The disclaimer first: I am not a Christian. I usually try not to go in for the Christian-bashing of the militant atheists though - I'm not one of them either.

I do have to wonder, though, whether most churches and most churchgoers have really progressed much beyond the sort of medieval thinking Mr (Father? I do not know the polite form of address) Sellick describes. I was exposed to the usual Christian socialisation which was part of the life of most Australian kids growing up before (say) the mid 1980s. And right through that, I was taught that the miracles of the bible HAD actually happened and WERE to be taken literally. I was taught that both heaven and hell were real, even if not necessarily corporeal. I was taught that Jesus really did rise from the dead (in fact, I was told that fact was more important than chocolate eggs!). I was taught that Mary really was a virgin, that Lazarus really did wake up, that Jesus really walked on water, that the water was turned into wine, that there was enough bread and fish to feed 5000, that Noah packed all of biodiversity into an ark, that Moses parted the Red Sea and that Saul/Paul got zapped by faith on the road to Damascus. Reading George Pell's Sunday Tele columns, he clearly takes those bible stories for literal truth.

When I protested the unlikelihood of these events I was told that "that's what makes them miracles, that's what makes them special, and that's why one believes". Can you wonder that I do not follow that faith?

If, as i suggest, that is how Christiantiy has been presented, then its opponents are entitled to rebutt it on that basis. Mr Sellick's paper appears to be an attempt to shift the philosophical goalposts, because (to mix metaphors) they currently stand on shaky ground.

Talk about Straw Men! Why should those who regard the stories of miracles believed in by ignorant yokels (or the best informed people of their age for that matter) as absurd be thought to rely on that incredulity to make them doubt Christianity when there there are a thousand reasons for believing all religions to be merely manmade cultural artefacts of more or less social or personal utility for various purposes. Why would a supposedly loving god that cares for what he is presumed to have created allow his loved creatures to be deluded by so many variant messages from people claiming special knowledge of the god's nature, intentions and desires? Why would the Christian god who had allowed a rather broader view of the human family than the early desert tribesmen had entertained ignore the Buddhists and Hindus to name only the most numerous of the forgotten multitude? And so on, and on. Whether there was something that could be said to precede the Big Bang, whether there are/were many Big Bangs, when exactly evolution that led to our species started, and how, will no doubt remain a puzzle, possibly until the fireball which ends all life on earth (possibly only microbial by then)but that doesn't give Christianity or any other religion a leg up.

Have never really understood why Christians had to ruin a perfectly good story about a remarkable man by dressing him up as a God.

The essence of his message wasn't "Hey everyone look at me, I'm the son of God!" No, it was an entirely mortal message about a better way for people to relate to one another.

There the story should have ended.

If your god is not the god of the bible, then where is he. Does he/she/it actually DO anything?

Yawn, how boring. Written using the same dismally reductionist language that Dawkins uses--no light or lightness or even the possibility of lightness whatsoever-- or put in another way any kind of understanding of the "world" as Conscious Light, or quite literally a light show.
See for instance 1. http://www.dabase.org/dht6.htm

Not one word of inspiration or spiritually informed intelligence. Also completing lacking in any kind of esoteric understanding of the Process that is True Relgion.

The Proces that is True Religion has nothing whatsoever to do with any so called "historical" event---when and "where" did this "historical" event occur? It is always a present time moment to moment enquiry into what we are as conscious beings, and what is the nature of all of THIS arising---Consciousness and Energy---the two fundamental irreducible facts of existence.

This reference gives a unique profoundly esoteric understanding of Jesus and the Teaching of Truth To & About Man

2. http://beezone.com/AdiDa/EWB/EWB_pp436-459.html#jesusandtheteaching

This reference 3.http://www.dabase.org/proffch6.htm gives a comprehensive critique of Christianity as an entirely power seeking worldly institution in which any kind of esoteric understanding is more or less taboo---made into a heresy even (most if not all of the Illuminated Saints within western Christianity were heavily persecuted by the ecclesiastical "authorities"). It is the esoteric dimensions of True Religion that make it culturally superior to the ordinary reductionist street level "world"-view of the scientist and the exoteric religionist such as Sells.

Many scientist see a lot more science in creation than the myth of evolution. The writers of the Scriptures agree that if Christ has not been raised from the dead then the Christian faith is useless. It is a good thing that many if not most of the great true scientist throughout history were believers in the gospel. If not the world would be a lot darker place than it is now.

Contrast Peter's barely coherent article with C.S. Lewis' concise comments on miracles
“It is useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question. If miracles are impossible, then no amount of historical evidence will convince us. If they are possible but immensely improbable, then only mathematically demonstrative evidence will convince us: and since history never provides that degree of evidence for any event, history can never convince us that a miracle occurred. If, on the other hand, miracles are not intrinsically improbable, then the existing evidence will be sufficient to convince us that quite a number of miracles have occurred. The result of our historical enquiries thus depends on the philosophical views which we have been holding before we even began to look at the evidence. This philosophical question must therefore come first.”

It seems Peter's philosophical view of materialism is what is leading his claims about miracles and therefore Biblical narratives, not the evidence.

"...If the writers understood them as ordinary occurrences they would not have related them..."
I like Peter Sellick's approach here. If we want to ascribe extra-ordinary aspects to an otherwise ordinary event we do tend to dress it up with our socially accepted excesses. If I say that I am so hungry I could eat a horse, I don't have a horse in mind; if I find something very funny I don't really burst laughing or literally jump for joy. These are similies socially aceeptable these days, like perhaps walking on water or climbing a mountain in Jesus' time?

Sellick's materialist and deist wordview is simply not the same as Biblical Christianity, no matter how much he might protest that he is indeed a Christian.

To separate the notion of "being Christian" from the actual doctrine which is proscribed in that religion's holy book, and which has actually been preached by the actual institution(s) of the Church for two millennia and more is to be false to experience and to demean history. It is to dismiss belief as an innocent human failing, instead of understanding it as a compelling and deadly meme.

If "the Christian mind" has truly evolved beyond the stage of Biblical literalism, why then, the product of this evolution no longer needs or deserves the title Christian. But I do not believe it has.

Fundamentalist Christianity, accepting unquestioningly the "inerrancy" of the Bible, is alive and well in Western society (particularly America, but on the rise here as well) -- and it is a key obstacle to mature and truthful reasoning on vital social and scientific questions.

A true materialist would be honest with himself instead of clinging to a label which more properly describes a primitive, pre-scientific understanding of the Universe. You're not really a Christian, Sellick, but a humanist in the closet.

Leaving the warm, anti-intellectual, non-confrontational fellowship of one's neigbours in the body of the Kirk can be painful, but it is more honest than the duplicity of calling oneself a Christian when one is a very different beast indeed.

Warm fuzzy memories of an innocent and credulous childhood will not make the sins of the true Church disappear.

Thanks Peter, and interested correspondents for turning up again at battlefields of history where God and the gods have put their ideas to the test.

If Prophet Elijah's God didn't win that day on Mt Carmel in the face of the 400 Prophets of Baal, then we would have a completely different Bible to the one we have today.

Perhaps this would be a 'Bible' whose God had the character of the god Peter describes as 'the supernatural conscious monad', rather like, one speculates, in scientific fashion, the Gods of the Humanisms, whether Secular, or Communist, or New-age, or Postmodernist or Islamic. And, if so, then we wouldn't have the Judaeo-Christian Bible that abounds, both on our bookshelves and in many hearts and minds.

Then there is the Battle of the Gods that took place that day outside Jerusalem. The J-C Bible tells us that Jesus was put to death for claiming to be the Hebrews' (and Gentiles') God. If that story stopped there, then once again the J-C Bible as we have it, just would not exist in its present form.

And we might just then have been left with one or more 'Bibles' such as the 'Humanist Manifestos', or the 'Communist Manifesto', or the 'New Bhagavadita' or 'The Archaeology of Knowledge' or the 'Qur'an'!

Or just maybe, there wouldn't have been any of these, particularly if it can be shown that each of these have relied for their genesis on the Bible of the Old and New Testaments of the Judaeo-Christian tradition!

And we wouldn't be having this rather interesting, unboring exchange!

I left my previous with something of a dilemma!

I would say that we face a crisis of 'schizophrenia'? [You might check your Dictionary Definition]

AnthonyMarinac: You outline two positions that you cannot hold together, and yet would say that when J-Cs achieve that, 'they stand on shaky ground'?

TBG: You are surely a super-rationalist, being able to hold all religions as admissible to the battlefield. But, if the J-C Bible's accounts of its God's victories stand at the end as true, then you might just be headed for a variant of schizophrenia, and I would weep for you and with you!

Kalin!: So I take it that you likely have not read John's Gospel!? I can recommend a long reading of it ... just finishing a 4 year read myself, and now have a quite expanded view of 'Who Jesus Is'!

Kalophon: I get your point, but please don't underestimate 'the power of other gods (idols!)', 'who and/or what they are', 'where they come from', and 'how and why they exist'.

Ho Hum: What is your 'Bible' from which came your idea, that 'The Process that is true religion ... is always a present time moment to moment enquiry ... etc'?' May I ask you four questions?:
1. 'Who is your Bible's God'?
2. 'Who are your Bible's Leading Prophets?
3. 'What are your Bible's Missionary Objectives amongst our young?
4. 'Will this Bible still be standing at the end of the Battle ... in both the Western World, founded on the Judaeo-Christian Bible and the Eastern World, founded on the Qur'an?'

Peter Sellick: 'Tired old arguments' maybe, and we all must get tired with the argument, but the promised day of rest will come, and let's trust that when it arrives, we will have fought a well-fought fight ... not without 'truth' or 'virtue' or 'vigour' or 'courage' or 'love' or 'compassion'! For while ever the maxim is true, that 'Ideas have consequences ... whether they are good/godly or bad/evil', then we should not, must not sit idly by! For our sakes, and those of our young.

BeeTee.

Perhaps/maybe after 2000 years and in a totally interconnected world it is time for a new Divine Revelation---especially as the two would be world dominant CULTS are gearing up for the "final showdown".

And what about the majority of the worlds population that doesnt subscribe to the psychotic fantasies generated by the these two grotesque entirely man made cults.
On what basis, do either of these cults pretend to have a claim on the entire human family?

In their genesis they were both the creations of small tribal groups.
Why should they then have some absolute claim on the totality of humanity? They both came to domination through political conquest which had nothing whatsoever to do with Truth. As though you can bring the Divine Conscious Light)to anyone at the point of a sword or the barrel of a gun? They came to world power by the accidents of world history---there is NO GRAND DIVINE PLAN.

The sources of my "bible" are easily discernable via the essays I refer to.

One of my references urls was wrong.
1. http://www.dabase.org/proofch6.htm The first essay (A Prophetic Criticism) sums up the situation quite succinctly---isnt the criticism patently obvious?

You seem to be looking forward to the "ultimate" battle for "truth".
The fact of the matter is, that if such an ultimate battle ever occurs, there will be NO ONE left standing.
How many billions of corpses do you think it will take for your ultimate "truth" to be left standing.
And of course there are millions of "true believers" in the USA who are actively praying for and expecting this showdown to occur. Talk about mass psychosis---a psychosis which is alive and "well" in the highest corridors of power in the USA government.

You asked for my sources etc---why does it have to be a "bible" and hence conform to your pre-judgements? Why not a Sacred Scripture or a Sutra or a Upanishad.

My sources are:
1. http://www.kneeoflistening.com
2. http://global.adidam.org/books/eleutherios.html
3. http://www.easydeathbook.com
4. http://www.dabase.org/coop+tol.htm
5. http://www.coteda.com
6. http://www.aboutadidam.org

Reference # 6 provides a thorough-going explanation of the significance of my sources.

BeeTee, what are the two positions I'm having trouble holding together?

I had only one point to make, friend: that many Christians (including, I infer from your postings, you yourself) believe that the miracles of the bible literally happened, and so consequently I assert that (despite Mr Sellick's view) it is quite appropriate for opponents of the Christian world-view to rebutt that world-view by asserting that the miracles are no more than mythology.

I did not, you'll note, attack Christian people for holding those beliefs. In fact I quite respect those beliefs. Genuinely, it must be really teriffic to believe there is a loving God looking over you, and a heaven waiting at the end of the day. But I can't find a way to believe that stuff myself.

And Sellick seems to be arguing for a brand of Christianity with no miracles, no supernatural being, and no heaven. One wonders why anybody would bother signing up!

Ho Hum

The mass hysterics you describes sounds like the Global warming High Priests

Agree kalin. Why invent the BS that now represents religion (all religions except perhaps Buddhism)?

The answer is simple. The extra stories and threats are to make people afraid and seek the "church" in the absence of any other higher authority.

To quote one George Carlin :

"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!"

I particularly like Gerorge's jibe about God being all powerful but needing money. Says it all really doesn't it. A ruse to get money is the root of religion, like all good cons. Exactly! And don't forget he loves you despite punishing you.

Read more of this at http://www.rense.com/general69/obj.htm. George is a comedian but he's spot on with religion.

AnthonyMarinac,

The faith of your childhood that you describe is exactly that – a child’s version that many of us grow out of as we become adults. Most mature Christians do not hold those beliefs, and Peter is right that this caricature is a straw man selected and crafted by sceptics because it’s easy to demolish.

True, some people cling to the miraculous and supernatural, but a large number of us who describe ourselves as Christian have indeed signed up for “a brand with no miracles, no supernatural being, and no heaven”.

It is not a promised reward of heaven or the comfort of a supernatural father figure that makes me faithful, but participating in a tradition that reveals – often allegorically and symbolically, sometimes very bluntly - profound truth about existence and authentic humanity.

The supernaturalism of today’s fundamentalism is not an authentic expression of original Christianity, but a defensive, contrarian and actually very modern reaction to the perceived threat of materialism and modernity. It is a dead end that virtually defines faith as the capacity to believe the impossible.

As Alan Watts has said "The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it."

Thank you Peter. In your previous articles I have criticised you for being obscure. But here you present your views - which seem to me to be very close to those of the heretical Rudolph Bultmann (? spelling) of the 1930's ( ? decade) less ambiguously. I was a believer/ preacher/ interpreter of the biblical texts in the 1970's, and had, I think, come to a similar position as you. I decided though that I could not continue to preach symbolically whilst my congregations believed literally. I resigned my office to prefer the label secular humanist. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I should have stuck with it, become more explicit rather than symbolic, and attempted to disabuse more people of their disaccredited literal beliefs. But I couldn't bring myself to challenge what to them was so important and valuable.

I am getting this right? Peter Sellick and I actually have something in commmon?

That is, we both enjoy reading the New Testament and admire the personage of Jesus. But believe him to be conceived just like any other normal baby, and quite dead.

An error:

The author claims:
"The contemporary enemies of Christianity have a vested interest in not discovering what Christians believe about God. You would have thought that Richard Dawkins, resident as he is at Oxford would have wandered across the quad to talk with any number of theologians that reside there. I can only assume that he and his ilk are so enraged that anyone can be faithful that they are blinded to what these people have faith in."

In his book, "The God Delusion", Dawkins refers many, many times to his conversations with theologians. Many of these his names as his friends. Just one example is described on page 335 Dwakins joining forces with the Richard Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford and another 8 British bishops to petition Tony Blair against the state funding of fundametalist school. Harries also has a brief role in Dawkins' doco "the root of all evil". There are numerous others throughout the book.

The author's statement in clearly wrong.

It seems that the author barely took the time to aquaint himself with the arguments of the people he attacks

This article, together with most of the foregoing comments, is a load of canting rubbish. So now the 'miracles' have normal explanations, Jesus didn't 'rise from the dead', Mary was not impregnated by the 'god of Abraham' etc. etc. Tell that to the arm-waving nit-wits out at Hillsong; tell it to the several billion dirt poor catholics who give their money to the church in the hope of eternal salvation; tell it to the multi-millionaire TV evangelists who terrify the dim-witted with threats of eternal hellfire and damnation. Don't however have the audacity to instruct me and others like me - we already know. Christianity is on the way out, and about time. The article is nothing more than a desperate attempt to hang on in the face of ruin, and the loss of thousands of good jobs in the highly secular undustry known as religion. The writer is a hypocrite of the first order.

Yes, you'd think Sellick would have bothered to have actually read Dawkins' book before having a gratuitous swipe at him, wouldn't you?

As for the article, I'm with Gym-Fish.

Fencepost,

Thank God for the heretics who are now successfully 'dividing' the church. Not very long ago the literalist wing of the Church was powerful enough to silence the more liberal and rational voices but that is no longer the case.

Sells' contemporary critics of the Church are slowly but successfully killing off the supernatural brand of Christianity. They have clearly won the day in Australia and for this, again, I say thank God.

Sells' challenge now is to address and engage ordinary people through the symbolic, mythic and parabolic language of Scripture in a such a lifegiving way that it brings Jesus' politically radical theology to bear over against the structural discrimination that keeps indigenous Australians living in poverty and the religious arrogance that lies behind America's military adventures in the Middle East and the intolerance that recognises only one expression of sexuality and vilifies those who do not or cannot conform to it.

Thank God for those who would once more have the Church give expression to the Love that Jesus proclaimed.

I think that some posters are being hyper-critical.

A 'Secular Church' sounds like a great idea. After all, the main reason why people go to a church, mosque or synagogue is for the friendly socialisation.

So, if Sell's offered me a supernatural-free New Testament with some lectures about Cosmology and Evolution by Natural Selection, then I would be very tempted to go. Especially if I get to meet friends from my local community.

A BBQ after the gathering would be great too. Just NO silly literal fundamentalism.

Christians may scoff at Muslims for their source of authority (writings made in a cave that added to the Old Testament) but ask Christians for their source of authority and it becomes "god's book" - and not to be questioned.

The religious institutions are simply power systems which rely on mythology and fear to impose antiquated rules and conventions underpinned by fear of the unknown, ie. death. Claiming to report only to their particular god, it becomes an offense (blasphemy!) to question and so they place themselves above review and examination.

These insane mythology-based belief systems only serve to warp the universal sense of a greater being (call it universal spirituality) to impose centuries old social customs on a modern society which manifests as friction like the earthquakes between 'tectonic plates'.

Surely one day we will be seen as still living in the Dark Ages where religion will be seen as a madness legitimised and protected by institutions threatening hell and purgotory for transgressors. Where religion rose from man's need to rationalize his spirituality.

There is today much evidence pointing to a new world order - of oneness and which uses the bible's ...

THY WILL BE DONE. All is one. Religion is predicated on fear and ignorance - and worse, promotes separateness - the saved from the unsaved.

Just remove god from the equation,promise of eternal life and our humanity will find more meaning/solace in striving for the understanding of our universe than all the biblical damnation could produce in 2000yrs.

The meaning of life is in the eternal present.Death is just the absence of memory and consciousness.Our new religion should be centered around learning and faith in our fellow humans.The concept of god is a flawed human foible based on our own arrogance and insecurity.

People, I truly enjoyed reading all of your posts and much of what I was going to say has been said by you intelligent sinners.

OK I can accept that all the miracles are not to be taken so seriously, but then there still is the question of the biggest miracle of them all: GOD.

A supernatural, timeless being, who is omnipresent and has apparently lived outside time and space for eternity, decided one day to create a universe of which we are part- and that's more acceptable an idea than all the other miracles?

Why not go one step further and also claim that the idea of God is a silly miracle that shouldn't be taken so literally?

Most people agree there is something greater than all of us - be it Yahweh, Allah, God or whatever.

Religions however all impose a particular dogma, ancient rule and power systems on us based on some obscure book (thank god it wasnt Shakespeare's plays!).

Christianity like all religions is a power system. It once burned people that translated the bible so the common man could not bypass their power system and have direct access to their belief.

Religions obscure god by elevating common people that reckon they know better.

Today the religious power systems feel threatened - 9/11 is but one expression.

The bible records god having killed 2,034,344 people while satan just 10. Since then multiples more have died directly and indirectly in the name of the bible.

SAVE LIVES - BURN A BIBLE.

It’s nice for Peter Sellick to espouse his reinterpretation of Christianity. But the Bible, with all of its miracles intact, reads quite plainly. The writers of the gospels explain to us how we are supposed to interpret them. They tell of the remarkable and impressive events that speak of a powerful God.

“For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the power (i.e. miracles) of our Lord Jesus Christ and his coming again. We have seen his majestic splendour with our own eyes.” 2 Peter 1:16.

“This is that disciple who recorded these events and wrote them down. And we all know that his account of these things is accurate.” John 21:24. Here John dares anyone to challenge the accuracy of his accounts.

“Many people have written accounts about the events that took place among us. They used as their source material the reports circulating among us from the early disciples and other eyewitnesses of what God has done in fulfillment of his promises. Having carefully investigated all of these accounts from the beginning, I have decided to write a careful summary for you, to reassure you of the truth of all you were taught.” Luke, chapter 1.

I’d like to take a similar view to Celivia, but from the other side of the same coin. Celivia said that if we are willing to drop the belief in miracles, why don’t we forget about the biggest miracle of all, that of God creating the world in the first place? But by the same token, if God is capable of creating such an amazing, intricate and interconnected universe just by speaking it into existence, then all the other miracles are just child’s play, just what he eats for breakfast.

Believing in miracles may not be easy or rational for a materialist, but believing in a God that is incapable of miracles is selling Christianity short.

MickV, "Believing in miracles may not be easy or rational for a materialist, but believing in a God that is incapable of miracles is selling Christianity short."

May I compliment you on your wisdom!

If you can accept that all of humanity has something inherently bad inside them because a talking snake convinced a rib-woman to eat some fruit from a magic tree, then belief in miracles are really not that much of a stretch.

To Remco,
God probably killed a lot more than that figure in the great flood alone, nearly everyone on the planet. Should we shake our fist at God, or do we try and make some kind of sense out of the death and suffering? Though at times severe, God is not flippant or insensitive to the pain of death. Jesus too, cried at gravesites while he himself suffered the worst of deaths

FIRSTLY.. a warm welcome to all the apparently new contributors to OLO!

SECONDLY... Pete.. you really show your presuppositions here, and they are sad.

"The most extraordinary event of all is the raising of Jesus and you do not have to have a deep understanding of causality to know that this does not happen, dead men stay dead."

then.

"The stories carry the meaning even though we know that certain events could not have happened. On the one hand we know that Jesus must have had an earthly father, on the other hand the writer, of the virgin birth narrative, is telling us something about Jesus’ relation to God."

COMMENT from the Apostle Paul:

1Cor 15: 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

COMMENT from me:
Well gee golly gosh.. did we need Pete or similar 'theologians' to tell us this? (Christians_are_STUPID/deluded/strange/wierd/pitiable/add_name_of_choice_if_Christ_did_not_rise)

No, of course not, Paul was WAY ahead of them, and he was one who KNEW the 'risen' Christ personally....

So, I'm wondering who Sells means by the 'un' believers ? (Himself?)
Sorry Sells.. dead men DO rise, if God raises them and no amount of 'modern' scientific theologians can change that.

"One thing I know... once I was blind...but now I see" yep..it was pretty clear to that bloke. No magic, just the power of God, plain and simple.

With this piece Sells targets "all the present day critics of Christianity".

But who are these critics, exactly?

Muslims? Dawkins? Me?

Things become a little clearer as his argument develops.

>>Part of the problem is that we are so influenced by the scientific world view that we find it difficult to imagine any other. But to understand the biblical mind we must try.<<

Understanding the biblical mind is not, I would suggest, as particularly pressing a task for "all the present day critics of Christianity" as it would be for a Christian wrestling with the inherent contradictions of his faith.

Perhaps that is what we are seeing here?

>>The scientific critics of Christianity conclude that once it is agreed that the miracles cannot happen then Christianity loses all credibility<<

This is an interesting observation. "Scientific critics" again. I wonder who they might be? I know I don't speak for anyone except myself, but among my concerns about Christianity, the science part is pretty small beer. Sure, I don't subscribe to the literal nature of the miracles, but that is but a tiny portion of my scepticism.

More and more this is sounding like an author whose faith is diminishing, and is trying to bolster it up by throwing a few grenades at the ideas that are starting to sound... well, kind of plausible, at least.

>>In order to see that this is so we must suspend our scientific critical faculty and listen to the texts on their terms. Alas this is something that the present day crop of critics are loath to do.”

Ah, so it is Dawkins and Hitchens we're talking to, is it?

Unfortunately, in order to spike their guns, Sells has had to take a position that says "don't worry about the miracles, it doesn't actually matter whether they actually happened or not".

Follow that path for long enough, Sells, and you will find that soon you will be sitting in the gallery with the rest of us, wondering why these strange religious folk insist on believing the unbelievable.

Best of luck with your journey.

Boaz, I know that you are a great fan of Paul, but there is no need to exaggerate.

>>Paul was WAY ahead of them, and he was one who KNEW the 'risen' Christ personally<<

No, he didn't. There is absolutely no evidence that Saul met Jesus, let alone "knew him personally".

I am aware that Christians tend to use the word "know" very loosely, and indeed that you often profess to "know him personally" yourself.

But it is misleading to suggest, as you do here, that Paul's statements are first-hand evidence of the resurrection. But they do - as Sells clearly demonstrates - introduce one of the major contradictions that Christians are forced to accept.

As you yourself point out, Paul places the resurrection front and centre. Believe it in its literal entirety, or you cannot call yourself a Christian.

That is pretty strong stuff. But being the smart operator he was, Paul understood that if you can get them to swallow the big one, all the rest - the blind man, the leper, Lazarus and all that - are pretty small potatoes.

So we are left exactly where we were before. The first major Christian evangelist with a tough message to sell, with a single self-proclaimed event, the visitation along the road to Damascus, as the motivation for his work.

That may be "knowing the 'risen' Christ personally in your book, Boaz, but it really just another story, as Sells so eloquently describes.

"When I prepare the sermon I read the biblical texts “as if” they describe an actual event (and sometimes they do) even though that event is a material impossibility."

There ye go.

Interesting that this thread itself seems to make my point for me: many of the Christians who have posted on this forum really do believe in the miracles, and believe they can happen if God says so. Thus, it is legitimate for other voices ("scientific" or otherwise) to seek to rebutt that position.

Rhian, appreciated your response. I thought it was sensible and useful. I wonder though whether you still have a religion once you remove the supernatural bits? Or do you have a philosophy? I guess that might just be a semantic point, if what you have helps you lead a better and happier life.

Anthony

A note for all pious people – a philosophical and psychological (as opposed to scientific) critique of religion:

Debates over reason, facticity, logic and evidence aside, what bothers me most about your chosen way of being is your total lack of intellectual honesty. What you demonstrate so profoundly in your various attempts to rationalise this (‘truth’) and legitimate that (set of values) is a fundamentalist and unapologetic ‘will to deception’.

“What deception?” you ask. Well, it begins with the psychologically inconvenient truth that we – homo sapiens – happen to be the only species on earth to have developed the capacity to become aware of the utter meaninglessness of this great big cosmic accident that we call existence. This, I couldn’t agree more, is a rather scary thought. For the brave, healthy and honest atheists amongst us, we simply face up to this truth and live by affirming all that life has to offer. But for the pious people, you turn your backs on life and seek a cowardly comfort through your stories of wish-fulfilment fantasy and anthropomorphic projections; rather like the poor old ostrich with its head in the sand.

Continued below>>…

>> Continued from above…

For a child – or indeed an ostrich – this process of wilful deception is perhaps excusable. But for a full-grown adult, it is really quite pathetic. Worse still, it is nihilistic, and likely only to promote an attitude that advocates running from rather than addressing problems at their core. Many of the world’s destitute choose to deceive themselves this way; they turn to the otherworldly in order to give some kind of meaning to the suffering they are forced to endure. However, the tragic flaw with this head in the sand approach is that the initial problem that pushes people away from the worldly in the first place is never dealt with.

Unless the great problems of existence are dealt with HONESTLY, and at their core, they will never be overcome; the ostrich will surely be eaten by its predator, those living in destitution will do so for longer, and those struggling with the meaninglessness of existence will never find themselves in a position of being truly comfortable in affirming life for what it is. The pious will never develop practical-philosophical worldly capacity to deal with life’s difficulties – for they will always be preoccupied with the nihilistic vocation of creating and affirming otherworldly stories that provide them with the comfort blanket that their inner-child – or inner-ostrich – desires.

To this I say, be brave my friends! For it is surely time to relinquish your comfort blankets, give up your childish stories, affirm life and all that worldly, earthly existence has to offer, and live like the adults you are!

I don't have a problem with what anyone believes, whether you be a christian who believes in miracles, a christian who doesn't, a muslim, a buddhist or a passionate believer in the super flying spaghetti monster. If it makes sense to you, go ahead and worship it.
However, where I part company with all religions is when they try to tell all humanity - whether a follower of their brand or not - how they should live and what they should think. I have also always had a problem with the fact that all religions seem to have a problem with women being allowed to exercise their full humanity without being controlled by some pack of old (usually) men telling them how they should live, dress and behave.
As an unbeliever, I am perfectly happy for believers to follow any old rules they like, however irrational and strange they may seem to me. Why does it seem to be so hard for many believers to accord the same freedom to me? No athiests have ever gone around beating young women on the ankles with canes because they think they're not dressed modestly enough. Conversely, I don't approve of athiests banning women from wearing headscarves - argue with them by all means, but freedom for the unbeliever has to mean freedom for the believer too. Unbelievers haven't often held serious debates on whether women are fully human, either, or banned them from standing in front of an altar, or called them unclean or polluted. Whenever that happens there is some sort of religion at the bottom of it. Either god is a hoary old mysogynist, or deity's really are man-made.

I wonder how many people really believe, or just need to believe.

How many more are just participating in Pascal's Wager without even knowing it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager#Rebuttals

How many more think that this is the only way you can hope to "know the unknowable" and make sense of the universe.

From my experience, going to a church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

Arguments, so many well constructed arguments....

Like Tommy Teddy said, "A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument"

AnthonyMarinac, you raise an interesting point – “I wonder though whether you still have a religion once you remove the supernatural bits? Or do you have a philosophy?”

Some “religions” have few if any supernatural embellishments (Confucianism, some types of Buddhism).

Many secular political philosophies operate a lot like religions (Marxism, the more extreme forms of environmentalism, dare one say Dawkins and his memes), with doctrines, prophetic and apocalyptic predictions and warnings, an evangelical and redemptionist message and scant tolerance for heretics.

Quite a few self-describing Christians argue that Jesus’ message was mainly anti-religious, and that authentic Christianity is in fact a rebuttal of religion as commonly understood (including supernaturalism, the corrupt, controlling and self-serving tendencies of the church as institution, exclusivism etc).

Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously called for “religionless Christianity.”

So, the semantic questions remain important - this time, how do we define a religion: as a set of ideas and beliefs about God, as faith in the supernatural and miraculous, as an institution promoting a set of beliefs (and its own self-interest along the way)?

By the definition of many on this forum – both self-described Christians and non-belieivers – I don’t qualify as a Christian. As Rache puts it so succinctly, the fact I go to church (almost) every week doesn’t make me one, if I don't believe all the things Christians are supposed to believe.

Yet I think the evolution from naive and literal faith to something broader (if fuzzier) is an important part of spiritual growth. Fowler famously (though, in my view, rather mechanistically) identified common stages of faith development that begin with literalism but progress and can lead ultimately to what he describes as universalising faith, though many adults get stuck in the earlier, more literal stages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stages_of_faith_development

After a certain point in this process, whether this is “religion” or “philosophy” maybe doesn’t matter so much.

How about this? Religion is an ego-based way of being. It imposes protocols to sustain a system to distinguish the 'saved' from the "unsaved'. Christianity creates an 'it' out of god which is embelished with some little fables and corruptions of what all other religions point to but often without the harshness of Christianity (and Islam).

The bible is a corruption. Irenaeus in 180 AD took out any bits that undermined the system (the "church") such as the Gospel of Judas (which gave people direct access to the light). Today Christianity sits as an aberant religion underpinned by a uncontestable book (one is a heretic if one should question that book.)

There is only god. Burn the bible, koran and torah and the world would be seen as heaven for the soul.

Dear Remco ... and perhaps also burn Murdoch's and others' news media ... and lots of books and discs from who knows where ... but all that would achieve is to do away with the accounts and reports and recounts of what goes on 'our worlds' ... speeding cars along Western Highway killing older community minded couple ... which Bible or Qur'an or Torah gave rise to that kind of 'heaven'? ... and we'd be left anyway with what goes on in our heads and hearts, and what we do with our tongues and hands.
Would these be 'heaven for your soul' Remco?
I have kept up with today's new posts and intend responding again later! Sweet dreams!

*sigh* People like Remco and LSH make it really hard to participate in these debates as a nonbeliever trying to critique or intellectually interrogate Christianity. One becomes associated with these rather extreme perspectives. I suddenly have a sense of empathy for how a moderate muslim must feel half the time!!

For the record, gang, not all of we unbelievers think you are cowards needing comfort blankets, and not all of us think your holy books should be burned. Some of us just don't believe, is all.

Anthony

Ena,
While you make your point fairly well, your case is not aided by sweeping generalisations of this type – “the fact that all religions seem to have a problem with women being allowed to exercise their full humanity.” I only have to show one counter example to show this statement wrong, and I don’t think this is true of the church that I fellowship with.

Also, it might not be true that, “Unbelievers haven't often held serious debates on whether women are fully human.” I don’t know if you believe in evolution or not, for most atheists it comes as standard, but in places where evolution was preached most solidly in the first half of last century, they did debate whether African and aboriginal women (and men) were fully human.

Ena (and others),
I love most of the Brussels Declaration values. I wonder what believers think of the declaration’s values on religion.
https://www.iheu.org/v4e/html/the_declaration.html

On religion:
"For many people, their religion or belief is a profoundly important part of their life and of their personal identity. There can be no laws restricting freedom of belief, but freedom of religion does not extend to practices which could harm the rights of others. Freedom of religion includes the right to change one’s religion or belief, or to reject religion entirely.

Europeans are free to practise their religion in any way they choose provided their practice conforms to the law.
There is no conflict between freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief. Attempts to outlaw defamation of religion are misplaced. It is the believer not the belief that needs protection. People and property are already protected by law. Religions and beliefs per se need no other protection and all demands for such protection should be rejected. Defamation of religious believers should be treated in the same manner as defamation of anyone else.

No institution should be immune from criticism. The right to question any belief and to freely express one’s views on any matter is a human right. Human beings have human rights, religions, beliefs and ideas do not."

Celivia, I and most Christians I know would support these sentiments wholeheartedly. Bishop John Spong, arch critic of fundamentalism, says that “any God who can be killed, deserves to be.” Christians can only gain, and should have nothing to fear, from listening to criticism and doubts from inside and outside the faith.

I have one parial reservation - the proviso that practices are permitted “provided their practice conforms to the law” is reasonable, but may in certain circumstances be challenged. Some people may feel bound to break laws that discriminate against the practice of their religion, or laws that are fundamentally unjust, or even sometimes in countering some greater evil.

Martin Luth King – who often broke the law, though never lightly - wrote from Birmingham jail, “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

Bonhoeffer, who I cited above, was executed by the Nazis for plotting to kill Hitler.

Neither, however, expected to escape the punishment in consequence of their action. Indeed Ghandi argued that unjust punishment is a powerful propaganda weapon against repression.

These are not uniquely Christian or religious values - many principled secular humanists feel much the same – but they mean that the commitment to obey the law cannot be entirely unqualified.

To Bee Tee (and AnthonyMarinac). How on earth can you make a connection with the bible and violence and civil qualities? Which countries are the most warlike, violent and unruly? Where is the home of the Mafia, the Inquisitions, the Spanish conquests of the Americas etc (I am tempted to include GW Bush).

Christianity has promoted more deaths in the name of the Lord than Asian beliefs. It, like Islam, serves to impose a dogma that superimposes on the innate being of people. We are NOT born in "sin".

Yes burn the bible. Kill god. Yes do take on the uncorrupted sayings of Jesus (before being tailored to create and serve the establishment - that Jesus so hated). Love your fellow man as one and respect life. Be present. Dont be misled by the corruption of the bible terms like "meek" and "sinners" etc.

The religions and their dogmas and their sacrosanct books will surely place these millenia as the extended dark ages before enlightenment.

Sincere greetings all. My early readings of Peter Sells' provocative statement left me thinking (and I paraphrase): he is a scientist and a preacher whose view of reality integrates both the natural - testable by the outward eye and hand on the material - and the supernatural - testable by the inward eye and the hand of the Spirit on the 'invisible'. If any new observation from either realm appears to contradict his previous experiences, then he makes the quest to integrate these. At worst he would hold the new contradiction in tension with the old experience.

I didn't read that Peter didn't believe in any of the extraordinary miracles of Bible text (nor I suspect any extraordinary scientific observation he might make). Rather, he has embraced into his personal being (body, mind, soul and spirit) what might once have appeared to him to be two contradictory observations, for example, "Dead men stay dead" and "Dead Jesus came back alive bodily, and stays that way"!

His reference to F Scott Fitzgerald's statement is firstly what I perceive Peter Sells is and does, in his laboratory weekdays, in his sermon preparation and delivery weekends, but ultimately in social discussions and life's practice the following week.

But I also perceive that is what we all are doing in this forum: accommodating new reality with the old. It's just that some have discovered the wider reality that unifies, for example, the above apparent contradiction, while others have not.

I still hold basically to my earlier reading of Peter: what he has written, who he is, what he believes, and what he practises. What a provocateur?

But dear fellow forum members, I hold you in this high esteem also, even to the point of recognising you as 'provocateurs-speciales for the right and true'. We may not presently look out on the natural and the supernatural with the same perceptions, but we are talking to one another, and that is much the better way to do warfare!

Wobbles,
The talking snake, the rib woman, and the fruit off the magic tree. What do we make of these? I think you raise these in jest, but I want to try and deal with them, even if many think I try to defend the indefensible.

A big part of Sellick’s article, and also the proceeding discussion, has been to ask what is true Christianity? Is the resurrection (in which Sellick does not believe) a necessary belief in the Christian faith (as others claim it to be).

I think Sellick is kidding himself if he doesn’t think the bodily resurrection of Christ was not a real event, at least in the opinion of the New Testament writers. If Jesus did not resurrect, then you could throw away the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. What would there be left of Christian teaching? Not much. You could give all the useless copies of the New Testament to Remco to burn. It seems he’s having a big barbeque.

Jesus' death and resurrection is the central teaching of the New Testament (reference 1Corinthians chapter 15).

Now about that rib woman. Adam was wounded in his side to begin the human race. Jesus was pierced in his side with a spear, the culmination of his death.

The talking snake. Adam and Eve believed the snake (the devil) in the Garden of Eden. This was mankind’s downfall. Jesus ignored all temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane, even to the point of dying on the cross. This brought about mankind’s salvation.

The magic tree. It was a tree in the Garden of Eden that brought about mankind’s downfall. Similarly, it was a tree on which Jesus was crucified that brought mankind’s salvation.

All Christians, at least all those who have contributed to this thread, would believe Christ died on a cross. It is central to the NT. The writers of the NT went one further and said he resurrected. Now, we can choose to believe it or not, but it seems to me that it all comes as a package deal. All or nothing.

"How on earth can you make a connection with the bible and violence and civil qualities?"

Don't you verbal me Remco. I made no connection one way or another. All I did was distinguish my own (hopefully) respectful dissent from the views of those who advocate the desecration of other people's holy books. You included.

Mick V
The resurrection is indeed central to the Christian faith. A bodily resurrection isn’t.

Whatever Paul met on the Damascene road, it wasn’t a reanimated corpse (non of Paul’s companions saw or heard anything). And in 1 Corinthians Paul indicates that the resurrection is not, or at least not merely, a physical thing.

The original ending of Mark’s gospel is an empty tomb, a strange messenger and some scared disciples – no bodily appearance at all.

The other gospels are cryptic and inconsistent (when read literally) in their post-resurrection accounts. Were the disciples in Jerusalem or Galilee? How come so many of the stories say people who knew Jesus extremely well didn’t at first recognise him - those on the Emmaus road didn’t know him despite walking and talking with him for a considerable a time, Mary took him for a gardener, and even Peter, John and the Apostles didn’t at first recognise him or his voice when fishing in Galilee? How did he mysteriously appear and disappear, including sudden materialisation in a locked room?

These are not the types of things the gospel writers wrote about him before his death, even when describing “miracles”, indicating that the post-resurrection Jesus is not the same as the physical pre-crucifixion Jesus.

Your claim that biblical literalism is an “all or nothing” package has no logic. Muslims believe in Christ’s life and respect him as a prophet. Probably most people of other faiths and none will accept that Jesus was a real historical figure lived and was executed in first century Palestine. Many Christians believe much more than that about him without accepting the literal truth of miracles or a physical resurrection.

Imagine, if we all accepted Jesus was a mystic (and whatever miracles and associations you care to make about the man). There is no dispute he once lived.

Imagine with a little creative winding back of the damage the likes of Ireaeus made in 180AD when he wrote out the bits that didnt suit the church of his day (eg perhaps the Gospel of Judas).

Forget the mythologies as irrelevant to the true wisdom of what Jesus stood for. What is left is a way of being so very similar to the essence of all the religions.

We are then approaching a universal belief. All that would then be required is the killing of god (and buddha etc). God is not an object or thing - an antromorphic aberation.

We would then approach a way of being where we are all one. There can only be love. No sense of separateness. No debates about one religion compared to another. We would be in the now.

All this debate here and elsewhere would be irrelevant.

Thy will be done.

Its Amazing to see the constant and unaltered responses from those who believe they KNOW that christianity is an absolute myth, a fictitious reproduction of the life of individual which was far less extraoridanory than many beleive. Its important to provide an educated review of the debate rather than regurgitate what others have presented for centuries, trust me I have heard many of the arguments from family, friends, workers, student colleagues who all believe they know better than to believe christianity is real and the bible is documented fact. On the flip side of the coin noone can provide any response to support the BIG BANG theory, evolution, or any other scientific measure,

Any academic would know that simply stating a view is not enough to prove it, Christianity has hundreds of well documented events to support its claims, what do those especially in this forum have to support theirs?

And one more thing those in this forum with the lack of respect to refer to Us christians in the negative and pathetic ways that you have, do yourselves a favour and aim a little lower on the intelligence scale for your debating partners, after all all Our God is far more intelligent than the lame attacks that you make on our credibility.

Dear AnthonyMarinac, yours was the first post, and you have maintained a respectful position throughout. Well done! (Ryaninsa, dear Christian, please note!)

Your question: "BeeTee, what are the two positions I'm having trouble holding together?"

They were ...

Position 1: The teaching '... that the miracles of the Bible HAD actually happened and were to be taken literally', and ...

Position 2: '... I protested the unlikelihood of those events (and) ... I do not follow that faith.'

You further state later that '... (you) quite respect those beliefs ... (b)ut I can't find a way to believe that stuff myself' ... which I submit Anthony can be paraphrased 'I'm having trouble holding these two positions together.'

May I offer A STRATEGY, and A CHALLENGE for redressing your dilemma?!

STRATEGY:
a. Read through, once or more (I'm up to my umpteenth read!), John's Gospel, as you would any book.

b. Get the author's different angles on 'Who Jesus Is' by progressively putting yourself into the shoes of both 'questing believers' such as John himself, Peter, Nicodemus ... and also 'skeptical questioners' such as the Temple authorities, their Officers, and Romans such as the Official (John 4:46-54), Pilate and the Soldiers.

c. Then come to Chapters 20 and 21 and ask what has happened, first to apparent skeptics such as NICODEMUS and Pilate and the Temple Authorities, and second to 'apparent questing believers' such as Peter and JUDAS and John and Thomas and the Marys; try to see yourself amongst these people, in circumstances like these, people like you and me, witnessing these events.

THE CHALLENGE: Now, Anthony, honestly give your response to 'Who Jesus Is' with all of your mind, heart, soul and spirit!

The experience will be like running a marathon, you struggling with all the aches and pains and oxygen deficit etc. ... alone ... yet 'in the grandstands' you will not be alone ... all heaven and earth awaiting the moment you will reach the finishing tape!

And all of us are running this marathon! But will we all reach the finishing tape and claim our prize?

Rhian, thanks for your several comments above.

If I caught you correctly, you say the resurrection of Jesus need not be physical or corporal. I would suggest that this does not make sense. What is a resurrection if it is not physical? I am most happy to agree that Jesus’ resurrection was more than just physical but it couldn’t have been less than that.

All the people connected with the event are saying that the body is missing. What happened to it? Is it rotting away somewhere, as in the normal course of events after a body dies? Or did something amazingly miraculous and supernatural take place?

When I spoke of an “all or nothing package”, I mean that we need to be faithful to the testimony of the apostles, which are the most accurate and reliable eye-witness accounts of what happened. These writings have come to us as a whole, and can’t be divided into bits we prefer and bits we don’t prefer. This does not mean they are above criticism, but that their testimony stands as a unity. The record of events is either right in its totality or it is in error. And they record that the person and body of Jesus was once again a walking, talking, eating, touchable and recognisable reality (however apparently the slightly upgraded model).

Can I also quickly add that I don’t like to call myself a literalist. I would prefer the term ‘plain reader’ of the Scripture. That is, I try and interpret it as the author intended (the way you would any other book). If it is poetry, read it as such. Read the narrative as narrative, history as history, symbolism in prophecy as symbolic, etc. etc.

BeeTee, weren't you my teacher in Year 3? Your style is very familiar.

As someone who shares AntonyMarinac's views, of respecting the right of people to believe in any god they choose but not believing in one myself, I hope you don't mind if I join the conversation.

You posit that the inability to accept that the Bible should be taken literally, coupled with a protestation at "the unlikelihood of those events", plus "a respect [for] those beliefs" coupled with an inability "to believe that stuff myself" constitutes - in your words - a dilemma.

I obviously can't speak for Antony, but I would be interested to hear why you consider this sequence of thoughts to be a problem, for which you kindly offer "A STRATEGY, and A CHALLENGE for redressing your dilemma" (Your capitals)

The problem I have is your proposition that I consult texts whose accuracy I question, in order to address the "problem".

>>Read through... John's Gospel, as you would any book.<<

Any book?

Lord of the Rings, perhaps, or a John Grisham potboiler? That would require the suspension of disbelief, and if I could suspend disbelief, I wouldn't have a "dilemma" in the first place.

(It cannot be read as history either, given that the author wasn't actually there, but that's another issue)

If I were writing a document to support the growth of a new religion, I would probably include the story arc "first they didn't believe, then they did". It is a standard authorial device, so in exhorting me to read it “as you would any book”, you encourage my view that it is predominantly fiction.

Your position is identical to Ryaninsa in many ways.

>>Christianity has hundreds of well documented events to support its claims...<<

Well documented? Certainly in the sense that there are a few carefully selected documents around to support the story. But as Ryaninsa also says, very perceptively,

>>simply stating a view is not enough to prove it<<

How utterly inane this debate has become. BORING indeed.

Does a religion really rely on the credibility of the writings of the long dead when any demographic study of the Christian world points only to a more violent history and no difference in their longevity, freedom from disease or all the other expressions that Christians make supplicant prayers for.

Using a book like Grimm’s with fairy tales, of sacrifice, murder and misdeeds.

I am not born in sin and neither were you. Jesus shared his believes. Others translated them to suit their ends.

Burn the bible. Kill “god”. A religion is a straightjacket to freedom to inquire, live, love and enjoy this "kingdom of god".

Rhian, “I have one parial reservation - the proviso that practices are permitted “provided their practice conforms to the law” is reasonable, but may in certain circumstances be challenged. Some people may feel bound to break laws that discriminate against the practice of their religion, or laws that are fundamentally unjust, or even sometimes in countering some greater evil. ”

Good comment, and I tend to agree with you that in certain circumstances laws may and should be challenged. Law is not an end in itself. Laws should be useful, like traffic lights, to keep things orderly.

But that doesn’t mean that the law applies to every single case, and neither are laws always good, morally. We once had slavery and sex discrimination protected by laws, luckily because of different times and different social attitudes these laws changed; they were no longer seen as ‘just’.
We now struggle with other issues. For example, euthanasia. A religious friend of mine is set against it because it is immoral, while I take the opposite view, as do many others. I think that it is immoral to NOT to have it available for the suffering people who want and need it. Should the Catholic Church dictate to others, who do not adhere to the Catholic Church, whether they can have euthanasia? Abortion is another issue we struggle with right now, so is same sex marriage. These are issues that are forced on non-Catholics by the Catholic Church.
Why should religion have the monopoly on morals? Slavery, sex discrimination, homosexual marriages, abortion and euthanasia are or were all morals held up by the Church, but we can clearly see now that these religious morals were no longer acceptable. We can clearly see that morals and laws that represent some of the morals are not absolute.

Religions and any other organisation that feel the law should be challenged will have to go through the proper exercise of the lawmaking powers of judges.

Sells, it is most unusual for you to abstain from a debate that you have started, even if it is (usually) to deride us lot for the shallowness of our thought processes and the paucity of our argument.

I'm intrigued that we haven't heard from you, especially given the "New Sells" character that you have placed before us, with yet another layer of shiny certainty abraded by wind and time...

It does rather sound as though you are only just hanging onto your religion by the slenderest of threads, watching the myths and fancies that have decorated it for so long gradually disappearing one by one under the unkind jackboot of knowledge and awareness.

Say it isn't so.

I for one would miss you.

Pericles, my dear Year 3 Lad! No offense meant by my ‘style’! I remember your paper aeroplanes landing plumb centre of my paper tray! You didn’t know, but I kept your best models!

Can you now accept Mick V’s expansion of my ‘Read through John's Gospel, as you would any book’ as my carelessly-expressed meaning? John’s Gospel is well-attested as an example of the genre of ‘first hand eye-witness testimony’ to ‘Who Jesus Is’. Not only is it ‘well documented’, but it is comprehensive of its use of hard evidences in achieving its purpose. Also, it has been highly selective of material, as John attests in Chapter 20, verses 30 and 31 and Chapter 21, verse 25, but not for the purpose of discounting any evidence of substantial value.

Remco criticises Irenaeus valuing the earlier 1st Century four gospels over the later 2nd Century gospels, such as that of Judas, Thomas and Mary: ‘Ulterior motives’ belonged not to Irenaeus, but to the later Gnostic Christians, who quite definitely did not witness Jesus first-hand. John was such a first-hand witness, and in the late 1st Century was Polycarp’s Teacher, in Smyrna of Asia Minor, and Polycarp was the Teacher of Irenaeus in the early to mid 2nd Century. Heart, mind, soul and spirit, they shared a common love for the Risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Pericles, your request: “I would be interested to hear why you consider this sequence of thoughts (of AnthonyMarinac) to be a problem”. In another life I was a fizz-banger teacher, and by ‘problem’ I had in mind the scientific approach to classroom science experiments of ‘Problem’, ‘Hypothesis’, ‘Controlled Experiment’, ‘Results’, ‘Conclusion’. Resolving the two apparently contradictory positions of Anthony will be very much like solving a ‘Science Problem’. Good scientists and good Christians have characteristically been the same person, but not excluding many non-Christians! Enjoy solving your 'problem' Anthony, and anyone else who shares it!

And, you add: “It cannot be read as history either, given that the author wasn't actually there, but that's another issue”. May I take that issue up in my next post?

BeeTee, how flattering that you remember those paper aeroplanes. You have no idea how much care I lavished on their flimsy ailerons.

I am intrigued by your endorsement of Mick V's reading - "I try and interpret it as the author intended... narrative as narrative, history as history, symbolism in prophecy as symbolic, etc. etc."

Surely, before you can isolate the intention of the author, it is important to identify him. Or her. This is a discussion that, I am led to believe, has been under way for some considerable time, amongst scholars far more aware of the available material than I, and infinitely more capable of tracing its source.

Even were you able to pinpoint exactly which individual, or group of individuals, is responsible for the writing, how can you possibly discern their motives?

You propose that a sound analytical methodology might be to "try to see yourself amongst these people, in circumstances like these, people like you and me, witnessing these events."

This indicates the viewpoint to be a local resident of some kind, but with the assumption that the events actually did take place.

I prefer, as you may have gathered, to put myself in the shoes of the PR agency of an early religious evangelist, given a brief to "sex up" the story of a little-known figure who died a political death a few years earlier, but who was generally regarded as a really neat guy.

A few miracles here, a couple of arguments with authority there, a dramatisation of his execution and some mysterious happenings afterward and voilà!! The foundations of a new religion, one that reinvigorated its Jewish roots and refreshed the whole story into a more "human" package.

By the way, you once again referred to

>>Resolving the two apparently contradictory positions of Anthony<<

My question was not about your methodology, but the fact that I could not discern any contradiction in his position, and was wondering if you could enlighten me.

Just like you did in the old days, when you told us all about stamens and pistils.

We are getting totally lost in personal details and off the topic. BeeTee, I do not value some gospels over the others - I just question the authority and the impact of Irenaeus. But then I dont care about words on paper documenting stories.

I simply ask, what have Christians left if their book was proven no more legitimate than the Torah or the Koran? But let's not get on to that, what legitimacy do Christians really have? There is NO evidence their believe is superior to others. Yes there are some recorded "miracles" over the years but UFOs have been sighted and well documented as well. Take out the book and nothing is left except edifices, statues and people. Nothing superior to offer over other systems. It's all comes back to something past. Christians dont live longer, healthier, or have anything to show for their belief and practices. It is as hollow as the statues to saints in the temples. Empty words pretending as a "saved" they would be in "sin" whatever that means.

The author quite rightly reminds us that the apparent battle between science and religion is really the disguised dispute between naturalism (physicalism) and supernaturalism.

But what he claims to have discovered is that the New Testament does not really contain supernatural elements. Dispute solved!

He wants to urge us against missing the meaning of the Gospels but does this by spiritualising away the events the Gospels narrate.

Ironically, the unacknowledged commitment to naturalism the author condemns is the same commitment that has him rewrite orthodox Christianity according the gospel of Bultmann. If the author was serious about his biblical criticism he would avail himself of current scholarship ‘Jesus and the Victory of God’ Tom Wright (greatest living Protestant theologian) is just one instance. Or for a quick read Dr William Lane Craig http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/menus/historical.html

Just because supernaturalism is unfashionable among a slight majority of his colleagues and just because many of them are philosophically illiterate and reductionistic does not mean that the solution to their ills lies in anachronistic re-interpretations of the Gospel narratives. Doing violence to the texts will not bring peace to insoluble philosophical disputes.

The author writes about causation but rules a particular kind out ab initio (from the beginning) his justification for this is to use Kant and Hume as authorities. Kant claimed all our knowledge is subjective and Hume believed that truth could never be found. Is the author’s essay merely subjective? Is it true? The dishonesty of the author is immediately apparent. I would much prefer the honesty of his atheist colleagues than Sellick’s dishonest theism.

On David Hume, these pages from GK Chesterton might heal his wounded imagination http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Gilbert_K_Chesterton/Orthodoxy/The_Ethics_of_Elfland_p3.html

How the author keeps the idea of a God who as Lord of history and the material universe could not (because of philosophical materialism!) do the things in the New Testament and the idea of omnipotence in his mind at the same time is surely a mark of an intelligence that has lost the ability to function.

Pericles,
If you have no faith, I don’t understand why you are concerned that Sells’s faith is on the verge of disappearing. Why should that bother you?

Remco is feeling the debate is becoming boring. Can we spice it up for him? He may be hard to impress. After the flames have gone down on his book burning bonfire he may be looking for some other pyrotechniques.

Remco, if you dislike the Bible so much, I don’t suggest that you burn them. Such protests bring free publicity, and it’s already a best seller every year. You will become very busy trying to burn them all.

You also say we’re getting off the topic, which I thought was the credibility of Christianity in the face of a modern materialist view which discounts miracles. Sellick doesn’t go in for miracles. But if you don’t believe at least in Jesus rising from the dead, why bother being a Christian? What would you do on Easter morning, eat chocolate?

The resurrection is the foundation of the faith, and that momentous event is what separates Christianity from other faiths and ideologies. The New Testament is the testimony of the witnesses of the event. We can’t escape the importance of those writings.

Following that, the testimony of Paul and others leading up to today who have experienced the miraculous power of the risen Christ. The evidence is in lives forgiven (forgiveness being Jesus’ main message) and changed for the better.

Most usually don’t believe in the possibility of current day miracles, unless you’ve experienced one for yourself. Miracles such as healing are a sign for unbelievers. (Though they are not a replacement for caring hospitals and medical science. Jesus never promised that life would become a bed of roses. He said faith would be tested by hardship. He predicted people would hate his followers just as they hated him. They may even come around and burn your books.)

Some of the growth among the Pentecostal churches can be attributed to their insistence that miracles can occur today. Unlike Sells, their faith is not on the decline.

The same old tired unbelievers arguing.

Mick V asks:

>>If you have no faith, I don’t understand why you are concerned that Sells’s faith is on the verge of disappearing. Why should that bother you?<<

It's called compassion, Mick.

I can still feel compassion for others, even though I am not a Christian, surprising as this may be to you.

Sells has written many pieces about Christianity and his faith for this forum. On occasions I have even taken the opportunity to enter into a discussion with him, even though he operates on an intellectual plane far above mine. But when he writes an article that is so chock-full of self-doubt, I feel for him.

Just as you would feel for someone who has discovered that their partner is cheating on them, or that their child is a drug addict. I can't help it, I just feel sorry for them.

It seems also to have had an effect on other camp-followers, who seem stunned by the whole thing.

aqvarivs for example is usually far more vocal than this:

>>The same old tired unbelievers arguing<<

It is significant that aqvarivs picked the one phrase from Sells' piece that gives the whole game away.

Although it is the title of the article, and one might expect a little illustration as to what they are actually arguing about, the entire discussion excludes unbelievers.

It is all about believers. Either believing, or not believing, in miracles.

The article says nothing about unbelievers except "...they have taken the fall of the medieval mind, that occurred as a result of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the rise of natural science, to be also the fall of the Christian mind."

A bold statement, but one that is not supported by the rest of the piece. Most unbelievers may from time to time observe that Christianity has changed its shape a bit. But they have absolutely no view or interest in whether this represents "the fall of the Christian mind."

It is only Christians who worry about such stuff, as Sells' article clearly shows.

Mick V (and in a sense others) pick up on my burning of the bible and the conflagration it would create etc etc. I say there is much wisdom in the bible, no question of it, BUT the evidence points to misinterpretation, the literal taken over the symbolism. The messages, including in particular by Jesus, have been LOST by superficiality - translated to become trivial. So too my reference to burning the bible, killing god.

We can live without the bible. Its literal translation only promotes divisiveness so my proposed “burning” reduces the distraction from the truth. On balance, I humbly suggest we are better off without that book. Without that book we don’t get into a “yeah yeah, my book (the bible, koran, torah etc) is better than yours” childishness. Which is what this is about – puerile debate about the recorded miracles (two women have elevated Jesus to the supernatural).

So without the “book” what have you left?? Well, what have you Christians left without being able to claim a superior book? I suggest not much. Less claim to miracles than there are claims about UFO’s. Again, Christians do not experience healthier living, live no longer, are no less violent or criminal etc. than many other parts of the world. Christians, you have a real credibility problem without your book.

There is however one thing you can lay claim to. That book will help to overcoming FEAR – the fear of what happens after you die. That, and that alone is what the belief provides, an overcoming of nihalation.
No wonder you squirm when I talk of “burning of the book”.

What about learning there is only love. We are one. To respect each others as equals. To stop trying to convert others to your belief. To trust yourself. To belief in yourself

OK, let’s look at the philosophy that’s left after Thomas Jefferson cut all the supernatural bits and miracles out of the Bible a couple of hundred years ago and we can find in the Jefferson Bible.
We now can focus, without the hocus pocus, on what’s left from Jesus’ teachings which can be summarized in a short list:

• Be just; justice comes from virtue, which comes from the heart.

• Treat people the way we want them to treat us.

• Always work for peaceful resolutions, even to the point of returning violence with compassion.

• Consider valuable the things that have no material value.

• Do not judge others.

• Do not bear grudges.

• Be modest and unpretentious.

• Give out of true generosity, not because we expect to be repaid.

That seems to be all there is to it- and I doubt whether his teachings were even unique or original, really (if Jesus existed at all).

Heck, I may have promoted "Burn the Bible" but that does not mean the Bible does not contain wisdom.
Now Celivia promotes a simplified version but I feel that the extract is horribly superficial and misses the messages of Jesus profoundly. Playing around with a book like Jefferson did, is far far worse than burning it.

But hey, let's get away from the book debate. We are all wired up for spirituality it is just that some have been imprinted with some ancient out of date mythologies where we have to turn a blind eye to some whacko practices like sacrifices and angels etc. Whether Jesus lived or not is only relevant to cults.

A quick response to the psychological ‘faith is simply a fear of death response’ type argument. It would be equally easy for me to say that unbelievers deliberately suppress their awareness of God knowing that they will have to account to the Ultimate Judge for their conduct upon death.

You've all got it wrong. God simply wanted everyone to make the CHOICE to LOVE one another. And what is the definition of love...God is love. So put God into everything you do. Be kind to your neighbour, your enemy. Put others first and your own greed last.
Don't waste your time arguing over who knows God best and who can best define the meaning of existence. Just be good to each other. It's really very simple.

Peter, an interesting article not only because it again gave our anti-religious friends the opportunity to use this forum as a psychotherapy couch, and us an insight into their state of mind that we should try to understand rather than patronise or condemn, because it is often us, or our Christian antecedents, who are the reason behind their need to use this couch.

I think you touched upon a problem that is not excatly easy even for the more sophisticated Christians, so it is understandable that you give the impression of sitting on the fences.

Louis Dupré, albeit a Catholic, had the following to say about the observation that “in many ways it seems easier to be religious in a general sort of way rather than believing according to the specifics of a particular historical faith”:

“That has indeed become a major problem for our contemporaries. I would attribute it in large part to an exclusive and mistaken literalism in our encounter with the sources of revelation. One of the more ominous signs of the spiritual impoverishment of our time is that believers have lost much of the sensitivity needed to perceive the symbolic within the literal. They tend to oppose one to the other: events and words are either symbolic or they are literal. But such a disjunction is fatal. The purely literal reading deprives the paradigmatic events of our faith of their enduring redemptive significance today and reduces an historical religion, such as ours is, to a mere memory. A purely symbolic reading weakens historical events and words to the point where they become simply occasions for creating new symbols for our own age. Many contemporaries caught between the horns of this false dilemma flee their historical faith to take refuge in some kind of abstract deism. But the historical need not be exclusive of the symbolic, and precisely thereby it attains contemporaneity for all times.” (http://www.crosscurrents.org/dupre.htmSPIRITUAL). Prehaps this is helpful.

George,
Your last paragraph was right on, I could not have expressed it better myself. I also liked what you said about being religious in general, our greatest enemy. I am amused that last month I posted what I thought was quite a good essay on Christian worship and Puritanism and it got only 5 comments. It seems like whenever I deal with the thing in itself, the actual practice of Christianity, no one is interested in taking me on. But when I tackle the so called big questions like the existence of God which are really apologetic pieces I get all this stuff in the comments section. Christianity is about the particular, that is when it is most offensive.

Peter Sellick

George says ..."One of the more ominous signs of the spiritual impoverishment of our time is that believers have lost much of the sensitivity needed to perceive the symbolic within the literal." I most humbly suggest those words describe the christians with their tunnel vision about spirituality. It meant that words like "meek" and "sin" have been taken in the vernacular.

The simplistic views of Christians is deminishing the capacity to enjoy the "Kingdom of God" - the here and now. The beauty of the now, the acceptance of all, not just the "saved". Who is tunnel-visioned?

George's words are right, the finger should have pointed back at the author.

"The contemporary critics of Christianity have one string to their bow...."

Would that be a use of metaphor I see before me?

Modern Christians too, should learn to identify the use of metaphor in ancient philosophical texts. The problem Christianity has created for itself - has been to take the bible more "literally" than everyone else - and its come back to bite.... very, very, hard.

Serves the self-rtighteous, power obssessed, hierarchies right. A universal law worth coming to understand.... eventually you get back what give.

Peter Sellick talks of noone taking him on about the "practice of Christianity".

Well, like all the others, Christianity is about limiting ones joy of life. It is about living with compromise now as there is a reward after death. The "Kingdom of God", right now, this very moment, has been corrupted by the misinterpretations of Jesus to mean the experience in the hole, after death.

Sure, Christian monks may not wear hair shirts nowadays and the common man the servitudes, but Christians still defer the full joy of living now as there is a reward after death. Their greatest fear overcome. They will drive their two tonne 4 Wheel Drives past orphanages to Sunday temple, of singing and chanting, to learn to live like Jesus. The practice of Christianity is a cult of limitation some believing the "heathens" are living a lesser life and must be converted to the "saved" so they too will be asleep to the moment of joy and love that is available.

But why do people avoid taking Sellick on the practice, because the foundation is so vulnerable. It doesnt exist EXCEPT in a book - a book which is cleaimed by the "saved" to be superior to the Torah and Koran. Why bother about the practice when the foundation is just paper. A simplistic, denatured view of the real wisdom of the ancients and the mystic that Jesus was is now the sacred book. Isnt it remarkable so much is kwown about his birth, nothing later and then a verbatum is known of what was said on the cross. Could it be, that Jesus was an Essene and leaked the Good News?

Love live and respect the oneness and live in the Kingdom of God. Its right here Peter, right now.

"Love live and respect the oneness and live in the Kingdom of God. Its right here Peter, right now."

Well said Remco, and when done in a 'spirit' of sharing, it really is heavenly. The lessons of Christ are easy to learn.. and they would be a lot easier without clergy interfering.

One of my favourite old English (or possibly even Glaswegian - I think there are sources for both) proverbs is "An ounce of mother's wit is worth a pound of clergy."

Anyone who cares to read a Gospel, would soon discover Jesus didn't have much time for clerics either - which is why they killed him. The irony is always lost on our dog-collared friends, but it provides me with an endless source of amusement.

You don't have to be "into" idolatory to learn and practice compassion. In my experience, it comes to the majority of people quite naturally.

Peter, remco, thanks, but what you refer to are not my words but those of Louis Dupré.

There are people who have problems with the existence of a spiritual world (that science cannot make contact with); there are people who do not have these problems but have problems with a personal God; there are people who have no problems with a personal God, only with the Christian model/version of Him; there are people who have no problems with the Christian outlook in general but have problems with established churches and their office bearers, especially - explicitly or implicitly - the Catholic hierarchy.

These are four kinds of problems at four different levels, and it is very hard to understand the complaints, or even to respond, if they are confused or mixed together. If, for instance, you do not believe in (the Christian model of) God you can criticise the social or political activities of a particular Church, but you should not pass judgement on whether it is faithful to its mission. What Peter and Dupré were commenting on is a particular feature of the Christian world view, and they, especially Dupré, warn against the two extremes. In this context it is irrelevant that some outsider would rather prefer that they stick to this or that extreme.

remco, I have lived in a society that wanted to realise the “Kingdom of God” in this world: they called it communism, an utopian state of affairs when everybody will have all his/her needs and desires satisfied. We know what was the reality. “Kingdom of God” is indeed a good idea that makes people strive for it, but one should never think it can be realised … full stop if you do not believe in the afterlife. The same about “saved” and “unsaved” - this should not make a difference to those who do not believe in afterlife, i.e. believe that their souls (the “software running their brains”) will be “unsaved” (pun intended), destroyed. However, I can understand your anger at those who want to “save your soul” against your will.

I am university educated, and I thought well capable of reading. Well, maybe not. Now I am told that if a passage reads that God did a miracle then I must read symbolism or allegory into it somehow. Otherwise I’m not reading it right.

So where it says Jesus healed a blind man who was blind from birth, it must mean something else, even if that does violence to the text, and the clear intention of the author. The crowd who witnessed the event are amazed. He must be a prophet. No one has ever heard of a man blind from birth having his sight restored because of prayer.

John only mentions a few miracles in his marvelous gospel. Anyone who reads it will be in no doubt where John is aiming. It’s not rocket science. A ten year old could read John and tell you which bits are meant to taken as an account of what happened and which bits are meant as allegory.

Jesus himself then brings the lesson. “I have come to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind.” (John 9:39NLT) Are we so blind we can’t read what is plainly written?

BeeTee’s CHALLENGE to us (in his post above) is starting to make a lot more sense. Have we lost the ability to read? Read the book of John in context to see what his message really is. Maybe still you won’t believe it, but don’t say it says something else.

Remco, what is left after the book? Jesus is still resurrected. His Spirit is present in the world, evidenced today by miracles, e.g.

http://catchthefire.com.au/blog/2007/07/24/at-world-doctors-conference-heart-surgeon-relates-astounding-account-of-a-resurrection-from-the-dead

His message still transforms lives, like forgiven ex-slave trader, John Newton, (see the current movie, Amazing Grace) “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Seeing such change of heart in a hardened man can be compelling evidence.

If I am to be criticised for my faith, let it be because I have big faith, not because I can’t read.

To Mick and George and other Christians. We, who do not call ourselves anything and we are neither ‘saved’ or ‘unsaved’. We are.

We believe in the innate goodness of all people and that we are one.

There is no book to look up. There is no mythology.

We acknowledge “miracles” occur all the time and when they happen to align with the Christian definition of a miracle, we understand why they should be widely promoted. Ghosts, UFOs, resurrections and virgin births are part of the unexplained. Just like the wave particle duality of quantum science. It is. We also question and get branded heretics when it touches the establishment, the church.
I write here as I feel sorry for those who classify, limit, label and define things by a book which includes stories of sacrifice and other whacko requirements so as to be called a Christian.

Practice your limited spirituality it that makes you happy. But reflect on how joyful your life could be without them. Yes yes, there is that one big fear unaddressed, of what happens in the hole. Your belief provides an answer.

How can you look into the face of a child and say it is born in sin? To not be in the Kingdom of God right now?

I am saddened that religion is the basis of so much strife when any fool can see the practice of religion diminishes the quality of living now and apart from the one in a million proclaimed “miracle”, there is not one skerrick of proof of an object god.

It is not a question of believing in god, there is only god.

It is just that some authors, hearing about one mystic two millennia ago, spawned a cult and membership means being saved from that fate of annihilation. Sad to have something evolve to redress our deepest fear. Christianity, like Islam is a fear-underpinned cult using mythologies that defers the ability to enjoy heaven on earth. We are one- only god.

I am a sinner. When I read the brief exchange between George and Sells, I thought "how smug"
But how uncharitable a gut response was that? My superior reaction was just one more example of how ready I am to belittle the best efforts of others to make sense of it all.
Remco, George, Sells, all of you, good on you for trying to make sense of it all.
Meanwhile, let mercy, tolerance, love and goodwill abound. And let me accept my readiness to criticise as another indication that I am not perfect, but importantly, not therefore in need of "salvation"
Fencepost.

Earth will ALWAYS be heaven to me. Can you really conceive in your mind anything more beautiful or perfect? We've looked deep into the cosmos and found nowhere else like it.

Earth is heaven... or hell, for us to create - depending on our choices. What is wrong with people sharing available resources sustainably? Why do we have the metaphor of feeding the five thousand?
Imagine all those people coming to see Jesus to learn his wisdom. When he begins sharing 2 loaves and 5 fishes, what are the rich amongst the crowd going to do? Ignore the wisdom they have come to hear? Not such a 'miracle' if others simply followed his example?

We are also reminded at the last supper "do this in memory of me" - that sharing the basics, food and drink (wine) are essential if people, from disparate backgrounds, are to coexist in peace.

Jesus had one mission: to teach the way of peace, so we can all, together, achieve the kingdom of heaven, the divine plan.

Even if heaven does exist only as a supernatural, afterlife place, then why would those living there already want anyone to join them if they have not proved themselves capable of such heavenly behaviour here on Earth?

Jesus refused the sword, suffered death at the hands of others without attempting to retaliate and yet, we have modern "Christians" causing/cheerleading the invasion of Iraq and plundering its wealth. The Christian path defends the weak using reason, not force and appealing to the universal - what we all have in "common" (communism, interestingly, being a derivative) it doesn't exploit them for personal gain.

Today, we WITNESS world leaders, political and spiritual (including Christian), more concerned with their own supremacy rather than the common good/weal and universal understanding. The world will only truly gain peace when the concerted aim is equality and not supremacy.

K£vin, remco, if I understand you properly you would prefer to pick only those parts of the message of Jesus - and to a lesser degree of what over centuries developed as Christianity - that (a) refer to the material world and (b) that are indisputably seen as positive even by non-Christians. If you do not believe in anything beyond the material world, this is, of course, the most charitable way of seeing His message. The Christians will agree, but they will insists on a deeper understanding of Jesus and of what evolved over centuries from his teachings, which unfortunately (but for a “cultural evolutionist” not so surprising) included degenerative mutations.

As a mathematician I shall certainly agree with your appreciation of mathematics and the work of mathematicians as manifested in the usefulness of computers, but I would not agree if you wanted to reduce mathematics to computing or replace mathematicians by computers. What you praise in the usefulness of Christianity (or mathematics) is only its application to everyday life, its outer manifestations, as useful and praiseworthy as they might be.

A fairy tale, I used to tell my daughter when as a child she objected to the unpleasant parts of our faith, went something like this: The three little pigs had learned their lesson, they built their houses from bricks, but now they wanted to have some beautiful flowers. So they went to a nursery and bought some plants. The first pig liked the flower, but not the rest, so she plucked its head and placed it on the ground in her garden. The second pig kept the flower and the stem but threw away the roots with the dirt they came in, because they were not as pretty as the flower. The third pig was wiser, she realised that the beautiful flower cannot survive for long without its roots. She planted the whole lot, mixing its dirt with the soil of her own garden, etc. You see, in English, “dirt” stands for the nourishing soil as well as for something rather negative

Hi George, I find nothing in your last post to disagree with. I offer merely my own deconstructed interpretation of the Gospels. To me, the Bible is a mix of allegory/metaphor and interpretations of some probable factual events. The use of metaphor, as always, is to expand our understanding of such events - the dynamics of human nature - the deeper, psychological causes of conflict.

The Bible, to me, is predominantly an allegory for the transition from the unconscious to the conscious mind.

I do not consider myself to be a christian btw, though raised within the Roman Catholic tradition here in England.

My point is simple - the Earth IS the most beautiful thing known to exist in the universe and we take if for granted - to the point of self-destruction - when, quite obviously, the opposite potential is (for the moment at least) equally possible.

Remco,
If I may, can I tell you the closest thing I have experienced to a miracle this year?

I live in the country. My next door neighbours, who are Christian believers, don’t believe in banks. In April, armed thieves came to my neighbour’s house at 1am. They stole his life’s savings and put a bullet through his wife. After a month in hospital, she was okay. People described her survival as a miracle, but technically it was not a medical miracle. The bullet just happened to pass through parts of her body that weren’t vital.

Fortunately, she survived, but if you want me to believe in “the innate goodness of all people”, you’re probably caught me at the wrong time. Even babies, from fairly early, predictably show tendencies to improper behaviour. There was only ever one totally good person, and we nailed him to a tree.

Apart from ‘original sin’, I think you show some other misunderstandings of the Christian faith, and why people enter into it. Most Christians (like most other Australians) I know are very practical. If their faith was not real and useful to them here and now, I don’t think they would keep turning up on Sundays. Forgiveness from sin, yes, but pie in the sky when you die, no. That’s not front and centre of their mind.

Though I have enjoyed our exchange of ideas, I do find some of your ideas a little hard to understand. On one hand you say, “there is not one skerrick of proof of an object god.” and in the next sentence you say, “there is only god.”

If by objective god, you mean one that I just didn’t dream up in my head, or create from my own wishful thinking, but he who has revealed himself in the pages of history, then that is one way to describe the God of the Bible.

What is ‘god’? God to me is omniscient so as the Jews also acknowledge, using the name of “God” makes god an object. So one can say, “kill God” – kill the object.

Christians make supplicant pleas to an object god –a parent figure so one risks the “wrath of god” a potentially angry figure “out there”.

Despite the supplicant pleas and influence the Christian god has on behaviour, Christians struggle to affirm their god and so the Roman Catholic church scours the earth for ”miracles”. Yet Christians do not live longer, are no healthier, no less criminal etc than other beliefs. That is my “no skerrick of proof”. It is only the unexplained “miracle” that points to a greater being never mind other “miracles”.

The religious hold on to mythologies, dogmas by that disempower themselves – shutting out the omniscient, blinkered to the oneness, creating divisions of “saved” and “unsaved” and above all, to the beauty of this most beautiful earth. We on the other hand are open to question but if the book of Christians is questioned, it becomes an issue of heresy. A “my book is better than yours” is implicitly used to stand up to Islam. A book standing in the way of true love.

We don’t need a book to practice love. There is not a skerrick of proof that Christian nations are any different to non Christian nations, one need only look at the United States.

Little wonder the Gospel of Judas and the other Gnostics were denigrated by the church. They saw the light that Jesus saw. It is right here. Right now. All around. Just love.

The bible has the essence of spirituality. I suggest it has been selectively interpreted so the profound wisdom of Jesus, a son of man, has in part been lost, and where not lost, interpreted to the banal. So then words like “sin” and “meek” have been narrowed down to the vernacular. The light is obscured. The heaven lost, their power given away to the church.

K£vin, “though raised within the Roman Catholic tradition… the Earth IS the most beautiful thing known to exist in the universe and we take if for granted - to the point of self-destruction” Perhaps you will find interesting the article by John L. Allen, built around the statement that “ Catholicism ... stands at a crossroads today on the environmental question. While there may be growing ecological concern, it's not clear whether the church will be a follower or a leader, and to what extent it can, or will, mobilize its resources to make a difference.” (http://ncrcafe.org/node/1213). Indeed, on some issues the Church is a passive follower for too long, before she realises that the issue is of such nature that her very mission would require her to take up a leading position.

Remco, there are many reasons you could criticise the official position of any Church, in particular the Catholic, but you have to keep to what she stands for in the 21st century. Yes, simple minded Catholics are probably more into “miracles” and naive interpretations of their faith than those belonging to other Churches, but this is a left-over from the Middle Ages, when there were no “other Churches”. Today, the RC church certainly does not “scour the earth for miracles”. On the contrary, she has problems with the proliferation of “Marian apparitions” (which are simply reflections of the spiritual thirst of some simple minded people whom she does not want to alienate), and with how to respond to the advance of evangelicals in the Third World, including traditionally Catholic South America, where this advancement is at her expense and uses methods based on a little rational but overly emotional way of spreading the Christian faith, methods that the RC Church abandoned many years ago.

Going back to my fairy tale about the three pigs, to keep and enjoy the beauty of the flowers you need to accepts not only the (historical and transcendental) roots of the plant but also the stem (organised Church), which over centuries, Catholics believe, has been nourishing the flower from the roots.

My fellow men, you were not born in sin - that's a lie. When you were born, you were beautiful and innocent and pure. Then you learned the words. You learned to be in fear and vulnerable. Deep inside you knew there was more and into your sense of confusion then, came a "book". Ah you said, that is what my longing was about. You became trapped in words. Religions are words manifested.

Religions were born a long time ago. Today we can look at whole nations and so, we can see that religion makes NO difference to people's life expectancy, health, criminality or whatever. What do you pray for then? Special dispensation?

You are, in this moment, right now, in the "kingdom of god".

Leave the miracles to the scavengers of the establishment church. Nationally there is NO evidence of any benefits of religion - only loss of the joy, to love being in the perfect place right now.

You are there. Throw away your tired words.

Remember where you were a long time ago?? When you were innocent and beautiful and ready to love everything around you.

Can you remember that time? Before words? Before fear? Before judgment? When you only had love? No religious dogma and mythologies then.

“Can you remember that time? Before words? Before fear? Before judgment? When you only had love? No religious dogma and mythologies then”, no philosophy, no logical arguments, no law, no organized states or institutionalized churches, no social security, no science, no 21st century medicine, no technology, no trains, no cars, no aeroplanes, no computers and no internet to tell people who would listen how good it was without all these things, before people learned to write and read books, including a few of them considered “sacred”.

"A time before words"? Yes Hellen Keller did. It was when she discovered separateness when before, all was one

Medieval Christianity has been in decline in the West, thankfully, for the last 200 years. There is still, however, much that is Medieval in the culture of todays churches and much of the missionary activity outside the Western world is Medieval in flavour. So Richard Dawkins enterprise is still well and truly justified. Im really not sure why Sells is so worried about the existence of healthy debate and the expression of views counter to his own. The tone of this article, its defensiveness, suggests insecurity.
In his discussion of invisible causes Sells really misses the point. Sure, science is slowly eliminating invisible causes by enhancing our senses with all sorts of clever experiments and machines so that we can effectively 'see' the causes that were previously unknown to us. There is, however, one 'invisible' force which science might never be able to explain satisfactorily and that is what one might call the 'life-force'. There is something about life that is beyond the sum of the physical elements of creaturliness. How is it that a blob of organic matter can 'be aware' of the world around it and can have feelings of love, anger, awe, wonder, fear, jealousy, loneliness, anxiety and so on.
There will always be this 'invisible cause' that is beyond our comprehension. Until such time as we can answer the question "Why am I?" we will continue to explore that dimension of being which for now we call the spirit.
The problem with the Church, most clearly exemplified by the Medieval Church, is that its world view is material and has lost its spritual sensitivity. God is objectified, Heaven and Hell are 'places' to go and the 'spirit' is a 'thing' which moves on after our bodies die. The reason there is any tension at all between science and the Church is that the Church holds a 'materialist' world view that is inconsistent with the scientific findings on the nature of matter. The Church is just plain wrong on that one and, as a consequence, might be losing its role in mediating human spirituality.

waterboy, I agree that “much of the missionary activity outside the Western world is Medieval” except that in the Middle Ages it was the Catholic Church, whereas today it is the evangelicals who imitate the Church’s Medieval missionary methods aiming them at simple-minded people, often at the expense of the RC Church (South America). This is one of the missionary activities which RC Church has to face; the other is the post modern “missionary activity” directed against it coming from the likes of Richard Dawkins and his followers.

The Sells’ article is not about science, nevertheless, “science eliminating invisible causes by enhancing our senses with all sorts of clever experiments and machines” fits more the 19th than the 21st century. It is not just experiments and clever machines that give us an understanding of the cosmos, that goes beyond both the Medieval Christian and the nineteenth century materialistic models. For instance, gravitation as well as what you call ‘life-force’ (self-organisation, emergence) are invisible and science keeps on providing a better and better understanding of how they work, but that has nothing to do with Sells’ article.

“God is objectified, Heaven and Hell are 'places' to go and the 'spirit' is a 'thing' which moves on after our bodies die. “ Yes, this is more or less the only way to explain a rather sophisticated world view to persons with little philosophical sophistication. How many people do you think understand Einstein’s theory of gravitation, or even the mathematics behind the emergent quantum gravity theory? You cannot blame professional physicists for the fact that many people have simplified ideas about gravitation, the same as you cannot blame the Church for the fact that some, probably most, Christians need a simplified, even naive, explanation of what the Christian world view behind their faith is all about. And when RE education is completely removed from schools, which seems to be the trend, then the vast majority of people will have an understanding of the Christian religion - whether they embrace it or condemn it - as naive as that displayed e.g. by Richard Dawkins.

Man, George, you are hilarious! Comparing quantum physics with Christian belief, thats a good one. That say some peoples Christian belief (or worldview or whatever)is so complicated that it is difficult to explain to someone the likes of Richard Dawkins is worthy of the comedy channel. Sure, dumb it down for the masses, but if it is really so complicated that it is cannot be explained simply (and still retain the actual core of truth), then what it becomes is unexamined (and probably false).

And Dawkins has "followers" now? Man you guys just can't understand an idea that isn't based in cult language can you? Atheism has to be an "ism" and a "religion" in and of itself so that it can be categorised and generalised about. Which of course it can't, (because it actually isn't anything other than an absence of belief in a deity, kind of like calling "black" a colour) but that is something that you probably don't understand either.

Man, Bugsy, when at school the teacher was showing you three apples and three bunnies hoping you would get the idea of the number three, you probably found it also hilarious that she was comparing apples with bunnies. Besides, it was not quantum physics that I used as an example but gravity, because that is what most people have some idea of, including the "Medieval" one, that things fall to the ground if unsupported, and there is no need to speculate about such a simple fact. The same with the cognitive part of a Christian’s faith that can also be very naive, Medieval.

I never said that it was difficult to explain to Richard Dawkins the metaphysical model(s) of an educated Christian’s faith (I guess it is more a matter of psychological predisposition than of an ability to understand); I can comment only on the knowledge of these things he DISPLAYS in his writings. Since I am not a biologist I cannot judge his qualities as a scientist, I can only admire his qualities as a writer of popularized biology and genetics.

John Polkinghorne, a physicist with a degree in theology, finds quantum physics easier to understand than 21st century theology. So do I.

“Sure, dumb it down for the masses, ... (and probably false)” I heard something similar said many times about mathematics by people who could not accept that there are things in mathematics they could not understand. There are many people whose knowledge of maths does not go beyond arithmetic and simple geometry, though I do not think they would like to be called “masses for whom maths has been dumbed down.”

That is a good example about calling black a colour: in physics you certainly would not assign a colour to the black box, because there is no radiation emanating from it; but when you e.g. buy a car you have a choice of several colours, including black. You see, it depends on the context, in our case it is the psychological context that we speak of.

George, even on a car, black is not a colour. And I am not surprised that theology is more complicated than quantum physics. That's because its a fictional story, like Star Trek. It just keeps on going and logical inconsistencies need to be explained by ever more elaborate stories, ultimately ending in "god did it", or a "Q". The bulldust just keeps getting piled higher and deeper until noone can understand or follow it anymore. That of course does not make it true, but you can believe what you want.

George,

You said
You cannot blame professional physicists for the fact that many people have simplified ideas about gravitation, the same as you cannot blame the Church for the fact that some, probably most, Christians need a simplified, even naive, explanation of what the Christian world view behind their faith is all about.

Physicists occasionally do try to explain their work in simplified language BUT they don’t pretend that the simplified version is the real thing. Churches DO expound the simplified view as reality and therein lies the problem. Actually it would be wise for the church not to expound any particular cosmology as it really isn’t necessary for the ‘spiritual’ enterprise and they keep getting it wrong. The church is very much to blame for continuing to expound its medieval cosmology and frankly they don’t do it out of any desire to simplify and make comprehensible an otherwise complex message. Many of them really believe it!

If you read the bible there is no real evidence that Jesus cared greatly about gravity or quantum mechanics. He spoke out of a culture with a particular view of the world but his ‘cosmology’ was not his message. Love, justice and hope are the really timeless messages that Jesus offered and in that department His teaching is as relevant today as it was when he delivered it 2000 years ago. It was relevant when the Hebrews taught it another 1000 years before Jesus.

Forget the Church’s cosmology. Its just a distraction! If it really is a genuine attempt to simplify a complex message then it isn’t working. Its doing more harm than good.

Bugsy, I’ve never heard of a colourless car. And the scientists at NASA would certainly be surprised to hear that the writing of a fiction like Star Trek was more complicated than the problems they have to solve since there is no “Scottie to beam their cosmonauts up”.

In distinction to fiction, scientific speculations, built up into theories, have to be confronted with reality through observations, experiments, etc. The same with contemporary (Christian) theology, where the “reality” to confront their speculative theories with consists of, beside scripture and tradition, also the most recent findings of science, including neuroscience, cultural anthropology, and psychology.

I agree that I can believe what I want, and so can you. However, one of the main differences between our approaches is that I try to explain MY world view, instead of calling YOURS bulldust.

waterboy, thank you for your thought-provoking comment. You have a point there, every analogy goes only that far. Perhaps I should have said “physics teachers” instead of professional physicists, because it is not the scholarly but the teaching function of Churches that you criticise. Beside that, I must agree with much of your criticism, except for the sweeping conclusion, if I understood you properly, that the Churches’ activities are generally useless or even damaging. (ctd)

(ctd) What is special about questions people ask the Church - or some other authority they trust, e.g. much of the function of what used to be pastoral guidance was taken up by counsellors - is the personal urgency to know the answer: You might or might not be interested in reading a lecture on cancer, but you will certainly have more personal and urgent questions should you be diagnosed (or suspected) of having cancer. Well, many of us have been “diagnosed” (or suspected) by life as being sentient, not just “biological”, beings. Most of us are satisfied when the answer to the question “What is a TV, how can I use it?” is “Just turn it on, you would not understand more about its workings unless you studied electronics.” The same about cosmology questions you hint at, but not when questions that we are deeply involved with, are asked. That is why the Church has to give simplified explanations pretending they are the whole answer, whereas physicists writing popular texts do not have to.

Having said that, I repeat, I agree that many teachers of Christian religion, often including influential hierarchy, are not up to their task of interpreting Jesus for our age. Something like there are two kinds of bad maths teachers: those who themselves do not understand what they are supposed to teach, and those who have a reasonable understanding of the material, but cannot teach. Also, a good high school teacher of maths does not have to be, and usually is not, a good research mathematician. The same, again to a certain point, about pastors/priests and theologians.

I never claimed Jesus cared about gravity, but I agree that Jesus taught many things that are useful and inspiring also for an individual or a society that does not believe (or thinks it does not have to believe) in a reality beyond the material; and even more for those who accept the spiritual dimension of reality, although without accepting its model based on Jesus’ teachings and developed over 2000 years by theologians of the Church or Churches.

I think that the "black" analogy is kind of holding up. When it comes to popular usage of words, a lot of people believe they know exactly what is being said, but they don't. You see, as with "black", many people believe it is a colour, but actually it is a shade, so to use the "colourless" as an antithesis is not really correct as it conjures up all sorts of visions of invisibility and whatnot (like water is "colourless"). Black is an absence of colour, not colourlessness. This is how false dichotomies are set up. Atheism is an absence of belief in the existence of god, nothing more. It cannot be generalised much further as the actual beliefs of atheists can vary very widely.

I see I am not the only one misrepresenting others George, as I only compared Star Trek with religion, not science (or NASA!). As a fictional story, I certainly believe that it still holds up as an analogy as they are both complicated with moral lessons and both probably have as many devoted followers. In the end they are still just stories.

To clarify my original point though is that many Christians (and theists generally) believe they know what is meant by the words "soul" "spirit", "mind", "consciousness" and "intelligence", when in reality they know nothing of the sort. They just think they do, which I suppose is the definition of "belief". But that doesn't stop them going to great lengths to try and explain what they think they mean.

Bugsy, I certainly appreciate the less emotional twist in your argumentation. Never mind whether black can be understood as the colour of a car (just ask a car dealer), but when you say “atheism is an absence of belief in the existence of god … the actual beliefs of atheists can vary very widely“ you are probably right; it all depends on what you call “atheist”. Classically, such person is usually called an agnostic, but I agree that grammatically “atheist” better describes the person who does not believe, in distinction to a person who believes firmly in the negative, who then should be called an anti-theist.

However, those critical of Richard Dawkins, the atheist par excellence, do not object to his “absence of belief in the existence of god” - there are many tolerant scientists who would fit that description - but to his aggressiveness towards those who believe. From what I know of his writings he is convinced that there is no god, whatever that means before you define the terms “exists” and “god”. So in practical usage, atheism has become to mean belief in the non-existence of (the Christian version of) God. I usually call people who do not believe in the existence of god but do not attack those who do, secular humanists (some people use the term secularist but that sounds too much like Islamist, the fanatical adherent of Islam). I certainly can coexist with them - as well as with Muslims or other Christians - as long as they do not attack me and/or my world view, though, of course, the verbal attacks by Christian fundamentalists (who claim to possess a monopoly on truth and morals) or aggressive atheists (who claim a monopoly on what is rational, logical or supported by evidence) is preferable to terrorist attacks by Islamists. (ctd)

(ctd) You wrote “theology is more complicated than quantum physics. That's because it is a fictional story, like Star Trek.”, so I understood you were referring to the “Star Trek story” not the “Star Trek fan club”. However, I can see that to an outsider a Church or a congregation of believers might look like a fan club. I believe my Christian world view is rational enough, but I am also a “fan” of the Apple/Macintosh system and sometimes find myself defending its advantages over the you-know-which system quite emotionally.

What you say about simple Christians who believe they know what is meant by rather abstract terms, when in reality they know nothing of the sort, can also be said about them - as well as about many simple non-Christians - in relation to other abstract terms, or even seemingly well known scientific terms like evolution, photon, quark, etc. For instance, many people think of atoms as tiny planetary systems where the small balls, electrons, revolve around a somewhat larger ball, the nucleus. There is nothing wrong with it, unless those people are professional physicists.

The professionals, physicists, philosophers or theologians, will explore these abstract concepts never claiming they know everything. Nevertheless, physicists will “go to great lengths to try and explain (to common folk) what they think they mean” when they discuss e.g. whether space-time is 4-, 10-, or 26-dimensional. Philosophers will try to explain why they are puzzled that our universe is mathematically structured, or, as Stephen Hawking recently put it, does it bother at all to exist? What if there indeed is “something out there” reflected in our meme for religion (Dawkins) as there is - many mathematicians believe - a “Platonic world of mathematics” reflected in our “meme for maths”?

George,

Thanks for the very thoughtful repsonse. My feelings about the Church are quite ambivalent. I am constantly frustrated by the gap between what it could be and what it is. It could be prophetic, the leaven in the lump as it were. It could be the very presence of Jesus in our midst. In the end it is a very human institution with mixed motives, confused goals, erratic behaviours and so on. But in spite of its quirks and faults I still love it and respect its role in the life of the faithful. I could just as easily hate it for its faults but I dont. Its like having a good friend. You know them so well that you are totally aware of all their weaknesses but you continue to love them.
I firmly believe the whole cosmology debate is a huge distraction and is, overall, a negative in the Church's agenda. Pastorally, I know its difficult for the Church to shift its ground too dramatically. That would hurt lots of fragile people whose beliefs, however crazy they might seem to you and me, are very important to them.
In the end I am inclined to be very critical of those sloppy evangelical churches that serve up theological MILK all the time as if there is no meat to be had. There is a huge problem and they have to shoulder a large part of the blame.

George, I try not to ask car dealers anything as I have learned that they never tell you what you really want to know. Dawkins is simply an atheistic reaction to massive aggressiveness from the religious camps.

Personally, I find your defence of your favourite operating system quite irrational, the others perform just as well and have their own advantages, but I do find that macs perform much better for the computer illiterate. I have also never referred to "simple Christians", that's yours. I think that ALL Christians, simple or not haven't the foggiest idea of what a soul or mind or consciousness is. That doesn't stop them from proclaiming loudly that they do and trying to make laws based on their ideas.

As for Star Trek, there is nothing wrong with being a fan. just as long as you remember that it's just a story. You can get moral messages from stories, codes and ways of living your life. Many Star Trek fans do. But just remember that they are just stories. At least the Star Trek fans have the decency not to bother to try and lobby the government for funds or to change laws.

Bugsy,

The computer literate know too well that the Mac is technically superior to the other one.... and much more fun.... they also understand that they can only really make a living out of working with the other one. Life can be such a bitch!

waterboy, thanks for the kind words, though to be frank, I do not understand what you mean by cosmological debate: today cosmology is usually understood as part of physics, bordering on philosophy, but you have also the classical cosmological or ontological “proofs” of the existence of God. Perhaps you have in mind Christian theology (actually, theologies), the rationalised interpretations of the Old and New Testament, in which case I think that it is just a part of human nature, at least within the Western tradition, that you want to have a system in what you (are supposed to) believe (in).

I would say that rather then “shifting its ground”, the (Catholic) Church, is in a desperate need of improving, modernising its methods of serving humanity by proclaiming the message of Jesus, rather than its content, part of which can only be understood on a symbolic level.

Bugsy, well this thread is neither on car dealers, nor on Star Trek, nor on Macintoshes (although I agree 100% with what waterboy writes). I agree, there are aggressive people in any camp and the question of who started is a chicken-or-egg question. Nevertheless, I do not know of an aggressive contemporary Christian of the same academic prominence as Dawkins, though I know of aggressive (fundamentalist) Christians who, like Dawkins, are an obstacle for peaceful coexistence of Christians, other religious, and secular humanists.

“I think that ALL Christians, simple or not haven't the foggiest idea of what a soul or mind or consciousness is. That doesn't stop them from proclaiming loudly that they do and trying to make laws based on their ideas.” Well, it is hard to communicate with a person who starts (and apparently ends) a debate by proclaiming he knows what other people know, even what EVERYBODY he happens to disagree with knows. I certainly do not know what you have or have not a foggy idea about, therefore I tried to explain to you why you should not to make such sweeping statements. Apparently I failed.

George,

Its not the Catholics who are trying to sell creationism and intelligent design as if they were credible science.
Sells article specifically identifies medieval theology as being in sharp tension with contemporary science and the point is that there are still many in the Church clinging to medieval theology and its accompanying cosmology (the heaven and hell populated by disembodied spirits type theology us not limited to the Catholic Church). The mass exodus of educated people from the Church in the west is in part due to the Church's reluctance to distance itself from medieval theology and cosmology. Of 20mil Australians there are less than 200,000 still attending church regularly and they are mostly elderly. Sadly, the Church is dying and it is its own fault. The 'tired old arguments' of the Church's critics remain powerfully persuasive arguments in the eyes of most people... that is the 19mil++ well-educated Australians who dont attend church (attendance is what matters not nominal adherence). Sells defence against the 'tired old arguments' is to try to discredit them by labelling them but the reality is that they are persistent and effective criticisms of an anachronistic cosmology/theology that is still strongly identified with the Church.

LSH...it has come to my attention....that you need some 'attention':)
(i.e. I read your interesting post)

I do appreciate your own honesty, but in your comments about 'pious' people you were far to general and broad. You also indicated some worrisome presuppositions, which appear to be more a product of a particular educational period, under the influence of identifiable philosophic views, rather than an objective assessment of 'religion'. (specifically the Christian)

You said:

This, (meaningless universe) I couldn’t agree more, is a rather scary thought. For the brave, healthy and honest atheists amongst us, we simply face up to this truth and live by affirming all that life has to offer.

Actually,I doubt very much that you are living true to your beliefs, so please excuse my 'brutal/rubber_meets_the_road/pedal2themetal way of expressing it.

If....you were true to your presuppositions, based on the history of mankind, you would be relentlessly seeking the following:

1/ Power, building a powerbase, attacking perceived enemies, making them your slaves.
2/ Self gratification. Taking their women, enjoying them to the max.

Now.. please don't argue with 'me' on this, but instead, turn the pages of human history and indicate where I am erring here.
Such is the plight of the 'honest' natural man who is affirming his meaningless and very time_limited existence.

When you think about it... in a meaningless universe there is no moral reason 'not' to do the above.

To suggest also, that this kind of thing does not appeal to men, is naivity and historic denial in the extreme.

Now..one last issue, 'anthropomorphic projections' Nope.. sorry. Such things when arising from 'men' relfect 'manlike' desires and wants.
In the case of Gods dealings with Israel, and his manifestation in Christ, it is the opposite. "This is a harrrrd saying, who can bear it" the followers said of Jesus. ."and many did not follow him after this" no, its not anthropomorphic in the way 'natural' religions are.
(i.e. about fertility, riches, abundance, security)

Please look to the real Jesus, rather than the 'mythical' one you are reacting against.

Now Boaz, I know that you always find it necessary to exaggerate to make whatever point it might be that you are making, but this is simply ridiculous:

>>If....you were true to your presuppositions, based on the history of mankind, you would be relentlessly seeking the following:

1/ Power, building a powerbase, attacking perceived enemies, making them your slaves.
2/ Self gratification. Taking their women, enjoying them to the max.<<

Are you suggesting that this is the natural state for atheists?

What evidence can you possibly present to support this utterly preposterous claim? This, by the way, is not evidence:

>>When you think about it... in a meaningless universe there is no moral reason 'not' to do the above.<<

Grow up.

waterboy, sorry, I should have read Sells’ article more carefully. Both he, you and most of us have the right diagnoses but I do not think we - or the Church(es) themselves - know of a cure. Embracing the Zeitgeist does not seem to work. (In Germany the Lutherans did it and they lost even more members than the Catholics. Here the State acts as the tax collector for Churches so you have to register or "unregister" as a member of a particular Church.) On the contrary, it sends some of those who in the past would have been firmly within the folds of traditional Churches, to various evangelical, Pentecostal mega or mini churches, who concentrate on the psychological wellbeing provided by spirituality, and practice emotionally loaded worship long abandoned by the Catholic Church, at leat in the Weat. Others, I agree, leave the Church because the essence of Christian faith, that is unintelligible without an understanding of its symbols, is presented to them in a way that the Medieval person did not mind taking literally.

Well, the naive answer is that what is symbolic could not be taken as the Truth, for which my reaction is that all of mathematics deals only with mental symbols of what is real, nevertheless we would not understand physical reality without maths. So I would argue, that a way out might not be in abandoning the symbols that were self-explanatory to a Medieval mind, but to keep them as pointing to something that we otherwise could not grasp.

The “persistent and effective criticisms of an anachronistic cosmology/theology” is based on taking the scripture and religious symbols literally, not only by fundamentalists, and misguided RE teachers, but also by those who think this way it is easier to discredit the Christian faith as such. Every monotheist believes that God created the world but only religious fundamentalists and aggressive atheists claim that this is a scientific statement (which has to be accepted or rejected by everybody), c. f. the deliberate misuse of the term “creationist”. (ctd)

(ctd) I know, this is a rather theoretical approach, nevertheless I would liken it to the way we treat the slide rule: it used to be an important tool in the hands of any engineer. Today its practical use is superseded by calculators and computers, but the theory on which it was built, namely logarithms, is indispensable and contemporary science and technology is unthinkable without them.

As I see the Catholic Church, it is just one among many Churches, like the Greeks are just one of the smaller European nations; but they are somehow the direct descendants of what stood at the cradle of Christianity and Western civilisation respectively. I know, in case of the Greeks this is undisputed in case of the Catholic Church it is disputed, but still. So perhaps its new role - somehow hinted at by recent pronouncements of the pope - in Europe and perhaps also elsewhere in the West, is to act as a mediator (not his term) of the two extremes: the pious, emotional and somewhat irrational, people who take the symbols of Christianity too literally (evangelicals), and those who reject the Christian symbols and what they point to, their rejection often being also more emotional than rational. As I understand the pope, he wants this “creative minority” (his term) to act as living examples that a Christian can (a) have faith, which in the past not only used to hold the society together but also gave every individual a sense of personal purpose, and (b) at the same time show more respect for reason (including contemporary philosophy for those up to it), and the findings of science, than a fundamentalist. Whether this goal is realistic, only time will tell.

Thanks Waterboy, Bugsy, and George, for enlivening the debate.

As I tap on my PC in gleeful ignorance of the qualities of Macs, I reflect on the obscure colours of cars that I’ve bought previously. My first car was a pale green, but my wife contended that it was cream. It was officially registered as ‘chamois’. My second car was a kind of pasty gold beige, but it was registered as ‘champagne’.

If I could try to pigeon hole where you stand, George is happily Catholic. Bugsy is an atheist but seems to not like the usual dictionary definition of the word, which is the definite belief in no god (notwithstanding his protests that atheism is not an ‘ism’). Waterboy sounds genuinely disappointed when speaking of the 90% of the Australian population not attending church, and the church’s missed potential, so I guess he’s a Christian, but to say of which stripe or colour is a bit trickier. But since none of you think very highly of fundamentalists, I just thought I should try and prop up my side of the argument.

Bugsy, if you like the teachings of the apostle of atheism, Richard Dawkins, you should become more aggressive in your atheistic stance. To quote from the Good Book, ‘the God Delusion’, “I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented. … I shall have Christianity mostly in mind, but only because it is the version with which I happen to be most familiar’ (p. 36-37). There is nothing passive about Dawkins’ beliefs.

Waterboy, I don’t believe those Australians not attending church are staying away because of any real scientific arguments. Some may claim to, but this would reflect their poor understaning of science and its limitations. More likely they have never properly considered or even heard of what the Christian faith is about. (And by the way, there are a good number of Catholics in the creation and intelligent design movements.)

(continued …)

What Christianity is about is bearing witness to the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and his teachings which are contained in the Bible, the world’s most read book. Central to these are his death and resurrection, which assigns Christianity its place in history. Therefore, no amount of science can disprove or even challenge the faith because science can’t judge history. Can you prove scientifically where Captain Philip’s First Fleet landed? No. Even in criminal trials, scientific evidence only attempts to persuade a jury beyond reasonable doubt. It is incapable of proving or disproving history in any definitive way.

The virgin birth and Christ’s other miracles are events of history, and therefore attested to by history and not science. The same can be said of the world’s creation. It was a one off event, therefore unrepeatable, therefore not testable, therefore outside the bounds of science. Genesis’ description of the creation is an historical statement, neither scientific nor unscientific.

Parts of the church that I see attracting the young and educated and experiencing growth are those favourable to these fundamentalist and creationist beliefs and have not sanitised or compromised the Biblical message for the sake of some modern philosophers (Hume).

The thousands of practising scientists around the world, who happen to be Christians and see no place or no need for the false assumptions that have attached themselves to so called science, know this well. Reason and science are fallible. They can be good servants, but a bad master.

Mick

Well said. . . for a fundamentalist.Asyou say,science isabout evidence and interpretation. It is distinguished by constraints like standards of evidence,repeatability and refutability. Refutability is an important one.If a theory/statement/hypothesis is by its very nature irrefutable then it is,by definition, not scientific. So a healthy scepticism is an important part of the scientists intellectual makeup.Good scientists spend most of their time trying to disprove their own theories.This is in stark contrast to religious/Christian folk who expend a lot of energy trying to prove their'theories'are true.
Lets call the creation/virgin birth/resurrection 'events' faith knowledge to distinguish them from'scientific'knowledge.Faith knowledge is by its nature irrefutable,either its absolutely true or the faith is invalid.Believing that the resurrection happened in history,literally,as told in the Bible,is the foundation stone of a certain sort of faith.Not believing it is a denial of that faith. This is a very different kind of knowledge to scientific knowledge.

Good scientists do not claim that sciencific knowledge offers absolute truth because they are all deeply sceptical and understand the interpretive nature of their work.Believers,misunderstanding, observe that science does not offer absolute certainty and mistake this for lack of confidence.How many times have I heard creationists saying that evolution is"only a theory"as if that condemned it to insignificance.The thing that makes evolution such a successful scientitific theory is the number of people,creationists included,who are trying to disprove it.Creation,on the other hand, is faith knowledge.It doesnt qualify as science because no-one is trying to disprove it,not even the'creation scientists'themselves because they're too busy trying to refute evolution.

My view,for what its worth,is that people are distancing themselves from the Church simply because the Church does not respect or allow them their doubts and uncertainties.People going to Church are often confronted with this simple choice:Believe like us or go away.Far more often than not,they choose to go away.There are a few,as you say, who manage to hold together the tension between their'scientific knowledge'and their 'faith knowledge'.That can be a very creative situation and it works best when the Church respects peoples doubt and uncertainties. There are Churches that can do that,thank God.

Mick,yousaid“What Christianity is about is bearing witness tothe life of Jesus of Nazareth,and his teachings whichare contained inthe Bible.”
Sorry to hack intoa sacred cow like this butwhat exactly doyou thinkthat means?

Bearing witness obviously suggests communication buthas certain overtones related to persuasion and conviction.Itis a fuzzy notion suggesting morethanit actually says.

The life of Jesus canbetaken in many ways. YouandI live lives within history but even a fictional character from literature hasa certain sort of life.Frodo lives in middle earth butnow also hasa life,of sorts,within our history.Macbeth wasan historical character butthe fictional Macbeth ofthe Shakespeare play hashad far greater influence on history thanthe‘historical’Macbeth.Symbol,metaphor and parable canbe farmore powerful in directing history thanthe historical life ofthisorthat person.
Jesus of Nazareth.Historical figure?Probably!Son of God!What doesthat mean?Washe really conceived when Mary was raped by God?Perhaps,ata different extreme of possible understandings,itjust means that Jesus really understood about God ina special way,so special thatbeing withhim was like being inthe very presence of God.Worse still,perhaps Jesus wasa slightly interesting character whohadbeen crucified and who served the purposes Paul,Peter,James et.Al. asa suitable symbol fortheir revolutionary mission.

His teachings. Do you mean strictly that which is recorded in the Bible as Jesus’ teaching?How much of Paul’s teaching is also permissible?How much of St Augustine’s teaching do you allow?How much of St Thomas’interpretation? How much of Luther,Calvin,Knox,Wesley, and so onand so on.

Jesus was a story-teller so his ‘teaching’ needs interpretation.In every new time and place Jesus stories need to be interpreted in new ways to address our ever-changing circumstances.They can be recognized as‘eternal’truths by the fact that they continue to make sense and be challenging throughout history.Jesus did not teach in the sense of delivering an objective knowledge of this world.He told stories that made sense then and now.

So it makes sense to re-tell Jesus’stories and it makes sense to tell the Jesus story.If that is what you mean by“bearing witness”to Jesus then I am fine with that.If,however,you mean seeking to persuade people to adopt a faith thesameas yours then you’ve completely lost me.If that is what the Church is on about then let it die

The standards of science are like the standards of religion. They're directed by the political moment. There is no superior position. It's all ego masturbation performed by the believers and the non-believers who cherry pick moments in history to portray their position in the best light while politically influenced social values ricochet between extremes. Sadly we are at a moment in time that allows for the emotionally and intellectually limp to be perceived as equals or better still, superior, for being victims of society. Cultural marxism reigns supreme.

Mick, waterboy, as I tried to argue in my previous postings, I really do not think pitting faith against science is the answer. At least not for an educated Christian, church-going or not. Neither is a somewhat cynical position, placing oneself above both, is the answer, as aqvarivs seems to suggest, as insightful as his observation might be. The “cognitive dissonance” does not come from some inherent contradictions between faith and science: its roots are within ourselves, our rational and/or psychological imbalance or limitations.

Indeed, a thinking person cannot have faith without doubts but doubts on themselves cannot be the basis of a world view, Christian or not. Doubts are a state of mind that needs to be attended to (for instance, by stressing that what the Church offers are just guidelines for his/her conscience and that God who will judge him/her can see directly into his/her mind or conscience, an ability which the priest or Church does not have) rather than argued about.

Mick, it is hard for me to be “happily” Catholic as it is hard to be happily a member of a family - though it is my memes rather than genes that bind me to Her - that is undergoing a deep crisis. I wish, but it unfortunately is just a wish, that She would find a way to accommodate people like you - as it was the case in the past - as well as people like waterboy - which has never been the case in the past, and one can only hope for the future.

waterboy, I can agree with most of your objections, except that I do not know of a Church that “respects peoples doubt and uncertainties” to such an extent that it would allow “Mary was raped by God” to be seen as a valid interpretation of “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Lk 1:38).

George,

The interaction between text and reader will determine the 'meaning' of any particular story. The Church may try to influence people to interpret the Bible in a particular way but ulitmately they can't control it.
If sex-abuse or sexual harassment is a major issue in your life then the story of Mary will ring all sorts of bells.. alarm bells! Mary is very young! God is powerful! She ends up pregnant. We have laws which proscribe relationships like this where one party exercises great power over the other and uses that power to obtain sex. This 'interpreation' might not be what the author intended but the author has little control over the text once it falls into the hands of the reader.

My point is that the Bible is literature and deserves to be read and respected as such. As literature, it is exciting, dangerous and unpredictable. It is alive and contemporary. Taken literally it is alien, stolid, rigid and largely irrelevant. If Mick wants to take the Bible literally. . . . he did claim to speak for the fundamentalists. . . then that is his prerogative. I just think it fails to respect the text for what it is and determines that the Bible will be misrepresented and misunderstood. I think the world would be a better place without fundamentalism. . . of any sort. No doubt the fundamentalists feel the same way about liberalism.

I agree with you on the science-theology debate. It is pointless. Right up there with trying to assert that Shakespeare's Macbeth is a fair representation of the historical Macbeth. Let the scientists do the science and the Church stick to theology

Mick,

Never own a green car. Ask any mechanic about green cars.

waterboy,
You still did not name a respectable Church that will regard ‘God used power to obtain sex’ as an acceptable interpretation of Lk 1:38. In my opinion, such an interpretation will suit only a sick mind (Sigmund Freud could perhaps explain), whether or not this sickness is a consequence of rape.

“Let the scientists do the science and the Church stick to theology” resembles, among other things, a Catholic (Medieval) solution, of course with an inverted understanding of what is more important for “knowing the truth” about humanity and the world it lives in. It is related to seeing the Bible as a pure fiction, not much different from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. This condescending vision of religion and its sacred books, I imagine, suits people like Dawkins. At a less naive level we have Stephen Jay Gould with his “non-overlapping magisteria”, which corresponds to the second type in the now classical Ian Barbour’s (b. 1923, physicist and theologian) four-fold typology of the science-religion relationship: Conflict, Independence, Dialogue and Integration. Barbour seems to prefer the third one, some Buddhists the fourth one. I myself put it as follows:

It is not true that religion and science are on a collision course.
It is not true that religion and science are mutually irrelevant.

It is true that some interpretations of religion and some interpretations of science are on a collision course.
It is true that "uninterpreted" religion and "uninterpreted" science are mutually irrelevant.

Waterboy,

Most of my posts on this thread have laboured on the same point. And that is, the Bible is quite clear and not difficult to interpret on most things. For those who can’t accept that God is capable of miracles, it does become more difficult to interpret.

It can be annoying when fundamentalists are criticised for not reading the Bible properly, especially after having to put up with that extraneous interpretation of straight forward narrative in the story of Mary.

Mary was old enough to be married and to take a long journey with her husband. She responded very maturely in trying circumstances, to say the least. She is not an immature, unwilling victim, as you make out.

A theological dictionary will define a fundamentalist in terms of accepting the miraculous birth of Christ, his death, bodily resurrection, and his other miracles, as described in the Scriptures. We fully take into account the cultural and historical underpinnings of the texts, something that anyone approaching any historical document would do, and anyone could do with a bit of common sense.

A literal interpretation is understood when it is required by the author (I’d hate to take a ride in a car with some of the posters above. What do you do when you come to a STOP sign? Mmmmmm, what does it really mean, or what do I wish it to mean?)

Going back a few posts, my comment about ‘bearing witness to the life of Jesus’ is a bit vague and needs fleshing out. But there is no backing away from the Gospel being a message for all peoples. Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion’ was a good example of communicating the message using the arts and technology at their best.

On the contrary, my Bible is not stolid or irrelevant. It contains great stories and amazing events. It is mainly about a guy who holds life and death in his hands. Don’t invite him to a funeral, he might wreck it. If you call believing that stuff boring, then what is not believing it?

George,

Much of this debate, as I see it, has been to do with how the church battles away in the face of modern science. To this end, I am glad you have taken on the challenge of trying to define the relationship between science and faith. And I wouldn’t argue much with what you and most others have said here about science.

I don’t believe it is a coincidence that science was largely born and grew up in the Christian West. It is almost as if one swam out of the other. When both are kept a little in check and are correctly interpreted, they don’t have much argument and sit quite well next to each other.

The main bug bear at the moment is the theory of evolution. In that regard, I don’t agree with Waterboy. I don’t think it is as stable or as secure as he thinks it is.

However, I also don’t agree that that my comments should be interpreted as “pitting science against faith”. Where have I said or implied that science and faith are adversaries or combatants? I wish them both well, and am grateful for the gains they have both brought the human race.

As Jesus said in regards to what is the ‘greatest commandment’, “Love the Lord your God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength”. I think that implies all our capacities for reason, science, intellect, and emotion (and let’s not be scared of that last one).

George, as you know, I struggle to follow your arguments, and most often I give up in despair. I hope that on this occasion you can help me out.

In a recent post you distilled the issues into a four-line summary:

>>It is not true that religion and science are on a collision course.
It is not true that religion and science are mutually irrelevant.

It is true that some interpretations of religion and some interpretations of science are on a collision course.
It is true that "uninterpreted" religion and "uninterpreted" science are mutually irrelevant.<<

I can picture "collision course". That is presumably when two sets of ideas reach a point where they are totally incompatible with each other, in that the fundamentals that underpin one are diametrically opposite to those that underpin the other, and therefore cannot be reconciled.

But what should I understand from "mutually irrelevant"?

How is this different from individual irrelevance? Are they only irrelevant, perhaps, when put next to each other - but how can this be achieved? I.e., how far apart do they have to be before they become relevant again, and to whom?

Mick,
I agree with what you wrote, and apologise for the clumsy expression “pitting science against faith” which in such generality I did not want to apply to you. The reason for my generalisation was, indeed, your treatment of evolution theory, which is a part of biology or scientific cosmology, as relativity theory or quantum mechanics are parts of physics. I do not know of your biological qualifications, I am certainly not a specialist, but I know that in biology classical Darwinian theory has been extended/amended, but all versions fit the description “evolution theory” which in this generality is accepted by a vast majority of scientists (with the small exception of ID people around William Dembsky and Michael Denton). The same can be said about relativity theory or quantum physics, although there are physicists - or people claiming to be experts in physics - who oppose Einstein, and the same with quantum physics.

The point I wanted to make is that any scientific findings - any scientific model of the material universe - can be interpreted by a Christian as compatible (on at least the subjective level) with our faith. Actually, the idea of a God who devised such a remarkable interplay of chance and necessity (Jacques Monod) through evolution, allowing the world to “create itself” (John Polkinghorne’s understanding of divine kenosis), including humans, the only beings (so far?) endowed with consciousness, is much more awe inspiring than the idea of a Supreme watchmaker or a Supreme computer programmer.

Pericles,
Thank you for calling my attention to the ambiguities that are probably due to my English.

Being on a collision course means that they might collide if left to themselves, i.e. if not reinterpreted in ways that do not contradict each other. [Some of these interpretations might inspire (a rather subjective term) each other, which, of course, does not mean that they must agree, lead on their own, to the same conclusions.] This is what in Barbour’s typology corresponds to Conflict, which I thus claim is inherent not in the science-religion relation, only in some of their interpretations. (ctd)

(ctd) Being mutually irrelevant means that science left "uninterpreted" is irrelevant to (independent of; irrelevant = unrelated to the matter being considered) a religious (I have in mind the Christian version, where I am most at home) world view, with its variety of subjective - psychological, cultural, but also metaphysical - manifestations. And vice versa, hence the word mutually.

Augustine had religious insights that are a source of inspiration even today, but he had very naive, from today’s point of view, ideas about biology, and there are respectable scientists - no need to mention names - with very naive ideas about religion and its philosophical insights. Of course, by science I always mean natural science: religion is certainly not completely irrelevant to the findings of e.g. cultural anthropology.

The independence (indeed, this is the term used in Barbour’s typology that corresponds to my case of “mutual irrelevance”) of science from religious presuppositions is sometimes referred to as “methodological atheism” that I also subscribe to, though “agnosticism” would here be a better term. A good example is Laplace’s reply to Napoleon when he queried the absence of any mention of God in his exposition of celestial mechanics: “Sir, I did not need this hypothesis”. Well, he was an atheist, but I am sure neither do Jesuit astronomers from the Vatican Observatory use the existence of God as a scientific hypothesis in their work as astronomers.

I do not understand what you mean by “individual irrelevance”. When you say a thing is irrelevant as such, you implicitly mean that it is irrelevant to what you are interested in, to what you are discussing, etc.

Finally, thank you again for the impulse to think over my science-religion “creed in a nutshell”.

If I might continue this train of thought for a moment, I have stripped your response of some of its more subordinate (insubordinate?) clauses, and arrived at the following.

>>Being mutually irrelevant means that science left "uninterpreted" is irrelevant to... a religious... world view... And vice versa, hence the word mutually.<<

So, "science left uninterpreted is irrelevant to a religious world view", and vice versa "a religious world view is irrelevant to science left uninterpreted".

OK, but what does it actually mean?

What exactly is "science left uninterpreted"? An example would help.

On reflection, I think you may have missed out the "uninterpreted" in front of "religious world view" - that would at least be consistent with your in-a-nutshell creed.

But again, what does an "uninterpreted religious world view" look like? An example could possibly help here as well.

It may just be, as you say, "due to your English", but I suspect it is a little more significant than that. The concepts do not, as they appear here, make any sense at all to what I would consider an everyday level of comprehension. But any search for deeper meaning is hampered by the essentially vague expression of the ideas.

>>I do not understand what you mean by “individual irrelevance”. When you say a thing is irrelevant as such, you implicitly mean that it is irrelevant to what you are interested in, to what you are discussing, etc.<<

Actually, that was my attempt at making sense of mutual irrelevance. I assumed that the mutuality was necessary for the irrelevance - i.e. each idea would be relevant on its own, but when confronted with the other, both would suddenly become irrelevant. The alternative, surely, would be independent irrelevance, where each is irrelevant regardless of the presence or absence of the other.

In which case, we could dispense entirely with the concept of mutuality, and simply be left with irrelevance.

But since deleting the "mutual" from your creed would deprive it entirely of sense, I thought I would look for other answers.

I'd like to understand better, can you help?

Mick

I think you have illustrated my point about biblical literlists quite well.

Tell me.. why would God bother to bring anyone back to life after they had died? How does She pick the 'lucky' candidates for resuscitation.

Pericles, let me repeat that I am grateful to you for pointing out the ambiguities of terms I used in my “nutshell”, perhaps too much carried away by the religion-science symmetry suggested by this formulation.

You are right, the sentence

>>Being mutually irrelevant means that science left "uninterpreted" is irrelevant to... a religious... world view... and vice versa.<<

is not clear, and actually not what I wanted to say, among other things because it violates the “cosmetic” symmetry of my nutshell formulation: The phrase “religious world view” should be replaced by “uninterpreted” religion, because “religious world view”, meaning the world view of a person, who is religious, e.g. a Christian, already encompasses personal interpretations - from very naive to rationally quite sophisticated (including uncertainties) ones - of “raw” religious experiences (William James), scripture narratives, theology, etc., by the very definition of the word “world view”.

This would make the statement more symmetric - “uninterpreted” science vs. “uninterpreted” religion - but I agree, that the terms used need to be defined, explained. Everybody more or less agrees on what (natural) science means, but there are many definitions of religion. For these purposes I prefer Clifford Geertz’s anthropological definition as “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life”. (The Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books 1973/2000, p. 89). Christianity evolved further, and there are other than anthropological aspects to it. So we have theology, which, roughly speaking, is a rationalised, systematised expression of the Christian religion, actually in many versions.

On the other hand, there is no no need for a “rationalised” expression of science, because all science is rational: there are no personal “scientific experiences” in the sense of William James (the sensual experiences can, of course be rationalised, that is what science is more or less all about), there are no “holy books” of science, no rootednes in history, no foundational narratives, etc. (ctd)

(ctd) So perhaps the relation science-theology, would be more symmetric than science-religion, with philosophy the overarching perspective, the meeting ground for their dialogue.

In this sense I would call “uninterpreted” religion its pre-rationalised stage, when one simply “experiences” the presence of the numinous (Rudolf Otto), only in its extreme form referred to as mystical experience, accepts the Scripture on its face value (which is the same for a contemporary reader as it was for a reader centuries ago). You see, I am improvising on the go, and will be grateful to you if again you can point to gaps.

“Uninterpreted” science should be a somewhat easier term to define. It is simply what all scientists (with comparable qualifications) agree upon, irrespective of their world views, irrespective of whether they believe in a God or not. As I tried to explain to Mick, evolution theory is something that should be kept within the realms of “uninterpreted” biology, because it is compatible with a theistic as well as atheistic interpretation.

Of course, interpretations do not always have to be related to religion, belief in God. A classical example is quantum mechanics, where everybody agrees about what it is (expressed in mathematical language), and that it is an experimentally verified scientific theory, but even physicists are “philosophically puzzled” about the uncertainty principle, particle-wave dualism, etc. You have the Copenhagen interpretation and half a dozen of others, each of which have philosophical implications compatible with both belief and unbelief in God.

Actually, I personally prefer to compare (abstract) religion with (pure) mathematics rather than science. For instance, Einstein’s famous aphorism: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality” could be paralleled by: “As far as religious symbols (and norms) refer to observable reality (and rules that can be enforced) they are not certain; as far as they are certain they do not refer to observable reality (and rules that can be enforced).”

Waterboy,
“Why would God bother to bring anyone back to life after they had died?” A quick reading of John’s gospel, chapter 11, the account of Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead, yields these answers: For people to see the glory of God. To give opportunity for people to believe in Jesus. So that Jesus could demonstrate who he was, that is, the source of life itself, and the one in charge of the final resurrection.

“How does She pick the 'lucky' candidates for resuscitation?” I see you chose the word ‘resuscitation’, and this is appropriate for there is an obvious difference between Jesus’ resurrection and Lazarus’ and others’ resuscitations. Lazarus’ coming back to life was temporary. He died again. Yet Jesus was raised never to die again. This is spoken about in 1Corinthians 15, which I’ve already mentioned as a key passage for understanding the New Testament.

Was Lazarus lucky? He might not have seen it like that. He then had to die twice. When speaking of the resurrection on the final day, we are all candidates (John 11:24).

George,
The same key chapter (1Cor 15) also explains how the person, Adam, is important in understanding the NT message. This runs in opposition to the theory of evolution, in which Adam is relegated to a figurative or non existence. This chapter also speaks of ‘death’ being an enemy (v.26), one day to be eliminated. Yet evolution theory always requires death to eliminate the weak, ever since time immemorial, for life to progress. A Christian can try and accommodate the theory of evolution, but it can’t be harmonised with the Bible.

Monod’s or Polkinghorne’s conjectures as awe inspiring? Perhaps to some.

Again, I risk being accused of pitting faith against science. If evolution theory served any practical purpose other than securing atheistic leaning philosophies, I might show it more respect.

You spoke of what “all scientists agree upon” as if that was oceans in abundance. I could list more names than just Dembski and Denton who challenge evolution theory.

Mick

In John's Gospel the 'glory' of God refers very specifically to Jesus 'lifting up on the cross', his crucifixion, which is the ultimate sacrifice God makes, revealing His love for the world.

The Lazarus story is a literary device to effect the transition from the 'ministry of signs' to the 'ministry of glory'. It is not to be taken literally although it probably is based on some early 'Jesus tradtions' as there are obvious connections to the Synoptic Gospels. According to John the raising of Lazarus is the event which causes the political reaction which leads to his trial and crucifixion ie His Glory. The synoptics are unaware of this causal relationship suggesting that it is a literary device in John rather than biographical. There are also linguistic hints that chapters 11 and 12 of John may come from the pen of a redactor rather than from the author of chapters 1 to 10 further strengthening the argument for the literary rather than literal understanding of these chapters.

In Luke the miracles, 'dunameis', refer to Jesus' authority over demons. I, for one, do not share the world-view in which there are demons and ghosts running around everywhere. These stories make perfectly good sense, taken literally, from within such a world-view but not from within my world-view. Once upon a time people believed in demons and told stories about demons and spirits. They were interpreting their world in concepts and language appropriate to their understandings. I do not believe in demons but I still appreciate that these stories make a significance point and that is what matters rather than the world view which formed them. I can even talk about demons, using the word metaphorically.

Believe it or not Mick, faith is possible without taking the Bible literally. Have you seen this site which talks about different faith 'zones'. http://www.spiritedexchanges.org.nz/store/doc/Issue%2036.pdf

George

Reading through your old posts I noticed you made the claim that humans are the only beings endowed with consciousness. I find this a most extraordinary claim. Have you drawn this 'knowledge' from science or theology?

Have you ever worked with a dog or a horse? Have you ever observed the social behaviour of a herd of cattle? Have you ever played in the water with a dolphin? They HAVE consciousness. . . . and intelligence. . . . whatever your scientists or theologians say.

In my perhaps naive point of view, the point of a miracle is that it CAN'T happen, but DOES. The word has been somewhat secularised - a single mother in need of expensive, life-saving surgery for her six kids wins lotto and we call it a miracle. But it isn't. Why? Because a woman in that situation CAN win lotto. If, however, her six kids died and then woke up three days later, wandered around and then said 'cheerio' and went to heaven, THAT would be a miracle. As has already been pointed out, science has shown that it is impossible for people to rise from the dead.

Now, many miracles have large numbers of witnesses. To disprove the supernatural nature of these events, it is pointless for scientists to tell those people that the event can't happen - they already know that, and that is why they are so stunned when it does. They need to prove that the event didn't happen. The Virgin Mary didn't talk to a few little kids at Fatima. Christ died and stayed dead. Proving that something can't happen without proving that it didn't just reasserts the traditional religious point of view that miracles exist and are outside the boundaries of scientific understanding.

Mick,
as I said, I am not a biologist and so cannot pass judgement on the QUALITY of those specialists who do not accept any version of the theory of evolution. I can only observe the QUANTITY: the number of those who accept the theory vastly exceeds the number of those who do not. I think you are not a lesser Christian when you accept that some people’s faith can be inspired by an interpretation of evolution theory, or Einstein’s relativity, or quantum mechanics, since there is nothing in the Bible that goes explicitly against these twentieth century theories; theories that our ancestors could never have understood.

waterboy,
I liked your wordplay literary vs literal, and at second thought also your example of Macbeth, which - in distinction to some pure fiction, like Harry Potter or Star Trek - is anchored in historical facts, and thus a good approximation (though not equivalent to) the Bible story.

As to the term consciousness I meant simply that quality which makes humans different from other oraginic units (or inorganic ones: computers). Sometimes the terms self-awareness, intelligence, sentience etc. are used and consciousness is preserved for a lower “self-awareness”. The entry in Wikipedia agrees with my use: “Consciousness is a characteristic of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment.” In spite of these big words, scientists still do not know how to handle that “emergent” property (in distinction to another one, life, which they are further in understanding of how it arises).

I agree that in the everyday use of the word, also a dog is conscious (one says he is unconscious, the same as a human, when anaesthetised).

waterboy, Mick,
your controversies illustrate, I suspect, the need for some arbiter to carve a balance between the extremes of a literal exegesis and an exegesis that is determined only by what science and history (or just personal preferences) can confirm/accept. This arbiter might or might not be the “teaching authority” (Magisterium?) of this or that Church.

George, I appreciate your attempts to explain some of the concepts that you have offered in more detail, but I regret that they haven't helped a great deal.

The core problem I have with this batch of posts is your use of the term "uninterpreted", in relation to both religion and science.

>>Everybody more or less agrees on what (natural) science means<<

Well, yes, as far as it goes. But are you saying that "natural" science is the same as "uninterpreted" science. Surely, if no-one is observing it, science - in the sense that natural phenomena explained by science, as opposed to a belief system, can be assumed to go on without any interference from ourselves. Unless of course you happen to be an existentialist, in which case we instantly move into "science interpreted" territory.

You go on to assert that:

>>“Uninterpreted” science... is simply what all scientists (with comparable qualifications) agree upon, irrespective of their world views, irrespective of whether they believe in a God or not<<

But... but... surely, if there is even a need for them to agree on something, there must be a step in between where they have laid down definitions, established groundrules etc. - all in an attempt to interpret the natural phenomenon they are observing?

I also have grave difficulty with the concept of "uninterpreted" religion. Clifford Geertz’s anthropological definition is clear enough - again, as far as it goes. But it fails to tell us anything about religion in its raw state - in other words, the definition only holds value when it is qualified by the presence of a defined religion e.g. Christianity.

There would seem to be little point, therefore in the concept of either uninterpreted religion, or uninterpreted science. Both require interpretation before they can be of any use to anyone.

Am I missing something important here?

Mick

A few things we learn from I Corinthians and chapters 13 and 15 in particular:

1. From the earliest days of the Church there has been vigorous debate over the interpretation of the resurrection story.

2. Paul was quite prepared to adapt what he was saying to suit his audience. In these passages he draws heavily on the language of Platonic philosophy to engage the Hellenistic Corinthians in the debate over the nature of the resurrection.

While Paul rejects a heavily Platonic interpretation, it is evident that Christianity as a whole, from its inception, was much influenced by Platonic philosophy and other ideas current within the milieu of those times. We do not all believe in the same way. Diversity has always been present within the Church.

The point is that the resurrection needs to be understood for what it is, theological reflection on the significance of Jesus' life, teaching, death and His relationship to God. Death, physical death, does not render life meaningless. Even in physical death Jesus rose up to regenerate His disciple's faith, restore hope and remain present to His followers as they formed themselves into the early Church.

Accepting the resurrection uncritically as biographical fact is not necessary for faith. Perhaps it is necessary for acceptance into some Churches but that is not the same thing as faith. Just as courage is not about the absence of fear, so faith is not about absence of doubt. Faith is not particularly about what you 'believe', rather it is what you do today and tomorrow to follow Jesus in spite of your doubts.

Pericles,
let me start with the term science (the adjective ‘natural’ in English is implicit, and used explicitly only to distinguish it from ‘social science’). It studies phenomena that do not involve humans directly, (though psychology seems to be an exception). Within natural science it is not much of a restriction to view the subject (the researcher) as being placed outside the object of research. [This, of course, is not the case where religion is involved.]

Another presupposition of science is the (belief in the) existence of a (material) world independent of the observer (it is the solipsist not existentialist, who denies this). A third presupposition of science is its ability to know the truth about this world, a knowledge that is essentially independent of the researcher and his/her environment. Here “knowledge” means a PROCESS, rather than something arrived at, now or in the future, and fixed for ever. Of course, these three do not constitute the complete list of presuppositions (beliefs) every scientists tacitly assumes even before embarking on his/her research. [There are post-modernists who deny the ability of science to know, or rather pursue, the truth independent of the scientist and his/her beliefs; they believe natural science is socially constructed.]

This brings me to “uninterpreted” science, which I put in quotation marks exactly because I was aware of its fuzziness. The term “interpretation” means many things for philosophers and human or social scientists. I use the simplest definition, interpretation=explanation of what is not immediately plain or explicit, where by “immediately plain” I mean from within science when speaking about science (or religion, when speaking about religion). Something like if you are a pure mathematician you can understand many things from within mathematics, without knowing what is their use, their application in science. So you are right, that I could have dropped the adjective “uninterpreted”, meaning simply science, including observations, definitions and theories based upon them, plus any conclusions that can be drawn/explained from within science without bringing a disputed world view into play. The latter condition I summarized in “on what all scientists agree upon”. (ctd)

(ctd) An interpretation of science in this context would mean taking into account some wider world-view that includes an attitude, positive or negative, to religion, acceptance of these or those presuppositions that include, but go beyond, those shared by all scientists. Such interpretation is, of course, personal and/or culture-bound. There are many “non-sequiturs” (when viewed from within science) in e.g. Dawkins’ books on Darwinism and genetics, and I have recently read a popular book on physics, written by a Christian physicist, that contained similar scientific “non-sequiturs” explainable only from within the Christian faith.

In case of religion things are more complicated. First of all, I agree with your remark about Geertz’s definition: In English there is a difference between religion as such, studied by anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and a particular religion, e.g. Christianity. Something like language as defined by linguists, and e.g. the English language. There is nothing similar in the case of science, because there is only one science but many religions; even of the “higher” ones there are about half-a-dozen. So I should have spoken of “uninterpreted Christianity” to keep to what I think I understand best. Again, I could have dropped the adjective. This describes everything my religion means for me, which has not only rational, but also emotional and ethical components (the emotional and ethical components in science are either negligible or depend on world-view interpretation) while “bracketing” what I know from science and philosophy thereof.

For some people “bracketing” means ignoring (e.g. the extreme literalists), for others it is a permanent state of mind (they are “Christians on Sunday and scientists on weekdays”), and for others, including myself, bracketing means just an intermediary state: I know what I know from science (or rather maths where I am more at home), I live a Christian life as best as I can, and spend my time in retirement thinking about the relation between these two approaches to truth (reflected also in the proliferation of literature on the topic in the last two decades), sometimes trying to resolve various "cognitive dissonancies".

Otokonoko, I think your comment was not naïve but concise and astute.

George, - “the number of those who accept [evolution] theory vastly exceeds the number of those who do not. …these 20th century theories; theories that our ancestors could never have understood.”

For someone who has read some philosophy of science, I shouldn’t need to tell you, science is not a democracy, and also, Darwin’s ideas arrive from the 19th Century.

I’ll admit to not being a biologist, but I know enough about science to know that it is not done by counting votes (even be it 99% to 1%). It is more precise than that.

When you say, ‘theories that our ancestors could never have understood’, are you including Darwin himself amongst these our predecessors? It is true that he was ignorant of important 20th Century discoveries such as Mendel’s genetics, etc, and though he was detailed in his research, his qualifications were mainly in theology.

To think that the ideas of some other 19th Century near contemporaries of Darwin, such as Freud (psychology) and Marx (economics), in their day, were also considered scientific, but today they’re thought of as quaint philosophies.

Darwinian evolution (and even new improved, modified models thereof) could go the same way, except that that would create a huge philosophical vacuum, with nothing but a supernatural Designer to replace it. Today’s philosophers cannot accept that. The whole issue is philosophical, not empirical.

Waterboy,
I repeat that I object to being called a Biblical literalist. I don’t think such a thing even exists. E.g. When it says, ‘If your right hand sins, cut it off’, no sane person takes that literally.

Our aim always is to find the intention of the author. When looking for such intention, the first place I start is in the words and the grammar of the text. I believe that God, as the inventor of language, is perfectly capable of communicating clearly. The Bible is His message, and I expect it to be comprehensible and internally coherent.

I don’t, like you, see any rupture between John chapters 10 and 11. It seems a continuous text. In both chapters 9 and 11, we see accounts of marvellous miracles with similar accompanying themes of Jesus attracting the envy and hate of the authorities for his actions.

I don’t agree with George’s suggestion of us needing an authority or arbiter to step in and explain what is clearly written. The Bible, rough and raw, is capable of speaking for itself, as it has to ordinary people for centuries.

Yet it seems clear that we hold radically different presuppositions. I wanted to ask you the same question that I asked Rhian earlier (Rhian never responded), and that is, did the Resurrection truly happen, or did Jesus’ body rot away as in the normal course of events after death?

I think from your last post, you have declared where you stand on this. For the record, I’ll answer my own question. I believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus, with the promise of an afterlife for all believers. For me, Christianity is inconceivable beyond these parameters. But that is not just my opinion. It is the teaching of the apostle Paul, “And if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world” (1Cor. 15:19).

You say, “Faith is not particularly about what you 'believe'.” I read Paul saying exactly the opposite throughout 1Cor 15 (e.g. v.11). What you believed mattered to Paul.

Mick

I agree we have very different dispositions.

As far as the resurrection is concerned I regard it as a literary construct. As a naturally sceptical person I'm inclined to doubt its biographical value... but then... I wasnt there. I cant say for certain what happened and I dont worry about it much. As a model for understanding Jesus, His life and death, it works. That's good enough for me.

For me the Bible is authoritative rather than authority. Paul had a certain world-view which I do not share. Im fairly sure Jesus would have had some dispute with Paul's interpretation of His life, particularly Paul's interest in personal salvation and its relation to resurrection.

You say you have an interest in the 'author's intention' yet you ignore serious questions about authorship and accept uncritically much of its cultural baggage and seem to ignore the possibility that interpretation might go way beyond 'finding the author's intention'. You accept that it contains literary devices used for effect, to make a point. Yet you refuse to draw the obvious conclusion that it is literature through and through. You describe it as if it was some sort of direct communication from God when, in reality, it is a very human book with all sorts of errors and constrained to a particular world-view that is no longer viable.

As a record of Gods dealings with a wayward and troublesome people the Bible is authoritative. That does not, however, particularly elevate its biographical value. At the risk of repeating myself I believe there is something deeply wrong with religious fundamentalism. It seems to me life-denying, sterile, unintelligent and dangerous. Fundamentalist churches are often just cults using Christian language to bolster some self-proclaimed authoritative figure, pastor or evangelist.


Enjoy your Bible as I enjoy being engaged with this life here and now. There is another thing Paul got wrong.

Mick,
you are right, science “is not done by counting votes” but if you are not a specialist that is all you have: For instance, I accept the warnings about climate change, CO2 emissions, because the majority of specialists say so.

By ancestors who could not understand modern scientific theories I meant those whom the Bible was originally aimed at, some thousands of years ago. I can try to explain relativity theory to a ten year old but I cannot do it the same way I would to a university student.

I wholeheartedly agree that “the whole issue (of whether there is an Intelligent Designer) is philosophical” not scientific, so as a Christian I can believe in Him without forcing other scientists - with other philosophical outlooks - to accept Him as part of science.

You could not be using elctronic equipments if quantum physics, as it is understood by physicists and applied by electronic engineers, was not right, verified by praxis. Nevertheless, there are philosophical questions connected with how to interpret the wave-particle duality that do not have universally accepted answers. Some people even use some of these interpretations to "scientifically explain" some aspects of Christian faith - e.g. God's intervention in the material world without violating its physical laws. However, I would not pay too much attention to a person philosophising about the complementarity or uncertainty principles who does not know what e.g. a Hilbert space is.

I suspect there are similar technicalities in biology connected with evolution that I do not understand, which does not allow me to criticise the theory as such. I must also be careful when criticising other people’s INTERPRETATIONS of what is known about evolution, unless they present them as CONCLUSIONS reached using SCIENTIFIC methods. Of course, I can choose my own interpretation, probably comprehensible only to those who share my world-view.

Also, I am afraid, “a huge philosophical vacuum, with nothing but a supernatural Designer to replace it” sounds very much like the “God of the gaps” argument that backfired so many times in the past.

When i was little i believed in the tooth fairy and santa.Now i'm older i would like to know why so many religious people over the years have murdered anybody who didn't have the same opinions.I can understand fighting a war to protect your home or family and your way of life.What i find difficult to comprehend is"religion is about being good and loving your fellow man".Therefore if someone doesn't agree you burn them at the stake,feed them to the lions,drive planes into crowded buildings,gas them, or in the case of one famous man ,crucify them.We can't prove one way or another about any god's existence but i'm sure he wouldn't approve of the things done in his name ,if he does exist.I try to be a good girl,just incase.

haygirl,
by comparing religious beliefs to the tooth fairy and santa you seem to indicate that you do not understand religion beyond what is taught at primary, or even pre-school, level. Whether that is the fault of your RE teacher - as unfortunately happens more than often - I cannot tell.

If your understanding of mathematics was on a level where you could compare it only with counting apples and oranges, it would be hard to explain to you how useful maths is in its applications for science and technology. Applications, that are good, but too often also bad. Without maths you would not have the plane that can bring you to Europe in about 20 hours, but that one can also ram into a New York skyscraper killing three thousand people. Without e.g. Christianity you would probably not have Enlightenment and modern science, as painful as the birth was for the “Mother”, (who is still worried, mostly unnecessarily, that her “baby” strolls too war away). However, neither would you have the passions that fuelled Medieval and pre-modern wars, that, albeit, 20th century managed on its own, without a direct input from religion.

Another example is sex, without which you would not have rapists, child molesters etc. but I do not have to explain to you that the sexual drive can serve also useful, pleasant and beautiful purposes.

You will always find people who abuse things meant to serve humanity, like religion, technology, sex etc. And the stronger, more psychologically entrenched these things are, the greater the abuse