tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321384869090495572024-03-05T23:18:04.871-08:00Christ-InanityNotes from a castaway in a Christian nationAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-10629726524290370952015-03-02T07:50:00.000-08:002015-03-02T16:21:16.420-08:00I don’t believe I’ll disbelieve<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> “<i>Fervid
atheism is usually a screen for repressed religion</i>.” – Wilhelm Stekel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Atheism certainly is a religion and, like
any other religion, it is dogmatic and therefore subject to inconsistency, error
and debate. Just as every religion has its doubters, atheism must also be open
to doubt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> “There is no God” is a bald and brash assertion
which can no more be proven through our powers of perception than can the assertion
“God exists.” If religions positing a god are to be held up to criticism,
disbelief and derision, then atheism, which posits the non-existence of any god,
must be, as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> The fallacies and absurdities of every
religion likewise abound in atheism. “The existence of evil proves that there
is no God,” for example, is a proposition that can be attacked from all angles:
Maybe God allows evil; maybe God can’t prevent evil; maybe what we see as evil
is only something else in disguise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> In fact, EVERY proposition in support of
atheism is contingent on atheism’s negation; that is, you can’t make a claim
about “no-God” that doesn’t refer to some type of God. So we must always ask
the atheist: What is it that you’re denying?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Atheism, then, has nothing solid at its
core: it is simply an aggregation of denials. And since it doesn’t affirm
anything, as religions go it is especially threadbare, unsatisfying and
baseless.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> The atheist sees that all of man’s religions
– all of our attempts to account for the mysteries all about us – are
inadequate, and so he puts forth a religion of his own that is just as
inadequate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> I propose the establishment of a new
religion, one that, if followed closely, will always be robust and sane. It is
based on Bertrand Russell’s observation that “the ignorant are cocksure while
the intelligent are full of doubt.” I’d call it Paulism, but that name’s
already taken. As a purely descriptive name, I’d use “okay-ism,” or
“uh-huh-ism,” or “live-and-let-live-ism,” or maybe “whatever-ism” – anything to
denote a bemused skepticism. It’s a religion to sustain us 24 hours a day, even
through the dark night of the soul, because we don’t have to agonize to stay
faithful to it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> We can never go wrong by doubting
everything. Doubt will never let us down.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-63318700701937828112014-05-05T11:55:00.000-07:002014-05-05T11:56:46.812-07:00The question, part 2<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A review of <i>The Question of God</i>, continued. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Chapter 2: <i>The Creator; Is There an Intelligence Beyond
the Universe</i>?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Freud argued
that as people became more educated they would forsake the “fairy tale of
religion.” He wrote that the various religions “bear the imprint of the times
in which they arose,” and that the notion that “the universe was created by a
being resembling a man…reflects the gross ignorance of primitive people.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As for
Christianity, he wrote that the precepts of Jesus are “psychologically impossible
and useless for our lives.” (Maybe that’s why few people have ever followed
them.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">C. S. Lewis
agreed with Freud up until, at about the age of 30, he underwent a radical
conversion. He declared in the preface to his <i>Mere Christianity</i> that “There is one God…and Jesus Christ is His
only Son.” He said that “God made the world…space and time, heat and cold, and
all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables…” and that there
is “a Dark Power in the universe…created by God, and who was good when he was
created, and went wrong.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEillxHSixBxxmo7rjYktv0qu1_EUv_WLlLICI5dx_OR6_75HSIxy3sw2mzjKMQj8VXQTRgzRUf5sfu1KSSme3VFFw45NFuc7fMtBvIGc8BXX2ZxQTV4oOk-7Hj7g1Ce9lsHm2ClHvGLFA/s1600/lew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEillxHSixBxxmo7rjYktv0qu1_EUv_WLlLICI5dx_OR6_75HSIxy3sw2mzjKMQj8VXQTRgzRUf5sfu1KSSme3VFFw45NFuc7fMtBvIGc8BXX2ZxQTV4oOk-7Hj7g1Ce9lsHm2ClHvGLFA/s1600/lew.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oy vey! Where did I go wrong?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">What went
wrong with Lewis? The author of this book, Armand Nicholi, contends that Lewis
was converted by the reading of certain authors and discussions with faculty
members at Oxford, where he was teaching. You could just as well account for it
by some sort of delusion or hallucination, for from this point on Lewis hardly
ever made much sense, in my opinion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Lewis often
trotted out the heartwarming old story about free will, to explain why a good
God could make a bad world. Because of our precious free will, which is, in
Lewis’s words, “the only thing that makes possible any love or joy worth
having,” we ourselves have botched things, but God, who “left us conscience,
the sense of right and wrong,” wants us to put things back together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It might
occur to any reasonable person thinking on such matters: why didn’t God just
make us—and the world—different from what we are? What’s so terrific and vital about
free will? But no, Lewis turns out to be as blinkered a believer as he was an
atheist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Freud wrote,
“It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and (is) a
benevolent providence…but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly
as we are bound to wish it to be.” In <i>Civilization
and Its Discontents</i>, he wrote of “The derivation of (religion) from the
infant’s helplessness and the longing for the father…”and in <i>The Future of an Illusion</i> he asserted
that the believer creates a God for himself, “whom he dreads, whom he seeks to
propitiate, and whom he nevertheless trusts with his own protection.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Lewis
criticized Freud’s characterization of religion based on one’s <i>ambivalence</i> towards one’s parents,
saying that the negative side of ambivalence would indicate a wish that God
would <i>not </i>exist. But wishing that
something didn’t exist isn’t the same as believing that it doesn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Lewis,
instead of acknowledging this, takes another tack. He says that wishing for
something may be all the evidence we need for its existence. Because he had
experienced throughout his life episodes of “longing” – brought on by gazing at
some beautiful stretch of countryside, for example – he concludes that these
“desires” were evidence of a Creator.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“Creatures
are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists,” he
wrote, ignoring the question of which came first, the desire or the object of
it; he then proceeds willy-nilly to this conclusion: “If I find in myself a
desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, <i>the most probable explanation </i>(italics mine) is that I was made for
another world.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Of course,
an equally “probable” explanation of such indefinable feelings is that they are
vague wishes brought on by boredom, dissatisfaction or despair, and cannot
properly be called “longings,” as every desire, indeed, must have an object.
But this is the Lewis method – the blithe and breezy assumption of highly
dubious premises, as a scaffold for erecting a theology that <i>must</i> be true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">(To be
continued…)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-43286280036237182682014-05-03T11:39:00.000-07:002014-05-03T11:39:15.682-07:00The question is moot<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A review of <i>The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund
Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life</i>, by Dr. Armand M.
Nicholi, Jr. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix_v8cA9v1Y_rIAjqqIk8wRKpOImfP5n2hJc8yLHNfT1TKATkZ9tORgL3ugOAHKhXNq9BTYh2OqDl9TeNavAJsNIc-HXP1ixWZfpdvbSgPMmCil7w43gbLKiLHaFMQbikLLD5q3FLDqw/s1600/f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix_v8cA9v1Y_rIAjqqIk8wRKpOImfP5n2hJc8yLHNfT1TKATkZ9tORgL3ugOAHKhXNq9BTYh2OqDl9TeNavAJsNIc-HXP1ixWZfpdvbSgPMmCil7w43gbLKiLHaFMQbikLLD5q3FLDqw/s1600/f.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sigmund Freud, here fondling his cigar</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Sigmund Freud never met C. S. Lewis, but the
author of this book imagines a debate between the two on the subject of God
(and some corollary topics). He also teaches a course at Harvard contrasting
the two men’s “worldviews.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Nicholi calls Freud “the atheist’s
touchstone,” and refers to Lewis as “perhaps the twentieth century’s most
popular proponent of faith based on reason.” Lewis himself was an atheist for
the first half of his adulthood, and Freud, indeed, was one of his touchstones.
When he became a Christian he often challenged the ideas of Freud’s that he had
earlier embraced. Or as Nicholi puts it in his prologue: “In subsequent
writings, he (Lewis) provides cogent responses to Freud’s arguments…”—thus
indicating early on where his own sympathies lie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Freud called religion “the universal
obsessional neurosis,” and was a lifelong atheist, although as the author
suggests he may have wavered in his disbelief from time to time. (In a letter
to a friend he wrote, “Science of all things seems to demand the existence of
God…”) Freud thought that one’s early, ambivalent attitude toward one’s parents
formed the basis for one’s “deep-seated wish for God.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Freud’s atheistic underpinnings came largely
from his reading of Ludwig Feuerbach, a German philosopher who, in his <i>The Essence of Christianity</i>, asserted
that religion is just a projection of human need. “Divine wisdom is human
wisdom…the secret of theology is anthropology…the absolute mind is the
so-called finite subjective mind,” Feuerbach wrote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Lewis, like Freud, grew into an atheist as a
teenager. His mother died horribly at home when he was 7, and Lewis recalled
that his earliest “religious experience” was praying in vain for her life. He
was sent to a miserable boarding school where, he said, he read his Bible,
“lived in hope,” and “attempted to obey my conscience.” When the school closed
he was sent to another, whose matron took him under her wing and shared her
growing unbelief with him. Under her influence, and that of his reading in the
classics, his faith began to collapse. Another teacher, William Kirkpatrick,
helped drive the final nail in the coffin, although the corpse would be
resurrected years later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> (To be continued…) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-84965610900815778782014-04-12T11:15:00.002-07:002014-04-12T11:15:51.719-07:00An old flame<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Barbara Ehrenreich, you could say, is a reality-based writer.
Her 2001 book, “Nickel and Dimed,” is a heartbreaking and sometimes harrowing
account of her first-hand experiences of how the other half lives, and in 2009
she took on the cancer-survivor industry (as a cancer survivor), in the lively
“Bright-Sided.” She is also a hard-core atheist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KHeSPX3vXBGfm6eoHPEMTlxnppD-4iE7Ms4sW4YGCJxuV_Dh2heosuIuWiBlhD-TuxCEmJZTbd1BGukVWUNGH_zvh01dsbwNnk0kXlJU_D688qfhMNwA1ahZLHzQFjpXXDGjcMVulw/s1600/f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KHeSPX3vXBGfm6eoHPEMTlxnppD-4iE7Ms4sW4YGCJxuV_Dh2heosuIuWiBlhD-TuxCEmJZTbd1BGukVWUNGH_zvh01dsbwNnk0kXlJU_D688qfhMNwA1ahZLHzQFjpXXDGjcMVulw/s1600/f.jpg" height="145" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Her unbelief is an inherited trait, she says. So it was
“profoundly unsettling” to her when, at age 17 (this was in 1959), she had a
mystical experience. She walked out into the street in Lone Pine, California, “sleep-deprived
and probably hypoglycemic,” and “saw the world — the mountains, the sky, the
low scattered buildings — suddenly flame into life.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Says Ehrenreich: “It was a furious encounter with a living
substance that was coming at me through all things at once, too vast and
violent to hold on to, too heartbreakingly beautiful to let go of. It seemed to
me that whether you start as a twig or a gorgeous tapestry, you will be
recruited into the flame and made indistinguishable from the rest of the blaze.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">She said nothing to anyone, and chalked up the incident to a
mental breakdown. It took her a long time to acknowledge that her experience
was not all that uncommon, and need not bring her non-belief into question.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Some surveys find that nearly half of Americans report having
had a mystical experience,” she says. “Historically, the range of people
reporting such experiences is wide — including saints, shamans and Old
Testament prophets as well as acknowledged nonbelievers like Virginia Woolf and
the contemporary atheist writer Sam Harris.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">All visions are not created equal: It is the descriptions of,
and justifications for, these episodes that differentiate them. Ehrenreich
characterizes her own as something akin to what the 20<sup>th</sup>-century
Protestant theologian Rudolph Otto concluded after studying the accounts of
mostly Christian mystics, in that it was “</span><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 150%;">beyond
all question something quite other than the ‘good’.”</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“</span><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 150%;">It was more like
a ‘consuming fire,’ he wrote, and ‘must be gravely disturbing to those persons
who will recognize nothing in the divine nature but goodness, gentleness, love
and a sort of confidential intimacy’.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 150%;">As Ehrenreich says, the divine needn’t enter
into it at all. She urges scientists not to dismiss mystical experiences out of
hand, and to think about adding the search for the source of these experiences
to their search for those other elusive substances that make up the universe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 150%;">“</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Without invoking anything
supernatural, we may be ready to acknowledge that we are not, after all, alone
in the universe, “she says. “There is no evidence for a God or gods, least of
all caring ones, but our mystical experiences give us tantalizing glimpses of
other forms of consciousness, which may be beings of some kind, ordinarily
invisible to us and our instruments. Or it could be that the universe is itself
pulsing with a kind of life, and capable of bursting into something that looks
to us momentarily like the flame.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-32606982139635140552014-04-05T10:19:00.000-07:002014-04-05T10:19:24.031-07:00Belief on the back burner<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Can you deny that there are supernatural beings and not be an
atheist?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The New York Times ran the transcript of an interview
conducted for “The Stone” by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at Notre
Dame, with Howard Wettstein, his counterpart at the University of California.
Wettstein is a practicing Jew who prays regularly, and he is proof, I suppose,
that one can have a rich religious life without necessarily believing in God –
or, in his words, taking “a theoretical stance on God’s existence.” As
Wettstein sees it (I think), belief is irrelevant to faith, and even irrelevant
altogether. To paraphrase another philosopher with a similar name
(Wittgenstein), what we can’t put into words we must pass over in silence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Wettstein takes an
unhelpful detour at the beginning, comparing theorizing about God to theorizing
about numbers. “</span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Even an advanced and creative mathematician,” he says, “need not
have views about, say, the metaphysical status of numbers.” He cites the
physicist Richard Feynman, who was supposed to have said about himself that he
“lived among the numbers,” but who was unconcerned with whether they “actually”
existed. But when we think about numbers we are able to describe how they work,
in the form of <i>proofs</i>. No such thinking can be done about God to
yield results that are anything but highly subjective and abstract. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Wettstein talks about a rabbi friend of his
who held that “God’s reality went without saying,” but that “God’s reality as a
supernatural being was quite another thing.” (Wettstein’s words.) To watch his
friend praying was to be overwhelmed, he says, by the intimacy of the pray-er
and the pray-ee: “God was almost tangible.”<br />
Gutting asks, quite reasonably, how one can pray to something that doesn’t
exist. Wettstein says that “’existence’ is, pro or con, the wrong idea for
God.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“My relation to God has come to be a pillar of
my life, in prayer, in experience of the wonders and the awfulness of our world,”
Wettstein says. “And concepts like the supernatural and transcendence have
application here. But (speaking in a theoretical mode) I understand such terms
as directing attention to the sublime rather than referring to some nonphysical
domain. To see God as existing in such a domain is to speak as if he had
substance, just not a natural or physical substance. As if he were composed of
the stuff of spirit, as are, perhaps, human souls. Such talk is unintelligible
to me. I don’t get it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In other words, we can’t talk about whether
God exists, we can only talk about what His existence means to us. An argument
like this gives sophistry a good name. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“So what is the real question?” Gutting asks,
a little wearily it seems. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“The real question is one’s relation to God,
the role God plays in one’s life, the character of one’s spiritual life,”
Wettstein answers. These aren’t questions, they are sidestepping the question. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-65443230337282917162013-05-21T12:05:00.001-07:002013-05-21T12:05:39.622-07:00Will save your soul for food<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGa-fl6ChWOz_DUvxV2Wj7IDmMOwtRKRLizbU_AFUPZMIwZCIIrFFOQf7q9F_OaEI1vPgsH2dN9oN6VkLY79lseapYd42a7VXUIAVnp8ye4Rs3Gv_rizDnbdaFxXOMXJwF_inltH8m7Q/s1600/pr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGa-fl6ChWOz_DUvxV2Wj7IDmMOwtRKRLizbU_AFUPZMIwZCIIrFFOQf7q9F_OaEI1vPgsH2dN9oN6VkLY79lseapYd42a7VXUIAVnp8ye4Rs3Gv_rizDnbdaFxXOMXJwF_inltH8m7Q/s1600/pr.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A story in
the NY Times deals with another hard-hit group of victims of the
recession: preachers. The number of available pastoring jobs has not kept pace
with the numbers of individuals answering the “call” to set themselves up as
custodians of souls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Preaching
has always struck me as a fairly cushy gig, consisting largely of comforting
the afflicted with platitudes and parsing the word of God on Sunday – which may
be why there’s such a glut of job seekers in this segment of the market. (The
Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches reports that there are more than
600,000 ministers in the U. S. but just 338,000 churches.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My advice to
these particular unemployed, short of counseling them to remember Jesus’s
precept about tomorrow taking care of itself, would be to do what so many
others do when they can’t find anyone to hire them: go into business for
yourself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Start on any
street corner. “Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there am I.”
(Jesus again.) Voila! You’re a church, and therefore tax-exempt. Pass the
plate. If you take in anything, you’ve made money your very first day in
business, and it all went into your pocket. How many entrepreneurs can say
that?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Build on
that rock, no matter how inconsequential. The key to success, as in any other
business, is to give people what they want. Entertainment, in this case, with a
little hellfire and damnation thrown in.
Work up some good stories, develop a sound delivery, and you’ll be on
your way. If you’re good enough, you’ll be able to get people to let you sleep
and eat in their homes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Maybe you
think I’m being facetious. But why should you expect someone to hire you if you
can’t do the job on your own?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-4395049138508746122013-05-19T09:36:00.001-07:002013-05-19T09:36:45.782-07:00Russelling, part 2<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyn66mSQGkwki2cfdWGaKHbPShc_GBDxWtBSv9biRMM9iEu9XEqKJID3DqT-B8CTJEwDRRtpE8arYXO7CVG78ZumpKutaP-aEKedpjiZki63DOsyEeRVNQSafNqGtJk5V1sbUElkbR7w/s1600/ru.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyn66mSQGkwki2cfdWGaKHbPShc_GBDxWtBSv9biRMM9iEu9XEqKJID3DqT-B8CTJEwDRRtpE8arYXO7CVG78ZumpKutaP-aEKedpjiZki63DOsyEeRVNQSafNqGtJk5V1sbUElkbR7w/s200/ru.jpg" width="146" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Bertrand Russell’s 140<sup>th</sup> birthday was yesterday. (See yesterday’s entry.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> “I am as
firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue,” Russell
wrote. “I think all the great religions of the world—Buddhism, Hinduism,
Christianity, Islam—both untrue and harmful.”
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The problem
with religion, Russell thought, was that it was based on faith instead of
evidence. “A habit of basing convictions on evidence,” he wrote, “…would, if it
became general, cure most of the ills from which the world is suffering. But at
present, in most countries, education aims at preventing the growth of such a
habit…” (Are you listening, you purveyors of creation “science”?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> In 1925,
Russell published a small book called <i>What
I Believe</i>. In it, he wrote that there were forces making for happiness and
ones making for misery in the world, and he classed religion among the latter. He
likened religion—religious dogma, that is--to a kind of armor that shielded its
wearer against “the shafts of impartial evidence.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> “Fear is
the basis of religious dogma,” he wrote. Fear of nature gave rise to religion,
and the fear of death—and life—perpetuates it. “Religion, since it has its
source in terror, has dignified certain kinds of fear and made people think
them not disgraceful. In this it has done mankind a great disservice:<i> all </i>fear is bad.” Russell said that
while he didn’t welcome death, he had no terror of it, even though he denied
the possibility of immortality. “Happiness is none the less true happiness
because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value
because they are not everlasting.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> A major
defect of religion as Russell saw it was its individualism; the defect, if it
is one, is even more glaring today, when everyone claims to have a personal
relationship with God. The dialogue, or duologue, between one’s soul and God
was, Russell granted, at one time a thing devoutly to be wished, because to do
the will of God, which led to virtue, was possible and even desirable in a
society dominated by the state. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> “This
individualism of the separate soul had its value at certain stages of history,”
Russell insisted, “but in the modern world we need rather a social than an
individual conception of welfare.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> In short,
Russell might have put it, ask not what God can do for you; ask what you can do
for your God. <br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-77950991461947288272013-05-18T12:10:00.000-07:002013-05-18T12:10:40.768-07:00Russelling with religion<br />
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Bertrand Russell, the greatest philosopher
of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, was born on May 18, 1872. He is best known for
his works on logic, knowledge, and mathematics; his <i>A History of Western Philosophy</i> is an elegant and entertaining
overview of the thoughts and thinkers of the Western world from pre-Socratic
times down to his day. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> In 1927 Russell gave a speech in London
called “Why I Am Not a Christian.” He defined a Christian as one who a)
believes in God and immortality, and b) believes, at the very least, that Jesus
Christ was “if not divine, at least the best and wisest of men.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Addressing the first condition, Russell laid
out some of the arguments for the existence of God. In short order he demolished:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The
First-cause Argument. “If everything must have a cause, then God must have a
cause,” Russell said. “If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as
well be the world as God.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The Argument from Design. (Everything in the
world has been created so that we can live in it and appreciate it, and if it
weren’t made just so, we could not live in it.) “It is a most astonishing thing
that people can believe that this world…should be the best that omnipotence and
omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years,” Russell said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The
Moral Argument. (There would be no right or wrong unless God existed.) Russell
pointed out that if God created both right and wrong, then there was no
difference in quality or truth between the two, and therefore it became
meaningless to say that God is good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Turning to the
second condition, concerning the character of Christ, Russell first admitted
that Jesus said some wonderful things, among them “Turn the other cheek,”
“Judge not lest ye be judged,” and “Sell that which thou hast, and give to the
poor.” But he noted that he was consistently less than wise, as he firmly
believed that his second coming would happen within the lifetimes of those he
was addressing. And because he believed in hell, and angrily condemned those
who did not heed his warnings about eternal punishment, Russell judged Jesus to
be far less than a paragon of virtue. In fact he placed Socrates and Buddha
above him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> “The Christian
religion, as organized in its churches,” Russell concluded, “has been and still
is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> “When you hear
people in church debasing themselves…it seems contemptible and not worthy of
self-respecting human beings…"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And finally:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> “A good world needs knowledge, kindliness
and courage; it does not need…a fettering of the free intelligence by the words
uttered long ago by ignorant men.” </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-22946742022920124582013-05-15T10:24:00.000-07:002013-05-15T10:24:49.384-07:00Doubt as an operating system<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> An article in the New York <i>Times</i> some months ago noted that 12 percent of
Americans define themselves as “Nones”—those adhering to no religion—and many
of these “Nones,” to make a lame pun on the term, are throwing off the habit of
organized worship but not necessarily their belief in God. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The author, Eric Weiner, says that we need
an entrepreneur, in the mold of Steve Jobs, to invent “not a new religion, but
a new way of being religious.” This new “operating system,” as Weiner calls it,
would, among other benefits, celebrate doubt and elevate humor to an exalted
component of worship. No less a champion of the faith than G. K. Chesterton,
Weiner points out, said that “It is the test of a good religion whether you can
joke about it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Jesus himself was a doubter and a wag of the
first order—well, waggish at least in relation to the comedic standards of the
day. His parables about the plank in your own eye and the camel going through
the eye of a needle were intended as knee-slappers, but to his constant chagrin
his audiences were a somber lot—they needed to be roused from the dead, like
Lazarus. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> We see the same over-seriousness as to
religion today, Weiner says, perhaps due in part to its association with
politics, a decidedly earnest business. Many people, he suggests, would hold on
to their religion if the politics weren’t part of the package.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> As to doubt, Jesus was a steadfast
practitioner—in particular, he fretted over his followers’ lack of faith and staying
power—which enabled him to clearly identify the chief doubters in his midst. And
then, of course, near the bitter end, he doubted his own fortitude for the
ordeal to come, not to mention the necessity of it all. One can imagine him in the garden, first
praying to be let off the hook, and then going resignedly to his doom, with a
smile--maybe even with the Aramaic equivalent of “Let’s do it!” on his lips.
What can you do but laugh?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Weiner notes that only seven percent of
“Nones” call themselves atheists. That may be because we (I consider myself a
“None”) doubt that the atheist knows the “truth” any more than does the True
Believer, or it may be because, for one reason or another, as Weiner says: “We
may not believe in God, but we hope to one day. We have a dog in this hunt.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-64188762029687644232013-05-13T11:22:00.002-07:002013-05-13T11:22:29.154-07:00Our prayers are with her<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">About a year ago, a Nashville
woman came up with an iPhone app for the prayerfully challenged, as reported in Nashville’s <i>City Paper</i>. Laura Landress’s Prayermaker is available at the Apple store – somehow
appropriate to us Luddites, as it was a apple, you’ll recall, that led to our
common downfall.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Prayermaker
enables users of different faiths (so far, Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, New
Thought, and Protestant) to create personalized prayers to offer up to their
deity of choice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“It fills a
need to help people find the words to pray when they need those words,”
Landress said in a brief Q-and-A with the paper. “The idea came from a desire
to help people have a prayer life that is easier to have on a regular basis.”
If this is as eloquent as she gets, let’s pray that she’s not the one writing
the prayers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">If we’d come
up with the idea, here’s the interview we’d conduct with ourselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy1pBLL3vfpR2tmEo75F0lfzJsYTVS85Q7wGTjmaREbSYWnQKfCjTtNPU3GANDY2mbNmXw2scb16rNE5jDaCKdX0-zjy-baSk3y6RMv5MxwFIQSXt8arywdJa4IKZXAoQqcUOFINF1bQ/s1600/pray.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy1pBLL3vfpR2tmEo75F0lfzJsYTVS85Q7wGTjmaREbSYWnQKfCjTtNPU3GANDY2mbNmXw2scb16rNE5jDaCKdX0-zjy-baSk3y6RMv5MxwFIQSXt8arywdJa4IKZXAoQqcUOFINF1bQ/s1600/pray.jpg" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Why would anyone buy your Prayer Home
Companion? Isn’t the idea of prayer is that it’s supposed to be heartfelt</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Why does
anyone buy a greeting card? They’ve got a feeling in their heart, but they may
have a problem putting it into words.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">So you’ve got a prayer for every
occasion</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We’ve got
all the major ones covered. Prayers for success, prayers for health and well
being, prayers for world peace or an end to poverty…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Then where does the personal part
come in</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Well, within
our framework of main categories, users can choose from hundreds of
subcategories to custom design a prayer for their specific needs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It sounds like a cookie-cutter
approach to prayer</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Not at all.
We provide our users with a whole multitude of ways to express their
individuality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Give us an example</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">How about I
show you one? Here’s our Home screen. Let’s create a prayer for our Uncle Joe,
who’s got cancer. We touch the “Sickness” button here, then, from the pull-down
menu we choose “Diseases,” then either “Fatal Diseases” or “Possibly Fatal
Diseases,” then “Cancer.” If we wanted to specify the type of cancer, that’s an
option.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Now we’re
prompted to choose the prayee: “Self,” or “Other.” We select “Other,” and now
we see our choices are “Relative,” “Friend,” or “Other.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Can we look at the “Other” menu</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Ok. We’ll
touch “Other,” and we see a long list of choices, like “Celebrities,” “Complete
Strangers I Read About and Was Moved By,” and “General.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“<b>General</b>?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">That’s where
we would go to request a cure for cancer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I see. Back to Uncle Joe</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">All right.
We’ll back out of this screen and choose “Relative.” Now we select “Uncle,” and
it brings up a series of questions designed to create a profile of our Uncle
Joe. Here’s where we encourage users to get creative. After they’ve filled in
the basic info on Uncle Joe, they’ll see prompts like “Choose three of the
following adjectives to describe your uncle,” and a long list of adjectives, plus
the option to provide their own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">They can
either answer these prompts or elect to skip them. So their prayer can be as
simple or elaborate as they want to make it. In any event, with so many choices
available, every prayer will be unique. The idea being to make sure that your
prayer makes it through to God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Makes it through</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Just think
of how many prayers your God – whoever He might be – has to listen to every
day. The more professionally crafted the prayer, the more likely it is to catch
His ear, wouldn’t you say?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Maybe so. We’re done now</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Just about.
We touch “Create Prayer,” and wait a few seconds…and our custom-made prayer
pops up for our review. Now we can Edit, Send, Save, or Cancel the prayer. If
we select Send, the prayer is sent and we’re offered the option of sending this
prayer again or another one at a specified date and time, of which our phone
will remind us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Where does the prayer get sent</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">?
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Facebook.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Facebook</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Where else? <i>Everybody</i>’s on Facebook.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-44790740336223479352013-05-11T09:25:00.001-07:002013-05-11T09:27:30.430-07:00Thou shalt read this<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkHpwWxnHSy7xgmLRI8GzTOAiZRMcNaoUpvpFq59lN_bfAowVrky9g9rdznvLew_1i889L4Iba4QbBJYe_fJhsiIie9gmS8BQrGvyifXwQCGQXqW-d20LCkwRJ7TTpADHPQP4K8-3O8g/s1600/mo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkHpwWxnHSy7xgmLRI8GzTOAiZRMcNaoUpvpFq59lN_bfAowVrky9g9rdznvLew_1i889L4Iba4QbBJYe_fJhsiIie9gmS8BQrGvyifXwQCGQXqW-d20LCkwRJ7TTpADHPQP4K8-3O8g/s1600/mo.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Faddish moderate unbeliever Alain de Botton, the author of <i>Religion for Atheists</i>, has published
something called “Ten Commandments for Atheists.” They’re not exactly
commandments—actually, they aren’t commandments at all. They are virtues, ones
that de Botton considers worthwhile for every infidel to cultivate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Why he calls them
commandments is a little puzzling—the idea of issuing commandments wouldn’t
make sense to atheists, would it, since no one can be said to be in charge?
Besides that, his list is rather lame, and doesn’t even address the atheist in
particular. His virtues are the old standbys (empathy, patience, politeness)
with a few amorphous ones, like “self-awareness” and “resilience,” thrown in. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Still, it might be salutary for non-believers to contemplate
some rules of conduct. The following are definitely not commandments, just a
few suggestions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> THOU SHOULD NOT imagine that thy nonbelief is something
particularly original or daring. If you see bad things happen and can’t
conceive of a good God that would allow it; if you see that the statement “God
created everything” leads to the question “Who created God?” or if you consider
that the alleged architect and designer of the universe might have done a lot
better, keep in mind that millions of the devout have had such thoughts, and,
far from ignoring them, have tried to make room for them in their faith.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> THOU SHOULD recognize that to believe “There can’t be a God”
is as lazy as to avow “There must be a God.” No one has the facts; all the data
isn’t in yet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> THOU SHOULD allow for the possibility that we’re asking the
wrong questions. To ask “Why would a good God permit evil?” or “How did the
universe begin?” may be simply meaningless because it is beyond our power to
find the answers, or to understand them if they exist. After all, everything
doesn’t have to resolve around us, as Copernicus proved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> THOU SHOULD not make thy unbelief a personal thing, or if you
must, keep it to yourself. To be disappointed in God is as puerile as to be a
cheerleader for Him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> THOU SHOULD NOT, above all, kill the curiosity in thyself, or
seek to kill it in anyone else. “To seek God is never in vain,” said St.
Bernard, “even if you do not find Him.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-36126456048691670262013-03-13T12:17:00.002-07:002013-03-13T12:17:23.325-07:00On a mission from God<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv1YHyXTqgmM_W1wi8QBwnnqCc8g1hUIwxCLs0KYRcJvGum7hpB6zBicWLB7D4wrDxeguwsIWayIoBCs1qcI9tQ9xyt6EVMFklfAWCiSQZDJB0y96tS7Z_bNJ35h1XkrP2VPdNpBnM9w/s1600/wi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv1YHyXTqgmM_W1wi8QBwnnqCc8g1hUIwxCLs0KYRcJvGum7hpB6zBicWLB7D4wrDxeguwsIWayIoBCs1qcI9tQ9xyt6EVMFklfAWCiSQZDJB0y96tS7Z_bNJ35h1XkrP2VPdNpBnM9w/s1600/wi.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> A rather incredible
letter to the editor ran in our Podunk Press last week. The writer accepts the
invitation of another lunatic “to collaborate with him in his effort to rid our
schools of atheistic teachings.” The use of the verb “collaborate” sets the
tone for the whole letter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The writer is
honored by the invitation “from a man as well known in this area for his
level-headed, plebian (sic) approach to issues.” The man is, indeed, well-known, as a
demagogic wing-nut who has all but called President Obama, among other things,
a terrorist sympathizer and a baby killer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The writer is sure
that his collaborator-to-be has “amassed volumes of information on people” over
the years, and he calls on him to send him a “list of the known atheist
teachers in our schools.” He cautions him to avoid mere hearsay, as the ACLU
frowns on “witch hunts.” (Quotation marks are his.) A few lines are worth
citing:<br />
“I will need actual, documented
statements from students who feel that their rights were violated by a teacher
who told them there was no God, or possibly ridiculed them for holding a
particular religious belief. It will be especially poignant if the teacher
tried to lead the student in an atheist prayer of some kind. Even if they said
nothing, but put atheistic symbols in their classrooms, or wore jewelry that
indicated ‘There is no God’ or ‘Jesus is a myth’, will be helpful evidence.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The letter is so
extravagantly paranoid and loony (for example, what might an “atheist prayer”
sound like? And do they make atheist jewelry?) that one has to wonder if the
writer is serious. Even if he is, laughter is still the best response, for now.
So let’s strike up the band, sit back and enjoy it—two of our community’s
stalwarts are, like the Blues Brothers, on a mission from God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-17191667020970820242013-03-11T12:03:00.002-07:002013-03-11T12:03:16.988-07:00Praying, against all odds<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3JsQ1LAbTtX2i7sWuk93UvRMhbzIEIsigHbinmwAGk8dOLODeGm-Ylc7Fsx87rfKB6Ey1bGCyv9znGzTLfWtoC6VxW5X_7Qx9ZlL0a-VVH0cTw52xPVhvFrFIKIg9zKcGiWV7sNfqsg/s1600/pray.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3JsQ1LAbTtX2i7sWuk93UvRMhbzIEIsigHbinmwAGk8dOLODeGm-Ylc7Fsx87rfKB6Ey1bGCyv9znGzTLfWtoC6VxW5X_7Qx9ZlL0a-VVH0cTw52xPVhvFrFIKIg9zKcGiWV7sNfqsg/s1600/pray.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In his book, “Mortality,” Christopher Hitchens, the famous
latter-day atheist, devotes the better part of a chapter to a discussion of
prayer. When many of his multitudes of friends found out that he had the cancer
that would eventually kill him, Hitchens says they let him know they were
praying for him even though it might offend him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Hitchens is tempted to write these folks back: “Praying for <i>what</i>?” a good number of them, he knows,
are as much, or more, concerned for his eternal salvation than for his actual
recovery. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The effect of prayer on one’s fate in the afterlife cannot be
determined, of course, as no one has ever reported back, but Hitchens cites a
2006 study—“the most comprehensive investigation of the subject ever
conducted,” he calls it (see below)—that found no correlation between prayer
and a patient’s improvement. It did, however, find a <i>negative</i> correlation, in that the person prayed for often felt <i>worse</i>, because he thought he had let his
petitioners down. And if he should happen to get better, Hitchens muses,
wouldn’t it convince the pious that their prayers had been answered? The
thought depresses him even more. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Prayer, besides being possibly un-therapeutic, is also
self-contradictory, as Hitchens notes. Presumably the devout regard their deity
as all-powerful and all-knowing; if so, isn’t prayer <i>blasphemous</i> if it beseeches this being to change its mind?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And isn’t even a humble prayer, along the lines of “Let my
wishes be Thine,” while maybe not negative in character, at least a little <i>redundant</i>? Why ask God to do something
He’s going to do anyway? In this case we pray to God in order to praise Him,
say the prayerful. But the God who needs constant admiration and thanks is one
of the many gods he doesn’t believe in, Hitchens says. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">What’s the big deal about praying, the reader might ask. What
harm can it do? Hitchens’ answer:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“The emptiness of prayer is almost the least of it. Beyond
that minor futility, the religion which treats its flock as a credulous
plaything offers one of the cruelest spectacles that can be imagined: a human
being in fear and doubt who is openly exploited to believe in the impossible.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Or believe in the possible, the praying individual will
undoubtedly say. But then you can’t argue with such a person—you can only pray
for him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">(The study Hitchens mentions is “Study of the Therapeutic
Effects of Intercessory Prayer.” Look online at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-68199171417191528872012-12-04T08:17:00.000-08:002012-12-04T08:17:42.945-08:00Shack Attack<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Author William Paul
Young was in town last week to sign copies of his new book. Young is the man
responsible for <i>The Shack</i>, the runaway bestseller about a man who spends a
weekend in the woods with the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Before Young hit it
big, he cleaned toilets for a living, he told the local press. Always
interesting, where writers get their inspiration.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In <i>The Shack</i>, God is
a large black woman, Jesus is a laid-back white dude with a hooked nose (“I <i>am</i>
Jewish,” he explains), the third member of the Bog Three is an Asian woman. The
equal-opportunity casting offended many church people, but the real crime
perpetrated by the novel is against good prose, dialogue, and plot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The cover of my
paperback copy of <i>The Shack</i> says that there are three million copies in
print, but even in this the Land of the Fatuous, it’s hard to imagine that so
many readers bought into the concept. God as Aunt Jemima? (“Sho ‘nuff,” she
actually says at one point, and then a couple of pages later, “Them greens can
give you the trots.”) When <i>The Shack</i>’s protagonist first meets this version
of the Almighty, a little bird flies in the window of the kitchen where she is
whipping up some vittles and begins to eat out of her hand. The hero and the
Holy Trinity spend the weekend eating, laughing, bantering and explaining
themselves, and he, the mortal among them, is simply amazed at how
down-to-earth his hosts are. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It all could be a
Disney movie, except for the part about the slain daughter and the demented
serial killer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A bio-blurb on my <i>The
Shack</i> reveals that Wm. Paul Young “suffered great loss as a child and young
adult.” If <i>The Shack</i> was meant to be autobiographical, the title has one too
many letters. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A letter in today’s
local paper urges the teaching of creationism right along with the teaching of
evolution. “We should present both views and let our children make their own
decision,” the writer says. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Oh, by all means.
Education should be a smorgasbord, from which kids can pick out their favorite
dishes. The story about God creating everything in six days is bound to be a
popular one, and it can prepare children for reading books like <i>The Shack</i> when they grow up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-36895672620064062262012-06-04T10:10:00.000-07:002012-06-04T10:14:02.220-07:00Don't asp<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Proud to be a Tennessean, Reason #692</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">: A
front-page story in the Sunday edition of our Great Metropolitan Newspaper is
about snake-handling churches. The piece is not just a snippet but is a full
five-page splash, with pictures of cretins fondling deadly serpents while
yawping or praying and sometimes swooning from the sheer ecstasy of it. The
reporter, with admirable journalistic integrity, refrains from editorializing
in his in-depth coverage of the phenomenon.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Readers are
treated to the testimony of yokels as to the spiritually invigorating effects
of playing with poisonous snakes, as well as the inspiration and justification
for it. (Mark 16:17: “<span style="background: #F9FDFF; color: #001320;">And these
signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils;
they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents…”) Though the
cultists are violating state laws prohibiting snake handling and possessing
poisonous snakes, they say it’s worth the risk of punishment to experience the
power of the Lord coursing through them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPLwq8ih3dZcGtwDMCNGK9HJV5CxQ2DOTpw-Zw6lNFiW3jplqDRcc2RN_lY4C1b9HgfJ4HFMlhj8JijLTngkbC3APjx1lEwETS6E_vrxUHedIXKQ0NeMYpkrXsN-0LTLNu9GiZK0Pm0g/s1600/snake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPLwq8ih3dZcGtwDMCNGK9HJV5CxQ2DOTpw-Zw6lNFiW3jplqDRcc2RN_lY4C1b9HgfJ4HFMlhj8JijLTngkbC3APjx1lEwETS6E_vrxUHedIXKQ0NeMYpkrXsN-0LTLNu9GiZK0Pm0g/s1600/snake.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #F9FDFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The article quotes Wiley Cash, author of a
“best-selling” book about a snake-handling church, who says that people want to
believe they’ve been singled out by God, and “What better proof than to pick up
a timber rattler and not have it bite or to survive a bite?” Can’t think of
nary a one, but the good folks at the church in LaFollette can: drinking
strychnine. (The passage in Mark continues: “<i>If they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them</i>.”) The
reporter did not get to witness this at the service he attended, as “All the
poison was drunk at a previous service and they’ve not had time to get more.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #F9FDFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> He also noted that “Most serpent handlers
think drinking poison is optional.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #F9FDFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Women are discouraged from handling snakes,
and they’re also not allowed to preach in Pentecostal Holiness churches. They
must wear skirts or dresses, and are not allowed to wear earrings or cut their
hair. Snake handlers themselves can’t drink (under the theory that alcohol
might make them crazy?), curse or have sex outside of marriage. (They can have
plenty <i>inside</i> marriage, though: the
preacher profiled, age 21, has four kids.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #F9FDFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The article reports that a pastor in West
Virginia, the only state where snake handling is legal (thank God for small
favors: at least we don’t live in West Virginia), died about a week ago from a
rattlesnake bite. He was following in the hallowed footsteps of his father, who
died at the hands (or jaws) of a rattler in 1983. The pastor of the church in
LaFollette prayed that his congregation wouldn’t lose the faith. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #F9FDFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> “The only thing I know to do,” he said, “is
to encourage the people of God to keep on, keep doing the signs of God.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #F9FDFF; color: #001320; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Maybe so; after all, life is always a
hit-or-miss proposition. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-76352587978155319152012-05-29T07:19:00.000-07:002012-05-29T07:19:17.264-07:00Atheist or Agnostic?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> No word sets atheists to foaming at the mouth more than
agnostic—not evangelical, not born-again, not even Baptist. To the avowed
atheist, the mere agnostic is a lily-livered, weak-kneed and spineless specimen
of infuriating indecision.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Besides a fundamental misunderstanding of what an agnostic
is, and a possible ignorance of the fact that almost all their cherished and
oft-quoted icons considered themselves agnostics and not atheists, self-proclaimed
atheists may be confused on another point: Their attitude toward the
non-nonbeliever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> First, the misunderstanding:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> While an atheist rejects all religions, and denies the
existence of God (and so flaunts the same certitude as the devoutly religious),
the agnostic admits that he does not know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> There might not be a God: Science alone can explain the
universe, for example, all except for how something can arise out of nothing,
and if we need an explanation for that, why bring in God?—why not say that if
something always had to exist, it might as well be the universe as God?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> There might not be a God, which might explain the random
nature of life and death, the prevalence of misery and suffering, the apparent
predominance of evil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Yet again, there might be a God, which might account for our
intimations of something greater than ourselves, for our apperception of
mystery and beauty in the universe, for our love and fellow-feeling, for our
sense of individual and collective purpose and destiny.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> There may be a God we can apprehend and explain, but none of
the world’s religions have yet apprehended and explained Him to the atheist’s
satisfaction. The agnostic doubts all the explanations, but admits that he
can’t be certain they’re all fallacious. It may be highly unlikely that a God
of love will one day roast me like a peanut forever and ever for dancing on
Sunday, but the agnostic, while doubting it, admits that it is not impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Atheism is a belief; agnosticism is based on knowledge (or,
rather, the lack of it). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Now, for the attitude:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Many an atheist is put out by the agnostic’s “gutlessness,” and
his scorn implies that he himself is genuinely gutsy. Why is the agnostic
gutless?-For not avowing something he’s not sure of? And why should the atheist
see himself as courageous?—just for avowing something that most people don’t
agree with, even if it’s unprovable?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The atheist proclaims that there is no God, standing up to
ridicule and censure from those people whose judgments he doesn’t value in the
first place. The agnostic says he doesn’t know, incurring no one’s wrath but
everyone’s pity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The atheist basks in the novelty and daring of his opinion,
while the agnostic cowers in the corner with his uncertainty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The atheist forms his conclusions based on the puerile or
pathetic beliefs of the religious; the agnostic concedes the value and
sometimes the power of belief. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The atheist insists that his certainties are more certain
than the believer’s; the agnostic suggests that there are no certainties.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The atheist scoffs, openly or to himself, at the religious
impulse, seeing it as weak-minded or deluded. The agnostic is confounded by the
fact that so many people—including people far more intelligent than he—are
religious. <o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-38777750347945322382012-05-22T08:32:00.000-07:002012-05-22T08:32:17.096-07:00Christ-inanity explained<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Christianity would be OK if it weren’t for
the Christians.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> A “Christian” woman of my acquaintance, for
example – let’s call her Grace – tells me often that she’s praying for me: She
knows that I drink, and that I never keep the Sabbath. When I point out to her
that Jesus himself preferred the company of wine bibbers and whores and Sabbath
breakers to that of respectable people, she frowns.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> That’s because the real personage of Jesus
is an inconvenience to her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Jesus was impatient with those who stood on
formality – those who designated a day as particularly holy, for instance, or
who wanted to forbid certain activities and mandate others. All the rules and regulations, he said – all
the fever to formalize and legislate plain love and respect for one another –
obscured the simple truth of what he taught.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> And what he taught was as stark and
uncompromising as could be. “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” “Turn the other
cheek,” and “Give up everything and follow me” are injunctions lovely and
splendid as theory, but impossibly daunting in practice. Even Jesus had trouble
with them from time to time, what with everyone pulling him in a different
direction, doubting him, fearing him and finally forsaking him. He was sometimes
out of sorts with even those closest to him, his disciples (“Ye of little
faith”).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> After Jesus was gone, of course, he became a
cult figure, and the imbecilities began to pile up, embellishing and encrusting
his austere and beautiful creed and sometimes, down through the years,
rendering it almost totally unrecognizable. Jesus would weep anew to know that
such thundering absurdities as the virgin birth or the doctrine of eternal
damnation or the wiping away of sins by Atonement have been, and are being,
inculcated in his name.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The Christians beginning with Saint Paul set
out to fashion a Jesus who would be popular and palatable to their recruitment
base – a Jesus whose warning, “I come not with peace, but with a sword,” would
be modified or ignored, and whose assertion that we must be like children would
come to justify the utmost credulity and the most infantile beliefs, instead of
a rallying cry for what Jesus meant: That we must cast off worldly desires and
become like a child again, full of wonder.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> I call this perversion of Jesus’s teachings
and the subversion of his spirit and character: Christ-inanity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-4603722878243627222012-05-15T07:33:00.002-07:002012-05-15T07:33:50.769-07:00Simply nonsense<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> There is no
end to the number of books analyzing what Jesus meant or represented, and to
plow through them all would require the time and leisure that the Christian
eternity promises. One recent one, called <i>Simply
Jesus</i>, asserts that Jesus was God’s agent and spokesperson here on Earth,
which indicates that the Almighty had bigger fish to fry elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> The Tennessean’s</span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> excellent religion columnist, Ray
Waddle, wrote a review of <i>Simply Jesus</i>
in last Saturday’s paper. Waddle calls the book’s author, N. T. (wonder if they
call him New Testament?) Wright, “a leading British interpreter of Christian
faith, a successor to C. S. Lewis.” And to judge from some of the excerpts
Waddle includes, I see the resemblance: Wright seems to, as Lewis did,
specialize in the tenuous argument presented as unassailable fact.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxUUbYvK8JP5QxWXnpi5Q3HOlSkvKq7MRbIm9wbMgq8Ojvkeh8Exbu0mAGp4Ovatdr8JMg1B2ptQvhyJQwiEwIvHeSNp_6hGFyW11LrC1yPoDZ7v6K-VGgbi15dw0BossllZ9JTCOmXA/s1600/shirt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxUUbYvK8JP5QxWXnpi5Q3HOlSkvKq7MRbIm9wbMgq8Ojvkeh8Exbu0mAGp4Ovatdr8JMg1B2ptQvhyJQwiEwIvHeSNp_6hGFyW11LrC1yPoDZ7v6K-VGgbi15dw0BossllZ9JTCOmXA/s1600/shirt.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> “Jesus has
all sorts of projects up his sleeve,” Wright declares. (Jesus, I presume, wears
long sleeves to hide the nail marks.) First and foremost he’ll be getting
around to, at long last, implementing the tenets he laid out in the Sermon on
the Mount. “The meek will be taking over the earth, so gently that the powerful
won’t notice it until it’s too late,” Wright says. But once the meek are in
charge, how will anything get done? There’ll have to be someone un-meek enough
to make a decision, won’t there? And if power inevitably corrupts, won’t the
meek become the bold, engendering a new crop of meeks ready to supplant them in
power – and on and on in a Marxian cycle?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> “The
peacemakers will be putting the arms manufacturers out of business,” Wright
writes. “Those who are hungry and thirsty for God’s justice will be analyzing
government policy and legal rulings and speaking up on behalf of those at the
bottom of the pile.” The passage is uncannily Lewisian: Fatuous speculation put
forth as gospel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> But Lewis,
at least, was always lucid. When Wright says, “Heaven is God’s space, God’s
dimension of present reality, it’s hard to either criticize or commend the
statement, because it’s – simply meaningless. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-1440724890040432442012-05-14T12:23:00.001-07:002012-05-14T12:43:55.976-07:00Pray for us<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> A Nashville
woman has come up with an iPhone app for the prayerfully challenged,
Nashville’s <i>City Paper</i> reported last
week. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Laura Landress’s Prayermaker is available at the Apple store – somehow
appropriate to us Luddites, as it was a apple, you’ll recall, that led to our
common downfall.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh00PiLedvENRxzjaoPSHin88PXPsTiLtKRjlL1Hi5-0n2AyYS9_Vob5pFb5xxBt-Tkqvx-QOW5aQn19uIYkwP_ABg3aSA0eCcQ2C89GXMT2QDr1b-Njrr9SWZeyJhJGZdPX5041S-KyA/s1600/pray.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh00PiLedvENRxzjaoPSHin88PXPsTiLtKRjlL1Hi5-0n2AyYS9_Vob5pFb5xxBt-Tkqvx-QOW5aQn19uIYkwP_ABg3aSA0eCcQ2C89GXMT2QDr1b-Njrr9SWZeyJhJGZdPX5041S-KyA/s200/pray.jpg" width="145" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Prayermaker
enables users of different faiths (so far, Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, New
Thought, and Protestant) to create personalized prayers to offer up to their
deity of choice.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> “It fills a
need to help people find the words to pray when they need those words,”
Landress said in a brief Q-and-A with the paper. “The idea came from a desire
to help people have a prayer life that is easier to have on a regular basis.”
If this is as eloquent as she gets, let’s pray that she’s not the one writing
the prayers. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> If we’d come
up with the idea, here’s the interview we’d conduct with ourselves. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Why would anyone buy your Prayer Home
Companion? Isn’t the idea of prayer is that it’s supposed to be heartfelt</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Why does
anyone buy a greeting card? They’ve got a feeling in their heart, but they may
have a problem putting it into words.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">So you’ve got a prayer for every
occasion</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">We’ve got
all the major ones covered. Prayers for success, prayers for health and well
being, prayers for world peace or an end to poverty…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Then where does the personal part
come in</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Well, within
our framework of main categories, users can choose from hundreds of
subcategories to custom design a prayer for their specific needs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">It sounds like a cookie-cutter
approach to prayer</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Not at all.
We provide our users with a whole multitude of ways to express their
individuality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Give us an example</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">How about I
show you one? Here’s our Home screen. Let’s create a prayer for our Uncle Joe,
who’s got cancer. We touch the “Sickness” button here, then, from the pull-down
menu we choose “Diseases,” then either “Fatal Diseases” or “Possibly Fatal
Diseases,” then “Cancer.” If we wanted to specify the type of cancer, that’s an
option.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Now we’re
prompted to choose the prayee: “Self,” or “Other.” We select “Other,” and now
we see our choices are “Relative,” “Friend,” or “Other.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Can we look at the “Other” menu</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Ok. We’ll
touch “Other,” and we see a long list of choices, like “Celebrities,” “Complete
Strangers I Read About and Was Moved By,” and “General.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“<b>General</b>?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">That’s where
we would go to request a cure for cancer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">I see. Back to Uncle Joe</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">All right.
We’ll back out of this screen and choose “Relative.” Now we select “Uncle,” and
it brings up a series of questions designed to create a profile of our Uncle
Joe. Here’s where we encourage users to get creative. After they’ve filled in
the basic info on Uncle Joe, they’ll see prompts like “Choose three of the
following adjectives to describe your uncle,” and a long list of adjectives, plus
the option to provide their own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> They can
either answer these prompts or elect to skip them. So their prayer can be as
simple or elaborate as they want to make it. In any event, with so many choices
available, every prayer will be unique. The idea being to make sure that your
prayer makes it through to God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Makes it through</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Just think
of how many prayers your God – whoever He might be – has to listen to every
day. The more professionally crafted the prayer, the more likely it is to catch
His ear, wouldn’t you say?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Maybe so. We’re done now</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Just about.
We touch “Create Prayer,” and wait a few seconds…and our custom-made prayer
pops up for our review. Now we can Edit, Send, Save, or Cancel the prayer. If
we select Send, the prayer is sent and we’re offered the option of sending this
prayer again or another one at a specified date and time, of which our phone
will remind us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Where does the prayer get sent</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">?
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Facebook.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Facebook</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Where else? <i>Everybody</i>’s on Facebook.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-45069710788960039042012-05-13T16:22:00.000-07:002012-05-13T16:24:16.220-07:00Mother of myths<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijPOXy3xR0GoojKi7fConxbptJCO60Ru2Z6hi7si5nAFlnW4ytP5NPFuKoTUhZu9bE_fVT40HhJaVcxQ8f96OrYW6dlF1UCnTVl8hoUawjICBXi4hQfbXo1ua5ldgnIwQp50no4LxIDg/s1600/mary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijPOXy3xR0GoojKi7fConxbptJCO60Ru2Z6hi7si5nAFlnW4ytP5NPFuKoTUhZu9bE_fVT40HhJaVcxQ8f96OrYW6dlF1UCnTVl8hoUawjICBXi4hQfbXo1ua5ldgnIwQp50no4LxIDg/s200/mary.jpg" width="143" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“<i>The mother cult is something that will set
future generations roaring with laughter</i>.” – Gustave Flaubert.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Those generations haven’t arrived yet,
obviously, and the cult of the mother, which holds its signal celebration on
this day, still flourishes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Mother-worship is as old as mankind itself.
The Earth Mother was probably civilized man’s first deity – the goddess of
crops. The Virgin Mary was a much later version. The most famous mother in
Western history has her hordes of ardent devotees even down to this day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> What would Jesus have made of the idea of
people venerating His mother? For that matter, what would He have thought of
Jesus-worship? The New Testament provides no clear-cut evidence that He
regarded Himself as divine. As for his mom’s awareness of it, consider the
episode in Matthew in which she urges her son to go with her to John the
Baptist and be baptized, in order to wash away His sins.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Indeed, it appears, at least to this skeptic
from his reading of the Gospels, that Jesus had no inkling of His divine duty
until He met John the Baptist and was inspired to start preaching himself. Even
then, he delayed matters for 40 days and nights, pondering on it. If He’d
been convinced of his supposed mission, would he have waited?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> As for the Virgin Birth, did Jesus ever hear
of it? It’s never mentioned in Mark (the oldest Gospel) or John, and the
details of it differ in Matthew and Luke. Again, the notion of virgin birth was
an age-old one and very common in Jesus’s part of the world in those days,
particularly in Egypt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Just sayin’. Happy Mother’s Day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-33161077881551948752012-05-11T12:41:00.000-07:002012-05-11T12:41:02.067-07:00Atheist or Agnostic?<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_YScPJ5jynGMwWrTPFEXy_VnLkqsU59zjT1pini743NLFaf3mYa5lto_HvGV2bFzJZJiiA5G1phUe7rv2Rkheq5TS0mb9ItRboziFI2CuInOJ8LBG0yEFPlzm5gMZRypulGWXnuwxiw/s1600/a+vs+a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_YScPJ5jynGMwWrTPFEXy_VnLkqsU59zjT1pini743NLFaf3mYa5lto_HvGV2bFzJZJiiA5G1phUe7rv2Rkheq5TS0mb9ItRboziFI2CuInOJ8LBG0yEFPlzm5gMZRypulGWXnuwxiw/s200/a+vs+a.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">No word sets atheists to foaming at the mouth more than
<i>agnostic</i>—not evangelical, not born-again, not even Baptist. To the avowed
atheist, the mere agnostic is a lily-livered, weak-kneed and spineless specimen
of infuriating indecision.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Besides a fundamental misunderstanding of what an agnostic
is, and a possible ignorance of the fact that almost all their cherished and
oft-quoted icons considered themselves agnostics and not atheists, self-proclaimed
atheists may be confused on another point: Their attitude toward the
non-nonbeliever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">First, the misunderstanding:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">While an atheist rejects all religions, and denies the
existence of God (and so flaunts the same certitude as the devoutly religious),
the agnostic admits that he does not know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There might not be a God: Science alone can explain the
universe, for example, all except for how something can arise out of nothing,
and if we need an explanation for that, why bring in God?—why not say that if
something always had to exist, it might as well be the universe as God?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There might not be a God, which might explain the random
nature of life and death, the prevalence of misery and suffering, the apparent
predominance of evil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Yet again, there might be a God, which might account for our
intimations of something greater than ourselves, for our apperception of
mystery and beauty in the universe, for our love and fellow-feeling, for our
sense of individual and collective purpose and destiny.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There may be a God we can apprehend and explain, but none of
the world’s religions have yet apprehended and explained Him to the atheist’s
satisfaction. The agnostic doubts all the explanations, but admits that he
can’t be certain they’re all fallacious. It may be highly unlikely that a God
of love will one day roast me like a peanut forever and ever for dancing on
Sunday, but the agnostic, while doubting it, admits that it is not impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Atheism is a belief; agnosticism is based on knowledge (or,
rather, the lack of it). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Now, for the attitude:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Many an atheist is put out by the agnostic’s “gutlessness,” and
his scorn implies that he himself is genuinely gutsy. Why is the agnostic
gutless?-For not avowing something he’s not sure of? And why should the atheist
see himself as courageous?—just for avowing something that most people don’t
agree with, even if it’s unprovable?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The atheist proclaims that there is no God, standing up to
ridicule and censure from those people whose judgments he doesn’t value in the
first place. The agnostic says he doesn’t know, incurring no one’s wrath but
everyone’s pity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The atheist basks in the novelty and daring of his opinion,
while the agnostic cowers in the corner with his uncertainty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The atheist forms his conclusions based on the puerile or
pathetic beliefs of the religious; the agnostic concedes the value and
sometimes the power of belief. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The atheist insists that his certainties are more certain
than the believer’s; the agnostic suggests that there are no certainties.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The atheist scoffs, openly or to himself, at the religious
impulse, seeing it as weak-minded or deluded. The agnostic is confounded by the
fact that so many people—including people far more intelligent than he—are
religious.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-78795551215187837482012-05-08T09:40:00.001-07:002012-05-08T09:40:37.969-07:00A lot of learning is a dangerous thing<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> A poll done on Facebook resulted in more than half the
respondents averring that creationism should be taught in public schools. This
startles me only because I thought the percentage of the scientifically
illiterate among us would be much higher.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Allied to the average man’s misunderstanding of evolution is
his fear of it, often heightened and even encouraged by his religion. Every one
of the world’s religions is, at best, an intermediary between its adherents and
the truth. And every religion worth its salt must conform to the intelligence
and understanding of its audience. Religion must not let the naked truth go
abroad, but must clothe it in myth and allegory. Even Jesus, who espoused no
religion, chose to speak in parables in order to make the truth palatable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> When religion presents the truth, even in a diluted or
adulterated form, it renders a service to mankind, but more often it does
damage by employing a lie to convey a truth. For example, Jesus was preaching
evolution when he said that the kingdom of God is within us and we must strive
to realize it by becoming God-like. The lie of Christ-inanity is that we were
made in God’s image, as the apple of his eye, but that each of us is born in
sin and all we can do is pull ourselves up out of the slime. <o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-51325294397952824372012-04-17T09:13:00.002-07:002012-04-17T09:13:45.033-07:00God: That is the question<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A review of <i>The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund
Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life</i>, by Dr. Armand M.
Nicholi, Jr. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Sigmund Freud never met C. S. Lewis, but the
author of this book imagines a debate between the two on the subject of God
(and some corollary topics). He also teaches a course at Harvard contrasting
the two men’s “worldviews.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Nicholi calls Freud “the atheist’s
touchstone,” and refers to Lewis as “perhaps the twentieth century’s most
popular proponent of faith based on reason.” Lewis himself was an atheist for
the first half of his adulthood, and Freud, indeed, was one of his touchstones.
When he became a Christian he often challenged the ideas of Freud’s that he had
earlier embraced. Or as Nicholi puts it in his prologue: “In subsequent
writings, he (Lewis) provides cogent responses to Freud’s arguments…”—thus
indicating early on where his own sympathies lie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5WKCSINVviD8-idVtxjIJYiWRbuRt63SYz09ODo7_0jAq032myTapOf4o_b4S2KmjyQlElNiqmYdU1xQ-Nukp9NxbUe-uF_wY0Ntenxy5KVycowf1MmmsQvRrEh0NEl9MnC37UM40Vg/s1600/freud.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5WKCSINVviD8-idVtxjIJYiWRbuRt63SYz09ODo7_0jAq032myTapOf4o_b4S2KmjyQlElNiqmYdU1xQ-Nukp9NxbUe-uF_wY0Ntenxy5KVycowf1MmmsQvRrEh0NEl9MnC37UM40Vg/s200/freud.jpg" width="135" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Freud called religion “the universal
obsessional neurosis,” and was a lifelong atheist, although as the author
suggests he may have wavered in his disbelief from time to time. (In a letter
to a friend he wrote, “Science of all things seems to demand the existence of
God…”) Freud thought that one’s early, ambivalent attitude toward one’s parents
formed the basis for one’s “deep-seated wish for God.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Freud’s atheistic underpinnings came largely
from his reading of Ludwig Feuerbach, a German philosopher who, in his <i>The Essence of Christianity</i>, asserted
that religion is just a projection of human need. “Divine wisdom is human
wisdom…the secret of theology is anthropology…the absolute mind is the
so-called finite subjective mind,” Feuerbach wrote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Lewis, like Freud, grew into an atheist as a
teenager. His mother died horribly at home when he was 7, and Lewis recalled
that his earliest “religious experience” was praying in vain for her life. He
was sent to a miserable boarding school where, he said, he read his Bible,
“lived in hope,” and “attempted to obey my conscience.” When the school closed
he was sent to another, whose matron took him under her wing and shared her
growing unbelief with him. Under her influence, and that of his reading in the
classics, his faith began to collapse. Another teacher, William Kirkpatrick,
helped drive the final nail in the coffin, although the corpse would be
resurrected years later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> (To be continued…) <o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-92155654095456736262012-04-08T05:29:00.000-07:002012-04-08T05:29:46.684-07:00Easter Parade of Fools<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIcMxszPYSkQgA_LIZICCeJlqmyN2sc6d-JLnlajQB1DMOntxbJz81PYjIf5ayij48o4etD1gHsZnGqGFnl-NVjSrqw3ti7xvYEq6NIcNBI2hqEZ-1_4cHseF47JzOohyMLIBbQTBr7A/s1600/baby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="245" width="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIcMxszPYSkQgA_LIZICCeJlqmyN2sc6d-JLnlajQB1DMOntxbJz81PYjIf5ayij48o4etD1gHsZnGqGFnl-NVjSrqw3ti7xvYEq6NIcNBI2hqEZ-1_4cHseF47JzOohyMLIBbQTBr7A/s320/baby.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<i>Regarding our habit<br />
Of venerating a rabbit<br />
That brings us all eggs--<br />
Just who's pulling our legs</i>? <br />
<br />
Easter's always a grand day, with chocolate abounding and wine overflowing (in our household, at least), an occasion to ponder one of life's profound mysteries:<br />
<br />
How can we be so gullible?<br />
<br />
It's a time to reread the Book of Luke, the lovely story (most beautiful in the King James Version) that takes us from the birth of Jesus in a stable, attended by shepherds of the field, to his calamitous end and beyond, when the slain Christ apparently busts out of his tomb and, after checking in with a few former friends, takes off for parts unknown.<br />
<br />
The most charming (or off-putting, depending on your point of view) aspects of the whole story are it fairy-tale elements. The son of God comes to earth and sets up shop as a carpenter, disappears for a dozen years or so and then returns to embark on a brief career as an itinerant preacher. Though penniless, he attracts an entourage, and travels from town to town, relying on the kindness of strangers for room and board while entertaining the masses with speeches and parables and the preforming of miracles. He walks on water and raises the dead and converts water into wine. He naturally attracts the notice of the authorities, who begin to ask questions and end up hounding him to death. His death, however, is a triumph, and far from the end of things. He has promised to return and set things right.<br />
<br />
It is Luke's Jesus that has come down to us, for the most part--the gentle, soft-spoken, sociable soul who loves children and is beloved by women, who bestows his miracles liberally, and who is always kind and considerate, even unto death. And it is Luke's point of view that has become a bedrock of the faith, in particular his conviction that Jesus was the long-awaited messiah who would come back to earth, after a three-day vacation, and establish his kingdom. The fact that we're still waiting hasn't dampened the expectation.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32138486909049557.post-84218313813925836002011-09-25T08:40:00.000-07:002011-09-25T08:35:32.852-07:00God the SuperfluousAttended services this morning, held on my back deck, of the Church of God the Superfluous.<br />
<br />
<i>God</i>, I prayed, <i>if you exist</i>, forgive us for our careless, selfish and unworthy thoughts of you. We have looked upon you as a gift giver and a bribe taker, as a sentimental old fool (with a beard) to be flattered and cajoled. We have ascribed all of our mean and scurvy human qualities to you, and depicted you as cruel, vindictive, grasping, jealous, angry, petty, vainglorious. We have leached all the magnificence and splendor out of you in trying to understand you.<br />
<br />
<i>We have created you</i> in our own image, in the belief that man is the measure of all things.<br />
<br />
<i>God, we have made you</i> the repository of all our confused notions about good and evil. We have made you bear the intolerable burden of perfect goodness, and have cursed you in our hearts for not making us good.<br />
We have made you the author of the universe, and held you accountable for the narrative, which we perceive but dimly. <br />
<br />
In our immense self-concern we have demanded that you give meaning to all of our lives.<br />
<br />
<i>Forgive us, o Lord</i>, we beseech Thee, for making Thee superfluous.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13233622751209485147noreply@blogger.com0