Tag: Religion

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Step 3 – Never Presume To Know The Mind Of God

Sunday August 25, 2019

You would think that this one simple act of humility would be the thing all religions could agree on. But the opposite is true. Each creed stakes itself out as the one which knows the mind of God.

May we point out that if a God exists – and that is a big if – it is clearly not trying to communicate with us. Therefore, we would not expect to know its mind. In an earlier post we gave a reason why that might be.

Since Chipotle or Burger King can easily reach us anytime and anywhere they please about a new menu offering, we must assume that an all powerful creator is not trying to reach us. If it were, we would expect to see and hear the message, outside, in the street, through our eyes and ears – since by all-powerful we do not mean stronger than dirt, we mean able to blow out all the stars in all the galaxies in the universe like so many candles on a cake. This presumes such an entity could at least engage Ogilvy, Google, WPP or Omnicom to get us a message.

And no, Dora, God is not talking to you. That little voice in your head is just the way it sounds when you are thinking, but not out loud. We all carry on an internal conversation.

And no, Rodney, such an entity is not communicating with us via ancient texts. That would be beyond pathetic and way not all-powerful. See last Sunday’s post.

So the silence is filled by sacerdotal arrogance and manipulation:

Parishioner: What does God want me to do?

Priest: I’ll go in the back room and ask. Wait here.

Parishioner: What did he say? (always a he)

Priest: He said you should do exactly as I say.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Step 2 – Beware of Those Bearing Ancient Texts

Sunday August 18, 2019

Step 2 in our quest for a religion which doesn’t require us to pretend anything has to do with jettisoning ancient texts. What follows goes for any of them but focuses on the central text of Christianity, because that is the writer’s religious tradition.

If ever confronted with the common evangelical question Do you accept the Wholly Buy-Bull as the Authoritative and Inerrant Word of Gawd?, it is very important to answer No, of course not. Why would I?

Here’s why you wouldn’t.

First. Jesus didn’t have a Bible and Christianity got along just fine without one. Take those paintings of Jesus holding the Holy Bible in the crook of his arm and file them along with other anachronisms, such as presidential statements about founding fathers securing airports during the American Revolution. Centuries separated the life of Jesus of Nazareth and anything bound on the left remotely like a Holy Bible.

The things generally required for a member of the Christian faith to believe are listed in two similar and compact creeds, known as the Apostles’ and Nicene. Neither contains anything like “I believe in the Holy Bible, the authoritative and inerrant word of God.”

Second. The Bible doesn’t ask us to accept it as Authoritative, Inerrant, or the Word of God. Those claims are made for it, not by it. Although he’s the most often quoted source for the holiness of the Bible (having written as a sideline that all scripture is inspired by God), what would Paul say at a modern church service upon hearing the Reading of the Epistle? He’d probably jump up and shout “Hey, that’s not the Word of God, that’s just taken from one of my letters!” One man’s correspondence is another man’s scripture.

Bible is a word meaning book. The Bible is a type of book called an anthology, or collection of books. There are two versions in common circulation and they don’t contain the same number of books. So much for authoritative. Authorship of the individual books is not generally a mystery. The names of the authors are on many. None claims to be the Book of God. Some of the more important books, the Gospels, differ on central issues – such as what day Jesus was crucified. There goes inerrant.

Belief in the holiness of ancient texts is simply idolatry in literary garb and needs to be called out as such. Invisible gods are a hard sell, ask any missionary, so tangible talismans come in handy. The Bible and the Cross are the two most powerful talismans in Christianity. If you find yourself falling off a cliff and can only grab one, grab the Cross. In it may be your salvation (more on this in a future post). The other is just a book.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Step 1.1 Thy will be done on Earth…by chance

August 17, 2019

From the scientists:

It is clear that chance is operative in the World as an ordinary state of affairs.

For the religionists:

Even the Lord’s Prayer directly implies that God’s Will is not operative in the World as an ordinary state of affairs.

Otherwise, why would anyone have to pray for that to be the case?

So Science and Religion, at least Christianity, should agree about the centrality of chance. They should also agree about the absence of God’s Will as a natural force in the Universe.

Nothing happens for a reason – unless we make it happen for a reason. Therefore, never justify personal action as being what God “wants”. Nobody knows what that might be, if anything.

Haiku to the New Haiku

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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A Book That Writes Itself

Sunday August 11, 2019

In answer to last Sunday’s question:

If you were all powerful, what the devil would you need?

The author of all things, what in Heaven would you read?

Humans feel powerless and out of control, but are power mad and controlling. They create deities in their own image. So they imagine that an all-powerful being would spend all its effort controlling everything, all the time. Because that’s what they would do if they could.

The opposite makes more sense. An all-powerful being would more likely create, and delight in, something which generated unforeseen outcomes. (How eternally boring if thought always came into being! No surprises.) So it might make a book that writes itself and stay out of the way as the characters write the story. Spoiler alert! Since it would exist outside of time, if it wanted to know how things turned out it could skip ahead. For the characters in the book, chance might be fundamental and dominate their universe – just as seems to be the case in ours.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity