Planet Utah

Don't make it hard for me to worship your God

One of my favorite bits of advice for commerce in the Internet age came from Vox: Don't make it hard for people to give you money. (Here's another one, from me: Don't make it hard to return stuff; ordering online is hit and miss. And another one: Don't take two months to deliver what someone else can deliver in two weeks, and don't take two weeks to deliver what someone else can deliver in two days...or I can get at my local store in two hours.)

I was reminded of that advice when I recently contacted a local Jewish temple for information on their interfaith programs. Now, if you know me, you know I'm not the kind of person to show up at temple on a Friday night and say, "Hey, who does a guy have to screw to get one of those hats?" No, I'd rather know in advance what the process is...and then follow it.

Well, a Reform temple just up the street from me had a detailed description on their Web page of all of the programs they have for un-chosen people like me. "Great!", I thought, and fired off an email to the designated address.

That was eight days ago. Still no response.

I'm through with Catholicism, but I'm tempted to email my local parish priest, just to see how the response time compares.

Religious cop-outs, part 2

(If you're looking for part 1, scroll down a little bit.)

So, let's talk about this sentence: "You have to have faith." (I guess I should say, "Let's talk about it again," cuz we've talked about it before.)

Now, I usually hear that sentence when I've expressed to someone my doubts about this or that religious claim. My interpretation of the sentence is this: "You can't expect absolute, irrefutable proof on these matters. I mean, God isn't going to walk into your kitchen and confirm the truth of the whole Bible for you. Some things, you just have to take on faith..."

(That's actually a super-literate interpretation. For a lot of people, the statement, "You have to have faith" is just a reflexive response to religious doubts/doubters.)

Fair enough.

Now, what if I told you the following: "Two thousand years ago, on an island in the middle of the Atlantic, there was a tribe of giants, 500 in number, each of whom was 20 feet tall. They're not around anymore because the island was destroyed by a massive tidal wave. But in their time, they were like nothing the world had ever seen before...and like nothing the world has seen since." 

If I told you that, swore it was true, and asked if you believed me, I wouldn't expect you to say, "Of course." I'd expect you to be skeptical...very skeptical. After all, everything in your experience tells you that giants don't exist and never have.

Now, if you said to me, "I suppose I might believe it, but you'd have to prove it to me," then I might say, "How? You want me to build a time machine and take you back to the island? Obviously, I can't do that. You just have to accept what I'm telling you on faith."

At that point, you would probably say, "Don't be ridiculous. I just want to know how you know the story is true. Are there historical records? Artifacts from the island? Contemporaneous accounts from credible sources? Skeletal remains? Is this something that unbiased historians of the ancient world also believe? If you can show me enough of that kind of evidence, then I might believe you."

Note that you might believe me even without actually seeing the giants for yourself, seeing a photograph, etc. In other words, you might believe me without absolute, irrefutable proof. You might make a leap of faith...but it would be a leap made from the top of a pile of evidence.

In my mind, telling me theological stories and asking me to believe them on faith alone, without compelling evidence--not definitive evidence, mind you, but compelling evidence--is like telling me a story about ancient giants and asking me to believe that on faith.

Footnote: Some people believe that the evidence for their theological stories is compelling. I don't agree. In fact, the more I learn, the more I'm shocked by how paltry it is.

Anklenote: Some people believe that God wants the evidence to be flimsy. If the evidence for, say, Christianity, were exceptionally strong, then it would be hard for anyone to deny the truth of Christianity, and we'd all be Christians. This wouldn't be satisfying to God because he really wouldn't have earned our love and faith...we would have come to him as Christians only because the evidence was so strong as to be virtually undeniable. 

To that I say, read your Old Testament. For that matter, read your New Testament.

The Old Testament is the story of the Jews repeatedly defying God despite his having revealed himself to them, having made a covenant with them, and having told them that they would enjoy peace, prosperity, and privilege if only they would obey him. 

God did all of that, and the Jews still refused to obey.

The New Testament is the story of God saying, "You know, I laid out the whole deal for these people--made the whole God-man relationship crystal clear, performed miracles, followed them around as a pillar of smoke, etc.--and they're still defying me. I don't think they're ever going to get their shit together on their own. I guess I'm going to have to send a special emissary down there to deal with this directly." (Spoiler alert: God's people were still so defiant, even when confronted by God's special emissary, they asked the Roman authorities to kill him.)

See what I'm getting at? Even when God presents irrefutable evidence of himself, his essence, his goodness, and his desired relationship with man, people STILL reject him. In light of this, it's a ridiculous theology that says, "No, God has to keep the evidence flimsy. Otherwise, everyone would embrace him too easily..." 

Religious cop-outs, part 1

When people ask about my hobbies and interests, somewhere in my response I usually say, "...I also like to talk about religion and politics, which, of course, are the two things you're not supposed to talk about." It's not unusual, though, for the person I'm speaking with to want to discuss either religion, or politics, or both. 

That happened the other night, when I was talking to a woman at an outdoor bar. I explained to her my struggles with religion. I said words to this effect: "All three monotheistic religions begin with a story. And the thing I want to know, first and foremost, is this: 'Is the story true?' If you can persuade me that the story is true--not in all of its particulars, but just generally true (e.g., there was a Jesus, he did miracles, he taught more or less what the Bible says he taught, he was crucified, he was resurrected)--then you've really got my attention.  But if you can't persuade me that the story is true, why should that story have any claim on my attention?"

Well, the woman with whom I was speaking said, somewhat condescendingly, "I understand, but I, personally, don't need that. I mean, whether Jesus existed, whether he did miracles, the resurrection, all of that--it doesn't really matter to me. I'm much more interested in the message. I'm a Christian because of the message, not because I necessarily believe that the whole 'Jesus story' is true."

What I wanted to ask this woman, then, was why she wasn't Jewish. The parts of Jesus' message that didn't have to do with his own identify, his relationship with God, the Eschaton, etc., were basically Jewish in their theology. (Jesus was a Jew preaching to other Jews about the proper practice of the Jewish faith. He wasn't trying to establish a new religion.)  

What distinguishes a Christian from someone who simply believes that Jesus was a great moral teacher is this: belief in the identify of Jesus as the resurrected son of God.

If you don't believe in that--if you don't even really care about that--why bother calling yourself a Christian? In fact, if you just believe in the "love, forgiveness, and the Golden Rule" part of Jesus' message, you don't need religion at all. You can get that same message from philosophy, literature, popular music, "Sesame Street," the musings of your average second-grader, etc. 

Get what I'm saying? The whole, "I, personally, don't need that" pose is a cop-out. It's a refusal to wrestle with the most challenging questions of religious faith. It's not open-mindedness, it's intellectual laziness.

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.