latest idea to increase the membership. When working on increasing members, they look at what people are thinking. If people think Christ was all about doing good things then their church should be out there cleaning up parks. If people think church should be a celebration, get some new musicians. If people want to know about recent historical discoveries about the first century, offer a class.

In the mid 20^th century, more and more seminaries began to teach textual criticism, the idea that by reading the Bible, you could determine that it was not written by Moses, the prophets and the apostles. This led to heretical ideas like maybe the miracles in the Bible might not have happened. This was not immediately passed onto the people in the congregations. Some young people who thought they were very dedicated to the church found they could not be once they went through seminary school. Some of this started to leak into the mainstream. In the mid 1980’s a group of scholars and laymen founded The Jesus Seminar. They wrote books, toured and gave a new interpretations of the gospel stories.

About that time I was getting more involved in my community and found that churches were an important part of that. When you needed volunteers to help with your neighborhood cleanup, they seemed to have a group just ready to go. I eventually stumbled on a church that was involved in doing good works, had some good music and a pastor that hadn’t done anything I would have a problem with. And he was just starting a class using a book by Dominic Crossan, one of the founders of the Jesus Seminar. It was not until years later that I was shown a book that exposed some of the not so scholarly methods used by the Jesus Seminar.

Later, also somewhat by accident, I picked up a book by John Shelby Spong. He was one of the first of the older generation of church leaders to really look into the psychology of homosexuality. He found out that he had been wrong to preach that it was a sin. It was apparently quite natural. He is now retired and writes extensively about how the Bible is not the word of God. Somehow he has maintained his love for Christ, although he has never explained why in a way that satisfies me.

It is rare that anything will be explicitly stated that these tools are used to keep people interested. But sometimes it is. There was an organization named Campus Crusade for Christ that works specifically to attract those young people who weren’t indoctrinated into Christianity by their family. The group eventually figured out that the word “Crusade” has some negative connotations. Now they just call themselves “Cru”. This was specifically because, “some people may be initially turned off at the mention of Christ.”

To hear more of this type of talk, you really don’t need to dig too far. You only need to get past the nice brochures that are left out for that 50-75% of people who don’t come in every Sunday. Once you are past the Sunday Service, on just about any committee or in a meeting at any level above the most local, you will hear talk about membership. There may be some language about doing the work of the Lord, but there won’t be much detail. Once you are at this level you are supposed to know what that work is and make the connections yourself.

For me, I eventually could not look at anything we did that I felt had actual value and not find a completely logical reason for doing it that did not require a supernatural explanation. The only thing the church offered was an infrastructure of buildings, regional leaders and a communication system. There may not seem to be anything wrong with that. And if my church, the United Methodist Church, was an organization that built clinics in third world countries and fed the homeless in American cities and did little else, then I would agree. But that is not all that they do.

First there are just the buildings themselves. Look around at all of them in your area. Each one must be heated, kept cleaned, and have the lawn mowed. They are rarely full except for a few hours a week. The reason for so many of them is that each disagrees on the tiniest bits of theology, things that have little impact on the world but took years to parse out and tons of paperwork as each new difference split off to form another denomination. Imagine the community center that could be built with the combined effort of those organizations. A center that would be for everybody.

A good deal of effort of the particular church I attended was put into working to change the organizations official policy on homosexuality. One of the things that made the church vibrant was a very creative staff of people in the Sunday School which taught that there was a guiding consciousness that created all things and watches over us. The questions that began to arise for me were why am I part of an organization that needs to have its policy on homosexuality changed? And, do I want children to be taught to believe someone is watching out for them, or do I want them to learn to think for themselves?

Not too far away, in other churches in the same organization, children were being taught that their prayers could cure diseases. Most of the other churches were either oblivious to the issues of homosexuality or actively working to keep the current rules in place. Again, more time spent arguing over something that the rest of the world has already dealt with. Of course, I am just one person and there is the question of creating change from within an organization or from without. It is up to you to decide where you stand.

Pagans and Heretics II

Part I of this series

Part III

So, what do I mean by Pagan? Most people who join groups, whether pagan or orthodox, don’t go on research projects about those groups. Most people make choices based on personal experience and the experiences of people close to them. There is nothing wrong with this and I will discuss it more in a moment. But this is a blog about examining those things, so here goes.

When I say “pagan”, I am talking about the shamanistic, polytheistic, and animist ways of looking at the world. The word has had many other uses throughout history, some of them not so nice. It was sometimes used to mean “NOT Christian”, usually for whatever indigenous culture the Christians were conquering at the time. To the ancient Romans it was used more like it’s earliest definition, someone outside the culture. The word predates the Roman Empire, from the Stone Age, and Rome fought hard to destroy that earlier culture of nature centered religion. Later when Rome became Roman Catholic, the stories of Dionysus or what are now Christmas traditions such as the yule log, were called pagan rituals.

Religious Tolerance.org is an excellent source for information that tries to stay neutral on just about any tradition, including Wicca and Pagans.

Heretic has less of a history, but its connotation is negative. I don’t see it as positive. Martin Luther was a heretic, and he helped to reform Catholicism. The important part of the definition of heretic for my purposes is that they come from within the tradition. Heretics study the classical forms, then see something new, something requiring change. If they are accepted, they are leaders, if not, they are heretics. Brian McClaren, the author of Everything Must Change has said that today’s heresies are tomorrow’s orthodoxy.

There may be other categories you see as a better fit for yourself. But I think what I have to say will map onto them. If I may make a few suggestions:
For Buddhists, you may want to read Confession of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor.
For Scientologists, how much have you been told? Do you know what happens when you reach Thetan level III?
I am not familiar with women’s groups, but if you are involved in anything associated with the Men’s Movement, there should be no dogma. The movement is an inquiry. No one should be demanding your belief or allegiance. Recommend reading would be Robert Bly or Robert Moore. There are many others.
If your interest in spiritual, psychic or paranormal activity is casual, you might be interested the story of Susan Blackmore.

Finally, I will also discuss science. But no need to get too scientific about it. As I stated before, for the most part, our beliefs are formed from personal experience. So your belief system is as strong, accurate and useful as your experiences. Of course we can’t be everywhere or do anything, so we also rely on those we trust, the people close to us. On the more complex issues, we have to trust others. We do this more than we realize. For example, I have never seen my own brain, but I trust brain scientists that it is where my thoughts come from. If I had lived in Aristotle’s time, I probably would have trusted him that the brain is there to provide a cooling mechanism for my blood.

I said I don’t want to get scientific, but there are some basics that educational systems don’t cover very well. One is the idea of proof. Science does not really prove anything. In math, there are proofs, but they are confined to the definitions of math. So you can prove that 2 + 2 = 4, but only as those characters are defined. There are many things that science can’t say much about. Even the things that it can say a lot about, it can’t say it knows for certain. This is starting to move into philosophy so I’ll stop.

The important thing that gets missed in discussing science and religion is that science begins with wonder. The mysteries of the universe inspired people to look for answers. There was no distinction between astrology and astronomy when people first sat up all night and watched the stars move. We continue to look for answers, but if the answers had all been found, there would no longer be a need for science. Somehow religion has managed to claim its place as keeper of the great mysteries, when it is religion that claims to have the answers. Science does not claim to have the answers. It just has a certain method for asking the questions.

Inquiry begins with some sort of anecdote. Something happens that inspires questions. There may also be a premise. Like I presume that I exist and that the laws of physics that can be demonstrated locally apply to the entire known universe. Experiments are done to ask those questions, data is gathered. The experiments are repeated and checked and confirmed. It is usually best to have several people involved. Inductive or deductive reasoning is used to further the study and hypotheses are proposed. Ideas are published, the work is checked again and a consensus starts to develop. When enough testing is done, a hypothesis becomes a theory, and it can be used as a new starting point for further investigation. So, to say that a theory is just a guess is not at all accurate.

This section has been rather dry. I hope some of the links were interesting. Next I will get into why this examination matters.