Planet Utah

The tired old "judge not" debate

I haven't blogged about religion very much in recent months, mainly because I've achieved a degree of peace when it comes to the issues I had been struggling with. Actually, it would be more accurate to say I've achieved a state of clear. That's what we call it in the Church of Scientology.

Just kidding, Mom and Dad! I mean, really, who can afford their own e-meter? (Actually, I have achieved a degree of peace, but I'll save that for another post.)

So, anyway, today I was listening to talk radio, and apparently some congregation got kicked out of some institutional church somewhere for somehow appearing to condone homosexuality. Well, the one side said, "Homosexuality is sinful behavior. You can't claim to be a Christian church and condone sinful behavior. So, if that's what the congregation was doing, they deserve what they got." This prompted people on the other side to call in and say, "Who are we to stand in judgment of others? Jesus said, 'Judge not, lest ye be judged.' The only one with the power to judge is God. If homosexuality is sinful, then God will judge homosexuals at the end of time. It's not our business to judge them in the here and now."

The problem I have with the latter response is that it glosses over the difference between judging people and judging behavior. My own interpretation of Jesus' teaching is that it is not our place to judge people, i.e., to say, "You are a good person," or "You are a wicked person"; only God can do that. I think Jesus is okay, however, with judging behavior. In fact, he gives explicit instructions for what to do when "your brother has sinned against you." Following those instructions requires that: a) we be able to identify sinful behavior in our brother; and b) that we point it out to our brother with an expectation that the behavior will change. We are, in other words, judging the behavior as bad and in need of change, and we are saying so.

This leaves open the question of what to do about sins against God. Homosexuality, for example, isn't a sin against ME, but it is a sin against God (or God's design), at least if you take Leviticus seriously. (And for those of you who think that Jesus didn't take Leviticus seriously, at several places in the Gospels he expressly affirms the continuing relevance of "the law," i.e., the Torah, i.e., the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.) In Leviticus, God calls homosexual sex an abomination, a detestable act, an enormous sin...depending on the translation you prefer.

So, for those who insist that we not judge sins against God, you are saying that our thought process should run as follows: "Well, God says this behavior is an enormous sin, and God says that this behavior is punishable by death...but I'm just not comfortable condemning it. Call me crazy..."

In my mind, that WOULD be crazy. If God condemns the behavior and requires us to be the instrument of civil justice in response to it (i.e., to stone people who engage in it, at least in Leviticus times), is it a reasonable expectation that we are not supposed to condemn the behavior as well? I don't think so...

Footnote: In preemptive fashion, let me acknowledge that Jesus also offered abundant cautions about judging the sins of others when we ourselves are engaged in sinful behavior. He was particularly sensitive about the Pharisees, whose condemnations of sin were public, and whose self-righteousness was also public. And he was a big believer in forgiving and forgetting rather than bearing grudges. But I don't think Jesus preached that we should never identify and condemn sin in others.

Anklenote: Would I be comfortable calling out someone else's sins? In certain circumstances, yes. It would have to be a pretty serious sin, it would have to be part of a pattern of behavior (not just a one-off thing that would never happen again), and the sin would have to be something of which I was not guilty myself. (That's the plank-in-your-own-eye caution.)

Assume you have a can opener...

When I was a freshman in college, I took an introductory economics course. The professor told a joke about how economists are famous for "solving" economic problems by making heroic assumptions. There are different variants, but the joke goes more or less as follows:

An economist, a chemist, and a physicist are stranded on a desert island. One day, a crate of canned food washes up on the shore. The three castaways begin discussing ways to get at the food. The physicist suggests dropping the crate off a cliff onto the rocks below, rupturing the cans and allowing access to their contents. The chemist suggests tossing the crate into the fire until the contents of the cans boil and the cans burst open. The economist says, "Why don't we just assume we have a can opener?"

I'm at a similar place when it comes to my quest for God. I'm prepared to assume that there is a God, and I'm prepared to assume that that God had a hand in creating the universe, the Planet Earth, and humanity. But then what? I mean, what implications does that have for me?

The answer to that question is pretty easy if you accept one of the monotheistic traditions--Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. But if you don't, there's very little guidance.

Among the three major traditions, though, there is one (Judaism) in which some adherents openly describe their beliefs in a way that I find highly appealing. I'm paraphrasing, and Jews who know their stuff will no doubt take issue with my paraphrase, but I think I'm getting the guts of it correct. Here it is:

"Our religion grew out of a belief that there is an intelligent life form out there, and that that life form created the universe and created us. We call that life form God. Believing in God, we came up with a mythical history and a set of traditions that represented our best efforts to describe God as we imagined him, to envision the kind of relationship God might want with us, and to describe the kind of life God would want us to live. Though our scriptures say that God revealed everything to us, this is not the case. Instead, God simply planted in our hearts a belief in his existence, and a belief that he was the creator of everything, including us. Working from nothing more than that, we've done our best to build a bridge to him."

When the Mormons consider you a lost cause...

Yesterday my dad and I were unloading a bunch of furniture from a moving truck outside my home in Austin. As we unloaded, two young Mormon guys approached us and asked if we needed help. We politely declined, and they offered again. We declined again, and they offered one more time ("Really? Are you sure?"). Again we declined, not because we didn't want the help, but because we didn't want to incur the obligation. Well, that didn't deter one of the young guys, who started laying his LDS rap on me. I hit him with my standard (and now well-rehearsed) set of objections to Mormonism as history and theology. Rather than addressing my objections point by point, however--which is what most Mormons do--he said, "But can't you just take on faith that this is the word of God?", nodding toward his copy of the Book of Mormon. I said, "No, my brain doesn't work that way. When all of the evidence from science and history indicates that something is NOT the word of God, I just can't force myself to believe that it is." The young guy then asked me, "Have you prayed about it?" I said, "More than you would believe." He said, "And what happened?" I said, "Nothing...no answer, no direction. So, I just keep searching on my own." And with that, the kid gave up: "Okay, well, if you ever need anything, here's where to find me. Welcome to the neighborhood."

What if Jesus was just an apocalyptic preacher?

Still listening to the Bart Ehrman New Testament lecture series on CD. Ehrman spends a lot of time talking about Jesus as the most famous of an apparently common first century "type": the Jewish apocalypticist. Ehrman argues that John the Baptist and St. Paul were this "type" as well. All three of these guys thought that the end was imminent. Accordingly, all three preached that we better hurry up and get right with God.

This got me thinking...what if Jesus sincerely believed in the apocalypse, but was wrong? You know, like one of those guys who predicts the world will end at 7:42 a.m. on March 15th, only to see March 15th come and go without the world seeming to notice. (I'm assuming here that Jesus was not divine; I don't think God can make mistakes of this sort.)

It's interesting to go back and re-read Jesus' teachings from this perspective: "This is how you need to live in order to prepare for the imminent day of judgment," as opposed to this perspective: "This is how you need to live for the next couple thousand years, or as long as it takes me to return."

Most current Christians and Christians emeritus (like me) have read the Gospels in a way consistent with the latter interpretation. But Jesus' teachings--particularly the more radical ones--make a lot more sense (to me, anyway) if you assume that he believed we had very little time to put our spiritual houses in order.

Makes me wonder what Jesus might have done/said differently if he had known that the end was not, in fact, imminent.

Who wrote the Gospels?

Like most of you, I was raised believing that the Gospels were written by, respectively: Matthew (a tax collector and disciple of Jesus); Mark (executive assistant to Peter); Luke (golfing buddy of Paul); and John (another disciple of Jesus). That's what my various Bibles said, and that's what the Jesuits at Brophy told me.

Well, many years later I started reading some of the scholarly literature on the Gospels, and I discovered that among people with Ph.D.s in this stuff, the Gospels are generaly considered to be anonymously authored. There are exceptions, of course, but I think it's fair to say that that is the majority opinion among Bible scholars.

Today, though, for the first time, I heard one of those Ph.D. sorts (Bart Ehrman) make a point that I had never come across before. All of the Gospels were written in Ancient Greek. That means that the Gospel-writers had to be able to read and write in that language. We know that John the disciple, the putative author of the Gospel that is named for him, was a fisherman (a job that doesn't require a lot of book-learnin'). So, we're supposed to believe that a fisherman whose native tongue was Aramaic, and who lived in a time/place in which somewhere north of 90 percent of people were illiterate, knew how to read and write in Ancient Greek.

Could be true, I suppose, but you never really see those guys on "Deadliest Catch" bust off an email in Korean.

Yes, I know, John could have learned Ancient Greek down the road. But let's not forget Occam's Razor: other things being equal, the simpler answer/solution is to be preferred. It's a simpler matter to say, as most Bible scholars do, that we simply don't know who wrote John's Gospel than to bend over backwards to attribute authorship to him.

Footnote: I've read a bunch of Lee Strobel's "The Case for..." books, the premise of which is as follows: "I, Lee Strobel, skeptical but fair-minded journalist, and one-time atheist, am going to examine all of the big questions about God, Jesus, and the universe. I will then reveal the answers to you. You can have confidence that my answers are correct because, as previously noted, I'm skeptical but fair-minded, and I used to be an atheist. Did I mention that part before?"

So, anyway, in the relevant portion of the relevent "Case for" book, Strobel interviews a guy who says that the only Gospel whose authorship is in question is John's Gospel, and that really, the questions aren't very significant, so it's about 95 percent certain that John the disciple actually wrote it. Strobel doesn't say, "That's weird, because every other Bible scholar I talked to says that all of the Gospels--not just John--are generally considered to be anonymously authored. So you're kind of out there on an island all by yourself. What's that like?"

The takeaway: if you're a Strobel fan, just remember that his books are works of apologetics, not disinterested intellectual exercises.

Another tough one for religious kooks

Don't know if you saw this story about an illegal reptile ring that sold snakes to crazy, snake-handling Christians (among other customers, one assumes). There are a couple of Christian sects that still include snakes in their liturgy because Jesus said that his followers would be able to "take up" snakes and serpents, and "tread on" them without being harmed. Problem is, people ARE being harmed, as you can read in the article. (For example, a guy and his wife both died from snake bites in one three-year span.)

Question: after your pastor gets bitten by a snake and dies (which happens on occasion), does it occur to you that it may be time for some textual reinterpretation? Or do you just think that your pastor was a fraud? And if it's the latter, what safeguards do you put in place to ensure that you aren't duped by the next guy?

Footnote: actually, I think I know the answers to these and all related questions. If you're deeply invested in something, you can come up with all sorts of rationalizations to avoid having to divest yourself of it.

Latest thoughts on religion (and why I still bother)

Regular readers know this is something I've been struggling with for a long time. I've gone from lapsed Catholic, to strict Catholic, to generic Christian, to theist, to deist, to agnostic-leaning-strongly-toward-atheist.

This transformation has been driven by, and has also driven, a tremendous amount of thought, prayer, reading, writing, and conversation. More than a few people have said, "Why do you put so much effort into this? It's not as if you're ever going to get solid answers. Plus, you don't have to take it all so seriously..."

My response to that is three-fold. First, the question of God's existence is--potentially, anyway, depending on the nature of God, if there is one--the single most important question we can ask and answer in life. Second, I enjoy the intellectual exercise of working my way through these issues. Third, despite what people say, I do believe that I am getting closer to solid answers...not necessarily solid answers for everyone, but for me.

In short, I see a clear return on investment here.

So, where am I now? I start with the fundamental question: how did all of this stuff get here: you know, life, the universe, me, soap-on-a-rope, etc. I look at the answers that science gives, and they don't work for me. In part, that's because they're terribly incomplete. Scientists simply don't know, for example, how life began on this planet. They have some well developed ideas, but at this point, that's what they are: ideas, not answers.

Beyond their incompleteness, many of the ideas lack an intuitive plausibility and simplicity that I need in order to say, "Okay, that makes sense to me." For example, the idea of the universe having its origins in an infinitely dense singularity doesn't help me much. First of all, I can't imagine or understand the concept of "infinitely dense." Second, even if I could imagine and understand "infinitely dense," I would want to know how the singularity got there, how long it had been there, what "there" even means when you don't have the concepts of time and space to work with, and why the singularity violently heaved all of its matter outward 14 billion years ago. I want answers that I can wrap my brain around. They are not forthcoming.

Now, some (many?) would say, "That's just because you're not smart enough to understand the science." Could be. But that doesn't change my situation: science doesn't provide satisfying, intuitively plausible answers to my questions.

You can proceed two ways from this point. On the one hand you can say, "Give science some time. Eventually it will provide the answers you're looking for." On the other hand you can say, "If the answers that attribute all of this--life, the universe, you, your self-awareness--to random chance aren't satisfying to you, then maybe answers that attribute it to some sort of higher intelligence will be satisfying."

Because I'm worried about dying before "eventually" rolls around, I'm going to go with the "other hand" here. (I can always jump back to scientific explanations if good ones turn up before I die.) That gives me two more options: 1) intelligent design; or 2) some sort of organized system of philosophy or religion that assumes (or believes it can prove) the existence of a higher intelligence.

I can't embrace intelligent design for two reasons. First, I don't understand the science well enough to make legitimate judgments about its intellectual merit. Second, many people who do understand the science--even Christians who understand the science--are highly critical of ID as science. So, intelligent design, like the purely materialistic/scientific explanations, doesn't help me much.

That leaves me with non-scientific systems of thought, whether philosophical or theological. They provide answers that do make intuitive sense to me. Again, this may be true simply because my brain isn't large enough for the scientific explanations to make the kind of sense I'm looking for. But I'm stuck with the brain I've got, and the philosophical and religious answers to my big questions are the ones with the most intuitive plausibility. To me. For now.

Okay, so what to do about that? Pick a religious philosophy or an organized religion and follow it. Why? Because it's easier than starting your own. That's the same reason I'm taking Krav Maga classes rather than trying to invent my own method of self-defense. Krav Maga may not be the best system out there, but it's a system into which a lot of people have poured a lot of time, thought, and energy over the years. It will definitely get me where I want to go...maybe not as quickly or efficiently as other methods, but it will get me there.

Religion should work the same way. Why not reap the rewards of someone else's investment? Why not stand on the shoulders of giants (or at least people who shop in the big-'n-tall section)? Why not follow a path that has gotten other people to the place that I want to get?

Okay, so which religion or philosophical stance am I going to choose? I don't know. I do know, however, that it will have to have certain characteristics:

• It will have to welcome, even embrace, doubts and questions of the sort that I struggle with.
  
• It will not claim to have a monopoly on truth.
• It will not claim to be the "one true way."
• It will not ask me to believe things for which there is scant or no evidence.
• It will not ask me to believe things about God that make no logical, empirical, scientific, or historical sense.
• It will require some thought and effort.
• It will provide a non-material reward for that thought and effort...in THIS life, not after death.

So, there you have it. If you'd like to nominate your religion, the comment box is open for business.

A word on Mary's behalf

I have a Jewish friend named Mary (for purposes of this post). She sometimes gets frustrated, even angry, with me when I write about Judaism. Mary would never put anything in the comment box, so I want to give her point of view equal time here.

I believe the crux of Mary's anger/argument is this: it's not fair to fault Judaism for failing to be something it doesn't even aspire to be, namely, historical truth. Judaism, Mary says, is a system for connecting people with God. (She wouldn't put it that way, but I lost her most recent email on this, so I'm doing my best.) Whether or not it's historically true/accurate doesn't really matter. What DOES matter is whether it's useful for helping people understand and commune with the divine. Accordingly, the lack of evidence for the historical accuracy of Judaism is not a legitimate grounds for criticism/skepticism.

(Gratuitous sports analogy: imagine we were talking about the Suns, and I said, "Shaq's an okay player, I guess, but he can't hit the three." If you knew anything about basketball, you'd say: "He's not supposed to hit the three, nimrod. He's a center. A big body. He lingers in and around the paint, blocks shots, grabs rebounds, and hits five-footers. He's not even supposed to BE outside the arc, let alone shoot from there. If you want to criticize him for other things, fine. But you can't really criticize him for his three-point shooting.")

My response to Mary? I'll give you another analogy.

You show me a detailed map purporting to give directions to the Fountain of Youth. It requires a lot of decoding, but if we COULD decode it, we'd be young forever.

Awesome...unless there's no Fountain of Youth. If that's the case, what good does the map do us? Now, you might tell me, "The person who drew the map actually saw the fountain with his own two eyes, so I know it exists." Then I would ask, "Really? And how do you know this person actually saw it?" And you would tell me, "Well, among my people, that's the tradition that's been handed down from generation to generation for a few thousand years." Then I would say, "Hmmm...that doesn't sound like that much to go on. I mean, no one who's still alive actually knows if this guy saw the fountain, or if he drew an accurate map, or if the map was copied and recopied accurately over thousands of years, or if the fountain is still there (assuming it ever was)." And then you would say, "Well, you might be right, but the quest for the fountain is the thing that gives my people its identy." And then I would say, "Okay, good for you...but that's probably not something I want to spend my time on."

Judaism's the same way for me. If it can't even help me get over the threshold question of whether God exists, what good does it do me? And even if I'm to assume that God does exist, how do I know that Judaism in any way accurately captures God's essence and man's relation to God? And if I can't have confidence in those things, again, why does Judaism deserve my attention as a legitimate, meaningful system for communing with God?

I suppose Mary's answer would be, "because it works." (Her answer would also be, "It's not just about God. It's also about how we deal with one another.")

I don't doubt that Judaism does work for many people. I just know it wouldn't work for me. The starting point for me has to be a (fairly large) kernel of truth. Otherwise, why would I pay attention?

Yes, I have been reading a lot about Islam recently

Can you tell? Anyway, I need to make another point in that vein.

Imagine that a Jew murdered a homosexual simply for being a homosexual. In the general outrage that followed, the Jew could refer everyone to Leviticus 20 and say, "This is what God demands. If the state refuses to enforce God's law, then God's people must enforce it."

Now, I'm as ignorant as I can be about how modern-day Jews deal with Leviticus 20 and other, similarly antiquated (in my view) parts of the Torah. I'm certain they DO have a way of dealing with them, though, so I don't want a bunch of comments from people saying, "Hey, the Talmud put this issue to bed about 1500 years ago." I don't doubt that. I also know, however, that there are Jews AND Christians who take the Bible text literally. I have personally met people, for example, who think the universe is only 10,000 years old, and who think that homosexuals should be put to death...because that's what the Bible tells them.

It occurs to me that this is really all that radical Muslims are...people who take the Quran and the related "Tradition" literally.

And why wouldn't you take the word of God literally, if indeed it is the word of God? If you had a radical Muslim sitting before you, and you couldn't persuade him that the Quran and Tradition were NOT the word of God, what argument would you make about why radical Muslims should not act on Quranic dictates and mandates? If God demands it, who are you to tell the radical Muslim that God is wrong?

I'm not trying to rationalize radical Muslim behavior here, nor am I engaging in an act of cultural relativism. I'm saying that while their behavior is crazy and abhorrent, I have no idea how to stop them from engaging in it without also getting them to abandon their religion.

That makes this a very difficult, and different, war. In the Cold War, when the eastern bloc finally abandoned communism, it was abandoning a secular ideology invented by men. If the radical Muslims are going to abandon Islam, that means abandoning what they consider the literal, unerring word of God.

Making that happen is a pretty tall mountain for the non-Muslim world to climb.

Footnote: I'm sure some readers will note other options -- killing all of the radical Muslims, or getting them to abandon their tactics without abandoning their religion. But I'm not sure how we do either of those things, either.

Christianity: Best of the Big Three (UPDATED)

I don't consider myself a Christian any more. These days, I'm more of a striver. I believe there's something out there bigger than I, but: a) I'm not sure what it is, and b) I don't think it's captured by Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. If I had to choose one of the Big Three, though, I'd choose Christianity. Even though I often write and talk about the lack of evidence for the basic Christian story, it's miles ahead of the other two.

The sine qua non of Judaism, for example, is the covenant between God and Israel. You won't find evidence for the existence of such a covenant anywhere outside of the Torah, which was anonymously authored by assorted members of...the tribe of Israel. I'm not saying that these authors had a vested interest in creating a heroic historical tradition for their people...okay, I guess I am saying that. Furthermore, they didn't commit any of this stuff to paper until hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years after the events they describe. Personally, I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. And again, if you're looking for anybody ELSE in human history to provide independent evidence for the basic story in the Torah, you're out of luck.

(I know the historical truth of the Torah doesn't matter to some Jews, but it matters to me.)

As for Islam, it too has a few big strikes against it that Christianity does not. First off, no one started putting stylus to clay tablet (or whatever) until a couple of hundred years after Muhammad was gone. (The earliest Gospel, on the other hand, was written 35 to 40 years after the fact.) I have a feeling that a few things may have been exaggerated, lost, made up, etc., in the process. Second, unlike the individuals chiefly responsible for spreading the Jewish and Christian stories, Muhammad (like Joseph Smith many centuries later) was the "prophet" of a religion that very conveniently made him rich, famous, powerful, and worthy of multiple wives. With the stamp of approval from God, he became a quasi-deity on earth. Nice work, if you can get it -- or at least fake it. (That logic, by the way, applies to Arabs generally. Islam considers Arabs to be God's favored people, just as Judaism does with Jews. I think Muhammad would have had a lot more credibility if he had said, "I've got a revelation from Allah that his favored people are...South Dakotans! As for Arabs, turns out we're in a tie for fifth with the Dutch. I know you're disappointed, but it could have been worse. Just be glad we're not Inuit Eskimos." That would have been what lawyers call an admission against interest.) Third, Islam expresses respect for Jews and Christians as "people of the book," affirms the divine calling of the prophets of these two religions...and then goes on to preach things that are not just inconsistent with much of Christian and Jewish belief, but are downright repulsive. How do you square that circle? (Islamic answer: "Have you no humility? Such things are known only to the great and powerful Oz! Oopsie, I meant Allah. Missed my morning coffee...")