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Note:
Now be nice, this is my very first attempt at a hand-made cartoon using all kinds of new software.  This cartoon was inspired by the comment thread on Common Sense Atheism’s post: Fear of Death.

My wife has recently taken our family into the “raw milk” culture.  We buy our milk from a local farm where the cattle are largely fed grass, then the milk is simply collected and sold as is — no homogenizing or pasteurizing.  I won’t go into the pros and cons of such a practice but to say that many feel raw milk is better for your health than processed milk.

Milk is a combination of fat (cream), protein and water which does not stay mixed.  To prevent the fat from rising to the surface in milk, it is homogenized by pumping the milk under high pressure through small tubes which breaks up the fat globules through turbulence and cavitation.  Fat molecules are thus reduced in size and tend to disperse more evenly throughout the milk so that creaming on the top of milk doesn’t occur.  This process also actives enzymes in the milk which breaks down fats and can produce rancid flavors but this is then prevented by inactivating the enzymes through pasteurization (heating the milk).

Many people, including my family, much prefer the taste of non-homogenized milk.  We love the rich, full flavor.

Our Bible translations are also intensely homogenized.  This homogenization furthers the illusion that the Bible has one author — the Holy Spirit.  This illusion is the result of all the highly varied texts of the Bible being translated by the same committee (or person, sometimes) working under a specific set of theological and translation guidelines. You get the sense that a lot of the texts are pretty similar.  Homogenization also takes place prior to translation — in the editing and redaction of the texts over the last 2,000 years and in the selection of canon for the Bible.

The New Testament in particular, because of this process, seems pretty consistent. In fact it is anything but. This translation consistency and homogenization incorrectly leads many people to think that there is some obvious central voice running through all the Biblical texts.

It would be interesting to see an English translation that tried to preserve functions of the original languages without homogenization.  Such a translation would end up with  the Book of Revelation, the Bible’s last book,  coming out as pidgin-English in some places, and as having long flouncy sentences with obscure words as in the pastoral epistles, and so on. It would make the obvious *theological* differences between the various authors stand out too.
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Note:  This post, minus my raw milk diversion, is largely word-for-word from a comment by my Bible scholar reader, Ian, in my previous post — Holy Spirit as Author.  Ian also advises readers who wish to see obvious theological biases and contradictions between the gospel writers to read “Gospel Parallels: A Comparison of the Synoptic Gospels” by Burton H. Throckmorton Jr.  Thanx Ian !

One Author – One Theology View

Theology is broken down into lots of subareas, many with their own special names:

• Soteriology (Doctrine of Salvation)
• Harmartiology (Doctrine of Sin)
• Ecclesiology (Church Structure)
• Eschatology (Doctrine of Endtimes)
• Pneumonatology (Doctrine of the Holy Spirit)

Yet I am surprised that there is not some special term for the theological category of  “Theology of Scripture” since it is crucial in all inter-religious dialogue.  Well, I have added this theology category to my post on “My Favorite Christians“, and would like to offer a brief explanation of the two simple positions I understand Christians taking on Theology of Scripture.  The first view is taken by the majority of Christians and has many subtle variants, but compared to the second position, these variants are insignificant.

This view comes in many flavors but they all agree that the Holy Spirit somehow influenced all the authors of the Bible with a revelation which has one consistent theology.  This theology is intimately connect to the inerrancy doctrine.  For since believers in this view do acknowledge that humans wrote the Bible, they have to imagine their god (through the Holy Spirit) “inspiring” the writers so that their scriptures remain inerrant and consistent.  The theories as to how this inspiration occurs varies:

• Automatic Writing:  outright possession
• Dictation: the writer listens carefully
  
• Nudging:  Holy Spirit intervenes only as needed
• Ideas only: relying on the author to put it in their words
• Mentoring:  the Holy Spirit raised the writers so their thoughts were correct
• Good Authors:  the Holy spirit guided the Church to only select text of those authors who just happen to get it all right without the Holy Spirit interfering in the free-will of the authors.

While less conservative Christians may admit that, though the scriptures may have inaccuracies or need metaphorical analysis at times, those holding this view will still insist that the Holy Spirit has somehow assured us a consistent, trustworthy, infallible message throughout the canon.

Many Authors – Many Theologies View

Non-believers as well as many liberal Christians hold this view.  This view emphasizes the humanity of the writers, their cultural blinders, their personal agendas, their own personal theologies.  Some liberal Christians may still feel the Holy Spirit is acting through the scriptures, but admits to no unified theology.  They understand that different authors may put forward very different inconsistent theologies both within a given text and certainly between various texts.

Conclusion

I obviously favor the later view — Many Theologies.   I feel that in discussing faith, it can be useful to discuss the believer’s  “Theology of Scripture” up-front in order to have fruitful dialogue.   And discussing epistemology stances can be very helpful.

But “Theology of Scripture” is only part of a believer’s epistemology.  Understanding the broad role of revelation (as opposed to experience and reason) is also important.  For instance, the notions of closed vs open revelation may be important.  Some Christians emphasize that God continues to give new revelations to believers just like the Holy Spirit did to the writers of the bible.  They believe that revelation is still active (open) and must be taken into account.  These include Pentecostals and Mormons to mention a few.  Yet other Christians view this as problematic and see Revelation as closed and final.

So, if you are discussing theology, may I suggest you explore fundamental positions first before talking past each other based on different fundamental positions.  Without admitting one’s fundamental positions, dialogue can be very frustrating.

Source: “Religious Tolerance“

Stop here if you don’t like subtitled movies or don’t know Spanish.  This film is a futuristic SciFi and social commentary mix.  In the near future, Mexican migrant workers don’t migrate, they stay in Mexico, report to a local factory and plug into a computer to operate robots in the USA.  This same technology allows not only human-machine interface but human-human interface.  With the advanced technology, do the deep parts of culture change?  No, there is still exploitation, abuse and poverty, they just have new faces.  The story has three heros, one of which is born from redemption (my favorite theme).  Their stories show compromised people, making difficult choices yet by mutual support they don’t lose themselves but bond in hope.

Suggestion:  Watch the special features !
Trailer:  MetaCafe
Other Reviews:  Gran Torino

Like many, I have written on the subject of prayer a few times, but this video does a fairly good job going over the basics.  I put this here so I can refer Theists to it later in blog conversations so that I don’t have to repeat myself.  And gee, the slide show does it better than paragraph after paragraph.  I think three big items to address when exploring religions are: (1) Community (2) Morality and (3) Magic — everybody wants these things, religion is just one way to deliver.  Oh, and please do read my  post below on “How prayer DOES work“.

HT: BeAttitude

Must read:  Tom Rees’ article review at Epiphenom:  What you want, god wants.

This study shows how we create our gods.  It shows where the gods & spirits live.   I think this evidence also ironically shows how prayer works as I will now explain:

Studies on prayer clearly show that intercessory pray (AKA: other-prayer or magical prayer) does not work, but I feel self-prayer (praying that you yourself will grow and change) can be a useful tool for peace of heart and insights into daily life.  However, self-prayer efficacy is difficult to research.

Tom’s review of this brain research study supports my theory on self-prayer by showing that the reason we can learn much from self-prayer is because the god we are praying to is actually ourselves.  Now, if self-prayer were only talking to a non-existent god, it too would be powerless like magical prayer, but instead, a person’s earnest prayers may actually be reaching someone who listens and actually cares — themselves!

Yet self-prayer is not as simple as just talking to yourself in the normal way.  When people do deep self-prayer, they probably have better access to some of their multiple selves  which are not easily accessible consciously.  These selves contain information and ideas you may not be aware of at the moment of your prayer when you are locked in another self.  I know this sounds sort of woo-woo, but this view fits well, I feel, with some computational views of mind.  You can see this link if you aren’t familiar with my notion of  multiple selves.

So, if you couple the insights of this study that Tom reviews along with the notion of self-prayer and my view of multiple selves,  you may see why I feel self-prayer sometimes works.

Anyway, great article by Epiphenom !

(1) Stop “Comment Hierarchies”

Here I will list some of my common suggestions for blog layouts, especially for WordPress folks.  Not that I am the “Layout King” by any means, but some folks may find this helpful.

Hierarchies allow a commenter to put their comment directly below someone else’s comment. This is probably my biggest peeve with some blogs. Here are just some of the problem:
(a) If you follow comments by e-mail, then when you return to the site to find a comment (especially in long comment threads), you have to scroll up and down to find a comment.
(b) It is hard to follow chronicity of comments
(c) The hierarchy eventually gets messed up by someone putting a comment in the wrong hierarchy anyway and things get real confusing.

Here is how in WordPress:

• Go to your dashboard — look down the left menu
• Find “Settings” and click on “Discussion”
• Find “Other comment settings”
• Uncheck the “enable threaded (nested) comments” option

I was teaching a friend the amazing game of “Go” (“WeiQi” in Chinese). He was having trouble seeing if his group of stones had the potential to live through a battle. I pointed out to him, that, in this game, a player must learn to look at the empty spaces and not just look the stones themselves.  Seeing-the-empty-spaces is a skill required to progress in WeiQi.  Below I give an example.

Here is an example puzzle: White is to kill Black’s stones. The untrained eye will only focus on the Black & White stones	But the simplicity of the problem is revealed when,  White looks at Black’s empty spaces (red) and ignores Black’s stones.

Being an accomplished trumpet player, my friend immediately understood and related this WeiQi principal to what he had learned about Jazz.  To illustrate, he told me a Jazz story — he carefully warned me that it may be apocryphal – but it makes the point.

Apparently, as a young hot shot, Wynton Marsalis was already technically an unsurpassed trumpet player who could play crazy runs and riffs. But one of his mentors, Stanly Crouch, told Marsalis that his Jazz was soulless. Crouch quoted Miles Davis saying, “Jazz is the notes you don’t play“.  Marsalis took his mentor’s teaching to heart and became one of the world’s most accomplished trumpet players.

This parallel between the Jazz principle of silence (notes-unplayed) and the WeiQi principle of seeing-the-empty-space was crystal clear to my friend.  I feel that a Meta-Thought informed both principles in my friend’s mind.  This seeing-the-empty-space idea is can be further illustrated as an element in the Japanese aesthetic principle of Wabi-Sabi.  My point is that seeing/hearing/feeling the empty space is a deep principle that informs diverse areas.  I call that deep principle “Meta-Thought”.

Another example of Meta-Thought happens in language.  I often, when speaking in English, I have ideas that pop into my head that first find expression in Japanese rather than English even though I am also speaking to an English speaker. I then have to struggle to get the idea out of Japanese and into English (which can look awkward   ).  Similarly, sometimes while thinking about a philosophical idea, a WeiQi pattern floats into my head to express the thought before I can put it into philosophical terms.  I remember when this first happened because I thought I was just daydreaming about WeiQi until I realized that my mind was floundering to express a Meta-Thought.

In my vocabulary, “Meta-Thought” is what lies behind though.  Meta-Thought  gives birth to expression.  Meta-Thought grabs vehicles to express itself while it is forming. Thus, the same Meta-Thought could be expressed in music, in WeiQi, in a computer program, in a sculpture, in a mathematical express or in a dance. People fluent in two or more creative expression styles often have that amazing experience of feeling the simultaneous expressions from a common Meta-Thought.  I think that the epiphany of Meta-Thought is captured in part of what E.O.Wilson’s wrote in his book, “Conscilience“.

To me, Meta-Thought is the complex relationships of impressions and feelings that create our thoughts — it is the EN of thought.

Why write about this? I think Meta-Thoughts also inform our theologies and philosophies.  Thus, though two people may have different theologies or philosophies, with careful observations we can sometimes reveal similar Meta-Thought informing both of these apparently diverse expressions. For me, the principal of Meta-Thought is key to fruitful religious dialogue.  Even in the extreme,  I feel that an Atheist and a Theist could each have very similar Meta-Thoughts informing large swatches of their apparently contradictory worldviews.

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Note:  I am sure others have said something like this before me and so I have probably made up a term when I don’t need to.  So if the reader knows of these, please let me know.  In linguistics, perhaps my “Meta-Thought” is similar to the concept of Mentalese and in Philosophy of Mind, perhaps it is similar to the Language of Thought Hypothesis.  I am, however, not at all familiar with all  subtle analytic pros and cons of these positions.  My Meta-Thought metaphor is simple but it has served as a good model for me to understand my mind.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In “the holiday spirit” let us embrace joy and love.  And what better way than with a secular heart !  No cloak of piety, no sacred separateness, just being human and doing it well.

HT: Toothface

New Testament

This is the first of a series of my “Favorite Bible Passages” which I am creating for my own reference purposes.  If others find them useful, great.  I will list and annotate passages I find particularly interesting or helpful.  Theses posts will explore the various positions held by the authors compiled in both the Hebrew and Christian Bible.  So I guess, when the series is put in an indexed post, I will have blogged through the Bible.  The collection will be my “Canon within the Canon”.

2 Thessalonians

• “For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false.”
  2 Thessalonians 2:11 (NRSV)
  • Apparently Yhwh deceives us, so it ain’t our fault.  Calvin fodder.

I didn’t have any apocalyptic scary religious stories to give me night terrors when I was a kid.  Even as a Christian adult they never seemed potentially real enough to me — gee, maybe I didn’t have enough faith.

But anyway, I had plenty of non-religious fears. Below are mine. What are yours?

• Headless Hattie: a horrible ghost story by YMCA camp counselors
• Russian Nuclear Bombs: the 50s and 60s were scary like that.
• The Basement:  I always had to run up the basement stairs quickly looking behind myself, because that is when the basement monster would get you.
• The Attic: we were told that if we went up to the attic at my friend’s house, we could fall through the floor to our deaths.
• The Dark:  I slept with the light on for a long time.
• The Pit: A black plastic dipping tank at my Dad’s factory.  He warned us that if we fell in it, we’d disappear to the bottom and suffocate.
• The Portrait:  At grandma’s big, old house there was a huge head portrait of my dead great-great grandfather in the bedroom we had to sleep in.

I wonder what my kids are adding to their lists.

My children and I went ice skating last night.  Skating is a brand new thing for all of us.  My son was able to skate by himself with only two or three falls per lap.  My daughter, however, clung to me with rubbery legs flailing while I swayed like a thin tree supporting a swing blowing in the wind.  But all of us were nothing but smiles as we skated to lovely Christmas music.

The skating party was thrown by my kids’ dentist who rents out the huge rink every Christmas for his clients and their families.  So there were tons of kids of all ages and temperaments.  There were roughnecks speed-skaters, zipping between us beginners, there were teenagers who were chatting instead of skating, there were Dads trying to impress, well, who knows who, and there were tiny kids with Moms patiently pushing them around.  It was a carnival.

My daughter and I were just trying to avoid bruises — too slow to feel like we were really skating and too fast for our own good.  At one point my daughter was having particular trouble staying up.  She was slipping, left go of my hand and grabbed my arm and jacket, throwing us both off-balance.  Then quietly and almost effortlessly, a red-headed girl skater came up right next to my daughter.  And as she passed us, with the deftness of a Kung Fu master, she lightly lifted my daughter’s arm to perfectly re-establish her balance without my daughter really realizing she’d been helped.

The angelic visitor turned and smiled softly at us as she continued around the rink as if to gently say, “It was nothing.  Have a good evening.”

The stranger’s kindness which expected no gratitude made her appear to be an angel.  It was rather surreal, actually.  I watched her as she skated away, disappearing into the crowd.  She had the grace of an angel, leaving no trace of herself.

Using religious symbols in non-religious ways is one way to weaken their doctrinaire and superstitious use.  The symbol can then lose its dogma and regains its original rich, mythical beauty.   Some may think we should shun all things religious, but a world without myths and symbols is dry.  Instead, we should be as creative as our ancestors and embrace symbols to make them our own.

Wow, I was honored recently by being listed as one of Luke Muehlhauser’s “Top 10 Favorite Atheist Sites“. Luke’s site, “Common Sense Atheism“, is one of my favorite Atheist sites. Luke is an amazingly brilliant philosopher (albeit by avocation and not yet by profession).  His style, while critical, is also kind and thoughtful — I’d classify him as a sympathetic atheist.  It is not infrequent that you hear Luke apologize for mistakes, change his positions and encourage atheists to be better people. We need this.  And so I read Luke regularly just to strengthen my mind. I am sure Luke’s site will continue growing as he has keeps generating amazing projects.  “Common Sense Atheism” is becoming a reference site for many of us — I highly recommend him to you.

Anyway, it seems that Luke took notice of my site after I commented on his post entitled, “What is Religion?” where I referred him to my suggestions at making a Syndrome-type definition on religion.  Luke then apparently looked round my site and further honored me by posting a quote from my post on “The Debator’s Golden Rule“.

But I must say, this honor from Luke is embarrassing for two important, non-humble reasons:

1. Other sites on Luke’s list are leagues above mine — I am just a simple blogger. His list contains other of my favorite sites. I’d love to see Luke make a much larger annotated list with perhaps one category for simple bloggers like me, and another list for the guys doing the tough content stuff like Tom Reese’s site at Epiphenom. And gee, I am sure the list could be longer for my category !
2. I wonder if Luke had taken time to read through more of my posts he would have spotted my inconsistent, confused and uncritical aspects which may have given him second thought at recommending my site. Oh well, I will take the honor today, though I wonder how long I will actually stay on his list.

Well, I guess this post is a sort of boasting, but I actually intend it to be a sharing happiness with friends. You guys who put time and energy into researching and crafting your posts know how good it feels to have your efforts acknowledged — even if they misjudged you, smile !

The word “mystical” is used in many ways.  One meaning is to describe subjective unusual experiences.  I have had several highly unusual mental and emotional experiences that I have great difficulty classifying with other experiences.  These experiences leave a hum of change in me — some that last for decades.   I call these “mystical experiences” for lack of a better word.

Below is one of several such experiences I have had.  In the future, I hope to post a few more.

But I am curious:  How would you define, “mystical”?  Have you had any experiences you’d qualify as “mystical”?
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Shortly after leaving Christianity, a friend tried to explain meditation to me.  But I had enough “spirituality” and just needed a vacation from religion.  He was patient and waited several months before bringing it up again.  And when he did bring it up, I rudely laughed at the silly practice of sitting on your butt trying to think about nothing.  But he gently demystified it for me and made it sound easy.  Then he slyly challenged me saying, “I’ll bet you couldn’t meditate for just 20 minutes even if you wanted to.”  Well, that was clever, he was using my pride against me.

So I decided to take the challenge to show him I could easily meditate.  But he was right.  At my first meditation,  I jumped up after only 5 minutes.  I was simply counting my breaths and I jumped up, irritated and bored out of my mind.  But I would not let silly old meditation defeat me.  So with diligence, six months later, I was finally able to comfortably meditate for 20 minutes.  And even with that level of a meditation came welcomed benefits:   I lost my difficulties falling asleep and it became much easier to control my temper.  I thanked my friend for the introduction.

Two years later, I was now meditating about 45 minutes a day or so.  It was autumn and I was upstairs “sitting” (the common word for meditation is Zen circles).  My meditations had changed;  I would count my breath for 5-10 minutes, and then relax my body part-by-part and finally in the last part of the sitting I would tame my thoughts by not letting them wander too far.  But that day, for some reason, after going through the relaxation phase at about 20 minutes into the sitting, I felt a sensation of a ball of multi-colored light rotating in my upward turned palms.  The hum of the slowly spinning, warm light was deeply relaxing while it grew in intensity.

Just then, downstairs, my roommate let out a huge sneeze!  The sneeze caused the ball of light in my hands to explode outward engulfing my whole body into a deep thoughtless space where I felt blurred into all around me.  When I came out of the sitting, in what felt like just 5 minutes, one and a half hours had actually elapsed.  Time had collapsed.  My mind was bright, and alert but very relaxed.  It took me 20 minutes to go downstairs, I did not want to move or talk to anyone.   When I finally did go downstairs, my roommates noticed a difference in me — a solemn calmness.  I thanked my roommate for the sneeze.  We all laughed.

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Related Posts:  My Supernatural Experiences

I use to live in a rural town in central Pennsylvania on the beautiful Susquehanna River.  One morning at 4:30 a.m., as was my habit, I was up doing my morning run. That morning I ran along the river. The moon was out, a soft mist covered the ground and the river was lit with a ghostly glow — it was beautiful. Suddenly, right in front of me, a sea otter jumped off its resting place on the river back and dove under water. It startled me.

I ran about 3 more seconds before I realized it couldn’t have been a sea otter — I am in Pennsylvania. But it was too late. My mind had seen a sea otter, and the memory was there to stay.

I use to also live in Seattle where I often saw Sea Otters on my morning runs along the Puget Sound. I guess my mind was doing the best it could to offer me a picture of whatever it was that jumped in the river that morning on the Susquehanna.

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Related Post:  My Mother’s Ghost

The Luddite Fallacy & Economics

The Luddite fallacy is the belief that labor-saving technologies cause unemployment.

The fallacy of this belief is that though indeed labor-saving technology does take away someone’s job, it also creates many more jobs to compensate for the job loss.  The word developed in the 1800s when knitting machines first came out and knitters began to lose their jobs.  But as production increased, prices fell and with more purchases, other industries prospered and more jobs were created.

The fallacy was named after Ned Lud who was a weaver who damaged some looms and was later fictionalized into the leader of the movement to resist the mechanization of looms.

The Luddite fallacy is not a classic fallacy but instead it is a common mistaken economic assumption.  Indeed the challenge of understanding economics is to see beyond many common economics intuitions which are wrong.  The same is true when trying to understand religion — our intuition modules do not reveal extremely trustworthy conclusions.  As I have often written, the human mind is not built to understand complicated truths.

Ludditism & Vaccines

On Sunday morning, I took my son (9 years old — 4th grade) to a local coffee shop at 7 a.m.  For our first 30 minutes, we agreed that he would read his book on Dragons and I would read mine on Kant.  Then we broke out our new, fun, award-winning, board game of Pentago (he beat me), and next he played an on-line educational game of Pandemic II while I went back to Kant.  The player’s goal in Pandemic II is to build an organism which can annihilate all humans on the planet.  Meanwhile, the program is trying to stop you by having humans build a vaccine.  It sounds like a bad game for children but it has many redemptive features.  For instance, it ironically it helps the player learn how to avoid disease by how it spreads and how dangerous it is.  It also teaches lots of great biology terms, evolutionary concepts and global public health issues.

After playing Pandemic II for a while, my son sat with me and chatted.  He said, “You know Dad, vaccines could become bad if we become too good at them.  If we start wiping out disease, lots of people will lose their jobs.”   I laughed but quickly thanked him for his thoughtfulness because he worried that I (his Dad, as a health care worker) would lose my job if there were no disease and suffering.  I told him how this was sort of a Luddite fallacy.  We looked up Luddites on Wiki and he actually understood the fallacy.

“Yes, if disease is wiped out, many people would lose their jobs, but many other jobs would take their place as we prospered more” I told him.  He understood, but bless his heart, he persisted in his argument.  He still felt rather sympathetic with disease and defended it saying further, “But without disease we would have too many humans on the planet and that would make life worse for everyone.”

With this, my son showed he understood the Hindu understanding of Shiva as the blessed destructive side of the Godhead.  Should I worry and start saving up for his future therapist?  Should I stop letting him play Pandemic?  Or maybe I will just enjoy the ride as I watch as his interesting and creative mind keeps unfolding !

In the Summer of 1975 I was in Europe.  I visited Francis Schaeffer’s L’Abri community in Switzerland and  had been disappointed by the intellectual Christianity I found there .  So I threw out my thumb and hitched slowly from Europe to India.  In Delhi I found work at a Christian half-way house which was part a chain of such missions in several cities on the hippie road between Europe and India.  To work at Dilaram, it helped if you were bit of a “freak” like the young folks you worked with.  Dilaram’s mission was to take Westerners who were ill, on drugs or just out of prison and help them rehab enough so they could repatriated back to their mother country.  “Dilaram” meant “Heart of Peace” and was meant to be that — a nurturing, loving community for tortured souls.   All house members were obliged to a mildly regimented lifestyle of regular meals, bible study, prayer and household duties — more routine than most of our guests were use to.  But this was therapeutic.  Our house leader was John Steer, a British fellow who lived there with his wife Angie and two children.  It was a unique, and amazing time.

Oh yes, the epiphany story — I got lost in describing the setting.  I will now take an interesting story and make it mundane.

One day, up in John and Angie’s room, we were having a staff meeting and prayer session.  John got up and went to the bathroom  just around the corner.  He left the door open and just stood there and pee’d.  His urine splashing into the toilet bowl resonated through our meeting room.  No one was phased but me.   I tried to be cool and not let it show how surprised I was.   I couldn’t believe John wasn’t shy about peeing like that.  He was the head of the house, there were lots of women staff at the meeting.  I was 19 years-old and still had not relaxed about something as simple as peeing.  And here I was, in India, after a very dangerous hitchhike that took me months, living in a Christian commune among heroin addicts and what am I learning?  How to pee freely !

An embarrassing truth but every little truth helped.  So here’s a thanks to Dil Aram for my peeing Epiphany !

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Notes:
1) Yes, that  is a picture of Sabio back in 1975.
2) Today, I found this Video of Dilaram in Delhi right around the time I was there.  I even found a Facebook group.

Sterilizing Buddhist Thought

-- Edward Conza -- (1904 - 1979)

Edward Conze was a Buddhist scholar (1904-1979) with a fascinating history (see the Wiki link).  I have a bit in common with this fellow.  He was a Christian in his youth, embraced Marxism and later, leaving both, studied Buddhism.  The man has lived in several countries and spoke several languages.  Conze also seemed to have a superstitious, idealistic inclination.  When I read Conze, I sometimes feel like I am listening to myself — albeit, a much brighter self.

I remembered Conze recently when reading Roger Scruton’s “KANT: A Very Short Introduction“.    Some of my friends are reading Kant so I have decided to re-familarize my self with the famous 18th century philosopher.    I was never fond of Kant — not that I ever bothered to truly understand him — so I thought a re-read may be interesting.  But even just a little into Kant’s story, memories of my day in philosophy grad school days came flooding back — the unpleasant memories.

-- Immanuel Kant -- (1724 - 1804)

What had disappointed me in philosophy school (which I pursued after leaving Christianity) was exactly what caused me to question Christianity.  Both in observing the variety of Christian theologians and now philosophers, I saw how a person’s own preference and social needs determined a person’s philosophy instead of philosophy being the result of pure reason.  Sure, I came to expect this of theologians, but now philosphers were guilty, heck, we are all guilty — no one can escape subjectivity.  Kant is a perfect example of such pre-thought bias.   Scruton tells us in his primer that ironically Kant struggled to combine with Hume’s Empiricism and Leibnitz’s Rationalism all with the goal of justifying his German Protestantism and giving rational arguments for its morality.   Back in philosophy school I saw this in Kant and now again in this book I read how Kant’s temperament, his upbringing and his preferences colored his philosophy.

As I did some tangential Wiki reading on Hume and Leibnitz to supplement my Kant read, I remembered how silly it was to discuss Western philosophy without discussing Buddhist philosophy.  Western Philosophers talk about their ideas as if they were the first to come up with them and certainly the only ones to consider them seriously.  In Western philosophy departments (at least in my day), Chinese, Indian and Tibetan philosophy were not weighed in the discussions.  Yet the blind spots in Western philosophy seemed so clear to me.  Today, I won’t go into the many fascinating aspects of these philosophy systems, but I do want to discuss two thoughts of Edward Conze.

As Buddhist thought entered the West, scholars here sterilized it by comparing and equating Western philosophers to Buddhist philosophers.  Kant was one of those obviously brought up and compared.  Conze wrote an essay in 1963 exposing these misleading comparisons:  “Spurious Parallels to Buddhist Philosophy“.  In this essay Conze shows how his colleagues were contriving parallels between Buddhist and Western philosophies which he criticizes as being either (1) tangential, (2) preliminary or (3) deceptive.  Conze ruled the parallels to Kant as being tangential.  Take a look at the essay, if you are interested.

Conze’s Methodology for Doctrine Exploration

In his essay, while trying to illustrate to readers the mistakes his colleagues, Conze’s also discusses the importance of seeing behind the motivations of the doctrines of philosophers.

A philosophical doctrine can be viewed from at least four points of view: [1] as the formulation of certain propositions, [2] in terms of the motivation which induced their author to believe them to be true, his motives connected with the purpose he had in mind, [3] in terms of the argumentation through which he tries to establish their truth–the reasons which he adduces being rarely those which actually impelled him, and [4] in terms of the context in which the statements are made, a context which is determined by the philosopher’s predecessors and contemporaries, and by his social, cultural, and religious background.

To summarize, Conze calls us to be aware of four major streams that enter into anyone’s doctrines:

1. Propositions
2. Motivations
3. Arguments
4. Context

He then cautions us to see take these into account when evaluating a philosophical doctrine.  This advice is helpful whether exploring theology or philosophy.   I agree wholeheartedly with Conze.  Conversations often take place only discussing the propositions of a doctrine, but our webs of beliefs are held together with much more than mere propositions.

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Endnote:  I often, and it is perhaps a bad habit, try to sneak in more than one thought in a post.  For instance, the photo at the beginning of the post is doctored.  For fun, I merged the two photos below.  The photo on the right is the Tenzin Gyatso (if you didn’t know).  I had never seen a picture of Conze before writing and researching for this post.  The photo below was the only good photo I found.   I laughed at myself when I was the photo.  I did not imagine Conze wearing the stiff suit of a 1950’s scholar — but gee, what was I thinking?  And I laughed further as I saw my mind knock Conze down 2-notches for his pedestrian appearance.  After all, Conze was suppose to be a sublime Buddhist scholar.  So I decided to make him into a sublime teacher to illustrate my silliness.   So, do you think I transformed Conze into a more interesting, authoritative and enlightened scholar?   Or have I just illustrated my own uniquely superficial mind ?  Please tell me I am not alone !

Many Christians believe that 1,000 years of peace will come just before the Final Judgment when God destroys the earth. This doctrine is called “Millennialism”.  The foundation of all Christian Millennialism is based on Messianic Prophecies in the Hebrew bible and this New Testament Bible Verse:

The Thousand Years

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and locked and sealed it over him, so that he would deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be let out for a little while.

Then I saw thrones, and those seated on them were given authority to judge. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection.  Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. Over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.

–Revelation 20:1-6

In my previous post I give an illustration of the major views of these ends times (eschatology).   Christian eschatology feeds US politics and is consumed voraciously by common Christian culture.  The famous book series, “Left Behind”, which popularized one of these views (“Dispensationalism”), is about to come out with yet another sequel.  Apocalyptic thinking is found in all religions — it is a universal inclination of the human mind.  But people can use the Millennial part of their mind in vastly different ways.

I recently read (and reviewed)  a book by a Christian scholar, Donald Dayton, where he explored Millennial thinking. In Chapter 4 of Dayton’s book, “The Rise of Premillennialism”, he discussed the evolution of theological doctrine before it became Pentecostal dogma.  What I enjoyed about Dayton’s analysis was how he acknowledged how social factors play into the formation of doctrine — I usually don’t expect that insight from believers in any system (religious or secular).  Instead, most believers often only argue the supposed truth-value of their beliefs.  They strip their beliefs of all the factors that could cause the believer to embrace and value their belief.

Dayton skillfully discusses the how social realities influenced the popularity of these different views on the 1,000 years.  Dayton explores two of the several models for those 1,00o years (see my previous post for others ).   He shows how PRE- and POST- millennialism offer different versions of hope for the believer.  PRE-millennialism offers hope for people who feel that their world is dark and dangerous.  It sees Jesus coming before the 1000 years and quickly solving all the worlds problems.  PRE-millennialism offers the believer hope for quick relief.

POST-millennialism, on the other hand, is the view that Christians must muscle in the Kingdom of God on earth for 1000 years before Jesus can come back.  POST-millennialism offers hope for social activists who feel that their efforts are necessary.  POST-millennialism offers the believer hope to endure.

When Christians are pessimistic and see their Christianity as weak and not progressing, POST-Millennialism can be discouraging because it would mean that the return of their Lord is very far off.  However, if one is a PRE-Millennialist, Jesus could come any moment.  PRE-Millennialism brings hope to oppressed or discouraged Christians.

POST-Millennialist feel that the expansion of the Kingdom of God on earth will usher in the second coming of Jesus.  Whereas PRE-Millennialist can sit back and just wait because Satan rules the world now, they need to just pray for their Lord’s rapid return because none of their efforts will matter much. In Dayton’s book he discusses those periods of history in the 1800s and the 1900s and how the Christian believers viewed their various worlds and used these very different versions of Millennialism to strengthen their hope.

People use ideas to support their personality and to support their world.  It is not the truth of a belief that our minds value, instead, our minds embrace ideas, ideologies and theologies which it finds useful.  So, how does your mind use its Millennial side?  I guarantee you, Millennialism is inside your brain (strongly is some).  Whether you are religious or secular, some version of millennialism is probably being used by your mind to support some type of hope which then serves you.

I made the Christian Eschatology charts below to use as a reference in future posts.  Hopefully I have improved upon other on-line charts.  Please remember, each model of eschatology has several variants so I couldn’t list them all.  This diagram, and the key below it, is meant to help those who want a quick view of the variety of models that have been postulated over the last 2,000 years.  I hope to add more info in the future.

All corrections & suggestions are coveted !

Below is a key to help you understand the symbols used above:

“Peoples’ beliefs are not the issue, its the way we relate to those beliefs”
– Derren Brown, Illusionist

Superstitious thinking can harm us especially when using them to make important life decisions.   Many of my posts emphasize that more important than the silliness of our beliefs is how we use these silly beliefs.  Derren Brown agrees.

British illusionist Derren Brown, a former Christian, has a fantastic 8-part Show on YouTube called “Messiah” where he exposes 5 superstition peddlers.  He is a young, up and coming Amazing Randy !   In one of these episodes, Brown actually converts Skeptics into theists!

Brown goes soft on us individual suckers for silly ideas, but says we need to expose the peddlers of superstitious nonsense.  In this show he does so by tricking 5 high profile superstition marketeers in their own game.  Below I list the 5 Superstition masters with links to their sites for your reading pleasure.  You really need to watch how Brown actually gets these Superstition Pimps to endorse him as a fellow true Pimp.

I loved this quote at the end of his show.  I added the emphasis to highlight where Derren and I agree strongly:

All these beliefs work in a similar way, whether it is religion or my own skepticism, we all notice what supports our beliefs and we disregard the rest.  I left thinking that any of these beliefs might absolutely be true but it is passion, not knowledge, that teaches us to be certain of them.  And the ability to question these things is what makes us truly human.
– Derren Brown, Illusionist

Here are the 5 Superstition Masters exposed on Brown’s show:

1. Sedona Creative Life Center:  Abbey Haydon, Psychic
   Scam:  Remote Viewing.  He gets reads someone’s drawing from a distance.
   Location: Sedona, Arizona, a town where 1/4 of its people think they are psychics.  It is a mecca for New Agers where they claim it has huge vortexes of spiritual power.
2. Curt Nordhielm — evangelist to immigrant communities at Restorations House Ministries.
   Scam:  Christianity.  He gets together a group of Skeptics and converts them to Theists
   Location: Lincoln, Rhode Island
   
3. Lorraine DiFelice — New Age Huckster  (ooops, she died Aug 9, 2009, so no site now)
   Scam:  Dream Catching Machine.  He gets a Psychic to buy into his machine.
   Location: Los Vegas, Nevada
4. Ann Druffel: Alien Abduction Expert
   Scam: Psychic reading of medical history gained after abduction by aliens
   Location:  Pasadena, Californa
5. Janet Nohavec: Medium and Psychic
   Scam:  Speaking to the Dead
   Location:  Pompton Lakes, New Jersey

For interested readers, here are more links:

• Derren Brown’s Blog
• Science of Scams site
• BTW, though I am sure many of you have already seen Brown, I ran into this video this morning on my morning Internet hopping:  I was reading on a favorite site (Common Sense Atheism) where there are some fun videos of this British chap – “Blue Dexter” refuting William Craig’s Theist arguments.  Blue Dexter mentioned Derren Brown so I looked him up.

Just as religious folks can be divided into sects by their theologies,  so I often wonder  what a natural taxonomy of Atheists would look like.  I imagine one test for a certain subspecies of Atheists would be to see if they read religious books like this one.  Religious folks are often very puzzled with those of us Atheists who are “obsessed” about religion.  They wonder if we are still seeking the Truth and may return to the flock or if we are just feeling guilty in our new apostate life.  Meanwhile, many lifetime Atheists also don’t see why we’d be interested in such writings.  So, I ask both my Atheist and Christian readers:  Do you read what you don’t believe and if so, why?  What do you feel about such ventures?  I did so to understand, not to prove anyone wrong, but simple to explore and feel.

“The Theological Roots of Pentecostal Theology” by Donald Dayton was recommended to us by Nick Norelli, a Pentecostal scholar, in my post “Curriculum of Understanding” where I invited readers to suggest their favorite books to help non-believers understand their particular beliefs. As can be expected, it was rather dry and abstractly theological, but I enjoyed learning from Dayton’s scholarly objectivity.

Donald W. Dayton (Yale Divinity School; Ph.D., University of Chicago), is a professor of theology and ethics at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, IL.  His earlier books include The American Holiness Movement: A Bibliographic Introduction and Discovering an Evangelical Heritage.  Dayton is a believer

The first two pages of each chapter’s are right out of hymnals.  At first, this made me disappointed that I bought the book — “This is going to be a sappy, subjective insider’s story”, I thought.  But I was very pleasantly surprised to find the author a very objective scholar.  Dayton often left me unclear on what he himself actually believed  –  “Is he Pentecostal?  Is he even Christian?”    But as the book moved on, I realized that this Christian author was striving against being “uncritical or apologetic” for which he criticized many other Christian scholars.

The hymns starting each chapter did not to set the tone for a confessional theology, but  assist the reader to feel the hopes, fears and joys of the believers.  I feel such sympathy is essential in understanding any faith.  Each chapter then explores the evolution of Pentecostal doctrine showing how the various doctrines supported the felt social needs of the particular believers in their point in history.  Wow, that took me off guard.  To read a believer who understands the natural evolution of their own beliefs is refreshing.  Dayton shows religion as a social tool.

Dayton unpeeled the roots of Pentecostalism showing the influences of Pietism, Puritanism, Methodism, Holiness Movements, and Perfectionism in such a way as to draw in my mind the image of the interactions of waves — I will  do another post on this “wave theology” later.  Dayton shows us how Pentecostalism grew out of Methodism’s rich theology instead of simply being a contrived emotionalism sprung from revivalist movements.  The sociological complexity of his story was fascinating, even for this Atheist. Dayton does not hesitate to quote revealing superficial sides of these elements, or should I say, the human authorship of these doctrines.  For example I enjoyed his telling of a 1900 propaganda pamphlet which bragged of the “electric sparks” from the “Pentecostal battery”.

Dayton guided me through several insider controversies: apocalypsism & millennialism,  christiocentric vs pneumocentric religious sentiment;  salvation as holiness vs salvation as a heavenly reward; gifts of the spirit and more.  But I must repeat, Dayton’s writing is a bit dry and detailed for the non-Pentecostal, yet alone the Atheist, and he often assumes much Church history and doctrinal knowledge of the reader.  So I am not recommending this book unless you have a particular interest in Pentecostalism.  Nonetheless, I was pleasantly surprised by the read.  It helped me re-think the various waves of influence in my own past Christian life and gave me a larger sympathy to a variety of Christian believers today.  Most importantly, it gave me fodder for my blog (smile) — more posts coming.

Theological Primping

This morning I listened to Christians debating each other about the Calvinism vs Arminian theologies of salvation  (yeah, I know, I need to get a life !).  I don’t recommend the lectures, but here they are.  Below are some of the comments I made on that Christian site.    The comments discuss:

• The difficulty with Believism
• The function vs. truth values of beliefs

Read on if these sort of thing interests you.  For the rest of you, I thought you’d enjoy my photoshopped “art” !

Religious Traits

Many personality traits vary over a spectrum and are not simply on-or-off traits.  I thought illustrating multiple spectrum-traits as volume controls such as are found on a sound board would be educational.  Here, for example, is my personality based on the famous O.C.E.A.N. 5 personality traits.

O — Openness : reflective, imaginative, creative, adventurous, curious.
C — Conscientiousness : dutiful, desires achievement, likes order and details
E — Extraversion  : talks a lot, likes to be center of attention, action oriented.
A — Agreeableness : cooperative, soft hearted, sympathetic,
N — Neuroticism : easily experience anger, anxiety, depression, vulnerability

The point of this post is not to discuss the validity of O.C.E.A.N. 5 though this linked Wiki article tells about studies supporting the heritability of these traits.  Instead, I am offering a visual method to think about the differences between people.  The point of this post is also not to discuss my personality, but ooops too late, I did (smile).   Of course it  is common sense that rating one’s own personality is vulnerable to amazing bias.  For that reason, I added a little objectivity by asking my wife which controls she would evaluate differently.   Of course she laughed and gladly cranked up one and down another  — I won’t tell you which – smile !

My actual goal for this post is to get thoughts from readers.   I hope to use this “sound board” template to illustrate personality traits which may influence our religious proclivities.  Many of  this site’s posts are pleas to not look at religious ideas for only their truth value,  but to also take into account the influence of both personalities and environment in the believers who hold these ideas and their function in their lives.   I have some ideas for such religious traits, and research has probably already been done on them.  So I thought I’d ask my readers for their thoughts on this prior to doing a post to illustrate how our personality traits perhaps predispose people to a limited ranges of religious/philosophical speculation.   Thank you for your thoughts which will help me in my future post.

I just read an excellent article by Peter Rollins called “Evangelism will change the world“.   Where Pete challenges his Christian readers (and others) to be evangelized instead of the normal call to go out and evangelize.  Peter is a unique liberal Christian from Ireland and now moved to the USA.  Probably many Christians would not consider him to be Christian — as if we care.  His philosophy/theology is highly influenced by Slovoj Žižek, a Slovenian Hegelian philosopher.  I linked articles if you are interested.

I agree wholeheartedly with Peter’s article.  Reading those with whom we have islands or even continents of disagreement can benefit us if we are open to it.  Maintaining such an open heart without turning off discernment is a difficult challenge — but a challenge that makes me feel vibrantly alive.

Examples would be:

1. The value of vaccine resistors to our vaccine methods
2. Studies of Chiropractor’s doctors office methods have improved alopathic doctor office practices
3. Atheists dialoging with Theists

“I am not a Hindu,
Nor a Muslim am I!
I am this body, a play
Of five elements; a drama
Of the spirit dancing
With joy and sorrow.”
– Kabir  (1440 – 1518)

Kabir was an Indian mystic composer of poems and music.   Kabir was claimed as a beloved saint by both Muslims and Hindus.  After his death they each demanded a proper handling of his dead body by their own traditions — Hindu cremation and Muslim burial. A fight actually took place over his coffin when it accidentaly was opened and Kabir’s body was missing.  In its place was a bunch of his favorite flowers and next to them was a small book in which the Hindus and Muslims wrote all his sayings that they could remember.  With this, the fighting resolved and both groups look at this miracle as an act of divine intervention.

I am curious of how a Christian would go about doubting this miracle story?  What criterion would they use?  These sorts of miracle stories and resurrection stories abound in India from days of old.

(1) Moral Influence Theory

Boy, I am naive !  I was not aware of the varieties of Atonement Theories in Christian Theology — theories about what Jesus’ death and (for most) resurrection accomplishes.

Atheists may say, “Why does it matter?  Christianity is false anyway, who cares about the various spins?”  Well, first, in rightful deference to Christians, what if the Christianity you reject is not the real Christianity?  Skeptical Atheists should rejoice to learn that their presuppositions are wrong and re-evaluate when necessary.  Second, even if all the atonement theologies are incorrect, some mistaken beliefs may be better than others.  I feel some atonement theories are worse than others and that Christians (and the rest of us) benefit if they embrace more generous and psychologically healthy theories.  See “My Favorite Christians” for more on this.

Your average Christians claims that the Bible is clear on the issue of salvation.  But isn’t it odd that all the smart theologians creating these theories disagree with each other.  You’d think this central doctrine in Christianity could have been resolved over 2000 years of theologizing.   Note also that each atonement theory must be attached to a Doctrine of Sin (“harmartiology”).

Well, with that, I will outline the main theories below hoping it is useful in forming dialogues between Christians and Atheists.  I am just learning myself (one of the fun things about blogging) and will improve/correct this post with the help of others and as I read more.  I am posting this well before it is complete, so please forgive and help me to complete it.

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First, here is a simple, easy to remember, list of 8 theories:

trait	Theory	Followers
O	Moral Influence Theory	Apostolic Fathers, Liberal Christians
?R	Recapitulation Theory
O	Ransom Theory	Eastern Orthodox and early church
D	Satisfaction Theory	Catholics
D	Penal Substitutionary Theory	Calvinistic Protestants
D	Governmental Theory	Arminian Protestants
R	Participatory Theory
R	Mystical Theory

 

Conceptions of Sin (from: The Participatory Model of the Atonement)
O = “Ontological” – sin is a featur of human nature–something we suffer from.
D = “Deontic” – sin is a failure to fulfill our moral obligations.  Immoral behavior, resulting in debt
R = “Relational” sin is the breaking or alienating of relationship

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• Summary
  • Jesus’’s death was the ultimate example of self-sacrificing love and obedience which believers should emulate.
  • AKA: ?”Exemplary Theory”
• Key Scriptures:  1 Peter: 2
• Churches & Theologians
  • Held by various Apostolic Fathers 100-200 AD:
    Clement (?-99 CE), Hemas (~150 CE), Barnabas (1-60 ad)
  • Formalized by Peter Abelard (1079 -1142). “Expositio in Epistolam Ad Romanos”, later declared “heretic”
  • Pelagius (354-420 AD) – “heretic”
  • Liberal Theologians: Pierre Abelard, Paul Tillich
  • Quinn (2000, “Atonement”) , McNaughton (1992, “Reparation and Atonement”)
  • Emergent Liberals (only some, see this post)
• Criticisms
  • PST criticism: little more than a warmed over “good ol’ boys get in” mentality
  • A meaningless or trivial death cannot reveal love; it reveals nothing – except perhaps foolishness.
  • The exemplary model needs to be able to characterize Christ’s
    death as accomplishing something in and of itself, apart from its inspirational value.

(2) Recapitulation Theory

• Summary
  • Jesus reclaimed (recapitulated) the perfect original human condition through his incarnation and successful living out the human life without sin.
  • AKA: Physical Theory, (? Mystical Theory)
• Key Scriptures
  • Romans 5:18-21
• Churches & Theologians
  • Irenaeus (125-202 AD)
  • I don’t think this theory is widely held any longer
• Criticisms
  • PST Criticism: Misses the vicarious nature of Jesus’ death

(3) Ransom Theory

• Summary
  • Jesus’s death was a ransom paid to the devil to free us from bondage to him.  Adam and Eve had sold themselves to Satan by their sin at the fall of man.
• Key Scriptures
  • Mark 10:45 : “For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
  • 1 Tim 2:5-6:   ”For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.”
  • 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
• Churches & Theologians
  • Most of Eastern Orthodox and almost entire early church until the medieval period.
  • Protestants too:  Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Benny Hinn, Robert Tilton, and others in the Word-faith Movement teach a modern-day variation of the Ransom Theory
  • Origen (185-254 AD) – first widely held atonement theory.  Contrary to Recapitulation Theory.
  • Augustine, Gregory the Great, Gregory of Nyssa
  • Gregory of Nyssa in the 300’s a.d.  Variation called “Christus Victor” Theory.
  • Gustav Aulen (1931) “Christus Victor”, is the major book on this position
  • C.S. Lewis: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• Criticisms
  • PST criticism: glorifies Satan as the one who was to be appeased for the wages of sin

(4) Satisfaction Theory

• Summary
  • Sin is debt.  The debt is paid when Jesus’s perfect gives God the honor that the human race owes God.
  • AKA: Necessary Satisfaction Theory
    
• Key Scriptures
  • Hebrews 9:22
• Churches & Theologians
  • Catholics
  • Anselm (1033-1109):  Why God Became Man (Cur Deus Homo) : argued against Ransom Theory.
• Criticisms
  • ?

(5) Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST)

• Summary
  • Sin is debt. Jesus’ punishment satisfied God’s demand for each individual’s punishment.
• Key Scriptures
• Churches & Theologians
  • Most common among Calvinistic Protestants
  • John Calvin (1509-1564): Modified Anslem’s Satifaction Theory to emphasize not God’s stolen glory but his need to punish sin.
• Criticism
  • It is unjust to punish an innocent person in the place of a guilty one
  • Richard Swinburne’s:  “talk of law courts and punishment make the whole process too “mechanical” for a means of reconciliation that ought to be intimate and personal” (Responsibility and Atonement, 1989, p. 152)
  • Make God a petty tyrant:  Why can’t god just to decide to forgive us
  • Why is Man held accountable for what he can’t avoid doing (sin).
  • Creates disunity in the Trinity

(6) Governmental Theory

• Summary
  • Jesus’ punishment stood in for the punishment of all humanity.
  • AKA: Rectoral Theory
• Key Scriptures
• Churches & Theologians
  • Most common among Arminian Protestants -  Wesleyans.  Reworking Calvin’s views.  Whereas our need for propitiation in Calvin’s view was calculated on an individual basis (Christ paid for the individual sins of each justified individual), both Anslem’s and Grotius’ versions have Jesus satisfying a more general divine dissatisfaction.
  • Hugo Grotius, see: http://homepage.newschool.edu/het//profiles/grotius.htm
  • Charles Finney(1851), see Systematic Theology: Atonement
• Criticism
  • Shares most of PST criticisms

(7) Participatory Theory

• Summary
  • the atonement involves participating in the death and resurrection of Christ.
• Key Scripture:  Rom 6: 4-11;  2 Cor 5:21; Rom 8:19-22; Col 1:15-20; Gal 2:19-20
• Churches & Theologians
  • Tim Bayne & Greg Restall (2009):  A Participatory Model of the Atonement or here
• History
  • Relatively new
• Notes:  Sorry, I have not read this yet.

(8) Mystical Theory

• Summary
  • the atonement of Christ as a triumph over His own sinful nature through the power of the Holy Spirit.  God became man so man could become God ( attain “god-consciousness”).
• Key Scriptures
  • Gal 2:20 : I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.  — Paul
  • Matt 9: 13:  Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice. — Jesus (quoting Hosea 6:6)
• Churches & Theologians
  • Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)
• Criticisms
  • PST criticism: relegates God to one of the plethora of pagan gods of yore; being reached via essential practices rather than his own initiative which is accomplished by grace through faith.  Furthermore, most of these theories place robust emphasis on man’s role in salvation; asserting that Christ’s work on the cross provided a means for man to complete the work of redemption rather than Christ completing the work himself.

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General Resources to date:

• “Various Christian Theories of Atonement” — Religious Tolerance site
• “Why I de-converted from Evangelical Christianity” by Ken Pulliam (Ph.D.) addresses PST in detail — his excellent site inspired this post.
• “What’s wrong with PST” by Jim McGrath at Exploring the Matrix. See this other post of his too.
• Wikipedia article on Atonement
• Returning King – a Christian apologetic website – good summaries on each theory
• The Atonement by Christian site: Undeception
• Saving Power by Schmiechen, recommended by liberal Christian commentator. I’ve not read it yet.

Ragtime Jesus

Ian, a secular Bible scholar and a treasured commentator on this site, gave me permission to reproduce a comment he posted on another site.  I have given his comment a fun title and made a pic to accompany it.   His story illustrates well the difficulty in putting together a historical Jesus.  Below the story, for reference, I list the approximate dates the Gospels were written.  Finally, I offer a comment on “Atheist Faith”.
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Imagine Jesus is born before the first world war. He is killed during the great depression. Imagine the first records anyone has about him are some letters from the 50s from someone who claims to have met Jesus directly, raised from the dead. He doesn’t say much about Jesus (no biographical
information at all), he focuses exclusively on his death and resurrection (Paul never claims to know anything about Jesus other than his revelation and the communion story, in fact he brags about his ignorance at the start of Gal).

Now, on with our parallel time-line. Towards the end of the trauma of the
Vietnam war, we get the first book about Jesus’s life, and in it Jesus is
predicting war and destruction. In it Jesus dies, but the author doesn’t
describe his resurrection.

In the late 70s and early 80s two more books come out. They embellish the
story, add (different) accounts of the birth, add (different) resurrection
stories and describe how Jesus was constantly railing against the commie
threat.

Finally a couple of years ago a fourth book came out that was even more
grandiose and had Jesus claiming he was God and talking about how evil
terrorism was.

There is as much political difference between Jesus’s Jerusalem and Matthew’s
dispersed community, or Mark in the diaspora, or John in open conflict with
local Jewish leaders.

So based on a set of gospels with those kind of anachronisms, it is tough to
say much at all about what the great-depression-era guy actually thought
about politics.
——————————————————

New Testament Dates

Event	Critical Dates	Conservative Dates
Jesus born	7-2 bce
Jesus killed	30 – 33 ad
Paul’s Epistles	50 – 62
Temple destroyed	70
Mark written	70 – 73	55 – 70
Matthew written	70 – 100	50 – 69
Luke written	80 – 100	55 – 63
John written	90 – 100	80 – 99
Revelations written	95

Please leave comments to help expand/correct this table or to offer other sources.

Conservative Christian Date Sources:

• Christian Apologetics and Research Ministries
• Bethinking.org
• Tekton: Education and Apologetics Ministry

———————————————

Atheist Faith

Most Atheists will like this Ragtime Jesus illustration because it confirms her/his beliefs.  They have probably read about these dates and not questioned them much further.  Sure, they knew there were a few conservative Christians who disagree, but since the dating of the Gospels confirmed what they already believed, they did not spend time seeking out counter-evidence.  After all, it would take a lot of effort to really understand the issue and the dates seemed reasonable.  So the Atheist put their trust, their faith, in the writers who confirm their beliefs.  Ironically, this confirmation biased faith-approach is what many Atheists chastise Christians for.

In my post defining “Faith”, such faith qualifies as  “Trust” (in that  they trust their favorite bible scholars or atheist writers) and “Belief Lacking Evidence” (in that the dating of the gospels is still significantly contended) , “A system of beliefs” (in that it decisions leading to the selection bias are based on a whole set of beliefs).    Thus, we are all “guilty” of faith — or should we say, we all rely on faith.

I feel that atheists should avoid focusing on the word “Faith” when debating with a theist.   Instead, the contention point should focus on the degree of certainty and the willingness to doubt.  Thus, though I too suspect the critical dates are much more accurate than conservative estimations and illustrate well the contrived nature of the Gospels, I realize that I use a measure of faith to hold these beliefs.  But I am always excited to be shown I am wrong about my faith.

BTW:  see my post on “No Crosses” to see another view of Jesus born in the 40’s and 50’s.

1. Trust, Hope or Conviction upon which beliefs are based

I have found 7 common uses (5 substantial) for the word “faith”.
Remember, it is the use of the word that gives it meaning.  We have to agree on use to communicate.

• Definitions:
  • confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, an idea, or a thing.
  • confidence or trust in a person or thing
  • something that is believed especially with strong conviction
• Examples:
  • I have faith that my brother will help me if I am in trouble.
  • I have faith that you are not lying.

2.  Belief or Conviction with little or no evidence

• Definitions
  • belief that does not rest of logical proof or material evidence
  • belief that is not based on proof
• Examples:
  • You hold that belief on mere faith.  –>  You hold that belief on “a conviction with little evidence”.
• Notes:
  • Some beliefs are based on scant evidence and some on no evidence and some even of overwhelming counter evidence

3.  A set of principles, beliefs, or religion

• Definitions
  • the body of dogma of a religion
  • a system of religious beliefs.
• Examples:
  • My friends all share the same faith –>  My friends all share the same “religion”.
  • He lost his faith, but not his morality
  • Heb 11: 1  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
    –> Now “our religion” is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen
    [Greek word: πίστις “Pistis”)

4.  Organized Religion — A particular religious group

• Definitions
  • a group which holds a common set of beliefs
• Examples
  • The two faiths were at war with each other.
  • A member of his own faith contradicted him.

5.  Obedience and Loyalty

• Definitions:
  • the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement
  • Commitment, Allegiance, Dedication, Loyalty, Fidelity
• Examples:
  • Keep the faith ! –>  Keep the “Fidelity” !
  • They broke faith with the investors –> They broke “loyalty” with the investors.

6.  The word itself:

• Definition:
  • No definition.  The word itself is just being discussed.
• Example:
  • “When speaking about “faith” ….”

7.  Vague:  The nuances of many meanings are being used

• Definitions:
  • This use is very common.  It is actually talking about the word itself or talking about all these notions at once.  Such use is very unproductive unless the two people talking already agree on everything.  Number 5 and Number 6 are often blurred together.
• Example:
  • “Faith is very important to me”
  • “Atheists just don’t understand Faith”

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I found a fun site, Visual Thesaurus,  and here is a pic of the word “Faith”:

———————————————

Notes:  I looked at several dictionaries and came up with these general groups so as to facilitate discussions in the future.  Please help me tweek this list if you have suggestions.  The definitions can overlap.

Why this post:

I tire quickly of word arguments and one of the most common between atheists and religious folks is over the word “faith”.  Come on folks, it is just a word.   Words are created by humans to facilitate communication.  Words depend on common concepts and associations.  An important part of discussion is to have common definitions.  Debate and dialogue happen best when each party agrees on their definitions.

You can see by this list that Atheists certainly have faith in the sense of  # 1 and # 3.  I think Theists have all 4 wrapped into their understanding of the word.  By jumping between the meanings, conversations often go nowhere.

So it is my hope that this post helps your dialogues.

Ways Theists will misunderstand your Skepticism

Nate, over at “Why Nate Left“, put up this list of ways Christians will misrepresent an Atheist’s Skepticism.  Below Nate’s list I have tried to make a list for Christians, or other believers, explaining how they may feel they are typically misunderstood.  Please suggest other things misunderstanding for either list and I will add them !

• You are angry with God
• Your heart is hardened to the Truth
• You have been deceived by Satan
• You gave up your search too early and too easily.
• You want the freedom that comes from a godless life more than you want god.
• You are confused or ignorant
• You are an angry, militant atheist
• You want to be God

Ways Atheists will misunderstand your Faith

• Your beliefs are all blind faith
• You are simple minded
  • You can’t do or don’t know any science
  • You still live with your parents
• You are blissfully self-deceptive
• You have a comfortable, unchallenged life
• You are a recalcitrant bigot
• You are fearful of the Truth
• You aren’t imaginative enough to let go of your security blanket

__________
Note:  The pic is of the Japanese Characters for “Misunderstanding”,   Go-Kai – “Mistake-Solution”.

Definition:

I was listening to an economics lecture and heard about this fallacy.  It one of the many foibles of human reasoning that shows how difficult it is for us to be rational — AKA “bounded rationality“.

Hopelessly investing further in a failed/irrational project or venture. No matter how much more is invested, it is clear that all is and will further continue to be lost.  Yet the person caught in the “sunk-cost fallacy” can not seem to stop throwing away their investment. Colloquially called, “throwing good money after bad” or the “Concorde Fallacy” (see below).

The phenomena is thought to exist because the investor feels that the shame , embarrassment or disappointment of owing up to the failure is more painful than the further investments that keep being lost while putting off that negative emotion.  It is as if you just keep digging yourself into a hole.

Examples:

• Adolf Hitler (WWII) & Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam War) both kept throwing away the lives and resources of their people (and the enemy) even though they knew the war was lost.
• The Concorde, a supersonic transport jet, failed any market potential after a freak accident that killed 113 people but was not due to design flaw.  The project got a bad name and was doomed.  Yet France and England kept investing deeper and deeper on the grounds that they had already invested a lot of money.
• Continuing the cost of tennis lessons even though you’ve decided you hate tennis, because you don’t want to see the money wasted.
• Continuing your major in College though you have no desire to continue in the field because you don’t want to feel you wasted all that tuition money.

Bait and Switch

Bait and Switch is a fraudulent sales technique which capitalizes on the Sunk-Cost Fallacy.  A seller lures a prospective buyer to their establishment with promises of low cost item.  When the customer arrives, the seller informs the buyer that ‘unfortunately’ the item is now out of stock and offers the buy other similar items of a higher cost.  Now, the buyer, after driving all the way to the store, taking time out of her/his day, having visualized obtaining the object and having their hopes up, must face a decision:  buy the higher cost item and at least have something to show for all my efforts or admit that she/he fell for the fraud and just walk out, promising to themselves to be more cautious next time.

Religion can offer the believer all sorts of benefits and though some may actually materialize, some of the biggest promises don’t pan out (for obvious reasons).  The believer, instead, then buys into cheaper items (I will let you think of example).  Then, once even further invested, the cost of leaving the disappointing religion is felt to be too great.  The believer is left standing at the bottom of a big hole they dug for themselves.  Actually, today I read an   Dr. Richard Beck’s excellent site where, as a Christian, he discussed Bait and Switch and offers ways out (within the tradition, of course).  This article, to me, is an example of how religion can be used well — and ironically, to help people duped by their own religion.

My Question for the De-Converted

Before de-converting, did any of you former-believers feel you fell for the Bait & Switch technique or the Sunk-Cost Fallacy?  Could you give us examples.  How long were in this predicament?  Months? years?

________
Notes:

• HT to this alternative energy site for the pic — the guy has a great face !
• For my definition of “religion” , see “Religious Syndrome“

My first year at Cornell University I studied Greek even though I was in the Engineering school. I did it because, as a newly converted Christian, I was tired of Pastors using the phrase “in the Greek” during their sermons as a way to add validity to their conclusions.  For already, in those days, I was doubting.  But I was impressed with their knowledge of Greek — I really knew no foreign language yet.   “Heck,” I thought, “They know the original language, They have to be closer to God.” But diving into Greek if anything, showed me what a head game I was shooting for.

Since then I have seen Hindu Sadhus (native language being Hindi) do the same with Sanskrit (a dead language) , Zen Japanese Buddhists Priests do the same with Chinese, and Pakastani Muslims (who speak Urdu) do the same with Arabic. The power of claiming to be in touch with the original language is huge. And it often brings the listening audience into a state of admiration and awe, or perhaps befuddlement.

Sure, knowing the original, can help a preacher see the spin put on by which ever translation they are inspecting. But obviously the preacher will then translate and interpret using his/her own perspective.  Translations are tricky things (I once made a living of it with Japanese).   So sure, scholarly speaking, there is something valuable in studying the original text which I will not deny. But what I want to briefly explore here are the dark sides of “Original Source Mystique”.

Even philosophers, in discussing Kant, for instance, may try to add credibility to their aura by quoting Kant in German and then translating for you. This is the “I-am-smarter-than-you” move which gives much power to the “Original Source Mystique”.

Quoting the original also has that quality of “essentialism” that Bruce Hood writes about in his book “Supersense” and which Dawkins writes about in his book “The Greatest Show on Earth”. Essentialism is the belief that a person or thing has an essence. A common accompanying belief is that this essence can be passed on from the original object — a spirit to heaven, karma into objects, etc.  So, for instance, in Martial Arts, and in many oriental practices, a big deal is made of being in the lineage of a famous teacher — as if the essence of that famous teacher somehow is thus more available to any teacher in that direct lineage.

Wrestling with the original text, likewise, gives the image of being there right next to the founder of the religion or philosophy. Quoting original texts gives the feeling of ancient wisdom. This is another cognitive temptation — to feel that if something is ancient, it must be good.

There is so many cognitive tricks that can be tapped into by quoting original texts, it is no wonder it is common.

Alle Sachen, unterliegen der Auslegung je nachdem, welche Interpretation aus einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt auf eine Funktion der Macht und nicht die Wahrheit.
– Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

Ooops, sorry, that was in the German, the translation would be, “All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

Smile !

Comparative Religion

Not very many American Christians can name the two largest sects of Islam, yet alone tell you their differences.  But differences are important.  Through comparing the various sects of a religion that we can learn a great deal about the religion itself.  Likewise, few Christians barely understand their own religion yet alone the differences between the many Christian sects (note: Christians prefer to call their own sects “Denominations” while leaving the word “sect” for pagan beliefs).

When comparing sects, we can also start to see that it is people who make up a religion.  There is no such thing as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism …etc.  There are individual believers and individual beliefs.  Even categorizing by sect is a bit artificial.  But one benefit is not only to see the variety and thus how religions are not homogenous, but also to identify those versions of theology which you feel are more benign that others.  For we all know that among false beliefs, some are better than others.  Heck, we even know that many false beliefs (think Tooth Fairy and Santa Clause) can actually serve more benefit than harm.

Christian Theologies

In a similar fashion,  I have of my favorite types of Christians.  So to be fair in dialog, let me lay out my atheist theological leanings, if you will.  Here is a table of some of the variety of Christian beliefs and the direction I’d prefer them to move if I were to have any influence on a person’s Christianity.

Christology	High –> Low
Epistemology – View of Scripture – View of Reason – View of Tradition – View of Revelation	View of Scripture: Unified Theology –> Multiple Theologies Inerrant –> Errant Inspired –> Inspiring Infallible –> Fallible
Soteriology (Doctrine of Salvation)	Exclusivist –> Inclusivist –> Pluralist –> Universalist
Atonement Theology	Substitutionary Atonement Theories –> Mystical Theory or Moral Example Theory
Harmartiology (Doctrine of Sin)	?? yet to research
Miracles:  Resurrection & Others	Literalists –> Figurativists Bodily Resurrectionist –> Metaphorical Ressurectionists
Cosmology	Young Earth Creationist –> Gap Creationist –> Old Earth Creationists –> Evolutionist
Ecclesiology	Top down rule –> Local rule
Missionology	Salvation First –> Service First
Eschatology	Christian Zionist –> Pro-Israel –> Israel-Neutral Premillenialist –> Postmillenialist –> Amillenialist –> No Millenialist
Science	Anti-science –> Pro-science
Women	Misogynist –> Pre-defined roles –> Equal Rights & Respect
Homosexuality	Anti-Gay –> Gay-tolerant –> Gay-friendly

Atheist Theology

So that is why I have interest in Christian Theology.  For example, I am presently exploring Atonement theories, Ethics, Post-Modernism, Narrative Theology and the like.  In the future I will include my stances on these issues here on this chart.  So perhaps you can see why I feel it is sometimes useful for an Atheist to declare their Christian Theology clearly when debating with Christians. It may seem strange to state that an Atheist have theological positions, but in a sense, they do.

Playful Exploration vs. Desperate Searching

I think our dialogues influence each other, albeit usually slowly and unconsciously.  And I have no doubt that skilled theists are influencing me also.  To avoid Christians being tempted to thinking “Ah, but Sabio is still searching.  God is working in his life which we can be see by his special attention to things Christian.”   I must ‘confess’ that I also study the theologies of Buddhism and Hinduism.  Likewise, I study the “theologies” of political platforms and nutrition schemes in a similar way.  Even the variety of philosophies of the martial arts is open to such methodology.  You see, it is more of an exploration than a search.  It is the curious mind, not the desperate mind, that I enjoy that around me.

I must mention a vital caveat:  Not only are some bad ideas better than others, but even good ideas can be used poorly.  So deciding the truth value of a belief held by someone is not suffice when trying to understand the person.  For what matters is how a person weaves their beliefs into their lives and thus uses them to support their actions and relationships.  Even though a given Christian may hold a theological belief I hold in low regard, they may actually weave that belief into their life in a healthier manner than they would hold better versions of that belief if they changed abruptly.  Ooops, I can tell that is too abstract and may need another post.

Generous Understanding vs Condescension

All of this may sound a bit condescending to believers, but remember, in my world, you aren’t going to hell (which is the epitome of condescending) and I still feel that with inaccurate beliefs you could be a better person than a person with accurate beliefs.  My challenge is to try and understand how you use your beliefs to make your life.  Yes, I may disagree with you on a belief but it does not mean I look down on your life.  I may just be trying to understand how you make your beliefs operate in improving your world and the world of those around you.

______________
Related Posts:

• What are beliefs
• Why I Troll Christian Blogs
• Generous Translations

This review is a spoiler, so stop here if you plan to watch it and you don’t want to know the ending.  And by the way, I save a few Atheist specific comments to the end.
The movie opens at the funeral of Walt Kowalski’s wife.  Walt, a cantankerous, bitter Korean War vet now lives alone in a neighborhood with very few fine White folks like himself.  His bitterness has alienated him from his neighborhood and from his own family.  The only beauty remaining in his world is his own troll embellished neurotically manicured lawn.  Walt’s only remaining past-time after fixin’ up the house is to sit on his porch and drink 8 cans of beer out of a cooler bad mouthing everything his sees.

But the movie is full of redemption when we see the soft-side of this old fart come out as a hero.  I love movies that make folks complex and shows people changing their ways.   My Dad had a lot of Walt’s traits — lots of guys did from that era (my Dad served in WWII).  Like Walt, he had a bigoted word for every race and religion, but like Walt he mingled well enough with all of them and was actually a fine citizen.  The movie slowly shows us Walt’s strong side which blossoms into a savior in the end.  To draw out and nourish Walt’s inner hero we get the help of several characters.  First his dead wife’s wish for her dear stubborn husband’s salvation are brought to Walt’s door by a naive but diligent priest.  Walt shoos away the priest, but the door has been cracked and it isthe words of a sassy, bright, and kind Hmong girl next door which opens the door of Walt’s heart.  Then our renewed Hero helps straighten the life of the trampled Hmong young boy next door.  Everyone redeems everyone else — it is wonderful.  Seriously, I am a sap, I love this stuff.

OK, I didn’t think the acting was the best, but again, I will sacrifice acting for a sappy story line. So, that said, I did want to make a few Atheist specific observations.

Walt finds out he has fatal lung cancer, but no one else knows — shhhhh !  He has befriended the Hmong neighbors by “helping” them ward of an Asian gang who is recruiting their son to a life of callous sin.  Yet Walt’s help is in the form of violence which only leads to more violence (of course).  And so with Clint Eastwood as Walt, we expect guns to go a blazin’.  But Walt has grown very fond of his Hmong neighbors, he was a hero in the Korean War and is very smart and good at fixing things.  Sure he punches his hand through a few things in anger (hell, he is man), but then he sits down and thinks and comes up with a plan.

He goes to the gang-house by himself, taunts the no-good hoodlums until they all shower him with bullets while the neighborhood watches Walt blasted down to sprawl as an sacrificial ornament on the neighborhood sidewalk.  The gang is hauled off to prison and Dead-Walt saves the lives of the Hmong family by sacrificing his own.

But wait, it ain’t too bad, Walt had Cancer anyway, remember !  This is just like Tommy Lee Jones in another of Eastwood’s films “Space Cowboys” where Jones sacrifices himself to die alone on the moon to save Earth from a nuclear disaster.   The sacrifices are nobel, but hell, we are happy for them because going out with a flame is far better than withering with cancer.  And in a funny way, these Jesus-figures illustrate how really toned down Jesus’ sacrifice really was too.

Jesus was supposedly 100% man and 100% god.  So he knows when he dies he goes back to being a god in heaven — absolute surety (unlike us pathetic, fear-ridden humans who only have the meagerest of hope in life-after-death).  Jesus knows 100% that when he dies, he is leaving future suffering of being a lowly human and runs right back to his homemade paradise.  Wow, some sacrifice.  OK, sure, it is great to help others on the way out, but the director (God, in this case) saves us from shedding too many tears for Jesus, we are just happy for ourselves — the saved.  But come on, why not have a young, family-man Walt with a long life in-front of him sacrifice himself for the Hmong family.  Well, because we’d walk away from that movie real sad and hating the Hmong gang and have all sorts of nasty feelings.

The movie, instead, left me with good feelings.  Hell, I even liked the priest in this movie — his sincerity and open mindedness were inspiring.  Ooops, are Atheists allowed to like redemptions, priests and forgiveness.  Hell yes !  So if you want a movie to make you feel good, give it a peak.  But if you are a half-way intelligent movie critic (which thank Krishna, I am not), you might give this one a pass.

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) from Wales (like my family !).  One of the founders of analytic philosophy, anti-war activist, free trade and anti-imperialism champion.  Oh yes, atheist.  He was the guy quoted in the previous post.

My point: Even classic Atheists can have a complex relationships with religion in general while they still make specific devastating criticisms of the particulars.

Guess in the Poll Below:

“Acts inspired by religion have some quality of infinity in them: they seem done in obedience to a command, and though they may achieve great ends, yet it is no clear knowledge of these ends that makes them seem imperative. The beliefs which underlie such acts are often so deep and so instinctive as to remain unknown to those whose lives are built upon them. Indeed, it may be not belief but feeling that makes religion: a feeling which, when brought into the sphere of belief, may involve the conviction that this or that is good, but may, if it remains untouched by intellect, be only a feeling and yet be dominant in action. It is the quality of infinity that makes religion, the selfless, untrammelled life in the whole which frees men from the prison-house of eager wishes and little thoughts.”

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References:

• Bertrand Russell: Selections from The Writings of Bertrand Russell
• Karen Armstrong:  The Case for God
• Billy Graham: Peace with God: The Secret of Happiness
• Margaret Atwood:  Moral Disorder and Other Stories
• Bruce Hood:  SuperSense: Why we  believe in the unbelievable
• Robert Wright:  The Evolution of God
• Christopher Hitchens: God is Not Great: How religion poisons everything
• Mother Teressa: A Simple Path
• Joseph Campbell: The Power of Myth

 

Answer: I’m going to make you work a bit for this:  “This is probably too much work for most of  you all !”  <– that sentence contains the answer using Francis Beacon’s famous encryption method.  If you are diligent and solve this code, send me an e-mail with the answer !  For the rest of you, I will post the answer (and my point) in my next post.

The on-line dating service OkCupid, analyzed >500,00 first contacts on their dating site to see what factors make a reply more probable.  Below are some of the fun facts their data revealed:

This graph illustrates that, on OkCupid, declaring oneself an Atheist is the surest way to get a bite !

So, what do you think this statistic reveals?

• Atheists are sexier?
• Atheists are more prominent on dating sites since they can’t seek out dates in church, synagogue or temple?
• Good religious people are loathe to visit these sites? (shame on you atheists)
• All the above ?

Here then is more of their data showing that Atheists and Agnostics get along better with people — with Jews and Buddhists following close. If your a Hindu or Christian, it is probably best to keep it under cover(s).

Numbers on the perimeter of the table are the weighted average match percentage:

Finally, Astrology has no affect — surprise, surprise !

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Notes:  HT to Brandon for the info.  No, I’m not a member.

Well, I guess it is all relative.  Heck, even atheists can be delusional.   But Tom Rees, reviewing an article at his fine site: Epiphenom,  shows that New Agers are wackier than everyone.    I particularly enjoyed Tom’s speculation that when folks leave their religions because they just can’t seem to fit in, if they are rational they become atheists but if they are nutty, they become New Agers.

So if New Agers are more crazy than Religious Folks, why do the atheists seem to focus most of their attacks on the poor Religious Folks?  After all, Atheists pride themselves in attacking illogical, deluded thinking.

Well, I can think of a few reasons (can you add more?) :

• New Agers aren’t trying to take over the government
• New Agers don’t think you are going to Hell
• New Agers won’t stop their kids from playing with yours
• New Agers aren’t trying to stop science research.

So come on Atheists, fess up.  It is not the beliefs of Theists that you dislike, it is what they attempt to do with those beliefs.  I actually feel that many religious folks are far from delusional.  I feel they only suspend rationality for a few precious beliefs and then turn on rationality to handle all the rest based on those beliefs.  It is all very complicated.

Rumi

A phrase to describe my beliefs popped to mind today — “Cognitive Mysticism“.  Well, being only two common words, and lots of writers out there, I am sure these two words have been put together before so please excuse me if someone has grabbed them and given them their meaning before me, and please indulge me.

Religious mystics are generally despised by the orthodox in their home religion.  The orthodox value creeds, doctrines and right thinking.  The Mystic values relationships and being.  The mystic’s first offense, a social one, is to deny the need the religious specialists or traditions to communicate to their god.  The Mystic’s second offense, a philosophical one, is to hold doctrines as suspect — Mystics questions the power of language to capture that truth of the encounter with the divine.

I too question authority (while understanding it’s usefulness in the lives of others) and hold that beliefs are merely anchors for our web of life with no more substance than the function they serve.   Our webs of belief capture far deeper realities than the words that string them together.   These deeper realities are our relationships — relationships to ourselves, others and the world we live in.

Cognitive mysticism allows me to dialogue with other faiths without, at times, a need to challenge their treasured assumptions.  If I want to help a person change their way of relating to their world I can still look to change their web while still preserving many of their cherished beliefs.  I can take pleasure in just making them a better version of themselves while they do the same to me.
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Related Posts:

• Beliefs as Circuit Components
• Beliefs: A Diagram
• Web of Beliefs

Religion (a syndrome definition):

A) Religion must offer all of these:

• Community bonds or tribal unity
  • Encourages in-group cooperation
  • Offers friends, potential mates, business partners, helpful neighbors
• Morals: ways to teach or reinforce morals
  • Threatens penalties for those not obeying rules
  • Sources of authority: Book, Leaders
• Afterlife: A better hereafter — Heaven/Hell, Reincarnation, Nirvana, Spirit-world

B) Religion must also have at least three of the below:

• Comfort:  Offer explanations to ease suffering (meaning and comfort):
  • of life after death
  • of sickness, misfortunes and disasters
• Spirits: Discuss spirits and the supernatural
• Taboo: Defines taboo and pollution issues
• Explains Unknown:  Offers explanations for what is felt to be otherwise unknowable information: creation myths, origin histories
• Blessings:  Offers adherents benefits (in this life or next):
  • Improved health or total healing
  • Status, security, money,  jobs, prosperous family, abilities
  • Improved personality: ability to overcome hardship, to help others, happiness
  • Improved relationships
• Shamans:  Has specialists who set the definitions of the religion
• Apocalyptic Visions:  Doomsday scenarios, drastic changes coming in the future
• Narratives:  Offer story telling as a means of offering meaning and bonds
• Rituals:  Offer rituals to satisfy the side of humans seeking safety in order and repetition.

_____________________________________________________

How to Define “Religion”

The word “religion” is vague and used in many different ways.  Attempts to offer a straightforward definition of  religion are doomed because the word is used in a great many ways.   I suggest that one useful approach would be to think of religion as a syndrome.  So, instead religion as a whole, it is probably most useful to discuss the particular element of the syndrome that composes religion.  In this way, we may better understand the structure of the mind that creates such a social tool.

In medicine, the notion of a “syndrome” is used to capture human disorders which we don’t yet fully understand. Psychiatry, an area of medicine wrought with incomplete knowledge, has most of its diagnoses by syndrome. Let’s take “Panic Attack” a list the DSM-IV definition in syndrome typology:

Panic Attack:

Must have all of these:

• Intense fear or discomfort
• Developing Abruptly
• Peaking within 10 minutes

Must have at least 4 of these:

• Chest pain or discomfort
• Chills or hot flushes
• Derealization (feelings of unreality) or depersonalization (being detached from oneself)
• Fear of losing control
• Feeling dizzy, unsteady, lightheaded, or faint
• Feeling of choking
• Nausea or abdominal distress
• Palpitations or tachycardia
• Paresthesias
• Sensations of shortness of breath or smothering
• Sense of impending doom
• Sweating
• Trembling or shaking

So you see, for some internal state to qualify as a panic attack it has a few conditions it must meet and then a certain number of other traits.  Thus, two people’s panic attacks could be qualitatively incredibly different experiences and still called “panic attacks”.

Likewise, I think we should be able to build a syndrome for religion which allows for a wide variety of religious experiences but still is not so nebulous as to be meaningless.  The definition I put together above is just my fumbling at what a syndrome definition of  “religion” would look like.  What should I add, or subtract — please help me build this.   Also, perhaps others have done this already — please let me know.  The fun exercise is determining, what is a “must” and how many secondary traits are required.  You can see that if the definition is broad enough, belief in gods does not have to enter.

__________
Notes:
1) Picture: HT: “DirtBrothers“: An Archeology web site

2) One of my favorite books on “What is Religion?” is:  “Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought” by Pascal Boyer.