Church of the Churchless

What, it’s Easter?

After I bought a cup of coffee and some muffins this afternoon, the clerk said "Have a nice Easter." I thought, What, it's Easter?

I'd completely lost track of what tomorrow was. I started to say, "I'd forgotten about it. Guess that shows how religious I am."

But I decided to bite my tongue and simply say, "Thanks."

Easter means absolutely nothing to me. Probably somebody in the world celebrates a memorable day in Zeus' existence. The two celebrations are equally senseless to my churchless self.

Yet I realize that other people find religious rituals and holidays deeply meaningful. They're welcome to their beliefs, as unfounded as they are to me.

We all need something to help us cope with life – which is full of uncertainty, pain, suffering, distress, unhappiness.

Coffee picks me up when I feel down. Others go to church, read the Bible, pray, or visualize Jesus' love for them. Personally, I think a latte is a better choice.

The Jehovah's Witnesses who knocked on our door this morning don't agree, though. I was in the midst of doing something important: eating a pancake and surfing the Internet. When I saw who was standing on our front porch, I felt a quiver of faithless indignation.

A woman handed me a leaflet, while a much older man in a suit stood to one side. "Hello, we'd like to invite you to a celebration of Jesus tomorrow."

I began rehearsing putdowns in my mind.

If she says one thing more…If she asks me if I've found Jesus…I'll tell her what she can do with her brochure…Yeah, bring it on sister…Just one more word…You knocked on the wrong door this Easter eve.

But she just smiled. Said, "thank you." And walked away.

Good move. The Jehovah's Witnesses have learned something. Or maybe they have a notation next to our address: "Tread lightly with these pagans."

Whatever, I went back to my pancake and laptop wishing them well. They were spending the day acting on their beliefs. Not in a pushy fashion, at least not with me. They simply wanted to spread the Good Word.

Which isn't so different from what I do on this blog, except I don't search people out.

Fresh from seeing Barack Obama yesterday, I'm in a pretty mellow mood. I agree with him that we need to do a much better job of breaking down the distinctions that plague this country.

Red states, blue states. Conservative, progressive. Faithful, faithless. Moral, immoral. Right, wrong. Patriotic, unpatriotic.

It isn't that we have to blend into some sort of featureless amorphous mass of oneness, losing our individuality.

It's more that believers need to do their best to look through the eyes of unbelievers, and vice versa. Ditto for blacks and whites, rich and poor, Republicans and Democrats, young and old, men and woman, etc. etc. etc.

In the bread store I paused before I blurted out what was going to be an impulsive rejoinder from my perspective. I realized that I had no idea how the clerk viewed Easter.

Maybe it meant a lot to her. Or maybe nothing, like me. Regardless, there was no need to say anything but "thank you." That's what I told the Jehovah's Witnesses also.

Have a nice Easter. Whatever it means to you.

Christian sex toys

Well, finally. Some Christianity that I can get behind. Or on top of. Whatever.

Christian sex toys. Though the offerings are fairly tame.

The NPR story says the "site steers clear of certain types of sexual activity that they believe are unholy." Any guesses?

Well, at least Joy Wilson and her husband are making good use of Biblical passages from the Song of Solomon. Sexual theology appeals to my churchless soul.

[Update: Gosh, does God have a plan for me? Am I about to convert to Christianity? Could be. Just noticed a CNN story about a minister asking his married couples to have sex every day for a month.

All of a sudden Christian dogma is looking quite a bit more appealing.]

Is it negative to be anti-Christian?

My wife and I try to be positive people. So when Laurel told a man we'd just met today, "You should know that we're anti-Christian," I hoped that this believer wouldn't take our negativity personally.

Fortunately, he didn't. I went on to explain that it isn't so much Christianity that turns us off as fundamentalism – which comes in many guises. Christian fundamentalists just happen to be by far the most common variety in our neck of the world's woods.

This cartoon does a good job of summing up what we find objectionable about so many Christians. They take the most ridiculous parts of the Bible literally, rejecting science in the process, but look upon the most elevated aspects of Jesus' message metaphorically.

"Love your neighbor as yourself." "Judge not, lest ye be judged." "Sell everything you have and give it to the poor." Whaaaaaat? Jesus couldn't have meant us to take that stuff seriously. He's all about stopping gay marriage, abortions, and stem cell research, right?

Well, I'd bet on wrong, though it's an open question whether Jesus even existed, much less how he'd feel about 21^st century social issues.

So I don't see it as negative to be anti-Christian if what you're against is Christian negativity. Negate a negation and you're left with something positive. Or neutral, at least.

Still, I'm pretty much on the same wavelength as Michael Shermer's "Rational Atheism" essay in Scientific American. He argues that while religious beliefs have to be dealt with when they conflict with scientific facts or violate principles of political liberty, skeptics should be cautious about going overboard with all-out attacks on religiosity.

Shermer's five reasons are:

1. Anti-something movements by themselves will fail.
2. Positive assertions are necessary.
3. Rational is as rational does.
4. The golden rule is symmetrical.
5. Promote freedom of belief and disbelief.

Here's his explanation of #5, which is difficult to argue with.

A higher moral principle that encompasses both science and religion is the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe.

Yes. And I recognize that while I no longer see the need to pursue my "do-gooder" activities under a religious banner, other people feel differently.

For example, Jonn, the man with whom Laurel and I had an interesting chat this afternoon at a table outside of the charming Sisters Coffee Company in (where else?) charming Sisters, Oregon.

(As an aside, Sisters Coffee has a reference to Jesus prominently displayed behind the cash register, and an open Bible near the seating area; this means nothing to us heathens, because they serve great lattes and sweets).

Jonn came up to us with some comments about something he and I have in common: a gray beard. Ostensibly he wanted some feedback on a desirable beard length, but pretty clearly a primary motivation for sitting down with us was to share his Christian-related vision of a cause called "Profits for Peace."

Which I'm still vague about. The description on his web site doesn't cast much light on what his recently formed non-profit organization is all about.

But, hey, we're down with sustainable peace. I'm just understandably a bit skeptical about whether "Profits" or "Peace" is the main goal of this group, notwithstanding its non-profit designation.

Regardless, talking with Jonn helped Laurel and me to remember that many (if not most) Christians aren't of the fire and brimstone fundamentalist variety. Yes, they're committed to their faith. And yes, they want to act on that faith. There's nothing wrong with either "yes." Often, a whole lot right.

Someday, I hope, people won't identify themselves as Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, or whatever. Nor will they be anti- or pro-religion. Humankind will have evolved beyond such distinctions.

Until that blessed time comes, it should be the goal of each of us to tolerate differences of belief and unbelief with as much goodwill as we can muster.

Yet only, as Shermer said, when one person's thoughts, beliefs and actions don't infringe on the equal freedom of others.

If you want to take away my grandchild's right to learn the scientific truth of evolution, unmixed with creationist or intelligent design B.S., then you'll have a fight on your hands. Or if you want to stifle federal funding for embryonic stem cell research that could benefit millions out of a fundamentalist interpretation of scripture.

Remember, Christians: the Bible says Thou shalt not pray in public! Keep your beliefs private and no negativity from unbelievers shall fall unto you.

Creation Museum displays Christian credulity

Just when I've been thinking, "summer is here, living is easy; maybe I shouldn't hammer religion so hard," the Creation Museum has to open its doors and make me wish I had a hammer of Biblical proportions.

Oops, bad choice of words. Because the problem with the Creation Museum — a huge one — is that it treats the Bible as gospel truth rather than manmade fables.

So if Genesis says that the Earth was created just a few thousand years ago, then dinosaurs must have co-existed with Homo sapiens, no matter what science has discovered.

This ridiculous monument to religious credulity cost $27 million. Sadly, plenty of adults will fork over $19.95 to gaze upon the Creation Museum's impressive looking (so long as you look past their idiocy) displays.

Even sadder, children are going to come along. I'm with protester Edwin Kagin, who said:

Teaching children that science supports the Bible rather than evolution "is a form of child abuse" and "terrorism" that could plunge America into a new dark age.

Absolutely. Polls show that 40% of Americans believe that God created humans in our present form less than 10,000 years ago. Every effort should be made to get that percentage a lot closer to zero. The Creation Museum is a step in the wrong direction.

The Bible was written by pre-scientific people. They were human, not divine. They had no idea that dinosaurs even existed. Nor did they know any other purported "facts" (such as the Sun goes around the Earth) that weren't part of the limited knowledge base of those times.

Hmmmmm. You'd think that a divine revelation would include some hitherto unknown accurate information about our place in the cosmos. But none ever has — whether Christian, Muslim, Judaic, Hindu, Sikh, or whatever.

That doesn't bother the true believers. Museum visitor Kim Schiffman said, "Every word in the Bible is true. The whole evolution theory to me is ridiculous."

Well, Kim, as the Evil Bible web site points out, you must endorse ritual human sacrifice, rape, murder, and slavery (to name but a few Biblical barbarities), because these are spoken of fondly in your Absolutely True Bible.

You might also take a look at the many Biblical contradictions. I guess truth can be both true and false, because the Bible often likes to swing opposite ways.

Thanks to this sneak peek at the Creation Museum, I was able to get a look at how human reason is viewed there. Given the Bible's strong tilt toward superstition and myth-making, it isn't surprising that the museum gives reason short shrift compared to God's Word.

This means that if something was written by scientific ignoramuses hundreds of years ago, and has been given a stamp of approval by almost equally ignorant religious authorities, it should be accepted uncritically even if every reasonable brain cell in your body is screaming Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!

No, I haven't been too hard on religion. The Creation Museum helped me see that. So long as children are being taught that reality is to be fled from, rather than embraced, religious fundamentalism has to be fought.

I'm mildly worried about Islamic radicals. But I'm much more concerned about the Christian crazies right here in the United States. That's who really threatens American freedoms.

Such as the right to know the truth.

Christians admit their religion is based on hate

I'm pretty harsh on Christianity, along with every other faith-based religion that asks us to believe in things unseen and a god unknown.

But it takes a Christian to really reveal the dark side of Christianity—a true believer whose world view is so blinded by an egocentric conviction that he's got all the answers, he doesn't see how deep is the moral morass into which he's sunk.

Such a man is Rick Scarborough of Vision America, an organization that claims to be "restoring the original American vision." This supposedly includes the right to discriminate against, hate, and vilify people who are different from you.

The House of Representatives has passed a federal Hate Crimes Act that would expand the definition of hate crimes to include attacks against homosexuals and transgendered people. On Fox News I heard Scarborough inveighing about this threat to hatred.

Religious freedom is about to be dealt a mortal blow, and religious tolerance is about to become history if this legislation becomes the law of the land.

Huh? Hard to understand what the hell he's getting at, but a Fox reporter explained.

Some religious groups fear prosecution and intimidation of pastors whose sermons against homosexuality inadvertently inspire a hate crime.

Oh, poor pastors. They're demanding that society tolerate their spouting of hatred toward homosexuals, even if it leads to violence, while basking in the hate crimes protection already offered (for attacks based on race, religion, or national origin).

Consider the delicious irony. And bullshit. Christianity, a religion that supposedly is founded on love, is up in arms at the prospect of hate crime legislation being passed. If this isn't enough to make you an atheist, or at least an agnostic, what is?

Yes, not all Christians are anti-gay. But an awful lot are. In fact, it's difficult to come up with anything but a religious reason for abhorring homosexuality.

This is why Vision America screams "the hate crimes bill would criminalize Christianity." Fine with me. Criminalize away. If you can't practice your religion without discriminating against other people, you don't deserve to enjoy unfettered religious freedom.

It's good to see a counterpoint to the Christian right prejudicial mindset. A "Call to Courage" campaign has set out to urge believers not to be taken in by the anti-gay wing of Christianity. Motto:

Religious-based bigotry…Let's end it now and forever

Amen to that.

It deeply disturbs me to read letters to the editor like the one that appeared in our local newspaper today. It was written by Angela Makarenko, a 13 year old who, sadly, has already been sucked into the hate-filled whirlpool that passes for mainstream Christianity these days.

I know Salem legislators are deciding laws regarding gay rights, and I'm against that. Since the day I was born, I went to church called Slavic Christian Church of Salem.

I'm Christian, and my parents taught me that God created Adam and Eve – one man and one woman.

Most people say that they were born gay. You can't be born gay, you choose to be gay – it's your lifestyle.

I have three nieces, and by the time they go to school, teachers are going to be teaching them that it's OK to be gay. I don't want that to happen.

Please, no gay rights.

Angela, sometime you're going to Google your name and find this blog post. I hope so much that by the time you do, you've opened your mind and heart to a more compassionate philosophy of life.

You're confined in a small fundamentalist pasture right now. Jump over the fence. Head for the horizon.

There's a lot more joy and love out there than you'll ever find in the Slavic Christian Church of Salem.

Pope says hellfire is real and eternal

Well, looks like it's going to be an interesting afterlife. If you believe the Pope—and why wouldn't you, since he's infallible—the fires of hell are real and eternal.

This news comes on the heels (oops, I typed "hells" first time around; guess the Devil made me do it) of my condemning myself to hell for a free DVD. And providing video proof which, unexpectedly, has been viewed by 755 people in less than three months (only a few of whom were me).

Despite being a devoutly unfaithful lapsed Catholic, I figured that it was safe to take the blasphemy challenge. After all, Pope John Paul II had rejected the reality of a literal hell.

Pope Benedict XVI has overturned the Paulian good news that hell is just the condition of separation from God. Since I'm also separated from the Tooth Fairy, Bigfoot, and the Easter Bunny, none of which I believe in either, I can handle Pope John Paul's form of damnation.

Pope Benedict's vision of hell is a lot hotter. And longer, since it's eternal.

Hopefully my Catholic baptism and first communion will stand me in good stead after I die. Limbo wouldn't be so bad, though the last time I checked Benedict wasn't big on limbo as a hellfire alternative.

On Fox News I saw an ex-ambassador to the Vatican interviewed about the Pope's "hell is real" announcement. This foursquare Catholic was asked if non-Christians are going to hell, even if they're otherwise good people.

He prevaricated a bit, but ending up saying that he's pleased the Pope is telling it like it is now (in comparison to John Paul's feel-good Catholicism, I assume). In other words, nonbelievers in Jesus are screwed.

Benedict won't be Pope forever, though. So if pagans like me are able to outlive him, we've got a good chance of seeing the "is hell real?" question take another turn around the wheel of Catholic dogma. The infallibility of the Papacy is strangely mutable.

It reminds me of another supposedly infallible line of religious leaders, the gurus of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. They're considered to be God in human form, seemingly a step up the divinity ladder from the Pope.

Charan Singh, who served as guru until his death in 1990, said that it was okay for vegetarian disciples to eat cheese even though it contained rennet—which usually is derived from animals. However, Gurinder Singh, his successor, put out the word that rennet should be shunned if you want to keep your karmic load light.

That led to a flurry of quasi-panicked research into rennetless cheeses among the faithful. Of whom I was one, back then. We'd spend many anxious moments reading the small print on cheese packages, not to mention driving pizza parlors crazy with cheesy questions they'd likely never encountered before.

It's interesting how the God-given truth can change so quickly. Sort of makes you wonder whether we're speaking of truthiness here, rather than the really real variety.

I'm betting that hell isn't real. And that a bit of rennet won't doom me to transmigration into a lower form of life, such as a neo-conservative.

If I find myself worrying about whether my bets will pay off, I've found that doubling down is a good strategy. I break another Radha Soami Satsang Beas vow and sip a glass of organic red wine.

With some cheese. Usually rennetless, I have to admit. Karma or no karma, I prefer not to eat the stomach of calves. Ick! That's hellish!

Unbelievers should want the Bible taught in public school

Seeing the headline on this week's TIME cover, "Why We Should Teach the Bible in Public School," I was prepared to become outraged. But after reading the article, and giving more thought to the subject, this unbeliever is all for more Biblical instruction.

Naturally it shouldn't be with an evangelical slant. The article's author, David Van Biema, says that the Bible should be treated as the bedrock of Western culture, not the holy word of God.

Other religious texts also should get wider exposure in schools. A few weeks ago I pulled up to a drive-in Dutch Brothers for a latte fix before speaking to a comparative religion class.

The guy on duty asked me how my day was going. I said, "Well, I need to stay awake for a talk on Taoism that I'm about to give." He responded with a "Taoism? What's that?" I offered up a 30-second summary after getting over my amazement that someone his age wouldn't know anything about one of the world's preeminent quasi-religious systems.

However, even more amazing is the fact that we live in the land of Biblical idiots. The United States is the most Christian-crazy nation on earth. Yet Americans know next to nothing about the Bible, as Stephen Prothero tells us in his book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—But Doesn't

Blogger Wonkette shares some of Prothero's delicious ignoramus tidbits:

75% of adults believe the famed Benjamin Franklin saying "God helps those who help themselves" is one of the Ten Commandments.

50% of high school seniors believe Sodom and Gomorrah were married.

Only one in three Americans can name the four Gospels, while less than half can even name one of them.

As Van Biema notes in his piece, those Christians who support the death penalty with "an eye for eye, tooth for tooth" mentality either don't know about "turn the other cheek" or conveniently choose to ignore it.

There are many other examples in the Bible of contradictory or ridiculous teachings that demand active consideration by free-thinking individuals, not passive acceptance.

Bart Ehrman is a scholar who changed from a devout evangelical into an agnostic after learning so much about the history of the Bible, he realized that the words in it can't be trusted. Ehrman's book, Misquoting Jesus, definitely should be part of any public school curriculum.

I'm certainly no Bible scholar, but I know more about Christianity than most Christians. That's one reason I'm not a believer.

I know how little evidence there is that Jesus even existed. I know that the Gospels were written long after Jesus' purported death and resurrection, and have been heavily edited—both intentionally and unintentionally—ever since. I know that the books of today's Bible were selectively chosen from among a much larger collection of early Christian writings, some of which (like the Gospel of Judas) cast heresy in a new light.

So when it comes to teaching the Bible in public schools, I say "bring it on." Critically. Comprehensively. Creatively.

Personally, I don't find the Bible to be interesting or compelling reading. But I can take it in small pieces. In fact, now and then I even come across scriptural passages that, for one reason or another, seem eminently worshipful.

Lost Tomb of Jesus story shows shakiness of Christianity

Sunday the Discovery Channel will broadcast a documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus." James Cameron claims to have found evidence that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and fathered a son named Judah.

And that he didn't ascend bodily to heaven, since his body was buried.

Lots of Christians and scholars are in an uproar, for different reasons. Scholarly types are critical of how the archaeological evidence has been interpreted. True believers are offended that anyone would try to demolish the foundation on which Christianity is built.

For the bodily resurrection is one of the essential doctrines of the Christian Faith.

Here's what I find most interesting about all this hullabaloo: it points to how shaky Christianity really is. Cameron's documentary likely will be shown and then quickly forgotten, because he seems to be making a big deal out of not much.

But if solid evidence did come to light that Jesus wasn't who the Bible says he is—God's divine son—then two billion Christian believers would have their rug of faith ripped out from underneath them.

That's the risk when your religion is founded on an individual person rather than universal reality.

David Kuo asks why so many people are out to disprove Jesus and Christianity, while so few take on the Buddha and Buddhism. Well, David, one reason is that Buddhism does just fine without the Buddha. In Zen, even better without than with.

I like to take my spirituality with a heavy dose of science, topped with some creamy skepticism. That's how it goes down best for me.

So when I see people worshipping a man who may never have existed, about whom nothing solid is known, yet is the being upon which they depend for their eternal salvation—that strikes me as bat-shit crazy.

Imagine how scientists would react if somehow it turned out that Isaac Newton wasn't who we thought he was. Maybe his wife, or gardener, actually wrote the Principia and Newton was a fraud.

No big deal. "Newton's" laws of motion would still guide the planets around the sun. All that would change is the credit line attached to the first discoverer of those fundamental principles of the universe.

That's because science is founded on facts that are independent of any person, while Christianity is a faith personified, through and through.

No Jesus as he is claimed to be, no Christian religion. No Isaac Newton, just a yawn for the practice of science.

To my mind the lesson to be taken away from "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" is that if your conception of reality is founded on the presence or absence of some bone fragments in an ossuary, you're on really shaky existential ground.

I recommend finding firmer footing before a more reputable researcher than James Cameron leaves you in metaphysical quicksand. (In my opinion you're already there; you just don't know it yet).

I condemn myself to hell. For a free DVD.

I haven’t made my Blasphemy Challenge video yet, but here’s the written version: “Hi. I’m Brian. I deny the Holy Spirit.”

According to Mark 3:29, my soul is now in deep hellish doo-doo.

“Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.”

On the plus side, if my video is among the first 1001 to be uploaded to YouTube, I’ll get a free DVD of The God Who Wasn’t There. That’s a $25 value, definitely enough for me to sell my soul.

Actually, I’d condemn myself to hell for a lot less. Like, for free, since I don’t believe that hell exists. Why, hell, I might as well condemn myself to Tartarus also while I’m at it. Along all the other mythical underworlds posited in the world’s religions.

If I’m wrong, the joke (and eternal damnation) is on me. But I’ll take my chances.

Bishop Carlton Pearson is on my side. He’s an evangelical minister of the United Church of Christ who preached fire and brimstone until he got a revelation from God. Which basically was: There isn’t any hell. All are saved. Christians and non-Christians alike. Everyone.

You’d think this positive, inclusive, non-judgmental message would be greeted by his congregation with a hearty “Praise the Lord!” But just the opposite occurred. His flock went from over 5,000 to just a few hundred.

Apparently hell sells. Which makes sense, in a sense.

If you’re a Christian believer, you damn well want to get some special benefit from all that believing. If hippies, drug dealers, homosexuals, and Buddhists are going to reach heaven along with you, what’s the point of going to church and filling the collection plate?

Nonetheless, it looks like Carlton Pearson now is doing fine. He has a snazzy web site and a nifty slogan: “The Friendliest, Trendiest, Most Radically Inclusive Worship Experience!”

Not surprisingly, Bishop Pearson is viewed as a heretic by fundamentalist Christians who aren’t into friendly, trendy, radical inclusiveness. This lengthy critique of Pearson’s hell-free theology calls him the charismatic bishop of heresy.

I suspect Pearson takes that as a compliment. As he should.

[Thanks to Church of the Churchless regular Randy for emailing me about Pearson, and to Newsweek for cluing me in to the Blasphemy Challenge.]

“The Pagan Christ” looks at Christmas differently

Spoiler alert: if you’re a Christian who believes that today you celebrated the birth of someone who actually existed, stop reading--if you don’t want to run the risk of having your belief balloon punctured.

Since I’ve never had any allegiance to the historical Jesus, I had no problem breezing through Tom Harpur’s eye-opening “The Pagan Christ,” subtitled “Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity?”

Harpur, a former Anglican priest and professor of Greek and New Testament at the University of Toronto, argues that Christianity is nothing more than warmed over Egyptian and Greek mythology. Jesus never existed as a historical personage. His Gospel story is an amalgamation of allegories that have no basis in literal fact.

Makes sense to me. But not for lots of others. I note that right now this book is selling for a rock-bottom $2.99 direct from Amazon. Probably the Christmas season is a slow period for books about the pagan origins of Christianity.

And Harpur, not surprisingly, comes in for some heavy criticism from erudite fundamentalists like James Patrick Holding.

My brain is still too much in my stomach after excessive gorging on a Christmas dinner to wade through Holding’s lengthy screed. I’ll simply observe that Bible skeptic Robert M. Price has his own extensive critique of Holding, along with critiques of numerous other apologists for Christian dogma.

Myself, I resonate with Harpur’s freeing message:

The personal Jesus concept is truly a limiting, and deeply divisive, dead end. The historical evidence simply isn’t there. It’s a classic example of the emperor’s having no clothes.

What is more, it commits idolatry by making a flesh-and-blood man into God—thus forever alienating Jews, Muslims, and believers of a host of other religions, and making full religious harmony on the planet a perpetual impossibility

It has, most notably in the United States, created a kind of passive-dependent Jesus cult totally prone to extreme magical thinking. It restricts Christhood to one person in all of history, instead of acknowledging the deep, archetypal power of a universal—yes, cosmic—principle and ideal.

Jordan Stratford is a Gnostic Christian blogger who likes “The Pagan Christ.” He straightforwardly lays out the choices: “Either Jesus Christ was a man who lived 2,000 years ago, suffered under Pontius Pilate and died, or he was not.”

Stratford points out, as does Harpur, that middle of the roaders like The Jesus Seminar participants try to have it both ways: Jesus really existed, but the Bible doesn’t accurately reflect who he was or what he taught. Stratford chooses one lane.

In my opinion it is far more honest to accept the premise, as put forth by a new current of writers including Freke and Gandy, that the Jesus story is entirely mythical with absolutely zero historicity.

So what happens with Christmas? If it isn’t a celebration of the birth of a once-real person, what is it? Just an opportunity to stoke the economy, or something more?

Harpur says that it definitely can be something more, so long as we take the Jesus story as a symbol of how divinity can be born in every person. He quotes John Dominic Crossan:

My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.

We’ve got to wise up, Harpur advises.

This is to refute the charge that if the events of religious festivity are thrown out as non-historical, Christmas and Easter and ceremonies like them will lose all their gripping impressiveness.

On the contrary, [Alvin Boyd] Kuhn affirms, the symbols will exert a far weightier significance when they are envisioned truly as symbols and not falsely as events. I can only add that this has been my personal experience too.

The celebrations of Christmas and Easter have become infinitely more potent for me as I have learned to penetrate beyond the externals to the realities within. As Origen says, taken in its literal, allegedly historical sense, “Christ crucified is teaching for babes.”

Or, to quote St. Paul, “But when I became a mature man, I put away childish things.”

Yes, it’s time to grow up and become churchless.

Almost time to celebrate the Christianity meme

Here we are, late December, and there sure is a lot of Christian talk going around. Someone from outer space would be asking, “What’s that all about?” Mangers, wise men, gifts of frankincense and myrrh.

Our alien visitor would be told that Christmas is a celebration of a man who was sent by God to redeem the world’s sins; that he died, was resurrected, and now is able to give other people eternal life in heaven if you believe in him; and that he expects believers to praise his glory to others so that they too can be saved.

“Oh, I see,” the visitor’s Universal Galactic Translator would say. “The minds of your people have been infected by a powerful meme. Our consciousnesses are prone to the same disturbances.”

Not exactly how Christians view the birth of Jesus. But it’s an entirely reasonable explanation of the hold that Christianity, along with other salvific religions, has on billions of Homo sapiens.

The Christianity Meme web site is dedicated to exposing what’s really going on:

"--Christianity is a meme, a mind virus that lives in the minds of people and is spread through proselytization and other means.
--Christianity is a meme about God, but it has no other connection to God.
--The Christianity Meme has been shaped purely by natural selection--the law of survival of the fittest--as it has played out in human minds. It is a sophisticated product of cultural evolution.
--Being a "true Christian" infected by the Christianity Meme will subject you to aid its survival through its adaptations that allow it to exert control over human behavior.
--As a consequence, the more Christian you are the more you are prone to certain kinds of immoral behavior. The Christianity Meme is not bound by the moral principles it carries.
--We seek to expose Christianity for what it is and we advocate a conscious and rational approach to morality in its place."

Makes sense. Memes are theorized to be the mental equivalent of genes. Whereas genes are passed on from parent to child through DNA, memes propagate through cultural forces: books, conversation, magazines, television, movies, art, blogs, all kinds of methods.

When you hear a new song and can’t get it out of your head, that’s a meme replicating itself. Or when you just have to get an Ipod, because everyone else has one. Or, if you’re of a certain age, when wearing a baseball cap anyway but backward becomes unthinkable.

In his essay “Viruses of the Mind” (in A Devil’s Chaplain), Richard Dawkins says, “Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses will tend to be hard for their victims to detect. If you are the victim of one, the chances are that you won’t know it, and may even vigorously deny it.”

These are the tell-tale signs that Dawkins says we should look for.

--The patient is impelled by a deep conviction that something is true, right, or virtuous. This conviction isn’t based on evidence or reason, but still is totally compelling and convincing. In other words, “faith.”

--Patients make a virtue out of faith’s being strong and unshakeable in spite of the lack of evidence. Indeed, the less evidence there is, the more virtuous the belief. Once the proposition is believed, it automatically undermines opposition to itself.

--A related symptom is that “mystery,” per se, is a good thing. It is not a virtue to solve mysteries. Rather, we should enjoy them and even revel in their insolubility.

--The sufferer may find himself behaving intolerantly toward vectors of rival faiths, in extreme cases even killing them or advocating their deaths. He also will be negative toward apostates (people who once held the faith but have renounced it) or toward heretics (people who espouse a different version of the faith).

--The patient’s beliefs likely have nothing to do with evidence and a lot with epidemiology. Meaning, it is the faith his parents and grandparents had, for by far the most important variable determining a person’s religion is the accident of birth. If he’d been born in a different place, he’d have a different religion.

--Yet even if the patient follows a different religion from his parents, the explanation still can be epidemiological: he has been exposed to a particularly potent infective agent, a John Wesley, a Jim Jones, or a St. Paul.

--The internal sensations of the patient may be startlingly reminiscent of those more ordinarily associated with sexual love. Some priests speak of the consecrated Host, the supposed body and blood of Christ, in romantic terms: “I would gaze on the Host…soft-eyed like a lover looking into the eyes of his beloved.”

So beware of what lurks within the religious mind. Memes, like viruses, don’t care about you. Their goal is simply to replicate by means fair or foul.

You might find yourself flying a plane into a building at the behest of a religion meme. Or, donating more money than you can afford to a meme that says, “God loves those who give to Him until it hurts.”

Have a Merry Christmas-meme. Just don’t turn your back on the devious creature.

Don’t spam God

It’s rare that I resonate with a Christian message. But I like the general tone of this short “Do you spam God?” piece (a PDF file).

I wonder, though, whether maybe God would prefer not to be bothered at all, compared with getting heartfelt messages. What’s the point of blabbing away to an omniscient omnipresent being?

(Thanks to the New Life Church for sharing this link).

Struggling to comprehend the Christian mind

I’ve been enjoying the Christian/non-believer dialogue being carried on via comments to my “Morality comes from nature, not God” post. Pastor Phillip Ross has stimulated some interesting cyber-conversation between himself and Church of the Churchless regulars, me included.

Today I’m in a pretty mellow mood. Last night’s election results filled me with hope that the divisions plaguing the United States can be bridged by moderates who realize that left and right can’t exist without a center.

I was in that spirit when I perused the latest comments from Phillip and others today. Rather than reflexively thinking, “Geez, that’s ridiculous” after reading some assertion of Christian theology, I did my best to comprehend Phillip’s frame of mind.

That is, rather than criticize his statements from my own perspective, I tried to get a feel for what it might be like to believe in God and Jesus as a devout Christian does (however, Phillip’s web site, Pilgrim Platform, is devoted to pointing out fallacies of the contemporary church—which points to the fact that these days it isn’t a simple matter to figure out what Christianity is and isn’t).

I’d like to be able to report that I succeeded in my empathic quest. But I can’t.

I was a political conservative in my deluded youth, so I feel that I understand how a right-wing Republican thinks.Likewise, I was a religious true believer for many years, even though at the time I wouldn’t have called my fidelity to the teachings of Sant Mat and Radha Soami Satsang Beas as such, so I feel I understand how a person of faith thinks.

Even so, a Christian mind such as Phillip’s is damnably tough for me to grok. I don’t say this critically. It’s just the way it is. There’s a gap between a fundamentalist Christian way of looking at the cosmos and my own perspective that is so wide, I end up gazing across the divide at a distant shadowy figure who is waving his hands and yelling faintly, “Do you get what I mean?”

No, I don’t. I’m sure this doesn’t dismay Christians like Phillip, because to them faith in Jesus is something you either have or you don’t. Sort of like a Zen satori. It isn’t explainable, defensible, comprehensible, rational, or explicable. Some get it, some don’t.

Why is this? In his November 7 comment, Phillip said that the main part of his religious outlook breaks into two halves, sin and forgiveness.

First, all have sinned. That's you and me and every biped. And the first evidence of sin is it's denial. Second, forgiveness comes through Christ alone. When we deny the first half, God denies the second half.

Well, I’m befuddled. The notion of original sin makes no sense to me. So not surprisingly, the notion that God had to send his son to suffer on our behalf for non-sensical sins also escapes me.

As do a lot of mystical precepts. The Buddhist “emptiness is form and form is emptiness” is absent from my store of adages that I feel I can explain. Yet Phillip, like most Christians, rejects a mystic approach to God. I’d mentioned to him that I had read widely in Christian mystical literature: Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, Cloud of Unknowing, and such.

He replied:

We have a thorough reading of Christian mysticism in common. I, too, spent many years looking there. But God is not there. The God of the Christian mystics is "mystery, darkness, not-knowing, ineffability." You're right about that. But that is not the God of the Bible. That is the false God of Gnosticism.

What is the true God, then? And how would we recognize this divinity? Can’t rely on a direct mystical experience. That’s a Gnostic no-no. And you also can’t rely on reason, according to Phillip. That’s a Platonic no-no.

The effort to prove God is an exercise of Greek categories of thought trying to make sense of the biblical God. But, alas, they cannot. Paul speaks to this in Acts 17 and in First Corinthians, where he identifies Greek philosophy as foolishness, that is, lacking in discernment and good judgment.

What’s left? The Bible? But Phillip says, “The Bible offers no proof of God's existence.” So it seems that we can’t rely on the Bible to point us toward the true God, since it can’t even demonstrate the existence of any God.

For some reason, though, in his comments Phillip quotes passages from the Bible to support his argument. Somehow the same Bible that contains no proof of God’s existence can be relied upon to tell us what God is like and what he expects of us. I learned from Phillip that…

--God is a person
--God is jealous
--God does not answer all prayer
--God invades human history

And (bad news for me)…

--God is offended by being called a false name

This explains why, even though I’ve been praying to God for a convertible Mini Cooper S (unselfishly, because I’d occasionally offer joyful rides in it to other people), one hasn’t appeared in my driveway.

Phillip said that my cover-the-bases prayer to God/ Allah/ Jehovah/ Tao/ Buddha-nature/ One isn’t going to win me points with the jealous Christian God, a.k.a. The Only True God. God apparently wants to be called “God,” (in English I assume, not Aramaic) and nothing else.

You pray, "whoever might be out there, here I am. Show me." [either yourself or the Mini, I’m easy] But your prayer is an absolute affront to God. You call Him by many false names. It's like you want to talk to me, but you can't remember my name. So, you call out, "George, Pete, Sam, whoever you are." And I don't answer. Are you surprised that I don't answer? You shouldn't be. Generally speaking, when you don't call people by name, they neither listen nor respond.

Hmmmm. About four hours ago my Tai Chi instructor, Warren, told a story about calling a phone company repairman “Ron” about twenty times before he said, “Actually, my name is John.” Yet John successfully collaborated with Warren on finding and fixing a broken wire on the roof of the Tai Chi studio, even though he kept being called “Ron.”

I guess John beats God in the humility department. As do I. If a neighbor’s house was on fire and they saw me passing by, I’d still run to assist them even if they mistakenly yelled “Help, Brad!” Apparently God wouldn’t do the same if you got his moniker wrong.

Nevertheless, during my meditation time this morning I spent a whole five minutes calling out to God. And only God. That was about as long as I could concentrate on talking to God before returning to mentally contemplating the oh so sweet election results.

I just checked our driveway. Twelve hours have passed. Still no Mini Cooper. This proves to me there is no God.

Phillip should approve of my conclusion. After all, he wrote in one of his comments that the only incontrovertible proof for the existence (and, I extrapolate, non-existence) of God is our own life—his, mine, yours. On that we agree.

Phillip finds that God exists. I find no evidence of that. He says tomahto. I say tomato. Each to his own. There’s nothing wrong with faith in God, nor with skepticism toward God. so long as believers admit that their belief is purely personal and improvable.

Phillip, you wrote, “I am just saying that the need for proof regarding God is resolved by meeting Him.”

Tell me: have you met Him? I assume so, or you wouldn’t know so much about him. Could you ask him why he has such a thing about being called the right name? Also, find out what name, in which language, he likes the most.

Send that info along to me. Then I’ll try my prayer again. Maybe he favors German and I should have been saying, “Gott, bring me a Mini Cooper.”

Hope springs eternal.

Texas governor says non-Christians are going to hell

On this election day eve, let us remind ourselves why it is so important to send a message to the Christian Taliban in this country: we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!

What aren’t we going to take? Intolerance. Sanctimoniousness. Attempts to turn the United States into a hateful Christian nation.

When the Republican governor of Texas agrees with a sermon where the pastor said that non-Christians are “going straight to hell with a non-stop ticket,” it’s long past time to scream bullshit.

Governor Rick Perry’s weird religious beliefs are his own business. But he needs to keep them to himself when he’s acting in his role as a political leader. He was among 60 mostly Republican candidates for tomorrow’s election when the pastor made his remarks.

Perry should have said something like, “I represent all Texans, Christians and non-Christians alike. Theology is one thing, democracy is another. I’m not going to comment on a matter of personal religious belief.”

How would Perry feel if he were a Christian living in Saudi Arabia and heard that nation’s leader say, “Every follower of Jesus will be judged harshly by Allah”? (This doesn’t require much of a stretch of the imagination.)

Could he be confident that justice would be applied equally to him and to Muslims? I doubt it. So how does he think Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, and other non-Christian Texans feel about his own intolerant remarks?

Independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman said, “He doesn’t think very differently from the Taliban, does he?” No, he doesn’t.

Unfortunately, Perry has lots of Christian company. Check out these quotations from the American Taliban.

I often hear it said, “Oh, these sorts of hateful people aren’t real Christians. The Bible teaches us to love, not hate.” Sorry, but that’s also bullshit.

The Bible is full of hatred. The haters of sodomy and homosexuality at godhatesfags.com say that they are merely preaching the Gospel. And, judging by the scripture they cite, they are.

These members of the Westboro Baptist Church have put together a persuasive PDF document: “God Loves Everyone.” The Greatest Lie Ever Told. 701 Passages Proving God’s Hate & Wrath for Most of Mankind.

It turns out that the Bible does say that non-Christians are going to hell. The Christian God isn’t full of love, as the document points out.

Have you ever wondered how many times “God loves everyone” is found in the Bible – 20, 50, 100, 200? Have you ever wondered if it appears in the New Testament or Old Testament or both? Have you ever wondered who said these words or who they are attributable to? Have you ever wondered how many times Jesus said “God loves everyone?”

As a matter of uncontroverted fact the phrase “God loves everyone” never appears in the Bible. You can search from Genesis to Revelation, including looking in all 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,173 verses and 774,746 words and you will never find this phrase. Period. In other words, the most famous Christian notion of God that is repeated without measure or limit in this evil and adulterous generation is never found in the Bible.

And that’s one reason I’m not a Christian. And why I urge you to vote Democratic tomorrow. The Dems are by no means perfect. But at least they haven’t been hijacked by the American Taliban like the Republicans have.

God wants to be forsaken

My churchlessness and agnosticism is adored by God. Yes, God looks upon me with more favor than all those worshipful Christians, Muslims, Jews and other religious types.

For God wants to be forsaken. Happy to oblige, my friend. It’s a pleasure to comply with the divine will.

I learned about what God wants from Meister Eckhart, the German theologian and mystic. He’s got some excellent doctrinal credentials, chief among them being accused of heresy by Pope John XXII.

You know that a Catholic is pointing toward the truth when he’s branded a heretic. So we need to take seriously the advice Eckhart proffered in one of his sermons.

Of course, it sounds astonishing to say that the soul should forsake God, but I assert that it is more important for the soul to forsake God to attain perfection than it is for the soul to forsake creatures, or all will be lost.

The soul must exist in a free nothingness. That we should forsake God is altogether what God intends, for as long as the soul has God, knows God, and is aware of God, she is far from God.

Now, it isn’t easy to understand Eckhart. He recognized that himself, concluding another sermon in this fashion.

Whoever has understood this sermon, I wish them well. Had no one been here, I would still have had to preach it to this collecting-box. There are some poor folk who return home and say, “I wish to sit down, to eat my bread and to serve God.” But I say by the eternal truth that these people shall remain in error and can never attain what those others attain who follow God in poverty and in exile. Amen.

D.T. Suzuki, a teacher of Zen, explains that for Eckhart “God” and “Godhead” are “as different as earth is from heaven.” Godhead is empty of everything that can be known, perceived, understood, comprehended. So, says Suzuki, to Eckhart pure nothing “is the highest point at which God can work in us as he pleases.”

With him God is still a something as long as there is any trace of movement or work or of doing something. When we come to the Godhead, we for the first time find that it is the unmoved, a nothing where there is no path to reach. It is absolute nothingness; therefore it is the ground of being from whence all beings come.

If this isn’t unclear enough, here are some additional Meister Eckhart quotations that have the delicious effect of overturning our unduly stable metaphysical apple cart.

But I say that if someone perceives something in God and gives it a name, then that is not God. God is above names and nature.

Taking leave of God for the sake of God is the greatest act of renunciation that someone can make.

Therefore we ask God to free us from “God” so that we may be able to grasp and eternally enjoy truth where the highest angels, the fly and the human soul are all one—in that place where I desired what I was and was what I desired.

Your soul should lose all her mental nature and should be left non-mental, for if you love God as “God,” as “Spirit,” as “Person,” as “Image,” then all this should be abandoned. You must love him as he is a non-God, a non-Spirit, a non-Person, a non-Image.

You are never better placed than when you are in complete darkness and unknowing.

Ah, thank you Meister Eckhart. I’m reassured that my meditation is going just fine.

Sam Harris shakes up a Christian nation. And, me.

I loved “Letter to a Christian Nation.” Sam Harris punctures every variety of religious vanity. Though his focus is, obviously, on the follies of Christianity, Harris’ razor-sharp dissection of one religion leaves in shreds every faith-based belief system.

I read nearly all of the 96 pages in one evening. It’s hard to put down this book. I agree with Harris nearly 100%, but even if you don’t—and most Americans won’t—his blunt epigrammatic style will draw you in.

After all, right off the bat Harris establishes some common ground between he and his Christian audience.

You believe that the Bible is the word of God, that Jesus is the Son of God, and that only those who place their faith in Jesus will find salvation after death. As a Christian, you believe these propositions not because they make you feel good, but because you think they are true.

Before I point out some of the problems with these beliefs, I would like to acknowledge that there are many points on which you and I agree. We agree, for instance, that if one of us is right, the other is wrong. The Bible is either the word of God, or it isn’t. Either Jesus offers humanity the one, true path to salvation, or he does not.

From there, Harris is off and running. Since neither Christianity, nor any other religion or spiritual faith, can prove that it knows the nature of ultimate truth, it isn’t difficult for him to demonstrate the folly of religious certainty.

For Harris, as for me, a scientific approach toward knowing reality is the only sensible way to go.

In the broadest sense, “science” (from the Latin scire, “to know”) represents our best efforts to know what is true about our world…The core of science is not controlled experiment or mathematical modeling; it is intellectual honesty.

It is time we acknowledged a basic feature of human discourse: when considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn’t. Religion is the one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.

I’m proud of my churchlessness. But Harris’ bold defense of truth in the face of religious attempts to substitute faith for facts made me realize how wishy-washy I can be.

I’ll listen to someone’s recitation of their religiosity and think to myself, “That’s bullshit.” Yet I won’t say it. Harris says it. As he should. As we all should.

In his first book, “The End of Faith,” Harris reserves special scorn for religious moderates and liberals. He does the same in “Letter to a Christian Nation.”

I have little doubt that liberals and moderates find the eerie certainties of the Christian Right to be as troubling as I do. It is my hope, however, that they will also begin to see that the respect they demand for their own religious beliefs gives shelter to extremists of all faiths…Even the most progressive faiths lend tacit support to the religious divisions in our world.

If somebody said to me, “Global warming isn’t happening,” I’d reply, “You’re wrong.” I wouldn’t say, “Well, you’re entitled to your belief” because this issue is too important for erroneous ideas to trump the truth.

Yet often I’ll keep my mouth shut when a believer spouts some equally indefensible statement about God, morality, life after death, or such. Partly I’m motivated by a desire not to rock the conversational boat.

But Harris is right: in the past, and to some extent now as well, I’ve held equally indefensible beliefs that I didn’t want others to question. So I’d hold to a policy of mutual assured religious destruction. “You could demolish the arguments I use to defend my faith just as easily as I could destroy yours; so let’s each hold our fire.”

Intellectually dishonest. Yet it worked. The cost of this I’ll scratch your absurdities if you’ll scratch mine is too high to tolerate, though. Personally as well as culturally. Blind belief threatens to tear apart the social fabric. In the United States; in the world.

So each of us needs to suck it up and allow our most cherished spiritual and religious fantasies to be seen for what they are: egotistical attempts at wish-fulfillment. Harris points out that scientists and non-believers are the most humble of humans, while the religious display astounding arrogance.

There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: the creator of the universe takes an interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of the truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell…An average Christian, in an average church, listening to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse—and there have been some extraordinarily arrogant scientists.

Read “Letter to a Christian Nation.” Even if you’re not Christian. If you’re a spiritual believer of any stripe, Sam Harris is speaking to you too.

Jesus Camp: turning kids into Christian soldiers

Jesus Camp. Only in America.

Well, also in Pakistan. But they’re called “madrassas” there. And it isn’t Jesus the children are being trained to die for.

However, in fairness to the camp director, Pastor Becky Fischer, I heard an interview with her on the Ed Schultz show.

She said, convincingly, that the Jesus Camp documentary didn’t include all of her “radically laying down their lives for the Gospel” comment. (Which you can see here, if you have broadband).

Fischer said that what she means by “lay down your life” is dedicating yourself to Jesus 100%. Makes sense. I really don’t believe that Jesus Camp is out to produce little Christian suicide bombers.

It’s still scary though.

The Pope isn’t infallible. Oh my god!

Well, another religious bubble has burst. The Pope makes mistakes, just like the rest of us. So much for infallibility—though the Catholic Church is smart enough to attach conditions to infallible Papal statements, leaving themselves an out when he makes a mistake.

Which I’d say he did in his recent speech to a German university, parts of which seriously offended Muslims. But I don’t think it was a mistake to quote a medieval emperor, who said:

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

That’s an interesting observation that deserves open discussion. Kudos to the Pope for having the guts to point out that Islam’s theology contains undesirable elements. Undesirable, that is, if you’re an infidel. Or a woman. Or a Muslim writer who criticizes his faith. Or on the receiving end of an Al Qaeda explosive.

I’m all for studying comparative religion. Let’s compare the most idiotic elements of every religion. We need a theological Consumer Reports that warns of beliefs which are hazardous to our humanity. Islam has its fair share. But so does Catholicism.

I suspect that Muslims would have found the Pope’s remarks about Islam more palatable if he’d accompanied them with mention of the Inquisition and the Crusades, just to show that things “evil and inhuman” are part and parcel of Catholicism also.

So far the Pope’s apology has been decidedly half-hearted. He must have an American public relations firm advising him. The tone of his apology is familiar: “I’m sorry that _____ felt offended by what I said. It never was my intention to make _____ feel bad.”

George Bush uses this half-assed sort of apology a lot. “I’m sorry that the defeatists and terrorist sympathizers in this country are offended by my decision to invade Iraq in order to keep this country safe.” Like the Pope, Bush tries to maintain an aura of infallibility around him, even when he’s caught in a major screw-up.

Again, though, it doesn’t bother me that the Pope said what he did. The mistake he made was saying it in such an incredibly boring fashion. I mean, given the attention his “evil and inhuman” statement has received, the Vatican had a great opportunity here to convey some gripping Catholic doctrine.

Yesterday I had some dental work done. My dentist, an anti-religious Taoist (much like me), said that he dug out and read the Pope’s entire speech via the BBC. I followed in his footsteps today, but decided to go right to the source. Yes, the Vatican has a web site. And a darn good-looking one, too.

Where I didn’t have much trouble finding…

APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG
(SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg
Tuesday, 12 September 2006
“Faith, Reason and the University
Memories and Reflections”

Ugh. Boring, boring, boring. I managed to highlight my way through seven printed single-spaced pages, filling the margins with lots of question marks. What a letdown. I finally am drawn to read a Papal pronouncement and bummer, I could hardly make any sense of it.

Pope Benedict’s speech was so incomprehensible to me, I couldn’t even understand it well enough to disagree with him. Which I’m sure I would, if I knew what he was getting at. Something about faith and reason. And the university. I got that from the title.

But I’m not sure how faith and reason tie together. I read that “not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.” However, here the Pope is echoing the thought of the medieval emperor, so I don’t know if Benedict really believes this.

Because he then starts to talk about the “profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God.” Hmmmm. As an admirer of the Greeks, I’m not sure about that.

The Pope moves on to speak about the “dehellenization” of theology. I gather he’s talking about the upswing of faith over reason, but it’s hard to tell. He does put down science if that means “the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements.”

God forbid that god and the divine might be considered empirical. If they were, people might expect to actually get in touch with them through religion. Then a Religious Consumer Reports could hold faiths accountable for their promises. Can’t have that.

So the Pope says that “any attempt to maintain theology’s claim to be ‘scientific’ would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self.” That doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me, but I guess I can understand why the Pope would feel otherwise.

Anyway, I figured that Benedict would sum up his message at the end, making clear whatever the heck he’d been trying to say. So I read:

The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur—this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.

Clear as mud.

Let’s see. Reason is good. Except when it is empirical scientific reason, then it’s not good. So reason has to be broader than what is empirically verifiable. That leads to faith. Thus faith and reason are the same thing. To the Pope. For most people, including moi, they’re quite different. But hey, I’m fallible.

If anyone wants to read the Pope’s speech in its entirety and make sense of it for me, I’ll be grateful. The BBC has an abridged version that, however, doesn’t do justice to the confusion of the original.

What’s up with worship?

Yesterday my wife had a epiphany. Laurel was driving by a church and saw a sign about Sunday Worship. “Suddenly,” she told me, “the whole idea of worshipping God seemed so ridiculous. How do we know that God wants to be worshipped?”

Excellent question. Which presupposes that there is a God at all. So the notion of “worship” is doubly dubious. The good Christians who attend that church believe in a God for whom there is no demonstrable evidence, and they also believe that this God whom they are clueless about loves to be worshipped.

Why? Because the Bible tells them so. And why should they believe the Bible? Because the Bible tells them to. It’s no wonder most scientists eschew religion. Circular reasoning that leads nowhere isn’t their cup of tea.

Nor, mine.

Christianity believes in a personal God who is the absolutely greatest being there could possibly be. This is Anselm’s Ontological Argument. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but regardless, I’ll agree that if God exists, you’d expect that this dude (or dudette) would put pretenders to perfect divinity to shame.

So I picture really good people like the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, or Gandhi being asked, “Is it OK if we worship you?” I’m pretty sure these humble souls would be aghast at the idea. “No, for god’s sake, don’t worship me. Love me, get to know me, be with me—but don’t put me up on a pedestal.”

Yet God does want to be worshipped?

My own adaptation of Anselm’s argument is that if it is possible for you to envision a human being who has higher moral qualities than your conception of God, you’d better rethink that conception.

In his book “Breaking the Spell,” Daniel Dennett addresses the marketability of the two main God hypotheses: God as essence</