Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

If You Don't Know About This... You Should

2008-08-11T05:14:00.001-07:00

I've been following the story in Postville, Iowa and I realize that if there is any public issue important to both humanists and theists, this is it. There is such an immense humanitarian concern for the people involved in the ICE raid that took place back on May 12, that I really wanted to call attention to it for all who are unaware of what happened and who may feel called to add their voices in prayer or protest.

I have seen very little about this story in the mainstream media, but there are many resources with information about the ICE raid on the internet. Here is just one of those resources from the United States House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary: The Statement of Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, Federally Certified Interpreter at the US District Court for the Northern District of Iowa regarding a hearing on "The arrest, prosecution, and conviction of 297 undocumented workers in Postville, Iowa from May 12 to 22, 2008" before the Subcommitte on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law on July 24, 2008. The statement is 20 pages long but I urge you to read fully, as an American. The details are important. A few excerpts below:

"In my capacity as the court’s expert witness I observed that the arrest, prosecution, and conviction of 297 undocumented workers from Postville was a process marred by irregularities at every step of the way, which combined to produce very lamentable results."

"In every instance, detainees who cried did so for their children, never for themselves."

"To him we were part of the system keeping him from being deported back to his country, where his children, wife, mother, and sister depended on him. He was their sole support and did not know how they were going to make it with him in jail for 5 months. None of the 'options' really mattered to him. Caught between despair and hopelessness, he just wept. He had failed his family, and was devastated. I went for some napkins, but he refused them. I offered him a cup of soda, which he superstitiously declined, saying it could be 'poisoned.' His Native American spirit was broken and he could no longer think. He stared for a while at the signature page pretending to read it, although I knew he was actually praying for guidance and protection. Before he signed with a scribble, he said: 'God knows you are just doing your job to support your families, and that job is to keep me from supporting mine.'"

"SSA actuaries now calculate that illegal workers are currently subsidizing the retirement of legal residents at a rate of $8.9 billion per year, for which the illegal (no-match) workers will never receive benefits."

"Several families had taken refuge at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, terrified, sleeping on pews and refusing to leave for days. Volunteers from the community served food and organized activities for the children. At the local high school, only three of the 15 Latino students came back on Tuesday, while at the elementary and middle school, 120 of the 363 children were absent. In the following days the principal went around town on the school bus and gathered 70 students after convincing the parents to let them come back to school; 50 remained unaccounted for. Some American parents complained that their children were traumatized by the sudden disappearance of so many of their school friends. The principal reported the same reaction in the classrooms, saying that for the children it was as if ten of their classmates had suddenly died. Counselors were brought in. American children were having nightmares that their parents too were being taken away."

"A line was crossed at Postville. The day after in Des Moines, there was a citizens’ protest featured in the evening news. With quiet anguish, a mature all-American woman, a mother, said something striking, as only the plain truth can be. 'This is not humane,' she said. 'There has to be a better way.'"

Special thanks to blogger Border Explorer for her continued reporting on these events and links to many sources of information. Unfortunately, the federal raid on the workers dissected a state investigation into the unfair labor practices of the company, Agriprocessors. The sleaze there was wide and deep--the good news? As BE reported, "Iowa state labor officials are turning over 57 cases of 'egregious' child labor violations to IA Attorney General with the recommendation that they are prosecuted to 'the fullest extent of the law.' Each of the 57 cases has multiple child labor violations in each case. Further investigation results may unturn additional cases, they say." Finally, please take five minutes and watch this video.

Eaters’ Bill of Rights from the National Catholic Rural Life Conference

Eaters have a right to food.

Eaters have a right to safe food.

Eaters have a right to nutritious food.

Eaters have a right to food with country of origin labels.

Eaters have a right to food with labels for genetic modification.

Eaters have a right to know whether food has been genetically modified.

Eaters have a right to food produced without harming air, water or land.

Eaters have a right to food produced under socially just circumstances.

Eaters have a right to know the conditions of their food production:

• Is the environment harmed?
• Is the food safe?
• Are the animals treated with dignity and respect?
• Is the food produced on farms by family farmers?
• Is the food produced by factories?
• Are the farmers paid a just wage?
• Do farm workers have safe and healthy working conditions?
• Are production contracts fair or one-sided?
• Are processing plant and warehouse workers paid just wages?
• Are processing plant workers given reasonable work schedules?
• Is the food produced locally or transported for thousands of miles?
• Is the food system controlled by a few agribusiness cartels?

Eaters around the world have a right to a secure food system.

Eaters have a right to good food at a fair price.

Eating is a moral act

O, Lord
Help us to remember where our bread comes from
and why we yearn for living waters.
Teach us your guiding principles
for reverence of your Creation and justice for your People.
Help us make a place at the table for everyone.
Grace us when we eat with justice on our plate.
Then fill us with joy.
Amen.

Fat Man

2008-08-09T07:49:00.000-07:00

Take 90 seconds to watch this:

Got this from Border Explorer, who got it from Jan--pass it on.

The Theological Center of the Old Testament

2008-08-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

Crime and punishment, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; that’s the sort of theology I expect from Deuteronomy. Some would say I lack an appreciation for the subtleties and layers of meaning buried in the context of that book. And so I did. Until I heard Lawrence Boadt speak about the book of Deuteronomy at the Castelot Summer Scripture Series.

I have come to discover that in Deuteronomy there is a theology of repentance and hope; of reconciliation and restoration; that there are the beginnings of the theology of Jesus in this book. Deuteronomy is the beginning of the theology of love.

And that is a message I can embrace archeologically, historically, and theologically.

“Lawrence Boadt,” I said looking over the brochure. “I don’t think I’ve read anything of his. Why does his name sound familiar?”

“Look in the front of your Bible,” said Gloria.

“Ohhhhh. Lawrence Boadt.”

Yes, the man is brilliant. I would first say that Fr. Boadt has a very classical sense of order and style, evidenced by the organization of his notes and outlines. I really like that kind of nerdy intelligence and wry sense of humor he brings to his lectures.

Some of what I learned wasn’t exactly a surprise. Yes, Moses is the narrator, and yes, it was written after Moses died, so no, Moses didn’t write it. If you are shocked by this, take a deep breath. Biblical scholarship is not about undermining faith or truth, but about being open to the deeper message the text is trying to convey to you. So what if Joshua was made up?

So yes, Deuteronomy was written by a variety of authors who edited it and added to it to respond to what was going on around them at their time.

There’s nothing wrong with using a variety of literary forms, including myth, to illustrate a theological truth. To quote the Jewish Rabbi Rami Shapiro, "The transformative power of faith is not rooted in outward signs and historical facts, but in inner awakenings and literary narratives. Only in our day has the human imagination become so degraded as to reduce truth to fact, and myth to falsehood. Only in our day does story pale before history."

Okay, look at Numbers 36:13. “These are the commandments and the ordinances that the Lord commanded through Moses to the Israelites in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho.” That’s the last line before the book of Deuteronomy. Now look at Deuteronomy 34:1. “Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan.” Chapter 34 is the last chapter of Deuteronomy. Look at the two sentences again. Num 36:13, then Deut 34:1. It’s the next sentence. They go together. That means everything in between, that is basically all of Deuteronomy, was inserted later as part of the Pentateuch. There are other particularities, such as the use of singular and plural forms, or phrase and theme comparisons with other contemporary writings, which to the trained scholar indicate changes and additions and help to make connections to various times and sources.

But what are the important themes and connections? Well, look at it this way: justice in the ancient world could be very arbitrary and ruthless. Downright nonexistent. When men looked to other men for justice more often than not they did not find it. Only the God of Israel brought justice to the world, and the men who feared Him and followed His laws. The people of Israel were obsessed with justice—and the way to find it was through God, and his prophet Moses. In Deut 4:5-8 Moses said, “See, just as the Lord my God has charged me, I now teach you statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land that you are about to enter and occupy. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’ For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?”

So justice and righteousness, yes. The punishment attitude was a natural outcome of this evolution of theology to the one God of Israel. Unlike the Greeks or Egyptians who had multiple gods to praise or blame when things went right or wrong, having only one God and struggling with the problem of evil brought people to the idea that when bad things happen it must be because we deserve it; it must be that we did something wrong and we are dominated by sin. But the theology of love is introduced as well—the people of Israel knew God loved them—it appears over and over. God has chosen the people of Israel because he loves them and he offers them justice as they did not have in Egypt: Deut 10:17-19 “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The God of Israel even loves strangers, and commands us to do so as well. The greatest commandment of the people is to love God. The Shema comes out of Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Deuteronomy 11:13-21, and Numbers 15:37-41.

And indeed, when Jesus is asked, he singles it out as the greatest commandment. “'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31

Another of the great themes is that of repentance and hope, reconciliation and restoration. God is always faithful. God recompenses for what you lost; just wait, you will be restored. Return to the Lord, return to the covenant. The message is that God will not fail you or forsake you—you may forsake God when you do not follow his commandments, but you can always repent and come back to the Lord. He will never forget you.

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life.” Deut 30:19

Now, if you view the Commandments through the prism of the Beatitudes, you’re really starting to get it.

Books by Fr. Lawrence Boadt, CSP:
Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction
Why I am a Priest
“Scriptural Exegesis” in Paulist Liturgy Planning Guide, Years A, B and C
And the forthcoming The Life and Missions of St. Paul (2008)
Along with many others.

Genesis 11:10-32, Yeah More Theology… Bo-ooring

2007-11-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

“If the Bible is indeed the literal and inerrant word of God, one might wonder why God thinks it so important that we know the names of these long-dead non-entities and their familial relationships.” Some Christians do believe the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of God. But, as Cervantes keeps showing us over and over again, if you take the Bible literally, it is easy for a person of science to make a fool of you. Believing scripture is inspired by God isn’t really the same thing as believing it to be literal and inerrant. There are lots of contradictions in the Bible, but if you look at the whole through the prism of the Gospels it’s possible to see the bigger picture, the fuller meaning. And it’s possible, even, to understand the purpose of all of these “begats,” despite the context of their original cultural and the differences with which we view women and individuals in a free and open society such as America today.

There is a small but important point to be made here: every life matters. Every life is important in the overall mosaic, in the generations of individuals, and in the fulfillment of God’s promise. All of these “begats” between the generations of Noah and Abraham that make our eyes glaze over as they are read aloud serve as a reminder that just as most of these people were ordinary folk who nevertheless advanced God’s plan, so too ordinary people today can contribute to God’s grace in the world in the midst of everyday life.

Maybe as a person of science you might think Albert Einstein was a very important individual. But what about his father? Or his mother? If his mother had never been born, then Einstein would not have existed, nor would all of his thoughts, and his contributions to the world would have been that much slower in coming, if they reached us at all.

Today is All Saints Day, and what better day to write about this—the communion of saints, the great “cloud of witnesses” whose lives challenge and inspire our own. Remembering all of those people who came before us raises the proposition that we connect with them as our companions in life and struggle. It is a multigenerational community of redeemed sinners that geographically encircles the globe. It stretches historically backward and forward through time into eternity; it crosses boundaries of language, culture, race, sex, class, sexual orientation, religion, and all other human differences.

In the Bible, the work of Wisdom is described in this way: “Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets” (Wis 7:27).

A friend of God isn’t just someone who enters into a relationship with God, but also someone who loves the world the way God does. You imagine how it should flourish, and are moved with compassion by the suffering. A prophet raises her voice in criticism of injustice and creates possibilities for resistance.

Here still, in Genesis 11:10-32 we have a completely androcentric list. Other than Eve, the women who did the work of bearing the sons and daughters of each generation go unnamed and hidden. Yet soon there will be a break in this pattern. We will learn of the daughters of Lot, of Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel. Sarah, who laughs at God. According to David Rosenberg’s translation, “Sarah’s sides split.”

Also given name are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah. These women all found themselves outside the patriarchal structure and taking unconventional steps that put their lives in danger, yet advanced the generations that led to the Messiah.

So maybe my life is ordinary. Then again, maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m teaching a saint. Maybe one of my own children will do something great for the world. Maybe generations from me a great leader will be born. Maybe Cervantes will think I’m finding meaning where there is none. Meh. You know, whatever. I’m okay with that. If I find meaning in Sacred Scripture for my own life, then I think I’m taking a healthy approach to reading the Bible.

More Theology: Genesis 11:1-9

2007-10-29T06:57:00.000-07:00

Well, first let’s ask ourselves if this legend of the Tower of Babel necessarily follows chronologically the legend of the Origin of Peoples. It doesn’t necessarily, and that’s a way of taking the Bible literally. There is a bit of jumping around in the Bible and this seems to be another instance. I would point out that we get another new list of Shem’s descendants as a means of introducing the narrative of God’s calling of Abraham (Gen 10:21-31 and Gen 11:10-26). But I’m getting ahead of myself now. I guess my point is these are legends and it’s not really a contradiction to say once upon a time everyone spoke the same language just because once upon a time Noah had sons, and his sons had sons and so on and they divided and became nations with their own languages and after ten generations along comes Abraham.
Okay, so the Catholic perspective on Genesis 11:1-9…It’s about pride. It’s about the growth of evil. The division of languages is seen as a sign of division and misunderstanding between individuals and nations. The Navarre Bible commentary states, “We have here an instance of literary devices being used to expound deep convictions—in this case the view that disunion in mankind is the outcome of men’s pride and sinfulness.”
Babel becomes a counterpoint to the Pentecost event (Acts 2:5-13). But that’s a fuller theology I’m not going to expound on here. Essentially the Catholic view is that this is a legend; it’s not intended to teach us about God as much as it is intended to teach us about mankind and pride and sin; just as Adam and Eve wanted to be like God, so do the people of Babel. And you know the ancients probably understood that they couldn’t reach God with a “puny tower.” It’s a story told by men to teach about the pride of mankind. St. Augustine pointed out that such a tower would simply go beyond our atmosphere, not really reaching anything, and that God had nothing to worry about from any attempts by man to physically reach Him.
I like this quote from Josemaria Escriva about the sin of pride: “The eyes of our soul grow dull. Reason proclaims itself sufficient to understand everything, without the aid of God. This is a subtle temptation, which hides behind the power of our intellect, given by our Father God to man so that he might know and love him freely. Seduced by this temptation, the human mind appoints itself the centre of the universe, being thrilled with the prospect that ‘you shall be like gods’ (confer Gen 3:5). So, filled with love for itself, it turns its back on the love of God. In this way does our existence fall prey unconditionally to the third enemy: pride of life. It’s not merely a question of passing thoughts of vanity or self-love, it’s a state of general conceit. Let’s not deceive ourselves, for this is the worst of all evils, the root of every false step. The fight against pride has to be a constant battle, to such an extent that someone once said that pride only disappears twenty-four hours after a person dies. It is the arrogance of the Pharisee whom God cannot transform because he finds in him the obstacle of self-sufficiency. It is the haughtiness which leads to despising other people, to lording it over them, and so mistreating them. For ‘when pride comes then comes disgrace’ (Prov 11:2)” (Christ Is Passing By).
The legend of the Tower of Babel (Babel, by the way, actually means “gate of God,” although it has been popularly connected with the Hebrew word balbalah which means confusion) illustrates that man has long been ingenious and long realized the power of working together. In looking at our accomplishments and comparing ourselves to every other living creature on the planet we can be consumed with the kind of pride that makes gods of men. But the truth is we don’t need God to sow division and misunderstanding.

A Theology of Genesis 10

2007-10-26T10:17:00.000-07:00

Hello Peeps. I’ve been gone a while, but I seem to have found the time to come back. I no longer have internet service at home, which is a huge drawback. And my conscience prevents me from spending too much personal time on the computer at work. But now I have a memory stick, so I can do some file sharing that way. I can write at home, and upload at work, which is what I would call a blessing because I really need the intellectual stimulation in my life right now. I suppose if little things like this make me happy I must not be clinically depressed. (snort) Gotta look on the bright side.
So yes, my personal life… I’m going through a divorce. Very un-Catholic of me, I know. But the fact that I’ve tried for eighteen years to maintain my marriage despite the obvious pathologies going on is indicative of my commitment to the institution and sacrament, if not the man. And that’s all I have to say about it here.
What I really want to get down to is Genesis 10—a short little account of the generations of Noah. The Catholic perspective is that this is pre-history. This is a story. The Bible is expounding the fact that the whole human race is of the same stock. This is the most complete ethnographic map to come from the ancient world, and again, if we all come from the same stock, if we are all really members of one family shouldn’t we live together in peace? According to the Navarre commentary, “These genealogies we’re worked out by reference to the geographical positions of the various nations, similarity of names, and popular traditions about certain heroes. However, the main thing about this list is that it is a way of showing how God’s blessing on Noah has come true: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth’ (9:1).”
And so the theme of Covenant is woven once again into the Bible’s narrative. We see it over and over again, from Adam and Eve up to the everlasting Covenant of Jesus. God keeps trying to cut a deal with us: I will be your God and you will be my people and our souls will reside in beautiful Communion. The original sin was disobedience, and the original punishment was being banished from the presence of God, from the everlasting communion with God that our souls crave. But God keeps trying; He wants to be with us. The legend of Noah is another example of this Covenant—people are bad—can’t deny that. God keeps up His end of the deal, it’s us—we people, who keep letting Him down; doesn’t stop Him from trying again and again. Genesis 10 is a way of showing how God kept up His end of the deal once again. God was faithful to Noah, faithful to His promise and blessing.

Genesis 11:10-32

2007-09-04T07:17:00.000-07:00

10 This is the account of Shem.
Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad. 11 And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

12 When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. 13 And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber. 15 And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg. 17 And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters.

18 When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu. 19 And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters.

20 When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. 21 And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters.

22 When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor. 23 And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters.

24 When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah. 25 And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters.

26 After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.

27 This is the account of Terah.
Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 28 While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. 29 Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. 30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no children.

31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

32 Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.

I stopped posting for a while in part because my interlocutor Missy has been taking a break to deal with some personal issues. (Don't we all have 'em?) I hope she'll be back soon, but meanwhile, I've decided to press on.

Here we have a lengthy stretch of begats. If the Bible is indeed the literal and innerant word of God, one might wonder why God thinks it so important that we know the names of these long-dead non-entities and their familial relationships. The reason the Torah is full of this stuff is, of course, that it was not a Bible for all people, but rather the putative record of a specific people, the Hebrews. As we see elsewhere, the Hebrew God (excuse me, G_D) was not a God for all people's either, but exclusively the God of the Hebrews. Back in the times we are revisiting now, the Hebrews did not believe their God was the only God, just that he was the only God they were permitted to worship.

So, this is their specific, individual history, or rather legend. Note that the society was patriarchal, which is why we are given only the male line of descent and the names of women aren't even mentioned, until we get to Abram and his family. The barrenness of Abram's wife Sarai turns out to be an important plot element, so she requires an introduction.

In the strict social science sense, patriarchy means only that the people trace descent through the male line, but in ancient Hebrew society, it meant far more than that. Women were chattels, with no economic or political rights. The action in the Old Testament is heavily male dominated. Men make all the decisions, issue all the laws and commandments, and women are their property. These patriarchal begats are just one manifestation of what was a man's world.

As for the people living hundreds of years, pish tosh. The life expectancy in that era, based on skeletal remains which have been extensively studied, was in the 40s.

Genesis 11:1-8

2007-08-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Hmm. That's funny. Remember Genesis 10:4, just a few paragraphs back? "From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language." And 10:20? "These are the sons of Ham by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations." And 10:31? "These are the sons of Shem by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations."

Well, that's inoperative. Suddenly there is only one language on the earth. But, we know that isn't true, because by this time -- according to the Biblical chronology, sometime around 2,400 BC -- there had already been written languages for almost 2,000 years, and uhh, there were many different ones. If you're interested in this subject, I would just start with the Wikipedia article.*

The history of spoken language is obviously more difficult to reconstruct, but if you're willing to ignore the biblical timing and just want to know whether it is true that there was once a single, original human language, that's actually controversial. Spoken language left no trace until the early 20th Century (thanks to Mr. Edison), except for whatever can be deduced about it from writing systems. Since early systems did not use phonetic alphabets, they are of limited use for reconstructing spoken language. But what is more important is that language pre-dates writing by tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

The proximate ancestors of humans, Homo erectus, persisted for about 2 million years. Their brains were considerably smaller than ours, and their vocal apparatus wouldn't have allowed for the complex, fluid speech we use today, but on the other hand apes communicate with meaningful, non-syntactical sounds, so they might have had a system of communication more complex than that of apes but less complex than ours. In any event, the evidence that it wasn't a real, fully developed language is that their material culture was essentially stagnant for all that time. We find no evidence of representational art, or ritual, and we find the same crude, disorganized kit of stone tools for all those millions of years.

Then, about 200,000 years ago, we find the first fossils of so-called anatomically modern humans. Not long after that, somewhere between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, was the event called cultural take-off. Suddenly stone tools become much more finely made and specific. In various times and places, new toolmaking techniques are invented and tools are made very specifically for specific purposes. They are clearly designed to be hafted as axes or fitted to spears or arrows, there are fine blades and heavy choppers, etc. Just a little later is sufficiently close in time that more perishable materials are preserved, so we find bone tools and traces of fibers. Soon thereafter we also find musical instruments, statuettes, elaborate burials, cave paintings. Something extraordinary happened and it's clear what it must have been. The ape started to speak, and now we could preserve and transmit culture, explain how to do things, discuss ideas, describe what we had seen to others, plan together, share our ideas about why the world was as it was and what it might become, write bibles and build towers.

But did language arise once, and spread from a single time and place, or were our ancestors poised to develop it and it arose at multiple points? We just don't know, although there is strong evidence that humanity passed through a very small population bottleneck in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and that these few people were the ancestors of all humankind, and maybe this one small group was the first to speak and language as well as life is their legacy to all of us. The basis for this belief is too complex to go into here, but if anybody is truly perplexed by all means let me know.

Whatever may have happened in the dark backward and abysm of time, we know that language evolves over time and that the confounding of language on earth arises from a continual process of change which ultimately results in the descendants of people who start with the same language becoming mutually unintelligible. At one time the ancestors of the people who today speak Spanish, French and Italian all spoke Latin. The English spoke a language related to German, but then the French invaded and they wound up speaking what is called a creole, which is my first language today. Pero hablo español también. God didn't do this, history did, and we have a full and clear record of it.

But enough of the profound idiocy of people who believe that the Bible is literally true. What does this story tell us about God? First of all, he's physically up in the sky somewhere. He has to "come down" to see what the people are up to, which means he also is not omniscient. Furthermore, he's highly insecure. He's afraid they can build a tower that will reach up to the heavens. Apparently he's unfamiliar with the facts about the universe he created, because there isn't any sky, it's an illusion caused by the scattering of sunlight from oxygen atoms in the atmosphere. If you try to reach the heavens, you just go up, and up, and up, forever. Before you get very far at all on the cosmic scale of things, you're above the atmosphere and you die, but you still haven't gotten to the place where God lives.

Nevertheless, he's jealous even of that puny tower. He doesn't want the people to accomplish great things, so he does what he can to mess them up. Of course, if he really was all seeing and all powerful he would have foreseen all this and never let it happen in the first place. Anyway, that's just sociopathic. My parents always encouraged me. They wanted me to take chances and create and build and accomplish. If god is our heavenly father, he's a dysfunctional parent and we had better move out and stop paying any attention to him.

Fortunately, God's pathetic scheme has failed. Nowadays, we have built tens of thousands of towers that make the Tower of Babel look like an anthill, and cities that could swallow up Babylon a thousand times over. We fly through the air, send words and pictures from one end of the earth to another in a nanosecond, and we have even walked on the moon and sent our robots beyond the solar system.

So God ---

Na na na na na. You lose, sucker.

*Quite possibly the earliest writing, or at least the earliest true written language that was fully syntactical, did arise in Mesopotamia. I point this out because the Iraq National Library and Archive has recently been occupied by American and Iraqi soldiers, threatening part of the irreplaceable heritage of all humanity. For more on this, see recent posting at Iraq Today.

Genesis 10

2007-08-09T15:44:00.000-07:00

Genesis 10
The Table of Nations
1 This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah's sons, who themselves had sons after the flood.
The Japhethites
2 The sons of Japheth:
Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras.

3 The sons of Gomer:
Ashkenaz, Riphath and Togarmah.

4 The sons of Javan:
Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittim and the Rodanim. 5 (From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language.)
The Hamites
6 The sons of Ham:
Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan.

7 The sons of Cush:
Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah and Sabteca.
The sons of Raamah:
Sheba and Dedan.

8 Cush was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, "Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD." 10 The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh, in Shinar. 11 From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah 12 and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.

13 Mizraim was the father of
the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites, 14 Pathrusites, Casluhites (from whom the Philistines came) and Caphtorites.

15 Canaan was the father of
Sidon his firstborn, and of the Hittites, 16 Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, 17 Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, 18 Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites.
Later the Canaanite clans scattered 19 and the borders of Canaan reached from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Gaza, and then toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.

20 These are the sons of Ham by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations.
The Semites
21 Sons were also born to Shem, whose older brother was Japheth; Shem was the ancestor of all the sons of Eber.

22 The sons of Shem:
Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram.

23 The sons of Aram:
Uz, Hul, Gether and Meshech.

24 Arphaxad was the father of Shelah,
and Shelah the father of Eber.

25 Two sons were born to Eber:
One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided; his brother was named Joktan.

26 Joktan was the father of
Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, 27 Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, 28 Obal, Abimael, Sheba, 29 Ophir, Havilah and Jobab. All these were sons of Joktan.

30 The region where they lived stretched from Mesha toward Sephar, in the eastern hill country.

31 These are the sons of Shem by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations.

32 These are the clans of Noah's sons, according to their lines of descent, within their nations. From these the nations spread out over the earth after the flood.

Hmm. What the heck happened to Canaan and his descendants being slaves of his uncles? Never happened after all. Canaan founds an empire and his uncles can go pound sand.

All of these empires, including Nimrods, of course, are impossible. Do the math -- in each generation, the Bible tells us exactly how many males there were. I'm not even going to take the time to count them, but they are in the low double figures by the time we get to the third generation, and it's in the third generation that we have all these cities and empires and clans. So where the hell did all the people come from? Hello! Bible believers! The numbers don't add up, by a factor of millions. Just thought I'd point that out.

Here's something else that's kind of funny: "(From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language.)" Ahh, apparently whoever wrote the next chapter didn't read this one. And it's the next chapter that I'll really have something to say about, because we're gonna be in my kitchen with that one.

Genesis 9:18-28: A Theistic Response

2007-08-03T04:39:00.000-07:00

The broad range of the human condition contained in the Bible is one of the things that makes it personally significant to individuals and allows for a dialogical approach* to reading the Bible. Basically, everything's in there. So Noah was a drunk...

"Now, this is obviously one of the most bizarre stories in the Bible. It makes Noah appear to be insane, and, while it doesn't explicitly endorse Noah's actions, it does make God look bad (not for the first time!) because he singled out Noah as the last righteous man and here he is behaving like a total lunatic."

Sometimes I just don't know what to say here. I could try to come up with a little theodicy** for every passage in the Bible, but in my mind, it seems like I'm repeating myself all of the time. But that's not necessarily bad, I mean, I suppose that indicates some unity of thought...

"Noah gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent, Ham accidentally sees him in this state and tells his brothers, and in response, Noah makes Ham's son Canaan - who apparently had nothing to do with the whole thing - the slave of his brothers. In later years, Christians decided that Ham was the father of the Africans and used this story to justify slavery. Fortunately, I don't have to try to explain this weirdness because Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope has done it for me, in two parts, here, and here."

Cervantes has a highly refined bullshit detector and, atheist though he is, he recognizes bad theology when he sees it. So I want to talk about that, but I want to take it out of the Biblical context for a moment. It is not unusual for a good symbol to be used for bad purpose. Our American flag, for instance, is heavily loaded with symbolic meaning for most Americans. Most of it good; equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom, land of the free, home of the brave. It is also heavily used to sell everything from politicians to cars.

Discernment, then, becomes important. Being able to separate the symbolism and it's associated meanings from the thing using that symbol to sell you a bag of goods.

If someone wants to do something really bad, especially on a really large scale, they will usurp and propagandize every good symbol and association they can to meet their ends.

So, to justify slavery, why not use the Bible? To justify the crusades, why not use the Bible? To justify killing Western infidels, why not use the Quran?

When people begin turning up in mass graves, you can be sure every tool was used to get them there, including God.

This doesn't mean God or the Bible or the Quran are bad things. It means bad people have usurped something good to justify their ends. We would be much poorer if we threw out what was good about culture, society, humanism--simply because they had the potential to be used for bad ends.

For centuries people have tried to use different passages of the Bible as prooftext to justify bad behavior. The best way to reach discernment when it comes to the Bible is to look at the Whole. Of course, three layers of tradition must be acknowledged: oral, written, and edited.

"There are two basic points: This story comes from an earlier oral tradition, and when it got written down, something was left out, perhaps something too embarrassing for the written record such as a sex act; and the later interpretation justifying black slavery was just pure bullshit, like most interpretations of the Bible, which are made to justify foregone conclusions. As I have said many times, there are innumerable ambiguities, self-contradictions, and vague metaphors in the Bible and it's easy to decide that it means whatever you want it to mean. This may be the ultimate proof."

Basically there are points here where we agree and where we disagree. I will hold with this paragraph up to and including the word "bullshit."

I still consider the Bible to be a record of Divine Revelation, no less than other sacred writings, no less than the oral or pagan traditions which preceded it. They are all an attempt to understand the Divine as revealed to human understanding. The fact that humans have been trying to do this for all of recorded history, and arguably pre recorded history, does not mean there is no Divine. On the contrary, it points up an interesting aspect of our evolution that we have yet to explain scientifically--why do we seek the Divine? Why do we believe God exists? Somehow we grasp that there is a perfection, ephemeral though it is, in the human being. These layers of faith tradition are all an attempt to define human culture and best practices in relation to the world. And really, the overwhelming message that comes through when you look at the gestalt of all faiths is this: don't be shitty to one another. This is the ultimate tool of discernment. If your interpretation contradicts this, you must be twisting it or reading it wrong. And if you don't get that, you haven't read enough.

*Link added as post script.
**Okay, for what it's worth, here's my thirty second theodicy of this passage utilizing the dialogical approach. "So, you're an asshole? You're a drunk? You think God couldn't use you? Well, just remember, Noah was a drunk."

Genesis 9:18-28

2007-08-01T14:29:00.000-07:00

18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth.

20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness.

24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
"Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers."

26 He also said,
"Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.

27 May God extend the territory of Japheth;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be his slave."

28 After the flood Noah lived 350 years. 29 Altogether, Noah lived 950 years, and then he died.

Now, this is obviously one of the most bizarre stories in the Bible. It makes Noah appear to be insane, and, while it doesn't explicitly endorse Noah's actions, it does make God look bad (not for the first time!) because he singled out Noah as the last righteous man and here he is behaving like a total lunatic.

Noah gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent, Ham accidentally sees him in this state and tells his brothers, and in response, Noah makes Ham's son Canaan - who apparently had nothing to do with the whole thing - the slave of his brothers.

In later years, Christians decided that Ham was the father of the Africans and used this story to justify slavery. Fortunately, I don't have to try to explain this weirdness because Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope has done it for me, in two parts, here, and here.

There are two basic points: This story comes from an earlier oral tradition, and when it got written down, something was left out, perhaps something too embarrassing for the written record such as a sex act; and the later interpretation justifying black slavery was just pure bullshit, like most interpretations of the Bible, which are made to justify foregone conclusions. As I have said many times, there are innumerable ambiguities, self-contradictions, and vague metaphors in the Bible and it's easy to decide that it means whatever you want it to mean. This may be the ultimate proof.

Sins, Dietary and Otherwise

2007-07-27T05:02:00.000-07:00

With regard to my previous post, I just wanted to add a note as an aside (and for the sake of Grandmere Mimi) that I do believe MP was being facetious when he said Jesus died on the cross for our dietary sins. Not that those sins are in any way minor, oh no no no. It's just that, and do correct me if I'm wrong here, MP, I don't think he buys into that whole Anselm's theory of Atonement dealio. It smacks of medieval feudal society logic and as acceptable as that model may have seemed, oh 900 years ago, I don't think MP cottons to that theology.

The atonement model of God is vengeful, angry, manipulative, feudal--downright masochistic. This is not the God Jesus described. This model of what Jesus was about destroys Jesus' notion of God. It leaves us bereft of the God who welcomes back prodigal sons with fatted lambs and banquets, the God who counts the hairs on our heads and feeds the sparrows in the sky. The loving God who, when asked for bread does not give a stone, is surely not the God who sends a son to be killed in some kind of blood sacrifice designed to appease a divine ego.

God did not want Jesus crucified. People did. God wanted to provide a model of the God-life in our midst.

Jesus' suffering was a very human thing. The people, the system, the world turned against him. And can't we all relate to that? That feeling, that pain? It is not so much the crucifixion and death of Jesus that can inform our lives, but the suffering which preceded it. It is the suffering of Christ that instructs and gives insight. Sooner or later we all find suffering in our lives--we all have "a cross to bear." Jesus shows us a choice: we can walk through our Golgothas as he did, with faith, understanding, and awareness of God's providence for us as we go, or we can stumble our way through, bitter and alientated from the very moments that, like his, can bring us to our glory.

"To say 'I believe in Jesus Christ who suffered' is to say that I believe that suffering is not destruction, and may, in fact, be the defining glory of our lives." ~Joan Chittister

"Freely I steal, freely I give." ~MadPriest

Update: Fatted lambs?! Whoops! Bad metaphor! Bad!

I May Be Lame, But MadPriest Is Not

2007-07-26T18:45:00.000-07:00

Typical. I've been letting my partner do all the heavy lifting again.

And he's right, of course. Hopeful promises won't save our planet from human destruction; but they will relieve God from having to take responsibility for hurricane season. Ecology and the environment, the health of the planet and it's many species, these are just the sort of issues that should be important to all.

And in typical Missy fashion I'm taking the easy way out. MadPriest has posted an essay that addresses Genesis 9:4-6 better than I ever could. Here is a brief excerpt, but I encourage you to go read the whole thing:

The image of paradise versus the fallen world is a constant throughout the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. It is used by the writers metaphorically in both their mythology ( eg. Genesis ) and their prophecy. When Isaiah wants to communicate the nature of a paradise beyond human comprehension he uses the imagery of the peaceable kingdom where the lion lies down with the lamb. Christ brings about the Kingdom of God. As Christians we are expected to live as if the Kingdom is already with us, and if we take seriously Isaiah’s prophecy of the Kingdom we must adopt the practices of it that are possible here and now. We have the ability, denied presently to our animal companions, to choose not to kill other creatures. When we choose such a way we are choosing the way of the Kingdom. This answers the second argument, that Jesus was not a vegetarian. To be fully incarnate, Christ entered the context of human life at the point of his arrival on earth. This context was one of a meat eating society. However, this is no longer the necessary context and it is now possible to live a more Kingdom based paradigm. I believe that on Christ’s return he will live in the new context and that it is our duty, as Christians, to help bring this evolution about.

What is needed is a new understanding of the term, ‘dominion’ based upon the Hebrew scriptures rather than Platonic Greek thought. In the Old Testament the line between animals and humans, in respect of their organic and spiritual attributes, is not as wide as it came to be perceived after the influence of Greek thinking upon our religion. God cares for all his creation equally, no matter how unique his relationship with humanity is. Secondly, all living things are perceived as having a soul, as life is equivalent to soul in the Hebrew scriptures. Therefore, Job comes to understand that the secret of God’s mysterious ways can be found, in part, within the universality of all life;

"But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? In his hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of every human being.” ( Job. 12: 7 - 10 )

I could almost give up meat. Except an occasional steak. And bacon. Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.

Genesis 9:7-17

2007-07-25T14:19:00.000-07:00

7 As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it."

8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth."

12 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."

17 So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth."

Regarding the first little bit, "be fruitful and multiply," note that it is redundant -- God already said this a few verses back. In any case, it doesn't seem to mean anything very profound in context. Remember we're pretending there are only eight people in the world right now. (Yeah, unlike Cain and Abel, Noah's three sons do have wives and therefore don't need a separate act of creation to carry out the instruction. But incest is required in the second generation, a little problem Genesis just ignores.) So obviously they need to build up the population. It doesn't say to do it without limit, but people read into the Bible whatever they want to read, so some Catholic theologians have argued that this condemns contraception, and other people have said it means we should try to make the human population as large as possible. (What's the difference, the Rapture is coming anyway.) Sorry folks, I really don't see it.

As for the stuff about the covenant is also redundant (viz Genesis 8:21-22), which tells me that we are getting two versions of the same story here. I've already commented on that, but what is new here is the rainbow. The rainbow must have appeared as wondrous to ancient people as it does to us. A few weeks ago I was at my aunt's house on the north shore of the Long Island Sound, and we saw a spectacular full double rainbow that touched the water on both ends. It was impressive enough that I can certainly see why people thought it must be a message from God, and a warm and friendly one at that.

To me, it's no less wonderful a sight because I know why it happens: that light has wavelike properties, that the colors we see correspond to different wavelengths of light, that white light from the sun is composed of a range of wavelengths, that light slows down when it passes through water droplets in the atmosphere, and in the process the colors within sunlight spread apart and we perceive the rainbow. Isaac Newton figured that out in his laboratory, by using his reason to design experiments and deduce explanations for their results.

The Bible is wrong, of course. Rainbows existed for billions of years before humans came along, existed throughout our time on the earth, including before the flood, which never happened anyway, and will probably still exist long after we are gone. So they aren't in any way a message from God particularly to us. But they are an astonishing and beautiful fact of creation.

Genesis 9:4-6

2007-07-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

4 "But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.

5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.

6 "Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made man.

To me, this is a good example of how the Bible can be sufficiently confusing, ambiguous, and self-contradictory that people of faith through the ages have come to markedly different conclusions about what it means and how we are to behave. Remember that God declared that Cain should not be put to death for murdering his brother -- and yet here he seems to proclaim the death penalty for murder. Later, we will see him commanding the Hebrews to massacre conquered people. The contemporary Catholic Church maintains that capital punishment is contrary to Christian morality. (Although they seem little interested, if at all, in pursuing this goal politically, while they are obsessed with abortion, mentioned nowhere in the Bible, and homosexuality.) While God here insists on the death penalty for murder, later he will himself proclaim the death penalty for homosexuality, and for gathering sticks on the sabbath. Presumably the people who carry out those instructions will have "shed the blood of man," but that must be alright with God after all. I'm all confused.

Now, the part about not eating meat that has its lifeblood in it is also hard for us to understand at such a great distance in time. Does it mean that we must not eat animals that are still alive? One has the image of hunters slicing flesh off a dying beast and devouring it raw. Did people used to do that? Perhaps. Or maybe we should take this as the Talmudic scholars did, to mean that slaughtered animals must be drained of blood before they are butchered. The first interpretation would be an injunction against cruelty, but the second turns out to be the opposite. Many people consider kosher (and halal) slaughtering, in which animals are shackled, hung upside down, and their throats cut to let the blood run out, to be cruel.

I have a rather different perspective on all this. I consider it unethical to raise domesticated animals for meat in the first place.

Doing Theology with Genesis 9:1-3

2007-07-08T07:08:00.000-07:00

I can talk about stewardship. I'm pretty good at that. Genesis 9:1-3 is a call to stewardship.

A literal approach to the Bible is very--well I think we've already covered this--childish. If I were teaching the Bible to very young children we might focus on creation and Noah's ark because that's where they are. They like animal stories. And doing so helps build a familiarity with the stories in the Bible. And this is where young children are developmentally. You plant a seed. You water it and keep it in the window; rows of styrofoam cups. You watch them sprout and grow. You start a few at home in case some kid's seed doesn't germinate. You talk about the life cycle. You talk about being kind to animals and pets. The idea you want them to remember, if they remember anything at all, is that God created everything and everyone; that God loves them individually and all of creation as well; and that we have to take care of all of creation and each other. These ideas seem to naturally flow from each other in my mind.

But these are the challenges to a Catholic understanding of the Bible. When you start at the beginning, you don't know you're supposed to already know the end and interpret everything in light of the whole. Let's start then, with two principles to guide us:
The Bible is BOTH the word of God and the word of human beings. I suppose a literal way of looking at it has Matthew going into some trance and the Holy Spirit possessing him and moving the pen. Puh-lease. God uses as authors human beings with all of their human limitations. (Jesus is the incarnational model of the word, fully God and fully human.)
The Bible is not a single book but a collection of books, a library, an anthology. A biblical passage is biblical ONLY in the Bible. Take it out of its context and it becomes something else, like a liturgical reading, a proof for my point of argumentation, etc.

So where does the concept of Stewardship come from? In the Bible? Well, all over the place. Stewardship is the Judeo-Christian concept that we have been blessed by God and that we are called on to nurture and develop those blessings for our own good and for the good of the human family. Deep down, people of faith know that our talents, our possessions, our money, and even our time do not really belong to us. They are God's property that has been generously entrusted to our care and for which we will be held responsible.

"For it will be as when a man going on a journey called his servants and entrusted to them his property..." Matthew 15:14 (ack! proof texting!)

So how do you get Stewardship from this passage? Taken in the context of the whole Bible, and even later verses of that chapter, we know God doesn't want us to hurt the earth. God makes his covenent, not just with Noah, but with all of creation.

"Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark." Genesis 9:9-10 (oh no! more proof texting! I must stop this!)

We're called on to serve and protect, to develop and nurture. So if I was going to try to create some theology out of this passage, that's what it would be.

How to Read the Bible, Part Deux

2007-07-06T13:06:00.000-07:00

I've noticed quite a few bloggers in the Jeebus circle are talking about how NOT to read the Bible, and there are some very good points on that subject.

I thought I would tack in a slightly different direction and do a short post once again on "how to" read the Bible.

And what with the rapture coming in just hours, this whole question could be moot by Sunday morning. But okay, assuming you're still here on Sunday and you want to start fighting the good fight, er whatever...

My first recommendation is to not begin with Genesis. Unless you're Cervantes, then it's perfectly okay. But if we are, in fact, talking about the Christian Bible, or one of the versions of it, my suggestion is to begin with Mark.

Why Mark? It was the first Gospel written, completed sometime around the fall of the temple in 70 AD. It is short, coming in at only 16 chapters, and easily completed in one sitting. Reading a book in one sitting can give you the sort of big picture you don't get by looking at random verses. Mark's Gospel is all about action--Jesus is always doing something. Mark uses the Greek word for suddenly, at once, and immediately over and over again. It is used 42 times. It appears only seven times in Matthew and only one time in Luke.

This simple, pictorial style projects the idea that Jesus mission cannot wait. There is no time to pause. And with the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, the end of the priesthood--it must have seemed like the end times to those first Christians.

The overall construction of this Gospel leads to the cross. A key moment is at the Gospel's midpoint when Jesus asks his disciples who they think he is. Jesus tells them he will be rejected by religious leaders, killed, only to rise again. His response is ultimately, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."(Mark 8:34) There is no mistaking the real mission of Jesus in this Gospel.

Mark is the most intense of the gospels. Jesus is the paradoxical "Son of Man;" Jesus is the most human in Mark (and most divine in John).

And finally the stark ending, 16:1-8, the Empty Tomb. (Vv 9-20 were added on later according to most scholars.)

So those are the reasons I like Mark. Well, plus it's the New Testament, it's the Gospel. As a Christian, I tend to see the entire Bible through the prism of the Gospels. Not to throw away the Old Testament or other books of the New Testament, but to look at them in light of what Jesus taught.

That cuts through a lot.

One last tag line: All of the stories in the Bible are true; some of them actually happened. That's basically my attitude.

Genesis 9:1-3

2007-07-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.

2 The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands.

3 Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

Well, of course it is true. Thanks to our creative intellect and our astonishing, manipulative hands, we do have dominion over all the earth's creatures, we do exploit them all as we wish, and we sure as hell have increased in number and filled the earth.

Only now we're starting to worry that maybe this isn't such a great idea after all, as humans are causing the greatest mass extinction since that asteroid 63 million years ago. Whether or not you give a damn about Amazonian tree frogs and Eastern Cottontails, our rapaciousness is now threatening to backfire on us. The depletion of top soil world wide, and of seafood, along with the pressure to substitute bio-fuels for fossil fuels, is bringing and end to the era of cheap food, and threatening an ever increasing proportion of humanity with chronic hunger and even starvation.

The strain in Judeo-Christian tradition of seeing humanity as master of the biosphere, and also somehow apart from it, is in stark contrast to other religious traditions in which nature and non-human creatures are objects of reverence. Many people nowadays will see this Biblical passage as among the most egregious. I certainly do.

Reasons People Read the Bible

2007-06-25T05:24:00.000-07:00

I broke my baby toe this morning. And this is entirely the reason why I'm writing a post at this moment. Because I was not able to drive to my class this morning I have some time to write a little. I'm sure I will recover, thank you.

Last week at an enrichment class titled How to Read the Bible my mind wandered back to this blog. At the top of the first page the facilitator passed out was:
"1) CURIOSITY APPROACH--Interested in finding out what is in the Bible, what it actually says.
Limitation: May or may not be an encounter with the Word of God."

This made me smile because I immediatly thought of Cervantes and his ongoing project, especially in light of the caveat. Honestly? I can't see you making it past Numbers with this methodology. Really, if it hasn't already happened, you will be flinging the book across the room. But maybe that's just me.

I found it interesting that my facilitator didn't even mention the literal approach. I am, as I've said before, RC, and as a people we do not read the Bible literally, or subscribe to its "inerrancy." And while I may mock such individuals who do here, in real life I suppose I treat them much more gently. When I encounter Catholics with these kinds of false, pre VII beliefs, I try to carefully educate them. Sensus plenior is a very Catholic concept. It is the fuller sense or deeper meaning of biblical texts. Catholics are open to all that science, history and literary studies can teach us about the Bible.

Anyway, I thought it might be of interest to share some of these approaches with Dialogue readers.

"2) SEARCHING FOR GOD APPROACH--Read the Bible to see what can be learned about God and how God relates with human beings.
Caution: Sometimes may create more problems than it solves depending upon the reader's mental and spiritual states, openness, personal spiritual needs, etc.
3) HISTORICAL, CRITICAL APPROACH--Interested in researching the Bible as to its composition, asking questions about authors, author's intention, community context, literary forms, etc.
Limitation: Such analysis is usually intellectual and it may or may not lead to an encounter with the Word of God.
4) APOLOGETIC APPROACH--Looking for texts to argue, substantiate or prove a point. The Bible is used as 'prooftexts.' Note: a biblical passage is biblical ONLY in the Bible. Take it out of its context and it becomes something else.
Caution: Can become defensive. Looking for one liners to prove that one is right. Not a healthy way of approaching the Bible.
5) INSPIRATIONAL APPROACH--Reading the Bible for support, comfort, consolation, reassurance, solace, etc.
Caution: Have to be careful so that it does not create a lack of challenge to my life or that it feeds my passivity. May or may not be an encounter with the Word of God.
6) DIALOGICAL APPROACH--Merging my story with biblical stories and letting the Scriptures inform and interpret my life. You find significant analogies between your life today and the biblical text.
A healthy way to encounter the Word of God.
7) LITURGICAL APPROACH--Selecting verses from Scripture to be used in worship as a proclamation of the Word of God.
Should be an encounter with the Word of God.
8) PASTORAL APPROACH--An attempt to explore the Word of God in order to obtain information, direction, insights, etc., about a particular need that needs to be addressed in an extended or local community.
Presumes that one has a healthy attitude about God's Word, the faith community and the workings of the Holy Spirit."

Rather than just ending there I'll try to wrap this up a little by saying the Bible is not for kids. This is an adult book. It takes a mature, adult understanding to find faith in it. Those of you who grew up in the "Church of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" know that approaching the Bible in a literal fashion is childish and hard to swallow once you reach an age of reason. Doing so seems to either kill a persons faith, or stunt it. Fundamentalist Christians seem to me to be people frozen at the earliest stages of moral reasoning and spirituality.

And that's about it for today.

Genesis 8:13-22

2007-06-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

13 By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

15 Then God said to Noah, 16 "Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it."

18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

22 "As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease."

I'm not going to worry about the ecological problems here -- note, for example, that with only two of each kind of herbivore, the carnivores are going to exterminate them if they are to survive, and of course the earth is not going to be revegetated to enable the herbivores to survive anyway. Whatever. Remember that this is a fable and is already completely preposterous.

Rather, I'm just going to note that in classic fable format, this one has a little tag that tells us what it means. As we discussed earlier, in contemplating the possible sources of the archetypal flood myth, this clearly arose from some great catastrophe, perhaps the breaching of a natural seawall and the filling of the Black Sea, perhaps a vast storm, which utterly destroyed a people's way of life. The point of this story, after all, is to reassure. God is capable of wrath, but he has promised restraint. The people would have needed this story to have the confidence to move on, and rebuild.

Unfortunately, for those of us fated to live at this particular moment in history, the promise is mythical. The earth is in some peril -- not of the destruction of all living creatures, certainly, but of great changes that will bring hard times upon us. And it's not God's wrath that threatens us, but our own folly. The promise given in Genesis isn't going to help us. We're on our own now. It's up to us.

Genesis 8:1-12

2007-06-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

6 After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

It's interesting how this story suddenly becomes far more detailed than the fairly sketchy narratives we've seen so far. I'm not sure what the meaning of all this detail is supposed to be. I do want you to note, however, that the representatives of the 1.4 million species of terrestrial animals -- including all the carnivores -- subsisted off of the stored provisions in the ark for, by my calculations, a total of more than 300 days. Then the earth must have been instantaneously recovered with vegetation, and off they all went.

I really think the details are just to make this a better yarn. Overall, the literary quality and narrative cohesion are gradually improving -- the stories and the characters are getting to be better developed. If this were just a campfire story, we wouldn't be inclined to look for the symbolism or deep meaning, so I won't do that here and I'll just take it as it is. I can't resist pointing out, however, that the problem of lack of available sexual partners and enforced incest that confronted the children of Adam and Even is about to be recreated for the children of Noah. God certainly does work in mysterious ways.

Sorry I haven't posted here lately, been awfully busy.

Genesis 7

2007-06-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

1 The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."

5 And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.

17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. 21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's a miracle. It doesn't matter how physically preposterous it is, God can do anything. Sure, it appears that this could only have been written at a time when people had no idea of the true nature of the earth, but hey, it's God, reality is irrelevant. There's no sense my going into the water cycle -- rain cannot cause the seas to rise because the source of rainwater is evaporation from the oceans -- or the height of the mountains, or any of that. The believers will believe, and that's all there is to it.

It's much more interesting to consider the near ubiquity of flood myths in cultures from around the world. Some of these clearly could have arisen by diffusion from the same ancient culture that gave us the myth of Noah. For example, the Greeks had a parallel myth about a fellow named Deucalion who built an ark and took his (multiple) wives and animals on it to ride out a great flood. The Romans also had a version of this myth. The Masai of East Africa have a strikingly similar myth as well, although it could easily be derived from contact with Christians in historical times, but there are similar myths from remote areas of Asia that seem less likely to have derived from modern contacts. Other flood myths aren't so similar -- they lack the ark, and have additional elements such as dragons and so forth. The lucky people who are forewarned may survive by fleeing to a mountaintop, or a few people survive because they happen to live on high ground already. In other versions, there are several people or families who are saved on boats or various floating objects. The boats may be anchored, or in one case the ark was destroyed by the devil before the flood came, so God was forced to provide an iron ship for the man he chose to save. In the Hindu version, Manu was saved from the flood by a fish. In a Chinese version, two children survive by floating in a giant gourd.

In my quick review, myths from the Americas are highly dissimilar to the Noah story, whereas tales from various places in Europe, Asia and Africa are notably similar. I'm no expert but this suggests to me that the Noah-style stories come from a common source, rather than some psycho-dynamical archetype as some have proposed. Such a dramatic story could certainly have diffused widely, and if you look at the distribution of myths with floods and arks, it isn't far fetched to imagine an origin in central or western Asia.

One popular candidate is the hypothesized creation of the Black Sea by the Mediterranean overflowing what was then a mountain pass and is now the Bosporus in about 5,600 BC, resulting in the innundation of more than 100,000 square kilometers within a few weeks. This theory is controversial, but if it happened, it must have made one hell of an impression on people in the area - who would, of course, have been dispersed widely thereafter and taken the memory with them. Some would have fled on foot, and some indeed might have saved themselves by jumping into boats. (Christians criticize this hypothesis on the grounds that the Black Sea flood would not have been very similar to Noah's flood, but that obviously doesn't carry any weight with me.) Later studies have cast doubt on the hypothesized 5,600 BC event, but support an earlier and rather different flood in which the Caspian overflowed into the Black Sea.

All very intriguing. Perhaps we'll have a definitive answer one day. Meanwhile I'll just say that all preliterate peoples were unaware of the extent of the wide world, and generally would have thought that the lands they inhabited constituted a good portion of it. Therefore any major flood would have seemed to them like the drowning of the whole world, and of course would have been a very memorable event, to say the least. Suppose that the people of New Orleans in 2005 were unaware of any lands beyond Plaquemines and the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain. How might they have interpreted the hurricane?

Genesis 6:9-22

2007-05-30T14:14:00.000-07:00

9 This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.
10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

11 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.

14 So make yourself an ark of cypress* wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. 16 Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top.** Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.

17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them."

22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

* Sometimes translated as gopher wood. Whatever.
** Sometimes translated as something to the effect of make an 18 inch window in the top.

Okay, now I'm sure I don't have to ridicule this for you. It's about as plausible as Santa Claus and considerably less plausible than the Easter Bunny. (Hey! There could be a giant rabbit that hops around from house to house and leaves baskets of colored eggs. But Santa has to come down the chimney and most people don't have chimneys these days.)

Bizarrely, however, as you know, something like 30% of Americans believe that this story is literally true. And they have just opened a $35 million museum in Kentucky which includes charming scenes from this tale. Creationist theme parks - and there are quite a few - typically feature Noah's ark petting zoos for the kiddies.

I find the creationists' new approach to the dinosaurs particularly interesting. They used to say that dinosaur fossils were just a fraud, or that God had put them there to test our faith, or something. But now they have retreated. The new line is that yeah, dinosaurs existed. That means they must have existed in Eden, and since God doesn't exempt any classes of creatures from the ark cargo, Noah must have taken them onto the ark. So how did he deal with 60 foot, 290 ton brachiosaurs and 25 foot tall carnivorous Tyrannosaurs? No problem, he took babies. Why they are now extinct we aren't actually told.

Whew. Here you will find an estimate of the numbers of known currently existing terrestrial species of animals. The vast majority of the more than 1.4 million species are arthropods -- most of them insects -- but there are more than 8,000 kinds of reptiles and more than 5,000 kinds of mammals. There are quite a few more odd creatures that Noah had to be careful to collect, like slugs and snails, land crabs, and slime molds. The ark didn't just include all of these -- most of them found nowhere near what we today call the Middle East -- but all the species that have ever existed, including those dinosaurs, and other extinct species like woolly mammoths, saber toothed tigers, giant sloths, Neanderthals, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, and moderate Republicans. How God got the South American, Australian, and Pacific Island fauna to southwest Asia and back we don't know, but anyway, it must have been awfully crowded.

Oh yeah, it was big. In fact, the ark was 50% larger than the second largest wooden ship ever built. Yup, it was bigger than the ships of the Spanish armada or the cargo ships of 18th century mercantalism, and it was built by a single individual -- perhaps with assistance from his sons, granted -- none of whom had any ship building experience. Okay, maybe God gave them the plans and a set of tools, I dunno. Nevertheless, it would not have had room for even 1% of terrestrial animals, let alone dinosaurs.

I know, the creationists don't care. They'll just smirk and say, with God all things are possible. But what are we to make of this as an allegory?

God is disappointed because the world is full of violence, so what does he do? He commits the most extreme act of mass murder in all of history. So I guess I know what to do the next time I'm upset about something, if I want to follow God.

It's Kind of Like This...

2007-05-28T12:46:00.000-07:00

At one time the search for knowledge was all one. Science, history, religion, philosophy; at first there was no distinction between these.

I retell the obvious. The Bible was one of the earliest attempts to consolidate knowledge of the world.

Now, we can agree on the historical and archaeological importance of the Bible.

We can agree that in terms of explaining the scientific workings of the universe it is an early and inaccurate attempt.

We can agree that philosophically the earliest parts of the Bible reflect a harsh patriarchal attitude toward man and nature. Not the entire Christian Bible, of course, but we haven't worked our way through the whole thing yet.

What we fail to agree on from the outset is the existence of God. So discussing the development of our perception of God becomes tricky. The evolution of thought from God the Puppet master, to the God of Judgement, to the God of Love seems irrelevant if you don't believe there is a God.

Cervantes, I understand the point you are trying to make with regard to what we have read thus far. You are not ineffective in your debate.

Has the universe changed? Or has our knowledge of it improved?

Has God changed? Or has our perception of God improved?

To quote another blogger with regard to our perception of God...

"So don’t tell me that loving is easy. Love will turn you inside out and upside down. It will delight you, move you, inspire you, transport you---and it will ultimately destroy you.

Love will kill you, if you do it right.

Jesus showed us how to do it. He didn’t call down the armies of Heaven as he hung dying on the cross. Didn’t call for any more smiting or bashing. Didn’t call for the judgment we so richly deserved.

He called for Love."

Who Can Turn the World on With Her Smile?

2007-05-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

I have to admit: I don't really look like Mary Tyler Moore...

The Book of the Generations of Adam

2007-05-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

Going back to this post, and Cervantes continuing perplexity over why people of the Book are people of the Book, I have to say I understand your frustration. I'm frustrated by my inability to thus far express sufficiently an answer to that. I hope through our continuing dialogue the fullness of my answer will become more apparent. I do think it's important to approach this question with a certain veneration for the religious tradition and writings being discussed, whether it be the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, or any other faith tradition.

You might say there's no accounting for taste. Most people who hold the Bible to be Sacred Scripture find a great deal of wisdom and beauty there. Flotsam and jetsam? There's certainly a great variety, but rather than being an incomprehensible scrapbook, I think it's a rich treasure of the past. From a faith perspective, it is a record of divine revelation--of mankind's attempt to percieve and understand the Spirit of God. And until you have fully studied the context and meaning of these stories, how can you say they lack wisdom? Obviously, if you reject the idea of God you might find this whole undertaking misguided.

It would be interesting to have the perspectives of individuals from other faith traditions.

Speaking as a Christian, the Old Testament is important precisely because Jesus was a Jew. Matthew in particular would be difficult to understand without the foundation of the Old Testament. The Bible stands as a whole because from a Christian perspective it is a whole.

In the famous medieval cathedral at Chartres in France there is a stained glass window which would have served as a catechitechal aid in the pre-Gutenberg age when most people couldn't read and didn't have access to the Bible. In the center is Mary holding the child Jesus. Flanking her are eight other figures, four of whom sit on the shoulders of the other four.

The four figures on the bottom are four prophets from the Old Testament: Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Perched on their shoulders, and thus able to gaze farther into the distance, sit the four evangelists: Luke, Matthew, John and Mark, respectively. The idea imparted here is that the Old Testament prophets are the foundation for the New Testament evangelists. You cannot understand the New Testament without the Old, and in the Christian perspective the Old Testament finds its true and deepest fulfillment in the New.

Now you admit, Cervantes, that interest in geneology is both widespread and ancient. Despite your own lack of interest, most people have a certain fascination with their own historical past. Mostly we are interested in the past to understand our present and our future. There is a point to all of these begats. I see a deeper profundity in the listing of these individuals.

Look at the Bible as a whole for a moment. All of these stories are rich and beautiful, and integrated and resonant in the life of Christ. All of the unlikely and miraculous birth stories from Abraham and Sarah to John the Baptist leads to a protracted point which is the investigation of life's meaning. Why are we here? Why are any of us here? What is the meaning of a human life? Is every person priceless to the universe? Are the stories submerged in a person's hereditary past a persuasive reason for caring about that person? There are a whole string of people who participate in the making of one person, who all had a vital role to play. We are all links in the chain of life. When you think about all of the little plays of fate that must occur just to create a person--it's incredible.

Mr. Howland must have encountered a number of small miracles in his lifetime. (I imagine him escaping from a series of cuckolded husbands.)

A couple of general observations

2007-05-28T05:46:00.001-07:00

I don't think I much resemble Lou Grant. Mary once discovered that Lou's breakfast consists of oreos and beer, and I can assure you that I don't have the oreos and beer until lunch.

Here's my basic attitude toward the material we're reading now, and the overall point I'm trying to make, however ineffectively. These texts are interesting because they are very old; indeed they reach back into preliterate society, and represent early records of formerly oral traditions. So they are archaeologically important. They give us clues about how ancient people understood the world.

The first thing you notice about them if you undertake a dispassionate reading is that they are incoherent -- frequently illogical, self-contradictory, and preposterous. That is not surprising, this early part of Genesis is a compendium of tales, indeed a compendium of compendia, a patchwork of different original texts. Furthermore people in those days were struggling to explain the world around them and they came up with various hypotheses, speculations, and metaphors.

However, there is a common idea, and it's very important. People attributed nature and natural events to intelligent actors -- originally multiple gods, with various powers and spheres of action. The Hebrews were not yet monotheists, but they did decide that one particular god was the chief one, and that he had a particular interest in them.

Unfortunately, the world was capricious and often cruel. If floods, and famines happen, and YHWH is the cause, well, either he's one really nasty son of a bitch, or we must have done something to deserve it. Hence the conclusion that he is disappointed in us, we are wicked, and we deserve what we get.

Nowadays, however, we know better. We know why bad weather happens, why there are epidemics, why we have a limited life span. (Death is essential for the long-term success of a species. We cannot reproduce if the old don't make way for the young, given finite resources, and without reproduction there is no evolution.) Fundamentalists still insist that God wiped out New Orleans as punishment for Gay Pride Day. Pat Robertson claims he prayed hurricane Bob away from his mansion and horse stables in Virginia, but it came on up to New England and killed some folks here. Pat and Jerry Falwell said that God slaughtered 3,000 people on 9/11/01 to punish the United States for harboring homosexuals, abortionists, and the ACLU.

Well, now we know that hurricanes are caused by convection off of warm ocean waters, driven by condensation from humid tropical air into powerful rain and windstorms which are spun into a vortex by the rotation of the earth. Their motions are controlled by upper level steering currents. The 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by people who were angry at the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, it's unquestioning support for Israeli policies concerning Palestine, etc. God has nothing to do with it -- which for those who believe in him ought to be a relief. Otherwise, God is a very nasty character who kills and injures innocent people by the thousands and tens of thousands, and bereaves their loved ones, in retaliation for actions they had absolutely nothing to do with.

Well, that is indeed the God of genesis. An evil sociopath. An ugly, cruel, vindictive God who reflects the hard life in which certain inhabitants of a poor, parched land found themselves. That's understandable, and it is of historic interest. However, it most certainly does not suggest any wisdom, or guidance, for how we ought to live today or what we ought to believe. It is not philosophically enlightening for us today, because we know a whole lot more than people did then.

And that's great news for us. We don't have to live under the oppressive shadow of this cruel and vengeful God. We can seek knowledge, and wisdom. We can learn how to predict bad weather, and prepare for it. We can study human psychology, and society, and learn how to prevent crime, how to reduce the chances of criminal recidivism, even how to bring about international reconciliation and reduce terrorism and war. We can do these things with our senses and our reason.

But this old time religion does not help in any of those endeavors. It is an obstacle. It deceives, it misleads. It frustrates our intelligence and corrupts our better nature. It is from the infancy of our species. Now that I am grown, I have put away childish things, starting with Genesis. It is time for all humanity to move beyond it.

Lamech

2007-05-27T07:03:00.000-07:00

I have to concede that Cervantes has a point about Lamech’s story being a bit bizarre to us. The Oxford Annotated RSV indicates that verse 23-24 is, “an ancient song, probably once sung in praise of Lamech, is here quoted to illustrate the development of wickedness from murder to measureless blood revenge.” In other words, he’s not a hero. So if you were engaging in exegesis you might use this passage to ponder how concommitant with the release of sin on the world the inevitable development and preponderance of human inflicted evil, violence, and tragedy caused ancient people to wonder WTF just as we do today.

I really just don’t have anything else to say about that passage. It’s a fragment of an almost forgotten character—who turns out to be the father of Noah.

And Cervantes also makes a subtle but valid point about Alan Keyes statement and our obvious evolving standards of decency. We no longer accept polygamy, or slavery as valid or moral lifestyles. You can use proof texting to argue against homosexuality, but you can also use it to argue in favor of some very nasty social institutions of the past. But if you're keeping your mind open to the considerations of contextual criticism, as I do, you would merely note that the Bible was reflecting the cultural norms of it's time.

It's true some Christians fear calling into question the inerrancy of the Bible. They are so spiritually immature that it would seriously erode their faith if anyone chipped away at the idea that God was not THE AUTHOR of Sacred Scripture and it was not taken to be totally, including historically, accurate.

In the other camp are Christians who see in the historical-critical method hope for making progress on our historical understanding of the Bible. They do not see this as a threat to faith but as a natural outcome of intellectual curiosity and a search for the truth.

I think you can't change the minds of the former. All you can do is try to take power away from them.

Cain and Abel

2007-05-27T06:58:00.000-07:00

Looking back on the post Cervantes wrote on Genesis 4:8-16, and trying not to belabor any of my previous points about literary construction, I’ll get straight to the exegesis.

Murder. It’s about murder. Killing is wrong. If you kill, you will be banished from the presence of the Lord. To be unable to commune with the Lord, then, becomes a supreme punishment. If being with God is the definition of heaven, then not being with God is the definition of hell.

Notice “am I my brother’s keeper?” is a lame rhetorical question. In other words, we are responsible for one another.

Notice there is no death penalty. Just sayin’.

So I don’t have a problem with all of the other people. As I said before, I don’t take the Bible literally; just looks like we missed part of the story.

An Illustrated Dialogue

2007-05-27T06:35:00.000-07:00

Cervantes wanted to have a dialogue.

He wanted to talk about issues important to everyone. Like, does the existence of the Bushosaurus mean bacteria don't evolve?

But he was missing something. Usually it takes more than one person to have a dialogue. Otherwise it turns into a monologue.

So he brought a newbie on board.

Missy said, "Hey that looks like fun. I'll join the dialogue!"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Listen Kid, I'll write up a lead, and you respond. Easy. Right?"

"So I'll write up a lead story, and you respond."

Hey. Where's that response? We've got a dealine here!"

"Mr. Cervantes, I do not work around the clock!"

"Missy, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but you're a jerk."

"How could I possibly take that wrong?"

"Okay. I'm a jerk."

Exodus 32:14 "And the LORD repented of the evil which He thought to do to His people."

Okay, it didn't really happen like that. No one is barking at me to hurry up. Cervantes didn't really call me a jerk. It's a line from the show. Am I the only one who's going to think this is funny again? I always find the misuse of wholesome iconic TV characters amusing.

Genesis 6:5-7

2007-05-25T06:12:00.000-07:00

5 The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.

6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them."

I'm almost inclined to just say "no comment." But, I guess I owe y'all a few words.

Oh ye people of faith: according to your holy book, your God is a klutz, who discovers that the creatures he himself made are loathsome, and in a fit of petulance decides to kill them all. Evidently the humans turned out wicked, although how so is not specified. We have no idea what's wrong with the rest of the animals. Evidently they just catch the back end of his hissy fit.

Since this whole story up till now is transparently bullshit, the only meaningful question is why anyone would wish for their lives and thoughts to be guided by whatever metaphor or symbolism may be found here. I'd be very interested in hearing an answer.

Genesis 6:1-4

2007-05-22T13:52:00.000-07:00

1 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

Here we apparently see the remnants of an earlier Hebrew religion. We don't know who the "sons of God" are. Of course in the New Testament there is only one, but here there are many. They cross-breed with humans and give rise to race called the Nephilim (translated as "giants" in some versions but left intact here in the New International Version). Evidently this hybrid race was wiped out in the flood (soon to come, so get the popcorn popper heating), because we never hear from it again. If you are interested in this question (which I am not, particularly) you can read more about it in Wikipedia, which tells us that Nephilim may be derived from an earlier Aramaic religion and refers to the sons of Orion, the celestial hunter.

In Jewish tradition, and mainstream Christian tradition, the "sons of God" are angels. Now, if you're like me you're finding this all quite grotesque and even rather offensive -- not to mention irreconcilable with the New Testament and modern monotheistic ideology.

While it's progress that God decides to cut the human life span down from 900+ years to 120, obviously we still haven't made it to reality. Later, of course, the Bible tells us that our days are three score and ten, which was about the max in those days, although nowadays most of us hope for just a few years more. His reason for reducing the life span seems to be that he gets tired of us after 120 years. So, once again, he decides that the prototype was flawed. In this case, he decides to do some redesign work rather than just kicking our butts. But, as we shall see, this only a brief reprieve.

What a putz.

Genesis 4:25-Genesis 5:32

2007-05-20T08:55:00.000-07:00

Here come the begats:

25 Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, "God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him." 26 Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh.
At that time men began to call on the name of the LORD.

Ch. 5

1 This is the written account of Adam's line.
When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them "man. "
3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. 4 After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. 5 Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died.
6 When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh. 7 And after he became the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters. 8 Altogether, Seth lived 912 years, and then he died.
9 When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan. 10 And after he became the father of Kenan, Enosh lived 815 years and had other sons and daughters. 11 Altogether, Enosh lived 905 years, and then he died.
12 When Kenan had lived 70 years, he became the father of Mahalalel. 13 And after he became the father of Mahalalel, Kenan lived 840 years and had other sons and daughters. 14 Altogether, Kenan lived 910 years, and then he died.
15 When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he became the father of Jared. 16 And after he became the father of Jared, Mahalalel lived 830 years and had other sons and daughters. 17 Altogether, Mahalalel lived 895 years, and then he died.
18 When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch. 19 And after he became the father of Enoch, Jared lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. 20 Altogether, Jared lived 962 years, and then he died.
21 When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. 22 And after he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. 23 Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years. 24 Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.
25 When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech. 26 And after he became the father of Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years and had other sons and daughters. 27 Altogether, Methuselah lived 969 years, and then he died.
28 When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. 29 He named him Noah and said, "He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed." 30 After Noah was born, Lamech lived 595 years and had other sons and daughters. 31 Altogether, Lamech lived 777 years, and then he died.
32 After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.

First of all, thanks to Missy for a bit of background on the origin and provenance of the various texts that make up the Bible.

Once again (and I know I haven't succeeded in explaining this clearly enough) but I still don't understand what it is that makes this particular collection of texts special to Christians -- or for that matter other "people of the book" -- who recognize that they are assembled rather arbitrarily by humans from a myriad of sources. There are other ancient writings, many from the same region and tradition, which are not part of the Bible, and there is a lot of flotsam and jetsam in the Bible that is seriously embarrassing to both Christians and Jews. So why consider these particular texts somehow "sacred"? We can find much greater wisdom elsewhere than we can in most of the Bible, and as for the good parts, why not just take them on their own merits, rather than endow them with some special status because they happen to be bundled up with a bunch of other junk? That's how I feel about it anyway.

Okay, this "begat" chapter gives us a chance to take stock of where we've come. Remember that the divisions into chapters and verses was added by medieval Christian monks, that's why I didn't mind crossing the chapter line here -- although the intro to Ch. 5 does suggest that we're actually beginning a new textual fragment.

And that's my first observation, basically. What we have read so far is a collection of fragments of old tales. They were written down at some point in a continuous sequence that gives the superficial appearance that it is trying to be a coherent narrative, but obviously it isn't. Two mutually inconsistent creation stories, followed by the sudden appearance from nowhere of a human population and a curse that fails to punish, and the bizarre non sequitur of Lamech's unexplained revenge, all show that this is really essentially a scrap book.

As for the begats, I remember reading somewhere that the 800-900+ year lifespans resulted from some transcriber misplacing a decimal point somewhere along the line, but that can't be true since the place-value number system wasn't invented until the 5th century CE, in India. And anyway, people back then were lucky to live to be 50, living to the age of 80 or 90 was extremely rare, if it ever happened at all. But, this certainly could result from some other form of confusion among differing number systems.

Interest in genealogy goes back to well before the dawn of literacy. In pre-literate societies, people learn to recite genealogies. It's interesting to think about why this is. My personal interest in my ancestry isn't really very strong once you get back before the parents and grandparents of people I knew personally. In other words, I'm interested in my grandparents' family lives, because they were influential and important people to me, so therefore I am interested in knowing about their parents and grandparents, who directly shaped their lives. But before that, it gets too tenuous for me to really care.

I understand that I am descended from John Howland, who came over on the Mayflower as the ship's carpenter but was not a member of the Pilgrim sect. At Plymouth, he was successfully sued more than once for paternity -- or as they put it in those days, "prosecuted for bastardy." So I guess I have a lot of cousins. But why somebody went to the trouble to find that out is beyond me.

Scriptural Content

2007-05-17T06:52:00.000-07:00

Iain asked recently how I "decide which bits of Scripture are appropriate to your own life and beliefs?" After a number of frustrated attempts to respond in comments I've decided to respond in a post.

I guess I want to say first off that I don't actually discard any parts of scripture. Certainly as a Christian, for me the New Testament trumps the Old. Also, I'm not quite sure what to do with the criticism of finding new meaning in these passages. Obviously I'm interested in the original intent, but it is a tradition of all literature that the reader completes the work. The reader always brings new meaning.

As a catechist I teach the Catechism of the church and the scripture as it's written. But especially with my older students, I always point out the context and changes in theology through the years.

As an individual I admit that I give less attention to the pseudonymous writings of the New Testament. They tend to have been written much later, closer to the 4th century, and they are an attempt to respond to things that were happening in the church at that time. Mostly they are an assertion of patriarchy and order. Take Paul, for instance. If you look at just the books scholars agree he actually wrote you lose all of that slaves obey your masters, wives obey your husbands shit. Paul becomes much more palatable. Iain, does that answer your question?

I want to take a moment to go back over the present content of scripture. I guess we ought to address the original language they were written in. The first language of scripture is Hebrew, which originated in Cannan and was passed on by Abraham. It was the language of the Holy Land until about the 3rd century BCE. Aramaic was the language Jesus spoke and would have been common from the 3rd century on. Finally, the New Testament was written in Greek, except for Matthew which was originally written in Aramaic (now lost). The Septuagint (begun in 250 BCE and completed in 100 BCE), which were the Hebrew Scriptures passed down to us, were written in Greek for Jews in Egypt who would have spoken only Greek. This is the translation the apostles would have used.

There are 72 or 73 books in the Bible (Lamentations is often put in Jeremiah). The word testament means "covenant" and the books represent our covenants with God. In the Catholic canon there are 46 books in the Old Testament. The accepted rules of the Jewish canon, which were set in the first century after Christ, were that the book in question had to be in harmony with the Pentateuch (Torah or law; the first five books of the Old Testament); it had to be written before the time of Ezra; it had to be written in Hebrew; and it had to be written in Palestine. The Jewish canon does not include: Judith (Aramaic), Wisdom & 2 Maccabee (Greek), Tobit & parts of Daniel & Ester (Aramaic outside Palestine), Baruch (outside Palestine), or Sirach & 1 Maccabee (after time of Ezra).

It is the Jewish canon that was accepted by Protestants at the time of the Reformation. But with regard to the New Testament, all Christians agree upon the 27 books in the canon. Most were written in the later half of the first century with the first Gospel, Mark, having been written close to the time of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The Catholic canon was officially determined at the Council of Hippo in 393 AD (we included Apocrypha as historical books).

Now, what types of literary forms do we see in the Bible? Lots. Here's a list: History – in story form (Pentateuch, the Exodus, David, Solomon); Fables – short tale to teach a moral (Judges 9: 7-15, Numbers 22: 26-36); Legend – non-historical story handed down by tradition (Daniel); Allegory – abstract or spiritual meaning under the story, symbolic narrative (Sampson, Solomon); Parables – simple story that illustrates a moral or religious lesson (Luke); Apocalyptic writings – revelation or prophecy to end times (Ezekiel, Daniel, Revelations); Myth – traditional or legendary story usually concerning deities without fact or natural application; Drama (Job); Epistles (letters of Paul and others); Wisdom – oracles (Wisdom, Numbers 23, Genesis 18); Poetry (Psalms, Genesis); Hymns (Psalms, Philippians 2); Prayers (Psalms, Our Father); and Folklore (Noah, Abraham, Moses).

There are also many types of books. I guess the first category is the Pentateuch; Genesis (origin), Exodus (Israeli nation), Leviticus (laws), Numbers (organized nation), and Deuteronomy (spirit of love and obedience to laws). Salvation history is another type of book--Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings. There is chronicler's history in 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Religious historical novels like Tobit, Judith, Esther, 1 and 2 Maccabees. Wisdom books such as Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, song of Solomon, Wisdom, and Sirach. And prophetic books, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. There are the Gospels; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and the early Christian church (Acts of the Apostles should maybe be included with the Gospels--I consider it the Gospel of the Holy Spirit). The Epistles, or letters of Paul, and the pastoral letters--Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, Peter, James, 1, 2 & 3 John, and Jude.

Now what we're getting into here with our dialogue is textural criticism. This can also take a variety of forms. There is the literalist--typified by fundamentalism. These folks take scripture word-for-word and also insist it to be a history and science book. Whatever. The rationalist looks for things that can be proved. Exegetes look for the religious or faith meaning of the text. The contextual approach, which I've discussed before, analyzes the times, culture, language and other circumstances the book was written in. This approach was recommended by Pope Pius XII in his 1943 Encyclical and also by Vatican II Council. As a Christian, I believe all scripture should be interpreted in light of Jesus. If you just look at the Old Testament you have primarily Deuteronomical theology, which is your eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth stuff. Deuteronomical justice assumes bad things happen as punishment from God. It stands in contrast to New Testament justice--followers of Christ believe that God does not cause evil, God allows evil to exist. Also, today it is more common to find masculine pronouns removed as we become more sensitive to reading the Scriptures through many perspectives.

Okay. So there you go. A quickie lesson on scripture content and textural criticism.

Genesis 4:19-25

2007-05-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

19 Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah.

20 Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock.

21 His brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play the harp and flute.

22 Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. Tubal-Cain's sister was Naamah.

23 Lamech said to his wives,
"Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for injuring me.

24 If Cain is avenged seven times,
then Lamech seventy-seven times."

Here's a powerful statement from the web site of conservative, Bible-believing political activist Alan Keyes:

Are you willing to give way to far-left progressive judges? If you think that turning a blind eye on gay marriage issue is prudent, a word to the wise: Watch out. For besides gay marriage, the conversation may one day soon shift to polygamy, and who knows what else.

No comment on that.

If Jabal was the father of all those who live in tents and raise livestock; and Jubal was the father of all musicians, the situation was only temporary, because all those people are eventually wiped out in the flood and Noah is the only father of everybody. Just sayin'.

If Lamech ended up "avenged" 11 times as much as Cain, evidently his punishment was that he got to build 11 cities, not just one. He didn't get to have 11 wives, though, only 2. But maybe they were 5 and a half times as cute or something.

Genesis 4:8-16

2007-05-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field."* And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

9 Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?"
"I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?"

10 The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.

11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth."

13 Cain said to the LORD, "My punishment is more than I can bear.

14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me."

15 But the LORD said to him, "Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over." Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.

16 So Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of Nod,** east of Eden.

17 Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch.

18 To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.

* Many early texts lack "Let's go out to the field"
** Nod means "wandering"

Now this is quite interesting. I always had a vague impression that the "mark of Cain" was a badge of shame, like the scarlet letter. But in fact, it is a sign of God's protection. God opposes the death penalty, at least for murder. (Although as we shall see later he insists on it for more serious offenses such as gathering sticks on the sabbath.)

What is most striking about this passage is its profound illogic. As far as we know, until verse 14, there are three people in the world -- Adam, Eve and Cain. So who is going to kill Cain? What is he worried about? Well, it turns out the world is populated after all. How did this happen? There would seem to be two possibilities: 1) God didn't stop with Adam and Eve, he went around making people all over the place, but the Bible just doesn't bother to tell us; 2) Somebody else -- or several somebodies -- had his own creation or creations, and decided to make creatures of the identical species. Either way, did they go through the same travails? Did the other people eat the forbidden fruit, or were they made already knowing good from evil? Did they start out in secret gardens and go through the whole expulsion thing, or did they just wake up in Nod and other places? All very curious.

Then there is the curse. Obviously, God doesn't really mean it, because Cain does not end up as a restless wanderer on the earth, in fact the very next thing we learn about him is that he gets married, settles down, and I mean settles down big time: he builds a whole city. So if the earth isn't yielding for him, he is doing quite well thank you in the construction business. That's a curse I can live with. In Genesis 4, crime pays.

More Theology: Genesis 4:1-7

2007-05-11T05:56:00.000-07:00

Apparently there have always been tensions between farmers and semi-nomads. Did barbed wire ruin the West? This passage symbolizes that tension in the two types of offerings.

So did God ask for this offering as Cervantes implies? Well it doesn't say. And we don't know the reason Abel's offering is accepted, but Cain's is not. Normally verse 6 and 7 are read to imply that Cain himself will be accepted, even though his offering is not, if his offering springs from the right motive.

If we're going to be tongue in cheek about this, you could say Cain was just trying to kiss ass and God saw through it. God even tried to give him a warning, picturing sin as a predatory animal crouched at the door. That snake's going to bite again.

And once again the advice of God is, "you must master it."

Back to Genesis 3:16-24

2007-05-11T03:25:00.000-07:00

So I intended to read up on some feminist theology before tackling this, but that just reeks of effort and I'm fluffy. I'm just going to go with my opinion.

We've already established that I am not someone who reads the Bible literally. I accept it as traditional sacred scripture which shows a spiritual path and within it's pages shows an evolution of ancient thought on God. In that context, I'm okay with cherubim and flaming swords. Whatever paradise we may have come from where everyone acted as they should, we can't go back to. That's a human fantasy, right? Things must have been perfect at one time, then bad people came along and fucked it all up. What ever happened to the good ol' days? A good man is hard to find.

Most of the ancient writers were men, and certainly the final editors were. Humans who, while noble in their intent to understand the Divine nature and the purpose and origin of humans, naturally got a few things wrong, naturally tried to line things up with what their ideas of right and wrong were at the time. Verse 16, the curse on Eve for the Fall is an ancient codification of women's role, and the "virtue" of obedience and submissiveness. It places women directly under men in the scheme of creation. The story is an illustration of the disruption of the natural order: Eve shouldn't be taking orders from the snake, she should be taking orders from Adam; Adam shouldn't be taking orders from Eve, he should be doing what God said.

And this whole passage is largely the crux of what Christian Fascism stands on. So it's right to discuss it. But as I said before, if you're addressing Christians, it's best to let Jesus do the talking. Jesus showed us evolving standards of decency. Genesis may have been about learning and following the rules, but Jesus broke the rules. Jesus showed us the rules could be wrong. Jesus showed us that they could be trumped by compassion and mercy. Don't work on the Sabbath? Jesus cured people on the Sabbath. It is in the New Testament that God acts as one who sides with the outcast: the hemorrhaging woman; the tax collector; the adultress; the child born in a stable. It is through Jesus that we all got the radical message of equality. As Paul said, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) Jesus disrupted the old order of submit and obey. His order was based on compassion and mercy.

A few additional notes: A close reading shows it is not Adam who is cursed in verse 17, but rather the ground. And I've always found the vegetarian command interesting. Verse 21 is intended to show God caring for his people and providing for their needs.

Genesis 4:1-6

2007-05-09T14:00:00.000-07:00

1 Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man."
2 Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil.
3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD.
4 But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering,
5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
6 Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?
7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."

Just BTW, apparently there is a pun here involving the name Cain and Eve's comment that she ahs "brought forth" a man. I point this out just so you know that the scribe enjoyed wordplay. (Adam simply means "The Man," as Missy pointed out earlier.)

Okay, somebody needs to help me out here. As you know, I'm having a really hard time with this God character. Evidently, off stage, God has asked the people for presents, which is pretty presumptuous of him since he kicked them out of the garden and cursed them, but what the heck, they appear to be willing to go along with the deal.

Here we have one brother who decided to go into planting, and another who went into herding. Both honorable professions, right? So they each give what they have, but that's not good enough. God likes the meat, but not he veggies. Okay, agreed, it doesn't do any good for Cain to be angry, but it's understandable, in my opinion. I mean, it's the thought that counts, right? Shouldn't God be more gracious about it? If you don't like a present, say thank you anyway and if you have the chance, regift it.

And God's advice is, if anything, even more annoying. He implies that offering up the veggies was somehow sinful, and if Cain just does what's right -- presumably giving God some of the meat that he craves -- everything will be okay. But Cain doesn't have any meat, he's a dirt farmer. So what is God's point?

And by the way, God should learn to like his veggies. They're good for him.

2007-05-08T03:32:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry Cervantes, did you say something? Huh? Huh? I can't hear you...

Genesis 3:21-24

2007-05-07T10:08:00.000-07:00

21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Oh yeah, I was right about the tree of life after all, I just forgot where the reference is. So yes, Adam and Eve were always fated to die, unless they ate from the fruit of the tree of life. God seems a bit dazed and confused -- he evidently neglected to warn the people not to eat from the tree of life before, but now it occurs to him that not only did he not want them to know good from evil, he did not want them to live forever either, so only now does he take the trouble to do something about it.

So again, why does God put the two trees in the garden in the first place? He doesn't want us to be "like Gods," knowing good from evil, and living forever, but why create the risk? And God lied to the people -- he said if they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they would surely die, but they were going to die anyway -- and Adam lives for another 900+ years, as it turns out.

God is disappointed in his creation, so he punishes us. But hey -- he made us. If he's unhappy with the quality of the product, whose fault is that? And furthermore God is a liar. If he could lie to us about the tree of knowledge, why should we believe anything he says? I'm really starting to dislike this guy -- he's incredibly arrogant, incapable of acknowledging his own mistakes, he's vindictive, and he's a liar. Even if he did exist, I sure wouldn't worship him. He doesn't deserve it.

For biblical literalists, obviously, this passage would appear to be a major embarassment. Today, we have thoroughly surveyed and visited every square inch of the earth's surface, and uhh, no cherubim, no flaming sword, no secret garden with a tree of life. Nowhere, no way, nohow. Okay, maybe it all got wiped out in the flood -- but if destroying it was an option, why not just do it immediately?

Not That Cervantes "Loathes" Religion, Mind You

2007-05-07T06:20:00.000-07:00

Really thoughtful article in The Guardian today about "New Atheists." Perhaps it has some bearing on our discussion here.

Hat tip: MadPriest

More Comments

2007-05-06T05:04:00.000-07:00

Well things are starting to crystallize a bit. And I'm not too surprised, but I wanted to throw out a few quick comments of my own.

First of all, with regard to the Bible, I do believe it was Divinely inspired; sorry for that misunderstanding. Perhaps this is why I'm so fascinated by those moments of Divine inspiration within the stories. I'm a theist. I believe there is a bit of the Divine in each of us.

But back to Cervantes comments about those who take the Bible literally. I'm genuinely surprised that half of Americans believe the creationist view. But there it is. I think that number has a lot to do with the rise of Christian Fascism in our country. I can only say I don't think you can engage the thinking of hard core believers in the way you are attempting because of their political agenda and the magical thinking they use to advance it. Attacking their beliefs or pointing out logical inconsistencies seems to do nothing. "Well," they laugh, "God can do anything." What you can do is point out their political agenda (which you are quite good at) and (hopefully) watch their 30 year political grip on our nation begin to wane.

I'm particularly dismayed to discover 41% of Catholics agree with the creationist view. John Paul II acceded in 1996 that evolution was more than just a theory. Of course I say all the time that Catholics are poorly educated about their own faith. Especially people of my generation. I wonder, like this guy, if perhaps they respond to the poll as they do because of the way it's worded?

Because if you're just looking at which denominations ascribe to creationism literally, I would expect the numbers in that poll to be much smaller. More in line with these statistics about the Largest Religious Groups in the United States. In other words, I would expect Baptists and any other of the smaller fundamentalists to be in this camp, but no majority. This world view has been usurped in an attempt to give moral justification to a fascist government model. If you want to fight religion with religion a better way would be to steer away from deuteronomical justice, and toward Jesus--whom the Christian Fascists claim to follow. It's much easier to find clear contradictions when you use the words and actions of Jesus. He was, after all, a progressive liberal. I think that is a better way to engage the thinking of American Christians.

And with regard to Cervantes comment, "This is an artifact in the history of culture, but in that respect it is not particularly distinguished from Aesop's fables or the Vedas or the epic of Gilgamesh." We can just disagree on that. I think what distinguishes the Bible is it's attempt to understand God and the degree to which those good intentioned efforts succeeded. Certainly the ancient ideas were not complete, but they laid the foundation for the evolution of Christianity and modern theology.

Many modern theologians believe we are co-creators and that the Divine spirit exists within humans and is infused throughout creation. But that's a more evolved position. In any case it is a position which is not in opposition to empirical data. Theology should never be opposed to empirical data. Science should inform us about the mechanics of life; faith should inform us about the purpose of life. To quote Joan Chittister again, "Science drags faith beyond magic. Faith challenges science to principles beyond utilitarianism. One does not explain the other. We look in vain for faith to tell us how the world began or why it functions as it does with floods in wetlands and desertification in dry places and massacres in Algeria and pain in my own small life. But we do look for faith to tell us what it means to have to deal with such things."

(Post script: With regard to the Adam and Eve story and the suddenness of their loss of innocence; meh. I don't know. I think flashes of insight are not an uncommon way of coming to moral understanding.)

A couple of quick comments before moving on. . .

2007-05-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

I thought I should take time out to respond to a couple of Missy's points before posting the next passage.

First, in the comments I misremembered the bit about the Tree of Life. (That's what I get for taking more than a month between posts.) The people are not forbidden to eat from it. Actually, nothing is said about it at all, except that it is there. We don't know what it means, it's just a stray mention. So I would say that it's not clear whether mortality is part of the punishment for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. You could take it that way, but it's not explicit. In any event, I find that puzzling. Why would death be the price of knowing good from evil?

Next, I certainly agree that this is a fable, and I don't know to what extent the ancient Hebrews took it literally, or how they interpreted it. Unfortunately, according to polling data, almost half of modern Americans do believe that it is literally true. Therefore, although it may not be an issue for people who are likely to read us, as we continue through the Bible, I feel that it is necessary to consider the implications if we were to take it literally. That's the only way to engage with the thinking of the majority of American Christians.

Of the remaining Christians, most tell pollsters that while they don't believe the Bible is literally factually accurate, they do believe that it is somehow dictated or inspired by God. I take it that is not quite the same as what Missy is saying, which as I understand it is that these early passages of Genesis represent the struggles of ancient people to understand God and their place in the universe, given the perspective of their time and the extent of their knowledge. I obviously agree with that, but that also means my attitude toward it is a bit different from Missy's. This is an artifact in the history of culture, but in that respect it is not particularly distinguished from Aesop's fables or the Vedas or the epic of Gilgamesh. To answer Neolotus's question, the reason I have chosen to read the Bible here rather than any of those other ancient documents is because of its importance in our own, contemporary society. But on its own terms, I don't give it any special respect.

And finally, to wrestle substantively with the concept of morality that seems to be at the heart of this tale, I would say that we generally consider moral agency to develop gradually in children, not come upon them suddenly. Infants, of course, are not moral agents, and we think of two-year-olds as close to our animal companions in their degree of moral agency. But pretty much as soon as children can talk, we start to try to teach them to understand good and evil and we expect them to begin to develop moral sensibilities. By the time they are in kindergarten, we're teaching them to share, not to steal, not to hit, to obey adults, etc. We expect children to have something close to a fully developed moral understanding by the time they are ten or so; innocence isn't suddenly shattered with puberty, although we don't hold people fully responsible as adults until they are a few years past sexual maturity, i.e. sixteen or so.

So this fable of a sudden loss of innocence doesn't really correspond to experience, and it continues to puzzle me. Of course, Christians in general (I don't know about Missy) believe that God is the source of morality. The typical stance is that people are inherently wicked (viz. the original sin) and that they require piety and the threat of hellfire to stay in line. Conservative Christians, and notably evolution deniers, insist on this: they claim that secularism will lead to the moral dissolution of society.

Since the enlightenment, secular thinkers have looked for the origins of morality in human nature, not divine mandate. Until recently, this sort of thinking tended to be rather vague and speculative, but in recent years there has been strong interest in a more empirically grounded analysis of the evolution of morality. One possibly revolutionary finding is that something akin to human morality can be discerned in our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, and that perhaps we should think about them as having the beginnings of moral agency. Evolution has equipped us with morality, as an essential attribute of a highly intelligent social species.

Now, scientists are doing empirical research into morality, and they have found that people have remarkably consistent responses to moral problems across religions, and cultures, and that religious and non-religious people do not differ in their judgments of most categories of moral problems. The exceptions, of course, have to do with specific rule-based forms of morality, such as the prohibition of homosexual acts. If you are interested in participating in some of this research, and you want to explore how you make certain moral judgments, you can go here, to the home page of the moral sense test, offered by Marc Hauser and Peter Singer.

We could get hung up in discussing these issues forever, and I don't want to derail our reading, so I'll leave it at that. I will post the next Bible passage this evening or tomorrow.

Another Theodicy: Genesis 3:6-15

2007-05-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

Obviously Cervantes is a much more prolific writer than I am.

Time to catch up a little. In addressing your points I have to mention once again the idea of context. No one writes for an audience thousands of years into the future; we're only now piecing together what that culture was like. However, since Jesus used parables, allegories, and similes, we can consider that maybe the people who preceded him would have understood the subtlety of using an animal in a story. When Jesus said, "Feed my sheep," we all pretty much understand that he meant, "give spiritual nourishment to the people who follow me." So maybe the original readers of this story didn't take it literally.

It seems that in ancient times matters of morality and ethics were often addressed in this way. A little research into Aesop's Fables shows the original date they were written down to be 800 to 1000 years before Aesop lived, which would make them contemporary with the first books of the Bible. I'm going to maintain people knew that animals didn't talk and they largely understood that an animal in a story could be a stand in or agent for a person. Modern individuals who want to take the creation stories of the Bible literally are misguided and largely appear less sophisticated and less spiritually mature than their counterparts 3500 years ago.

What this story is pointing out to us is that there was a time in pre-history when people began to form the concept of good and evil and the idea of choosing between the two. The focus seems very much on obedience as "good" and the concept of clothing in the garden has more to do with modesty than protection.

Cervantes asks why God would not want Adam and Eve to know good from evil in the first place. When you look at this knowledge of good and evil from the perspective of free will there is a glimmer of an answer.

If a child gets too close to a dog's dish, the dog may bite the child. This is bad. Yet we don't hold the dog morally responsible, the dog is just doing what dog's do. Following doggy nature. The dog wants to protect it's food; it doesn't know biting is "bad." I kind of look at it that way. Before people had a concept of right and wrong they were more like the dog. Always acting out of personal interest and human nature. So God is shown here like the parent who wants to protect their child from knowledge. Like the dog owner who understands the pet needs restraint, not punishment. Once people began to "know" good from evil, we became morally responsible for the choices we made. In an era that knew heirarchy, reward, and punishment, we pictured God as the judge who will reward and punish. More like a king than a spirit. But that is where we were developmentally.

Another observation is the fact that God is described anthropomorphically present. God strolls in the garden, and is limited in time and space. God is just another character in the story. Perhaps because they knew of no other way to describe the person hood of God. This is a puzzle to me as well, but I take it to have more to do with the writer than the true nature of God. These earliest stories are a struggle to explain God. Our concept of God has changed over time; from strolling around with Adam and Abraham to a burning bush for Moses to a dove and a flame in the New Testament. Our attitudes, our ideas change, evolve and mature. History has shown us that obedience isn't always good. And modesty can be taken a burqa too far. We need to look at old stories with the light of modern understanding.

As for NeoLotus' point about sexuality being the greatest factor of this new knowledge; that's something that needs maturing as well. I suppose this ancient society would have put a lot of emphasis on controlling women and their sexuality as they were seen largely as chattel at this time. Again, our ideas of good and bad should evolve as our understanding about people and the world evolves.

Genesis 3:16-20

2007-04-30T15:18:00.000-07:00

16 To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."

17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

Whew! Now I'm dealing with some famous words indeed.

From the standpoint of modern evolutionary biology, we now believe that the reason childbirth is so difficult for humans is because we evolved these big brains, giving our babies big heads that don't fit through the birth canal. So it's not exactly a curse. It can definitely be a drag for women, but it's the price we pay for being human -- not for disobeying God, but for being what we are.

As for the second part of God's curse upon Eve, fuggedaboutit. In the first place, it seems to be based on an inaccurate premise. Most people agree that the male sex drive is more difficult to control than the female, and that in male dominated societies, it is often the case that the one source of power available to many women is their ability to manipulate men through sexual attraction. So this is a very lame excuse for patriarchy. It's pretty obvious to me that this is just a male fantasy. The author is saying, "Hey, you know you want it. And I'm the boss around here."

The curse upon Adam is more plausible at least. In fact, modern views of prehistory suggest that pre-agricultural peoples -- hunter-gatherers -- indeed enjoyed more leisure than later agriculturalists. What this means is not that the writer knew about the neolithic -- obviously he didn't, because he imagined a secret garden somewhere in Anatolia rather than an African Savannah - but rather that people of his age experienced life as full of toil.

I'm sure it was. As for the dust to dust thing, it's a reference to the earlier passage in which Adam is formed from the dust of the ground, not a reference to the nitrogen cycle. But this is one more example of how it is often possible to read modern knowledge and ideas back onto these vague allegories. I think it's important to remember that what we see in these words is probably nothing like what people saw in them 3,000 years ago.

Finally, according to my annotated New International Version, Eve probably means "life," not to be confused with the English homophone.

A Theodicy of Genesis 3:1-5

2007-04-27T06:09:00.000-07:00

I promised Cervantes a response to this post on Genesis 3:1-5 to get things started. As a feminist I have to say this is probably one of my least favorite parts of the Bible. All the better to examine it I suppose.

First of all when you read the Bible it's best to begin by looking at the context. Who was it written by, who was it written for? Consider the time period and culture and their limited understanding of how the world worked. Consider their deficient science and their use of allegory and metaphor.

Thus we have the talking serpent.

So please, for Missy, let's assume the serpent in the story, despite the charming bit of mythology there about it's evolution into a belly crawler, is not a serpent or snake per se, but rather acting as an agent. Who is it meant to be an agent for? Who would the first readers interpret this to be? "A generally unpopular taxonomic order."

The official position of most Christian faiths is that this is Satan (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 391), some sort of fallen angel: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing." Lateran Council IV (1215)

The command in Genesis 2:17 stresses God's lordship and man's obedience. Again, think about the culture of the time, 1500 BC, a culture trying to understand who God is, trying to explain what God is. Primitive, uneducated people would understand what a lord was and this was used as a simile to help identify God. An unfortunate distortion when looked at from a modern perspective. But I would maintain we have evolved and so has our view of God. We're looking back on a people who still performed blood sacrifice and burnt offerings. I think it's okay to say our view of God has evolved since then. In the tradition of litanies, there is no one name for God. God is key, rock, door, dove, and wind. But at a time when patriarchy was the way of life, when men were seen as the only fully developed creature on earth (women resembled teenage boys, so they were not considered fully developed, ergo not fully human) when authority was unquestioned and obedience a virtue, this was a way to discuss God.

All of that said, here are some of the points raised:

the serpent was telling the truth
how did the serpent know the truth?
why can the serpent talk?
God lied about the tree of knowledge of good and evil
why would God not want Adam and Eve to know good from evil?
why place the tree in the garden?
if God is all knowing, it's a setup
what if the snake was a she?
what are the assumptions about divinity, authority
what world view, what morality is promoted?
the greatest factor about the knowledge of good and evil is about sex for when they eat of the fruit and their eyes are opened they knew themselves to be naked rather than obtaining any actual wisdom.
what is original sin?

Dang. That's quite a list. 1, 2, and 3 are going back to my point about understanding the serpent to be an agent or metaphor for Satan. The tempter, the evil one. We can come back to this later if you REALLY want to.

As for number 4, did God really lie? A slightly more nuanced perspective is that Adam and Eve were condemned to a mortality of the spirit as opposed to an instant death. Christians cling to the concept of original sin as point and purpose of Jesus the Savior. You can't tamper with original sin without undermining the mystery of Christ. So you might weave in the doctrine of free will at this point. That choosing good over evil is somehow morally superior than doing good just because you're forced to. Now it's thouroughly murky--God doesn't want us to know good from evil because that is the way of falling away from God (5), but in order for Adam and Eve's choice to have any meaning it has to be real, thus the tree and the set up (6 and 7).

What if the snake was a she? Nah. I think it's safe to say it doesn't matter that much to the story, but if it were a she then it would have been well stressed throughout history so we could properly hate female animals.

Numbers 9 and 10; there are assumptions being made here about divinity and authority and I think it's right to challenge those assumptions. As I noted earlier, they are based on the understandings of 1500 BC. They looked at the world around them and made understandable allegory based on that. What can we say God is like? What is our relationship with God like? Well, it's a little bit like a lordship... Let's look around at our world today and reask these questions.

Number 11; I think we'll get to that in 3:6-15.

Number 12; at it's most basic, the original sin was envy, desire... coveting. Disobedience brought about by envy.

So what do I think of this passage? What do I get from it? I'm not a fundamentalist and the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. I believe this is an allegorical tale used to make a point about something that happened very long ago in pre-history. I believe Adam and Eve were not the first humans, but they were the first something. Something significant happened to two people. Two people who were awakened to the idea of a creator-God and who felt a personal relationship with that God. Two people who sensed there was right and wrong, sensed that there was a choice as well. Somehow this was passed on orally and finally written. From that short passage I get that there are rules in life; that we have a choice between good and evil; that in the world and within ourselves there are temptations to be faced in terms of making decisions between good and evil; and that the original sin was wantin'. I want. I covet. I'm jealous. I desire. I envy. Not just wanting, but wanting so much you're willing to break the rules. That's, I guess, when it becomes a sin.

I think it's significant that envy is the original sin.

A Brief Introduction

2007-04-27T05:07:00.000-07:00

"I don't remember exactly when I first began to notice the shift of circumstances, the change in attitudes, but I do know that every day the truth of the difference between past and present religious evolutions got more and more clear for me. What has for long years been considered 'dissent' in the churches by those who want more answers than questions, more clerical authority than spiritual investment may not be real dissent at all. People are not challenging Christianity and leaving the Church. They are not arguing against the need for a spiritual life. They are not denying God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit. They are not ridiculing religion and going away. On the contrary. People currently considered 'excommunicated' or 'suspect' or 'heretical' or 'smorgasbord' believers are, in many ways, among the most intense Christians of our time. They do more than sing in the choir or raise money for the parish center or fix flowers for the church. They care about it and call it to be its truest self. They question it, not to undermine it, but to strengthen it. They call for new ways of being church together. They do not dismiss the need for the spiritual life. They crave it. What's more, they look for it in their churches. But they crave more than salvation. They look for authenticity and the integrity of the faith." ~In Search of Belief, by Joan Chittister, OSB

I like this quote, so I thought I would begin there. I think fostering dialogue between theists and humanists is a worthy goal. But I couldn't help noticing not many theists were joining the discussion. I think it's safe to say that I have many of the same questions as Cervantes. As a normal questioning human being, how could I not? So I'm here to add to the dialogue.

I'm not especially qualified in the area of theology and don't speak in any official way. But I'm willing to follow an argument to its logical conclusions. I'm not interested in proselytising or evangelizing. If I manage to convince anyone of anything it would be this; that belief in God or a Supreme Being or Spirit of the Universe is rationally acceptable and that you can't disprove theism.

Who am I? My name is Missy. I'm 43 years old. I have five kids aged 16, 15, 13, 11, and 5. I work part time as an assistant director of religious education and section head for grades 1 thru 6 at my local parish. Basically? I'm a Sunday school teacher. For some reason I like the shock value of telling people that at cocktail parties. In a former life I was a banker.

I'm wary of challenging people with an immature spirituality and faith. Such people tend to be immature in many other ways as well (I think these are exactly the people Cervantes would like to challenge, but I digress). If you're starting from a position of zero faith, that I don't mind challenging. Take from it whatever you want. Maybe at minimum a better understanding of theism.

Okay, enough about me...

Genesis 3:6-15

2007-04-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.

15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."

I've got to tell you, I find this whole story very confusing. First of all, "the knowledge of good and evil" turns out to consist of shame about the human body -- God's creation. It's possible, of course, that just happens to be the first "evil" thing they notice, but isn't it odd that God would not want the people to know good from evil in the first place?

I mean, think this through: if nakedness is evil, then the people were already sinning. Now that they've eaten the fruit, at least they stop committing that particular sin. (And I'm quite sure that the majority of Christians and Jews, and close to 100% of fundamentalists, will agree that going around naked is a sin.) So how could eating the fruit have been the original sin? On the contrary, it's the act that made it possible for people to stop sinning, if they wanted to.

Another largely unrelated observation is that God is not omniscient, not even close. He doesn't have a clue what's going on -- the people can hide from him, he doesn't know what's happened until he gets the story out of them, he is limited in time and space.

Third, he's mad at the serpent so he makes him crawl on his belly and eat dust, etc. But hey - God made the serpent. If the serpent isn't up to quality control standards, whose fault is that? And let me just add in further defense of the serpent that he did not, in fact, deceive the woman, he told her the truth. It's God who was lying.

Of course, as far as I know snakes don't actually have a problem slithering around on their bellies, that works out just fine for them. So it's not a very effective curse. Maybe God realizes that he doesn't have much of a case after all so the sentence is a light one. It is true that people tend to dislike snakes, although that's not universal, but I don't think that they care about us one way or the other.

Genesis 3:1-5

2007-04-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Talking animals have always been popular, from Aesop to Get Fuzzy. So, here we have the serpent, a generally unpopular taxonomic order, suborning the greatest crime of all time, the Original Sin. Funny thing about it though -- all he's doing is telling the truth. God has lied to the man and woman, which would be a sin if the serpent were to do it, I presume, but the serpent does the right thing and sets the record straight.

A few other odd aspects of this whole situation, in my view:

Why doesn't God want the people to know good from evil?
Whatever the reason for this preference, since he does have it, why does he put the tree in the garden in the first place?
If God is all powerful and knows everything, including the future, he already knows how this story is going to play out before he even plants the tree or makes the people. Indeed, he must have set it up on purpose

So, we'll see how he reacts to his own plot.

And oh yeah, how could I have forgotten mention: How does the serpent know the truth about the tree? Evidently God must have let the info slip in one of their late night chats. Also, why can the serpent, among all animals, talk? Obviously, God wanted him to tell the woman about the tree. The whole thing is a set-up.

Why I've been away, why I'm coming back

2007-04-15T08:13:00.000-07:00

After I started this project of reading the Bible, I found that I might not be the right person for the job after all, because I just wasn't finding a lot to like. The protagonist, God, I find to be an amoral doofus, and you need a sympathetic character to relate to. Also, the literary quality so far isn't really doing it for me; the story telling is badly organized, the plot makes no sense, the allegories are strained, and the prose is wooden.

I was just getting all snarky and hyper-critical, and I don't know why anybody would want to join me on such a bitter journey.

Okay, I'm over that. I'm going to continue to look at the Good Book with a clear eye, but it will be unjaundiced. I'm going to look harder for what it is that people fine appealing about the whole thing, and give it a decent chance. Let's see how that resolution holds up.

The Point of This Project

2007-03-04T08:33:00.000-08:00

Guess what? Most people who profess to be religious, including evangelical Christians, have obviously never read the Bible. The Boston Globe's Christopher Shea explains the findings of BU professor Stephen Prothero:

In his new book, "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- and Doesn't," Prothero lays out the evidence of what he considers Americans' paradoxical, and troubling, religious ignorance. According to various surveys conducted since 1990, half of all Americans can't name even one of the four canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), the cornerstone of the New Testament. A majority can't name the first book of the Bible (Genesis). This suggests a curious unfamiliarity with a text that two-thirds of Americans believe contains the answers to all of life's questions.

This ignorance about basic religious and Biblical matters crosses all sorts of sectarian lines. In a survey from 2000, 60 percent of evangelicals, but only 51 percent of Jews, answered yes when asked whether Jesus was born in Jerusalem (the New Testament says he was born, as we're reminded by all those Christmas carols, in Bethlehem).

So, if you claim to live a biblically based life, or to found your belief system in the Bible, the least you can do is know what's in it. If you don't like my critical perspective, feel free to argue with it. But at least read the damn thing.

Genesis 2:23-25

2007-02-10T06:53:00.000-08:00

23 The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."

24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Okay, I haven't posted for a while, and here's why. I had to let this project settle while my attitude adjusted. I know it gets better later on, but so far this book just has not been all that interesting, frankly. These are nothing but inane fables for children. Yes, it's embedded deeply in the culture, but there's nothing profound or wise or meaningful about it so far. It isn't even eloquent. That a large percentage of Americans believe that this gibberish is in any way literally true, or the divinely inspired word, is really frightening, and creepy.

The second creation myth reflects the patriarchal, male-dominated nature of ancient Hebrew society, and our own, which has only recently begun to change. So all it really has to offer us is a window into a world view that we very much need to leave behind.

In any event, in the verses above they've toned down the sexism a bit and introduced the institution of marriage, rather sweetly at that. The medieval monks who made the chapter divisions broke it in an odd place, I would say, so the next idea is introduced here in the last verse, but not developed until Chapter 3. Therefore I'll leave it alone until the next post.

Genesis 2:18-22

2007-01-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.

20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh.

22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

Apologies to both of my readers for the hiatus, I expect I'll post more regularly in the coming weeks.

Anyhow, in contrast to the first creation story, this one clearly establishes the male dominance of Hebrew society. Woman, it turns out, is a mere afterthought, provided as a helper to the man once God realizes that he screwed up initially by failing to provide an assistant.

God also needs an editor, I would say. After mentioning the need for a Girl Friday, God digresses to deal with the naming of the animals. Then he has to repeat himself to reintroduce topic 1. I guess the point is to make sure that the man gets to name the animals without having to put up with any yadda yadda yadda from the woman.

God performs the first surgery, although again, since he's an all-powerful being, it's not clear why he needs to take the rib. (Apparently the original Hebrew doesn't necessarily imply a rib -- it could be some other body part.) Obviously he still needs to magically multiply its weight a few dozen times, then transmute the material into all the organs of the body. Why couldn't he have used a chicken bone or even just a clod of dirt? Evidently it's all about the symbolism. We are to think of the woman somehow as a minor body part of the man, I suppose.

Anyway, were I female, I would find all this deeply insulting. God is just a male chauvinist pig, as far as I'm concerned.

Genesis 2:15-17

2006-12-27T12:36:00.000-08:00

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

We have seen some odd behavior from God before, but now he's starting to act very strangely. If he thinks it's such a bad idea for the man to eat from the fruit of that particular tree, why put the tree there at all? It's obviously unnecessary -- there is nobody else around who needs to eat that fruit. At the very least he could put a fence around it -- that's what I have to do with my own fruit trees, or the deer will eat them, believe me. If God is omniscient, he knows the future, and he knew perfectly well that the man would end up eating the fruit. So he's just playing a nasty game here. And note that the man does not yet know good from evil; therefore he must not know that it is wrong to disobey God, and he can't be held accountable, and should not be punished, if he does eat the fruit. So this God character is truly warped.

Anyway, God's irrational and careless behavior aside, this is interesting in another way. We had one suggestion that the idea behind God making humans "in his own image" was not a reference to their physical bodies, but to their moral agency. Unlike the other animals, humans resemble God in their ability to make moral choices. However, we see here that God had no such intention. He meant for us not to be moral agents.

Perhaps, after all, that's what it really means when the Bible says we were created in God's image, for as will soon become evident, God is himself utterly amoral.

Genesis 2: 8-14

2006-12-17T08:32:00.000-08:00

8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.
9 And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.
11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold.
12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.)
13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

(Hey, it's been a few days, but I've always said I'll pursue this project when I feel like.)

Hmm. Where the heck is this place? I got out my trusty Oxford Atlas and I determined the following: The Tigris and Euphrates do not have a common origin, although they do arise maybe 100 miles apart from each other in a mountainous region of what is today southern Turkey. That's a long way from where Adam and Eve are about to find themselves, I must say.

So are there two other rivers that flow from somewhere near there? Nope, just one, a small river that flows north into the Black Sea, through Ankara.

Cush, it turns out, is a name for Nubia, which as everyone knows is on the Nile. The Nile arises in central Africa, more than 2000 miles away. Nobody seems to know exactly where Havilah is, but apparently it's usually associated with southern Yemen, which sadly is lacking in rivers except for intermitten watercourses (called Wadis) which arise in the mountains just north of the coastal plain. So the Pishon is most mysterious.

Anyway, Eden, clearly, is nowhere. As it should be, I suppose. The Hebrews would have been familiar with the Tigris and Euphrates, and no doubt may have had the impression that they had a common origin. From the vantage point of far northern Syria, it might appear that they are flowing from the same point, although it would not appear that way from lands better known to the Hebrews further south. The Hebrews, as far as I know, had yet to see the Nile when this story was first told, but they would have heard of it. Of course the Nile flows in the opposite direction from the Tigris and Euphrates, but back then they had no way of knowing that. (They will find out the hard way later on, of course.) And they no doubt heard tales of some other distant land which they imagined was watered from the same source.

In other words, Eden lay at the center of an imagined earth. The people who told this tale knew only the lands that they wandered themselves, as herders; and they heard tales of distant lands from travelers. But they had no maps and no way of assembling those tales into a coherent picture of geography.

Curiously, there was a river in the region where the Hebrews lived at this time -- the Jordan -- which arises in Lebanon a good thousand miles from the Tigris and Euphrates but in the same general direction from that vantage point. One would think that the Jordan would be a good candidate to be the Pishon, but it isn't. Canaan was not watered from Eden, apparently. Perhaps this reflects the Hebrews' deep sense of physical exile, a recurring theme throughout the Torah.

Genesis 2:4-7

2006-12-08T14:27:00.000-08:00

4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens-
5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground,
6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground-
7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

So now we start the second creation story, which if I am not mistaken comes from the source called E. It's going to get quite complicated and redolent with meaning and associations very shortly, so I plan on taking the next few posts in bite-sized chunks.

In the first story, we got vegetation -- "And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind" -- long before we got people. (In fact, plants came even before the sun and the moon.) But in this version, we need humans to work the earth before it can yield fruit. I really don't know why God didn't get around to making it rain just yet, but some things are just going to have to be mysteries, I guess.

Anyway, this seems to me the first suggestion that the world God has created is anthroprocentric -- that humans are the most important thing in it, and that they will have dominion over it. In sharp contrast to the first story, without humans, the fields are barren. In the first story, plants are given to humans for food, but they are also given to the beasts. People are exeptional because they are made in "God's image," but otherwise they seem to take their place with the rest of the animals. Here, as we will see more clearly in a short while, the relationship is different.

What may be an even stronger contrast is the relationship of the sexes. In the first story, they are created together and co-equally: "He created them male and female." There is no distinction. But here, we start out with a man, and it's all about him. The only reason we get a woman at all is because poor Adam is lonely. (And probably horny as well, although the curtain of discretion is drawn across that issue. Since, as we shall see, God did not intend for people to be immortal, it's not clear whether, before he made the woman, he planned to replace Adam when he died, or what.)

Finally, we continue to see God's limitations. In order to make the man, he needs some raw material, he can't just conjure him up. He chooses dust, which is appropriate, I'll grant you.

A necessary digression

2006-12-07T13:51:00.000-08:00

Right here I need to step back for a moment and take a look at the nature and origin of the text that we're reading. Tanta finds justification for the chapter division, but the point I wanted to make is that the divisions into chapters and verses were made by medieval Christians, and have no basis in the earlier texts. So in fact a monk in what is today Italy made that demarcation a couple of thousand years after the Torah was first written down, perhaps for the same reasons Tanta finds it meaningful.

The reason it is nevertheless odd, of course, is that just after the verses I quoted yesterday, we get a whole new creation myth, which is inconsistent with the first one. Apologists will no doubt say that Genesis just goes on to fill in some details that were left out of the first sequence, but that doesn't work. As we shall see shortly, the two stories cannot be reconciled. This won't be the last time we run into similar problems. The Torah contains many examples of multiple tellings of similar stories with different details, including some very central material, such as alternate versions of the Ten Commandments.

I'm not a biblical scholar and I don't intend to invest the time to become one, but I vaguely remember the basics from a course I took, believe it or not, in high school, and I've refreshed and extended my knowledge in connection with this project. As is often the case, a perfectly good place to start is Wikipedia, with this article on the so-called Documentary Hypothesis. (The main Wikipedia article on the Bible, as you might expect, is something of a mess, but this seems very clean.) It's called a hypothesis because some people think the Torah was dictated by God directly to Moses (including the parts that happen after he's dead), or perhaps appeared miraculously on golden plates like the Book of Mormon, or something.

But in fact it was compiled by a scribe called the redactor from four main sources, perhaps around 539 BC after Babylon fell to Cyrus II, whereupon an exiled Jewish community there returned to Israel and there was a need to knit together various traditions in order to unify the community. In other words, the Torah is an anthology of mythology's greatest hits.

I'm not going to worry about the details as I proceed, although readers are welcome to wrestle with them. But we will have to acknowledge the repetitions, conflicts and disparities we encounter.

(By the way, in looking into this, I encountered the Book of J, by Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg, which maintains that the Torah source called J, author of the first creation myth, was a woman. This is no doubt what Missy was thinking of. As I said, this is no doubt a recording made at some point of older oral traditions, but there's certainly no reason why it couldn't be women's lore. I haven't read the book.)

Genesis 2:1-3

2006-12-06T14:39:00.000-08:00

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.

3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

(I decided to go with the New International Version for now, to reduce issues of translation.)

The chapter division here is odd -- this really ought to be the end of Chapter One, not the beginning of Chapter Two. More on that next time, and why it might be.

It is noteable that the God we are starting to see revealed is not much like the modern Judeo-Christian-Muslim God, in many respects. Most notably, he is not all knowing and all powerful -- he has definite limitations, and very human quirks and weaknesses. If he made us in his image, the converse is that he resembles us, in all our imperfection.

And here is the first evidence of it - his labors make him tired, so he rests. Fortunately, that means he is sufficiently empathetic that he gives us a day of rest as well -- although as we shall see later he gets awfully nasty with people who don't seem to appreciate his gift.

I think that many pious Jews still have a sort of personal, human scale relationship with this very human-like G_d, in spite of his grandeur and power. For Christians, he tends to be more abstract and inscrutable. I don't know enough Muslims well enough to know how they perceive God's personality. Maybe someone else can comment on that.

Administrative Statement

2006-12-05T06:54:00.000-08:00

I started the Bible reading project here with an announcement on my home blog Stayin' Alive, but I realize now that I should have explained myself in the same place where I was doing the project. So here goes.

I'm going to read the Bible, the whole thing, from beginning to end, and discuss it from my point of view as a humanist with a strong interest in human society and ethics. I am on no particular schedule -- I don't plan to post every day by any means, though I will certainly try to add material more than once a week. It may take me the rest of my life. That's okay, there's no hurry.

My purpose is certainly not to debunk or attack religion. I am not religious, I'm what I would call a realist, which among other consequences means that you would probably call me an atheist. However, I definitely think the Bible is important and interesting as both an artifact of how ancient people thought and lived, and as a powerfully influential force in modern history, and of course in the present. I do want to engage with the text constructively, hoping to find much that is useful and instructive, but also critically -- I know there's plenty there I don't like.

Unfortunately, a substantial portion of the U.S. population tells pollsters they believe the Bible is literally true and inerrant. It is trivial to disprove this -- the Bible contradicts itself very often as well as contradicting very well established and irrefutable facts. It would be silly for me to invest a lot of time and effort pointing out the absurdities and contradictions in the Bible, but I feel I do have to acknowledge them as part of any honest reading. But I'll try to keep that to a minimum.

The most important issue I need to discuss here is how I intend to engage with readers. I very much want to read your comments, including comments from people who are religious and to whom the Bible represents revealed truth of some kind -- whether you believe it is literally true, or not literally true but somehow inspired by communion with God and perhaps literally true in many respects. I must tell you that I have found this sort of dialogue with believers to be difficult and often strained. For some reason, when one takes issue with religion, asserts non-belief, denies the existence of God, believers often take it as hostility or incivility.

I don't really understand that. You state your beliefs, which differ from mine, and I don't take that as hostile or rude. So why can't I state mine? The purpose of this blog is dialogue, which means I may answer a comment with a rebuttal. Feel free to rebut right back, I won't take it as hostile (assuming it isn't). We have an equal right to our beliefs, and equal right to state our beliefs, and an equal right to explain why we disagree. If I don't agree with you, it doesn't mean your beliefs aren't welcome here. On the contrary.

On the other hand, there is a vanishingly small chance you will convert me. I grew up in a Christian church, I know all about it, and I have thought long and hard about these matters. When I was 13, I wished to be confirmed and I spoke with my uncle, an Episcopal minister, about the process. Then I changed my mind. Again, just because you fail to convert me, does not mean your ideas, beliefs, and arguments are not welcome here. You have your beliefs, I have mine.

Finally, this blog is open to additional posters who can demonstrate that they are thoughtful and share our commitment to honest dialogue. That includes people of faith. I want people who do not share my perspective to have access to top-level posts on this blog. So if you are interested, let me know. My e-mail address is available in the sidebar at Stayin' Alive.

I'll get to the next few verses tonight or tomorrow.

Genesis 1:26-31

2006-11-29T14:49:00.000-08:00

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Whew. You could write a book about these verses. You could make understanding their impact on history your life's work. For an enlightening compare and contrast, see my earlier post about the Peacemaker of the Ho De No Sau Nee:

His view was very different from the view of Jews and Christians . . . about the relationship between humans and the creator. He did not believe that the creator had given humans dominion over the earth. On the contrary, "The principle of righteousness demands that all thoughts of prejudice, privilege or superiority be swept away, and that . . . the creation is intended for the benefit of all equally, even the birds and animals, the trees and the insects, as well as the humans. . . . Nothing belongs to humans, not even their labor or their skills, for ambition and abilities are also the gifts of the creator. Therefore all people have a right to the things they need to survive, even those who do not or cannot work, and no person has a right to deprive others of the fruits of those gifts.

I will leave the Peacemaker's idea as the last word on that particular issue for now, although we will no doubt come back to the implication of these verses very often.

Then there is the interesting assertion that humans are made in God's image. I have to presume that the Hebrews meant this literally -- that God has two legs, two arms, a penis and an anus, that he burps and farts, wipes his mouth on his sleeve, the whole thing. (That's what the Greeks thought about their Gods, so why should the Hebrews be any different?) Perhaps he has exceptionally refined manners, but on this the Bible is silent. Of course we also note that he is male.

If the phrase is not meant literally, then what does it mean to say that we are made in God's image? Obviously we don't share the powers of God, and we certainly don't share the mind of God -- Christians often say, in fact, that it is unknowable. Perhaps a reader has a suggestion.

Genesis I, 6-25

2006-11-22T13:12:00.000-08:00

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

I won't belabor the internal oddities -- for example, we have evening and morning before the sun and moon are in the sky; the cosmological misconceptions -- there is no firmament of heaven, though I suppose the ancient Hebrews thought there must be one, with water above it, because the firmament occasionally sprung a leak and down came the rain; nor the faulty chronology -- terrestrial vegetation before marine life, and for that matter before the sun and the moon.

We already know that this story is purely imaginary, since they had no information about these matters. So the interesting question is why they imagined it in this particular way. The function of the lights in the sky, aside from giving light, is to mark the seasons and the years. Unlike many, if not most ancient people's, the Hebrews don't make a big deal out of the sun. It has no special powers, it isn't awesome, there is no personality or minor God behind it, it's just an artifact of the creator God. The same for the ocean, the earth, the animals and plants. All are mundane. Only God is powerful.

At the same time, the cosmos is not somehow a manifestation of God, or permeated by his personality. It's something that he made, which is apart from him. We don't even know exactly where he lives, from what perspective he regards this creation, or how he reaches into it to mold its components or affect events, but clearly he is somewhere outside of the whole thing, looking upon it, and evaluating it. Evidently he's up in the sky somewhere, beyond the stars. Fortunately, he likes what he made, or perhaps he would have trashed it and started over.

You hardly need to hear it from me that this is very different from the God or Gods of other ancient peoples who we know about. Other people saw specific deities associated with the major (and often minor) constituents of nature, such as sun Gods and sea Gods, or spirits animating the individual rocks and trees and rivers; or a pervasive divine force in all of nature. Within the first few sentences of the Pentateuch, the unique conception of what was eventually to become the dominant spiritual orientation of not only the Middle East, but also European culture, is already apparent. As we go on, we will see how the consequences of this metaphysic unfold for the Hebrews, and ultimately for us.

Genesis I, 1-5

2006-11-19T11:41:00.000-08:00

1. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.
4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

In ancient times, people everywhere of course wondered how the world they knew came to be, and they made up various stories about the creation. Most people imagined some powerful being or beings as the creator, but unlike the Hebrews, they did not all see this creator or creators as continuing to rule over the creation.

Nowadays, we know that the Hebrew creation myth explains the creation of a universe that does not actually exist. The world the ancients were trying to explain was the one perceptible to their senses, but their senses were playing tricks on them. In the first five verses of Genesis, we can already note several errors.

First of all, saying that God created the heaven and the earth is like saying that God created the earth and a single atom of carbon off the coast of Madagascar. The assumption that everything we see when we look up, and everything we find around us on the earth, are of roughly equal importance, seemed to make sense to people who had no idea how far away are the sun and the moon, and especially the stars. The sun is one of 100 billion or more stars in our own galaxy, which is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies within the observable universe. The earth is as close to nothing as anything can be.

What is more, the earth, we now know, came into being around 9 billion years after the heavens, more than three quarters of the time from the so-called Big Bang until now. (I do not like the term Big Bang, which is highly misleading. I prefer to call it the Initial Singularity, the IS, which is scientifically accurate. I don't know why cosmologists don't do the same.) So the earth, sadly, gets a demotion in time as well in space.

Some people try to say that the creation myth in Genesis is at least metaphorically consistent with reality, if we presume that the "days" may have been, in fact, of any arbitrary length, including billions of years. It is true, according to our most credible theories, that the universe was originally opaque to light. Photons were not able to travel freely through space until about 380,000 years after the IS, when the universe cooled sufficiently. (The so-called cosmic background radiation is the relic of that moment.)

However, that obviously does not accord with the biblical chronology, for the earth, the sun, and indeed all of the stars did not yet exist. On the other hand, if the myth is held to refer to the light of the sun, that existed before the earth came into being. And even people who do not choose to believe all that will concede, I presume, that darkness and light are not "divided." Rather, day and night result from the rotation of the earth; the sun shines continually, and it is always day on half of the planet, and night on the other half. This was true throughout the development of the earth, by accretion of smaller objects.

Some religious people do accept the scientific version of cosmic and geological history, but nevertheless hold to the idea that the creator God inspired the biblical belief in a guided process of creation, however crudely the ancients may have mis-imagined it. Surely a creator is necessary, else where did all this come from? But that just begs the question. The moment described in Genesis cannot be the beginning after all, for God already existed. Where did God come from? And what was God doing before the creation? Eternally contemplating his own non-coporeal navel? Or playing with other universes? God the creator is no answer to the mystery of the cosmos, but only kicks the question down the road.

Nor, of course, is the Initial Singularity an answer. Scientists will be the first to admit that they do not know why it happened, or where the stuff of this universe came from. They can only observe what is around them and make deductions about its history. But scientists, at least, have that humility, along with the ambition to find answers. They are not content with ignorance, but inspired by it.

In contrast, people of faith are at the same time,arrogant enough to think they know everything, and sufficiently feckless to be, not just content, but proud to be utterly ignorant about the object of their greatest obsession, the imaginary God.

News from Liberated Afghanistan

2006-03-20T07:43:00.000-08:00

Remember GW Bush crowing about the Burkhas coming off?

Kabul - An Afghan man detained for converting to Christianity could face the death penalty if he refuses to become Muslim again, police and a judge said on Sunday.

Abdul Rahman was detained two weeks ago after his relatives reported to the police about his conversion which is forbidden under Islamic Sharia law.

"Yes that's true, a man has converted to Christianity. He's being tried in one of our courts," Supreme Court judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada said, adding that his trial began early last week.

He said the man could face the death penalty if he refused to revert to Islam as Sharia law proposes capital punishment for any Muslim who converts to another religion.

Actually, I did want to know. . .

2005-07-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

From Juan Cole:

The majority of Iraqis is [sic] Muslim, but the Iraqi state is not necessarily Islamic. Those who don't fall into the category of orthodox Muslims (Sunni or Shiite) probably amount to 5 percent of the population. There are 750,000 or so Christians, and smaller numbers of Mandaeans (Gnostics), Yezidis (you don't want to know), and heterodox Turkmen Shiites.

From Wikipedia:

Yazidi believe in God, the creator, but his role stops there. The active forces in their religion are Malak Ta’us and Sheik Adii.

According to the Yazidi, Malak Ta’us is a fallen peacock angel who repented and recreated the world that had been broken. He filled seven jars with his tears and used them to quench the fire in Hell. Yazidism also includes minor deities and some clans venerate Sheikh Adii as a saint, subservient to Malak Ta’us. There are also 6 other minor deities that are honored.

The Yazidi holy books are the Book of Revelation and the Black Book. The latter forbids eating of lettuce or butter beans and wearing of dark blue. The historical status of the book is questionable.

Fortunately for those of us in the public health business, who promote consumption of folic acid, they don't accept converts. I wonder what would happen if one of them ever got a job with IBM?

Donning the Alcoa sombrero

2005-07-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

I'm not the first person to think this, but isn't it obvious that the gang currently in power -- let's call them the Cheney administration -- wants terrorists to attack the United States; encourages proliferation of so-called unconventional weapons, including nuclear weapons, which they are hoping will be used against the U.S.; welcomes violence and chaos in Iraq, including attacks on U.S. troops; is working diligently to create a regional conflict in Southwest Asia with the U.S. military in the middle of it; desires environmental catastrophe; and is determined to ruin the U.S. economy?

It is easy to show that their policies and actions are perfectly designed to achieve these objectives. But why would they pursue them? I'll tell you why. They hate us for our freedom.

The individuals who are today the Cheney administration, in exile during the Clinton years, called for invading Iraq in order to establish U.S. military hegemony in the Middle East. (I know, the NYWT forgot to tell you that. Go here if you don't believe me. No Alcoa sombrero required for that one.) However, they said they needed a transforming event, a "new Pearl Harbor," for the plan to be politically viable. Funny thing about that. It happened. Even though Mr. Bush was warned in a presidential daily briefing that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike inside the U.S. He ignored the warning to continue his vacation in Crawford. Then they invaded Afghanistan, but they let Osama go, and they turned their attention to invading Iraq. They used a campaign of lies about terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction™ to justify the invasion, but in support of their lies they blew the cover of a CIA agent working on, guess what, Weapons of Mass Destruction™.

Meanwhile, they have done everything in their power to undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as treaties on chemical and biological weapons, while moving to build biological weapons laboratories of their own. When they invaded Iraq, they did nothing to secure weapons and explosives depots, or Iraq's nuclear sites, allowing them to be looted. They abused and tortured prisoners in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq, and they are demanding the right to continue to do so without interference from Congress or the courts, even though it is well known that torture is counterproductive as a method of getting information. It does, however, make people angry and determined to strike back.

Now, they have defined "victory" in Iraq as the installation of a Shiite theocracy allied with Iran -- the second country on the Axis of Evil, which they keep making noises about attacking. They are arming, equipping, and training an army for this Shiite Islamic state -- apparently with every expectation of ultimately fighting it.

These policies would seem utterly insane if we believed the "president" when he talks about national security and keeping us safe. But they make perfect sense when you realize that he wants the United States to be at war, forever. Remember how he kept bleating about being a "wartime president"? War is supposed to make him unaccountable. War let's him erode civil liberties, turn the country into a garrison state, eliminate taxes on the wealthy, destroy environmental protections that might limit their profits, run enormous budget and trade deficits that mortgage the country's future for a brief illusion of prosperity.

But won't that be bad for business in the long run? Hell no. They don't give a shit about the U.S. The corporations they serve are multinational. They have no loyalty to any nation, and national borders mean nothing to them. The Cheney administration has friends in agribusiness, and construction, and other industries, but mostly they're in the oil business. Petroleum is the most important lever of power in the world today. They want to control it. They're perfectly happy to sell oil to the Indians and the Chinese and the Europeans. It doesn't matter what happens to the U.S. economy. But they want the price to be high. The last thing they want is any investment in conservation. And they don't want the people who live where the oil comes from to get in their way either.

For the Cheney administration, the major prize that comes with state power is the world's most powerful military, which is now at the disposal of the oil barons. The critical objective is to hold on to that asset. Democracy is an obstacle, obviously, so they want to eliminate it. The more conflict and chaos they can stir up in the world, particularly in the regions where there is oil, the more opportunity they will have to use military force to gain control. The more the American people are scared of "terrorists," the less they will resist restrictions on their liberties. And oh yeah, all this crap about "Christianity" and moral values? That's just one more way to dupe people. Obviously it doesn't apply to them.

And why are they so into torture? Because it gives them the weapon of terror and intimidation. To use, one day, on us. Enemy combatants.

So how about it. Am I crazy?

Okay, I'm gonna do it.

2005-06-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

Does God exist?

Many of my friends say we should just agree to disagree about this and get on with all the good stuff we believe in together. I'm willing to do that, but I feel my cards should be on the table.

Before we can talk intelligently about the question, we need a definition of God. I just want to let you know, between friends, that realists often feel that theists keep moving the goalposts. We falsify some conception of God, and they come back with a different one. So we can move the goalposts later, if you like, but for now, I'm going to take on the God of the Bible -- granted that there are differences among various parts of the good book, but there are certain basic attributes that theists generally ascribe to God.

So here are some premises about God. If you want to say that God exists but lacks one or more of these properties, you are not a Christian, or a Moslem, or Jew. You can call yourself any of the above if you like, but your minister, priest, imam or rabbi will not agree with you.

God is all powerful, omnipotent. God can do anything he wants. (Yes, he's generally considered male but I won't belabor that point.)
God created the universe and everything in it.
God is benevolent, God is good. Nothing God does can be evil.
God is all knowing, omniscient. God knows all of the past, and the future.
God wishes that we worship him, and obey him, and do his will. If we do anything contrary to the will of God, we are evil. We will presumably suffer in some way for it, but again I won't belabor the specifics.

It certainly is not original with me, but the above propositions are logically contradictory. For example, if God knows all of the future, then God cannot possibly be all powerful, because he does not have the power to change the future. If he did, he couldn't know it, because it might change. Also, obviously, God cannot commit evil.

But God created the universe, and everything in it, yet the universe contains evil. I mean, hell, if you worship God, you think I'm evil for not worshipping him. If you're a Christian, you either believe that Bishop Robinson is evil for divorcing his wife and having sex with a man, or you think that other Christians are evil for not granting him dignity and respect. Either way, it has to be God's fault, because God created Bishop Robinson and the people who despise him, God knew that a gay man would be consecrated as a Bishop, God knew that other Christians would condemn him, and God caused all of this to happen by creating the universe in the first place, which he knew would inevitably lead to these events. As a matter of fact, God created Satan, knowing full well that Satan would do evil. Everything Satan has ever done must have been the will of God, and part of his plan.

As a matter of fact, God cannot possibly have any free will. If he ordained the future at the moment of creation (and we'll leave aside the question of what he was doing before he created the universe), then he made sure that he could never make another decision for all of eternity. Neither can you. Or I. And if I don't believe in God, or worship God, that must be what God wants. Otherwise he would have made me differently in the first place.

Now, this is all completely obvious. "Theologians" have spent the past couple of thousand years spouting oceans of bullshit to try to cover up and obscure these completely obvious, inescapable logical contradictions. The only reason they get away with it is because faith, by definition, demands that we abandon reason.

Next: God vs. observable reality.

Pharisee Nation

2005-06-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

my thanks to c. corax for informing me of the delightfully named Father John Dear, S.J. and this stunning piece by him, called Pharisee Nation, available in its entirety at Common Dreams.

He begins:

Last September, I spoke to some 2,000 students during their annual lecture at a Baptist college in Pennsylvania. After a short prayer service for peace centered on the Beatitudes, I took the stage and got right to the point. “Now let me get this straight,” I said. “Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ which means he does not say, ‘Blessed are the warmakers,’ which means, the warmakers are not blessed, which means warmakers are cursed, which means, if you want to follow the nonviolent Jesus you have to work for peace, which means, we all have to resist this horrific, evil war on the people of Iraq.”

With that, the place exploded, and 500 students stormed out. The rest of them then started chanting, “Bush! Bush! Bush!”

So much for my speech. Not to mention the Beatitudes.

and i will add, with all the sarcasm i can muster, how very christian of this nominally christian audience.

more:

We have become a culture of Pharisees. Instead of practicing an authentic spirituality of compassion, nonviolence, love and peace, we as a collective people have become self-righteous, arrogant, powerful, murderous hypocrites who dominate and kill others in the name of God. The Pharisees supported the brutal Roman rulers and soldiers, and lived off the comforts of the empire by running an elaborate banking system which charged an exorbitant fee for ordinary people just to worship God in the Temple. Since they taught that God was present only in the Temple, they were able to control the entire population. If anyone opposed their power or violated their law, the Pharisees could kill them on the spot, even in the holy sanctuary.

Most North American Christians are now becoming more and more like these hypocritical Pharisees. We side with the rulers, the bankers, and the corporate millionaires and billionaires. We run the Pentagon, bless the bombing raids, support executions, make nuclear weapons and seek global domination for America as if that was what the nonviolent Jesus wants. And we dismiss anyone who disagrees with us.

[snip]

If we dare call ourselves Christian, we cannot support war or nuclear weapons or corporate greed or executions or systemic injustice of any kind. If we do, we may well be devout American citizens, but we no longer follow the nonviolent Jesus. We have joined the hypocrites and blasphemers of the land, beginning with their leaders in the White House, the Pentagon and Los Alamos.

[snip]

Just because the culture and the cultural church have joined with the empire and its wars does not mean that we all have to go along with such heresy, or fall into despair as if nothing can be done. It is never too late to try to follow the troublemaking Jesus, to join his practice of revolutionary nonviolence and become authentic Christians. We may find ourselves in trouble, even at the hands of so-called Christians, just as Jesus was in trouble at the hands of the so-called religious leaders of his day. But this very trouble may lead us back to those Beatitude blessings.

to which this atheist can only say: amen.

the places above labeled [snip] contain powerful and relevant and challenging language. please go read the whole piece.

while i'm here, thanks to feministe for a link to this great piece on abortion.

On Civility, A Modest Proposal

2005-06-12T15:53:00.000-07:00

intentionally mixing allusions in the title of this post, i want to comment on recent intramural spats on the left. several bloggers, thersites in metacomments, a while back, and pz myers at pharyngula, recently, (i am sorry i can't find the relevant posts at either place, but check them out if you haven't already. i recommend both) have suggested that we lefties are losers when we respond civilly to political jerks on the right and ID idiots. i am all for it. i am not for incivility to our own however.

Howard Dean, chairman of the democratic party, recently made some strong statements about republicans. Senator Biden undertook to clarify those statements and was a bit less than supportive of the chairman, in stark contrast to statements by raging asshole cryptotheofascist dobson's comments about republican senators caving in to democrats on judicial appointments. see now, i used Senator Biden's title of office and spoke moderately about his statements and took the opportunity to insult a jerk on the right. (there, i did it again!)

here on the internets Mr Markos recently ran an ad i consider to be in dubious taste. my comment to him would be/is "Mr Markos. you are running an ad that many men and women will find demeaning to women. i realize that not all your readers will find it so or even notice it, but i do think that the left, roughly speaking, should be supportive of equal rights and dignity for all and i urge your consideration on this matter. your blog is a source of information and inspirition for many and a place of vigorous debate. the righty blogs are full of hate-filled venom and lockstep agreement with sexist, racist, anti-immigrant, corporate toadying crap, some of which emanates from that drug addled lying sack of shit rush limbaugh. truly a big fat idiot, thank you al franken." there i go again, respectfully asking markos to consider the big picture, plugging al franken, and insulting both freepers and limbaugh. a twofer. this is fun. give it a try.

What Dialogue?

2005-06-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

human existence looks more and more to me to be dividing onto two camps between which there can be no dialogue. everyone who comments here, atheist, theist, deist, buddhist, christian, platonist, freethinker, freemason---well, i haven't really seen anyone identify themself as a free mason---seems to put their beliefs or non-beliefs at the service of compassion and inclusion. we are united in our acceptance of each other as humans, quibble as we may about divine presence. we're in the camp that is willing to have a conversation with the other camp, the other camp made up of people whose worldview is magical. i think it is easier for fundie christians to have a conversation with fundie muslims than with us. they recognize in each other an absolutist position and agree to hate each other. they agree that domination is the game. i think it is easier for us to have a conversation with the communist chinese, unburdened as they are by religion.

what sort of conversation can i have with someone in whose view i am "evil" and the only resolution for whom is to convert me? i only want to find a way for us to agree civilly to disagree about theology and find a way to coexist peacefully. i seek not to convert anyone. threats of a dreadful afterlife or being "left behind" don't faze me, but the threat of sharia, islamic or christian, is scary. call me sinful and smile when you say that, stranger, but don't force me to recant by torturing me.

when i read "the chalice and the blade" by riane eisler, an interesting view of the differences and the inevitable clashes between pastoral/agricultural/passive and nomadic/hunting/aggressive cultures, i did not foresee that some christians would become blade people. my admittedly inadequate education about jesus, the putative savior of christians, led me to believe that he advocated peace and forgiveness. some christians, not the ones who come here, seem to have forsaken the teachings of jesus in favor of the heaviest and most vindictive parts of the old testament, parts long since let go of by reform and conservative jews. i know even less about islam, but it was born in a blade culture, and has historically been a conquering political force at least as much as christianity.

the orthodox, fundamental jews are only trying to conquer all of palestine, though they do have a very strange alliance with "zionist protestants." google "red heifer" for a weird story. go here if you're lazy. the rabid elements of both christianity and islam aim to conquer and convert the planet. good luck to them with india and china.

Living Biblically

2005-05-27T07:09:00.000-07:00

We hear from the pious people who are in charge of the country today that we should live our lives according to the wisdom given to us in the Bible. We are told that many of the most important questions that decided that national election in 2004 had to do with moral values, specifically homosexuality, and the sanctity of life.

The Bible does indeed condemn homosexuality, at least male homosexuality, although it is silent on female homosexuality. The Bible says specifically that men who have sex with men should be put to death. That seems inconsistent with the sanctity of human life, but when rules conflict, something has to give, I suppose. The Bible also says that people who do work on the Sabbath must be stoned to death.

The Bible is totally silent on abortion, although abortion was widely practiced in the ancient world. Indeed, the pagan Hippocrates maintained that physicians should not provide abortifacients, but for whatever reason, God never mentioned anything about it. (Some people maintain that a passage in Deuteronomy specifies a ceremony for inducing abortion in case a woman has been adulterous, but I'm not convinced by that interpretation. Certainly God never says anything against abortion.)

But, if we are going to live Biblically, according to the wisdom God has given us in the Bible, then we certainly ought to wage war according to God's commands. And in Deuteronomy 20, he tells us exactly how to go about it.

10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. ¹¹ If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. ¹² If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. ¹³ When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. ¹⁴ As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. ¹⁵ This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.
¹⁶ However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. ¹⁷ Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you. ¹⁸ Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God.

¹⁹ When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees of the field people, that you should besiege them? ²⁰ However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.

So it is clear what the "sanctity of life" refers to: the life of fruit trees. According to Almighty God, it is our duty to slaughter human beings. I appreciate the opportunity to make that clarification.

Credo -- but first, the labelling problem

2005-05-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

Our good friend Jane Boatler wants to know why atheists proselytize -- too kind to point out explicitly that this seems a bit inconsistent, as we don't seem to like it when religious people do it.

I think the question may be a bit unfair. People generally try to persuade others to their point of view, and civil debate is a normal, and usually enjoyable, feature of everyday social conversation. Atheists do not, as far as I know, go from door to door or stand at the train station handing out tracts, we don't post quotations from Robert Green Ingersoll or Richard Dawkins in the courthouse, and we don't insist on having the latest findings in cosmology read aloud before every session of Congress. We engage people in discussion on a purely voluntary basis.

That said, it is about time I get upfront and down and dirty with exactly what the heck I do believe. Before I do, however, I need to deal with this difficult label issue. People like me who don't belong to an organized body of belief usually feel that none of the very limited number of available categorical names quite fits us or adequately represents us. It is true that I am quite certain that the entity called God by the various major religions does not exist. (And I note that having written that, I have not been struck by lightning.) However, my beliefs are not centered on that negative proposition. That's just a conclusion, not a central principle.

Some people call themselves realists, skeptics, secular humanists. I'll accept all of those but they require explanation. Also, there aren't any specific criteria for joining any of those groups, so there are definitely people who call themselves by those names who don't agree with me about one or another fundamental question. Humanism, in particular, implies not just certain beliefs about the nature of reality but also a set of values. Actually, some people call themselves humanists because of the values, people whose metaphysical beliefs are quite different from mine.

There was an ill-conceived and ill-received proposition published in Free Inquiry a while back that people like me ought to start calling themselves "The Brights." Since this obviously implies that other people must be "The Dullards" or "The Dimwits," it was not exactly the best public relations idea. And I certainly do not agree with either the implication or the aesthetics of the term.

So I'm going to say that I am a Realist and a Humanist. Shortly, I'll say what those words mean to me and how I go about deciding what to believe. Meanwhile, does anybody care to respond to these labels? What do they mean to you?

Tax This

2005-05-07T08:11:00.000-07:00

if the news is to be believed, and why would anyone question any news, churches are increasingly telling parishioners how to vote, well, technically, the church itself doesn't say much; some human church official does the political work. prior to the recent presidential election some catholic bishops or cardinals told catholic voters that it would be a religious sin/error to vote for kerry. fundamental and evangelical christian voters, we are told, got the official pastoral (if that is the right term) word on the proper vote. now some pastor pretending to be a real christian has drummed democrats out of his congregation, although maybe they would be allowed to sit in the rear if they pledged to vote republican.

tell me again why churches don't pay property tax? "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;......" so why is the subsidy of a tax break not supporting religion? aren't there rules about tax-exempt businesses--excuse me---institutions not engaging in politics? i think that everyone should be able to play politics and everyone should pay taxes. churches benefit from the infrastructure of roads and other publicly funded services like police and fire protection as much as private businesses and corporations and should pay their share. oops. i forgot that corporations are mostly avoiding taxes now.

interesting disagreements

2005-05-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

so there i was the other day, maybe yesterday, reading what pz myers was up to over at pharyngula. he posted a recommendation to read an interview with noted atheist biologist richard dawkins at salon. of course there were comments. so i read them. my, my. almost every one of the commenters self-identified as an atheist, and yet some got quite testy with each other. what's up with that, you may ask. i won't try to describe the various positions. go read them.

i mention this minor contretemps (hoping i'm not offering insult to any of the participants with that descriptor) because i was a bit surprised at the back and forth between people who were really on the same side of the bigger picture. so if those who do not accept on faith the existence of a deity, who see no evidence of such, can disagree so much about the politics of their non-belief it is no wonder to me that believers can have even more widely divergent views of what it is that they believe in. of course, from my point of view that there is no evidence for the existence of a personal deity it seems obvious that every believer necessarily has a unique, subjective notion of god.

fundamentalists in any religion think that their notion of what god wants us to do is the only correct version and should be imposed on everyone. there is variance in the method of imposition and the violence allowed, or required, to bring about such rule, but the rest of us had better obey one way or another. so it behooves the rest of us, believers or not, to watch out for our freedom. digby over at hullabaloo has some chilling words by Fritz Stern about the misuse of christianity by the nazis in pre-wwII in germany. here is a bit of his acceptance speech upon receiving the Leo Baeck Medal.

Twenty years ago, I wrote about “National Socialism as Temptation,” about what it was that induced so many Germans to embrace the terrifying specter. There were many reasons, but at the top ranks Hitler himself, a brilliant populist manipulator who insisted and probably believed that Providence had chosen him as Germany’s savior, that he was the instrument of Providence, a leader who was charged with executing a divine mission. God had been drafted into national politics before, but Hitler’s success in fusing racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity was an immensely powerful element in his electoral campaigns. Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics, but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas.

German moderates and German elites underestimated Hitler, assuming that most people would not succumb to his Manichean unreason; they didn’t think that his hatred and mendacity could be taken seriously. They were proven wrong. People were enthralled by the Nazis’ cunning transposition of politics into carefully staged pageantry, into flag-waving martial mass. At solemn moments, the National Socialists would shift from the pseudo-religious invocation of Providence to traditional Christian forms: In his first radio address to the German people, twenty-four hours after coming to power, Hitler declared, “The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. They regard Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life.”

does that last sentence sound familiar?

Verse Undevisive? or Vice Versa?

2005-04-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

The Brook
We’d come at last to a place
Where our ways must surely part.
The small freshet which flowed
And enlivened the distance between our lands
Had now gone wide, and
Rather than slow and snake idly by
As one finds often at an expanse of water,
Here were unexpected rapids, shooting over a cataract
Which seemed to draw from, rather than give life, to the water,

We found ourselves stumbling on either side
Pitched down precipitous tunnels
Each tangled in a thicket alone,
Unsure where to turn for air or light,
Unable to count on the other’s hand
Now the divide had gone so suddenly wide.

Time, time…give it time and earnest care
Waiting out the night,
Listening for the least advice
From what birds were wintering out,
From the creaking trees
Or a certain lift in the wind,
Till finally detecting the slightest dripping,
The thaw had come
At last I seemed able again to walk a way downstream.
I called for you—and your call came back anew.

And now we each know better and
The stream between us,
That where it can be brooked we’d best go,
If we hope not to walk these lands alone.

Can This Blog be Saved?

2005-04-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

The Dialogue has had some great posts and lively exchanges in the comments. For a while, it seemed as though we were headed where we wanted to go. But after a while, we ended up with just half of the ingredients.

It may be that our original hope was false -- that dialogue between faith and reason is just not possible. Perhaps the terms of discussion, or the rules of inference, or the norms of interaction, are just so different that we can't establish a meeting ground. Or perhaps most religious people just aren't interested in defending their fundamental beliefs. Or maybe we just haven't gotten lucky.

Particularly in the past weeks, with the very foundation of secular democracy under open, sustained and vicious attack, I personally had hoped that more people of faith would come forward to assert common ground with non-believers on freedom of conscience, the separation of religious institutions from wordly power, and the respect due to reason and verifiable truth. Last week, for the first time, we began to see some public statements by prominent religious leaders, including the National Council of Churches -- far too little, and far too late, in my view, but at last it is happening.

This site was, of course, an experiment. I don't call it a failure. I have learned from it and I trust others have as well. But it can it continue? I can keep posting here of course, and so can the terrifying piratical one, but that's not the point. There are plenty of well established atheist, skeptic and free thinking sites out there. So again, any believers who want to post here, we want you to do it.

Meanwhile, please comment. Why is this so hard? What can we do better? Is the project doomed from the start, or is there a way to make it work?

The Peacemaker

2005-04-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

The Ho De No Sau Nee, the People Who Build, live in New York State and Ontario. Before the Europeans came, they ranged over far more extensive lands. In 1977, the United Nations hosted a conference for so-called indigenous peoples in Geneva. I'm not sure how the people so labeled define their commonality, but essentially these are peoples who possessed a cultural identity prior to the European conquest of much of the world, who are now subsumed within larger nation states. The Ho De No Sau Nee, who English speaking people call by a name the French called them, Iroquois (a term they do not recognize as coming from their own language) presented documents about their history and cultural tradition, which they collected in a book called Basic Call to Consciousness. I will paraphrase a bit as I condense.

According to their tradition, which as far as I know they first wrote down themselves for that occasion, long before the European conquest they experienced a social crisis. The six nations in the region were in continual conflict. Blood feuds between clans and villages meant that no-one was safe. A young man of the Wyandot, north of Lake Ontario, argued that the system of blood feuds should be abolished. He got no hearing in his own land so he traveled south to the land of the Genienkahaka, the people of the flint, who we call the Mohawks, where he started to preach and win converts to his ideas.

As I understand it - and if by some chance any of the Ho De No Sau Nee should read this please set me straight - he had three major categories of ideas.

First, he said that some force or being must have created the world. He didn't claim to know very much about the creator, but he did not believe that the creator would have wanted human beings to abuse one another. He argued that humans should create a social order to abolish war and robbery. His view was very different from the view of Jews and Christians, however, about the relationship between humans and the creator. He did not believe that the creator had given humans dominion over the earth. On the contrary, "The principle of righteousness demands that all thoughts ofprejudice, privilege or superiority be swept away, and that . . . the creation is intended for the benefit of all equally, even the birds and animals, the trees and the insects, as well as the humans. . . . Nothing belongs to humans, not even their labor or their skills, for ambition and abilities are also the gifts of the creator. Therefore all people have a right to the things they need to survive, even those who do not or cannot work, and no person has a right to deprive others of the fruits of those gifts."

He also argued that humans were given the gift of reason in order to settle their disputes without violence.

Finally he argued for a principal translated into English as Power, but which is nearly the opposite of our own idea of power. "Peace . . . flourished only in a garden fertilized with absolute and pure justice. It was the product of a spiritually conscious people. "

He set up a constitution for a confederation of the six nations which was radical but reasonable for a hunting and gardening society. It included parallel political structures for men and women, and the abolition of territoriality. It's specifics are not evidently adaptable to our current circumstances, but it may be instructive if we consider it in its context.

To my way of thinking, the story of the Peacemaker is particularly instructive because it shows that, while people everywhere tended to feel that the universe must have a creator, their ideas about the creator could be very different. If God demanded that the Hebrews follow the laws of the Pentateuch, and later that they accept Jesus as their personal savior or else He would torture them for eternity in hell, he evidently didn't bother to tell most of the world's population, but allowed them to come up with their own ideas, presumably at the cost of their immortal souls. That was not nice of Him at all.

Infanticide

2005-04-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

how does abraham get a pass on that child-killing thing? if he was willing to kill his child because a voice in his head told him to doesn't that make both him and the voice morally reprehensible? do you suppose he asked the boy's mother what she thought about murdering their son? would a daughter have been as valuable a sacrifice as a son? would a woman making that claim get a pass? what will we say when the fruitcake neighbor is found to have killed his/her child and says "well, god told me to do it." we'll likely say, and rightly so, that the murderer is criminally insane. luckily enough for abe another voice in his head something like "ok. you don't have to carry it out. your willingness to do so is proof enough for the big guy of your devotion to Him." which god do you worship and how's your devotion?

i know modern christians abhor infanticide. or do i know that? the fundamentalists in the big tent might argue for biblical inerrancy. some members of the US congress want us to accept that government authority comes from god, and want all judges to so acknowledge. would that be the same god that demanded a human sacrifice? how far down this path to theocracy will we allow the fruitcakes to take us before we wake up? is it the sort of theocracy you can live under?

so all i have are questions. there are those places in history where things reach a tipping point; where one group takes hold so that others are swept aside to such a degree that recovery is a long and difficult task. i see a dangerous situation here and now. how about you?

Dominion over Thee and Me

2005-04-04T18:44:00.000-07:00

What do Karl Rove, Pat Robertson, Machiavelli, and Antonin Scalia have in common? The Dominionist view. They, the elite, are to lead us. Why is torture ok now, sanctioned by the new Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense? Because evil in the work of the lord is acceptable to them. How is it ok to lie to lead us into war? ANY ploy is acceptable to to them to do "god's work." "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." Are you vigilant enough to read a long and well done piece on Dominionism? go here. Thanks to Shakespeare's Sister. True Christians, be afraid with the rest of us. Be very afraid. I dare you to read it. It made me want to get a gun. Go. Check it out. Come back and tell me what you think. They don't want just to deny homosexuals marriage, they want to KILL them, along with "fornicators," adulterers, and anyone who dares criticize authority. really, kill. read Scalia's comments on the death penalty.

A hot topic, Brought to you by a dead guy

2005-04-03T06:54:00.000-07:00

David Hume:

Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it; you will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of machines . . . . All these various machines, even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the production of human contrivance, of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therfore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble, and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties proportioned to the grandure of the work which he has executed.

Discuss. (But see my comment.)

A Prime Example

2005-04-01T15:42:00.000-08:00

We don't have links to other blogs here yet, so here is a link to a post by our co-host Cervantes on his own blog. He makes a forthright statement at the end and asks a tough question. The comments are where it's at. There is a spirited discussion between Cervantes and our other co-host Speechless. I commend them both for their civility and respect. I recommend their discussion to anyone who stops by here.

I will ask here:

Why are not christian leaders, cardinals, bishops, preachers, elders, priests, whatever, and christian politicians not publicly repudiating the hate-filled vitriol of Tom DeLay and Randall Terry? In the absence of other voices they are being allowed to speak for christianity. They are becoming the face of christianity.

A Call for Posters

2005-03-30T13:19:00.000-08:00

First, a sincere thanks to everyone who has come by and commented! The comments are what this site is all about -- we want discussion.

But the top level posts are also important. This place is about dialogue, we really mean it. Right now, it seems that issues of faith and belief -- even the very nature of reality -- are at the heart of our politics right now. There is often a lot of common ground between liberal religious people and non-religious people, and we want to find it. We also want to be clear about what ground we do not share, and whether and why and how much that matters.

Dread Pirate Roberts and I have been carrying the posting load lately, but we need theists to make this site work the way it is supposed to. It could be you! If you are interested in posting here, please send an e-mail to DPR or me (if you've been hanging around these precincts of cyberspace, you know how to find us), or leave a comment here, and we'll take it from there.

This is a moderated board, so not quite everything goes, but we're pretty open minded. We look forward to hearing from you.

Carnival of the godless

2005-03-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

check it out. the dread pirate roberts leads off the current Carnival of the godless #9

Moving on to the "C" Word.

2005-03-25T09:15:00.000-08:00

actually there are two, closely related "c" words to discuss: conception and contraception. okay. one word and the same word with a negative prefix. some regard any attempt at birth control--well, conception control--as a sin, and want to deny any mention of it in sex ed., not just for our own children, but for adults all over the world. no intercourse without procreation! or at least the possibility of procreation. so no mention of condoms is allowed, let alone birth control pills. but wait. there is the venerable rhythm method, augmented by modern scientific knowledge of changes in body temperature and vaginal mucus viscosity. so if a woman avoids intercourse during her "fertile" time while carrying on during her "safe" time isn't that fudging? isn't that having sex with the direct design of avoiding procreation? i'll leave that question for individuals to wrestle with in private.

so how well is this notion of withholding information from teenagers about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and safe sex, mentioning only abstinence, working out? we recently found out from a survey of teens who took the "virginity" pledge that they get as many STDs as other teens. how can that be? they maintain their "virginity" by having unprotected oral and anal sex! which brings us to the other benefit, the first being the prevention of unwanted pregnancies, of condoms, which also protect against the transmission of STDs, including the current biggie HIV. so our government refuses to fund any HIV education program that includes the use of condoms because condoms stop sperm as well as pathogens.

are we short of humans? i don't think so. is there an epidemic of a barely treatable sexually transmitted disease? why, yes. but so what. god says go forth and multiply and our biology enables us to do so. miracles are rare and wondrous events. while we are apparently hard wired to love and protect our own offspring as well as thinking each unique, one might suppose that by now we would stop seeing birth as miraculous. how many does it take to become mundane? and what sort of perverted morality blames the people who get infected with HIV when they satisfy a wholly human impulse?

Buddhism 101

2005-03-23T06:11:00.000-08:00

Gosh, I'm kind of disappointed that only two people had anything to say about Buddhism. Evidently there isn't as much knowledge about it out there as I had presumed. I am not a Buddhist, by the way, in case anyone is getting the wrong idea; I take insights where I can find them. So this is the best I can do as an interested dilettante. And, as I suggested below, I am looking at Buddhism from a foreign perspective. Any real Buddhists out there who want to set me straight, please come ahead.

Buddhism has evolved, of course, since Siddharta Gautama's day. The Theravada, or southern school, which originated in Sri Lanka and spread through Southeast Asia, is closer to the original. The Mahayana school, which originated in China and spread to Japan and Korea, is more familiar in the United States, in the specific form of Zen. Many years ago I tried to tell a friend about Buddhism and she said, oh yes, she met some Buddhists and they just said that if you chant NAM-MYOHO-RENGE-KYO over and over again every day, you'll get whatever you want. Alas, there is a cult that believes this, which calls itself Buddhist. That is like calling Heaven's Gate a Christian denomination, however. These beliefs have nothing whatever to do with the teachings of Siddharta Gautama. (NAM-MYOHO-RENGE-KYO is the title of a famous sermon of Sakyamuni, which means more or less The Lotus of the True Doctrine.)

Anyway, Sakyamuni's teaching can be summarized as having four major components. These are:

The four truths;
The eight-fold way;
The impermanence of all created things;
The non-existence of self.

The four truths are:

Existence is suffering;
The cause of suffering is desire (or attachment);
People can achieve liberation from suffering;
Liberation is achieved by following the eight-fold way.

The eight-fold way is:

Right views
Right intention
Right speech
Right action
Right livelihood
Right effort
Right mindfulness
Right concentration.

The first seven steps on the path translate fairly straightforwardly into English, but "concentration" refers to a state attained in meditation, not to focusing intently on your work. A Buddha means a person who is awake, or illuminated. It refers to someone who has followed the 8-fold way and become liberated from suffering and illusion.

The idea that life is suffering does not mean that we are always suffering or never happy. However, pain and disappointment are the fate of all. Whatever we can acquire of worldly wealth, it is never enough. Whatever loving relationships we form, death will always end them if nothing else does. Whatever we want for our family, our town, our people, our society, our world, most of it we will never have. Suffering, then, arises from selfish craving. There is not space here to discuss impermanence and not-self, but for now I will just say that both of these ideas help to guide us on the 8-fold way to liberation, by showing us the futility of egoism and of clinging. The Buddhist ethic is one of selflessness and compassion. Wanting things for ourselves is ultimately the cause of disappointment and pain; caring for others, without clinging or selfish desire for material or emotional rewards, is part of the way to liberation.

To a humanist or realist, Sakyamuni's arguments are particularly respectable because he insisted that no-one should take anything he said on faith. His epistemology is empirical -- try it, and see if it works. Also, there is no moral pressure on anyone to either be a Buddhist or to follow the 8-fold way. When the time comes, and one is ready, it is there. If you're busy wallowing in worldly pleasures, that's your own business.

Now, Buddhist tradition gets into all sorts of abstruse metaphysics and complex philosophical wrangling that would put western academia to shame. I'm not going there. But does this make sense to people so far? Are these ideas religious, or are they something else? If you believe in God, do they still make sense? What is the relationship between the Buddhist form of inquiry, theology, and science?

An Interesting Person

2005-03-20T17:35:00.000-08:00

Siddhartha Gautama was a philosopher and teacher who lived about 500 years before Jesus. Like Jesus, he left no writings of his own, and we know him only through oral tradition transcribed some decades after his death. His ethical beliefs were mostly consistent with those of Jesus, but their beliefs were radically different in many other ways.

Today Gautama is usually called Sakyamuni, or the Buddha. Sakyamuni just means a monk who comes from the Sakya clan. As I understand Mr. Gautama's ideas, however, it seems inappropriate to call him "the Buddha" because he always said he was just an ordinary person and that anybody can be a Buddha. Sakyamuni is regarded as the founder of one of the world's major religions. It's pretty hard to exceed an accomplishment like that. But in his case, it is also quite ironic.

It's not clear that his teachings have very much to do with religion as it has been generally understood in either the European Classical or Judeo-Christian worlds. He did not go out of his way to deny the various gods and mythical beliefs of his culture, but he had no interest in them. He said that first causes are unknowable. His concern was with humans.

According to the tradition, which there is no reason to doubt insofar as its non-fanciful core, he was scion of the ruling family of a region which is now in Nepal. His childhood and early youth were sheltered and luxurious. As an adolescent, as he was travelling with his family from a winter to a summer palace, he noticed along the way poor people, old people, sick people, and a funeral procession. He also saw ascetics -- holy men who had renounced worldly things for religious seeking. He became preoccupied with the problems of suffering and mortality. As what we today would consider a young man, at 29, he is said to have renounced his inheritance and gone to seek answers to these problems from established spiritual teachers.

He came to reject the asceticism they taught him -- long fasting, enduring exposure and other forms of deliberate discomfort. He sought advice from others but was not satisfied. Finally (and this does seem a bit fanciful), he is said to have sat down at the foot of a fig tree and declared that he would not rise from the spot until he had seen the truth of suffering and release from suffering. I don't know what it is about 40 days, but that's how long he was supposedly sitting under that tree. Presumably he had a buddy to empty his chamber pot.

Anyhow, he got it. Upon arising to proclaim his insights, he attracted a community of followers, at first all male. Women eventually asked to join the community, called the sangha. The tradition says he resisted at first, but then agreed. So there have always been Buddhist nuns as well as monks. Historically, men have been far more important than women in the written record of Buddhist thought and deeds, but that is because of the cultures in which Buddhism has been embedded. There is no doctrinal reason why women cannot act equally with men as teachers and writers of Buddhist-inspired thought.

Sakyamuni had learned the techniques of meditation from the Hindu tradition, but he interpreted his experiences in meditation in a radically new way. What is most striking, he said that the Self -- a central concept in Hindu metaphysics, something like the Christian Soul and said to be a manifestation of the ultimate -- is an illusion. A great irony, which I feel certain would have greatly displeased him, could he have known about it, is that popular religious traditions grew up in which Siddhartha Gautama's historical personage was elevated to the status of a God, and people prayed to him. This is antithetical to his ideas and purposes.

A notable and confusing development has been the penetration of Sakyamuni's ideas into a segment of the traditionally Judeo-Christian world. Many people, like me, are now seeing him from the perspective of the post-Enlightenment, looking directly at a complex individual embedded in a culture we know almost nothing about, jumping over two and a half millenia of historical development of Buddhist ideas and practices.

Sakyamuni's ideas have turned out to be of considerable interest to atheists, agnostics, and liberal theists. Even stripping out some basic beliefs of his time and place which his Western admirers do not share -- the most essential being reincarnation -- his system holds together and seems relevant to existence in our world, no matter how remote from his.

Before providing a precis of his ideas, or saying anything about how I respond to them, I'd love to hear from others. I'm sure many of the people who come here have learned about Buddhism and thought about Buddhist ideas. So tell us how you respond to Sakyamuni and to Buddhism.

Til Death do us Part

2005-03-18T14:37:00.000-08:00

the folks that want to control the beginning of life also lay claim to the end. no birth control. no abortion. no sex ed. now we don't have the sense to know our own minds about death either. the supremes are cogitating on oregon's assisted suicide law. one of the supremes is brother scalia, who recently said during oral arguments about the display of the ten commandments ".... a symbol of the fact that government derives its authority from God.” apparently forgetting that the declaration of independence states that ".......Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...."

so i'm made in god's image and i have free will but my exercise of that will is subject to the official gatekeepers of god's will. it's bad enough to have them telling me what god wants. now they have roped in disability advocates who think i want to kill the disabled, and advocates for the aged who are convinced i want to kill old people, or at least trick them into dying. in both instances these advocates are claiming to know more than the disabled or the aged, as well as impugning the motives of those in favor of legal medically assisted suicide.

i do understand that people who are disabled in some way and people who are old don't want to be encouraged to die and i certainly don't encourage anyone to do so. after all, i'm getting older and aging lessens everyone's abilities in some way. i want society to grant everyone the expectation of respect, and i want that respect to extend to the careful, conscious decision that one's life is done. i don't want you to kill yourself, that's up to you. i want us all to have the right to that option, after going through all of the rigamarole that an enabling law such as oregon's requires.

in june of 1997 the supremes ruled that that there is no constitutional right to physician assisted suicide, upholding laws in new york and the state of washington banning that practice. the court implied that there was no constitutional bar to a state permitting such a practice.

Justice Rehnquist wrote:

"Throughout the nation, Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality and practicality of physician-assisted suicide. Our holding permits this debate to continue, as it should in an democratic society"

so the concept of state's rights is fine for banning physician assisted suicide and banning gay marriage but not for enabling either of those, or the medical use of marijuana. is there a religious view that would grant me the right to the option of assisted suicide? at the end of the day, as philosophers say, medical intervention or law may delay death, but we all have a right to die, as it comes with life. no one gets out alive.

save your meds. do the research. be prepared.

Update: from the New York times, Monday, March 21

In a 2004 Gallup survey, 65 percent agreed that a doctor should be allowed to assist a suicide "when a person has a disease that cannot be cured and is living in pain," up from 52 percent in 1996.

On S/he who loves and knows us...

2005-03-17T10:47:00.000-08:00

There was a call for a feminine concept of God. Here she is, as requested, as conceived one morning, while in prayer for a friend who was bravely facing surgery that had her life hanging in the balance. My friend was had such courage and confidence, and I felt so scared for her. Her chances of survival were minimal, but she did survive. A group of friends and acquaintances took turns through the day and night in the weeks before and after her surgery, storming heaven with our prayers. Afterward her doctors were startled by her vitality and healing.

The poem, is not like much of the heady intellectual stuff we've posted here previously. Still, perhaps it's time we try going about this from a different way of knowing, to try to feel some of the meaning beneath these arguments. To that end, I offer you this.

Bothie an Draoineach- The Weaver's Hut~
The whitewashed doorframe timbers,
A cold smooth threshold underfoot
And beyond, that great Oak.
Fragrance of box hedge
mixes with lavender, mint and thyme
crushed between flagstone slates of purple, rose and blue.
But I've arrived at the Weaver's hut
Long before my expected time.
Within I hear the moaning tune
Of Herself at the work,
Weaving in shadow and light.

Loving it all,
Blessing it as it is and soon shall be,
Conceiving more than I
With my five senses and
These three dimensions
Might ever perceive.

Does the thread follow her dreaming,
Or are her hands led by each image's longing to be made?
Maybe they twist themselves to tell the story,
Glimmering, beckoning on their bobbins,
Longing to be unwound, involved in a pattern
Which to my novice eye is all a tangle?

Dare I enter here? --To behold how
All I am is but a bit of thread wrapped round some sticks
To be blown in the wind and washed in what waters I cannot say?
I've stumbled on her dyer's garden and her doorway,
Surely I cannot come in.

Still I sit and imagine
crossing that threshold.
What welcome may there be
as I enter this first home?
The promise is for more than bones...
I'd be greeted with a meal
And allowed to stay.
An apprentice to the work.
I might carry sticks for the fire,vneeded in the making of dyes.
I’d learn the cultivation of those herbs-Madder, Marigold and Wode-
glean the intricacies of spinning such stuff,
unwinding the silk cocoons...

But surely my hands roughened from the work
Would stick like nettles to each thread.
While She who's toiled in the making of each day,
Who delights in an eternity of work as play,
Seems but to caress the silk cap,
And each strand falls aligned by its inner nature.

Aye, I could hew the wood
Or dig the garden patch,
Lay the table,
Make straight each place of rest,
But past the portal I dare not go, not yet.

It’s enough for now to know the house is here.
In a dream a Wise Woman told me long ago,
I may one day enter in, only take it slow.

So I rest on the doorstep of the Weaver's hut
Wary of the lessons I have yet to learn,
But praise Her
Who sings the aching song.

Reason to Believe

2005-03-15T10:59:00.000-08:00

another country heard from, metaphorically speaking, as i am still in the usa, although fairly close to the border with canada. i have followed the previous discussions with great interest, and occasionally the fascination one has with a train wreck. though i am unqualified to formally debate epistemology i do have some opinions. here goes.

Reason, science, and knowledge are not synonyms. i think they have been conflated a bit, not necessarily explicitly, but inferentially. and science is not an antonym to religion. one may have faith (complete confidence) that the scientific method is the most rational approach to the study of the natural world, and one may have faith (belief in supernatural power). knowledge (wikipedia informs me) may be a posteriori (learned) or a priori (from introspection). science leans toward learned knowledge, faith towards introspection. religion, all too often i think, depends on dogma and cultural transmission of someone else's received knowledge. we would all be better off if more people were skeptical of second hand revelations.

i do not believe that there is a personal god, or rather i believe that there is not a personal god, as the only evidence of god seems to be the assurance of other humans. yes, i am discounting our very existence as evidence of a deity. i have had my own experiences of the oneness of existence and was deeply moved and consider those moments important in the development of what little maturity i have. but there was no sense of a god or anything with which i would have a relationship beyond what we mostly agree is physical reality. i do not deny the reality of others' experiences of god's existence but must assume they are misinterpreting such an experience. i do, on the basis of my own subjective experience, suspect that consciousness may be non-local, but i haven't made any decisions based on that suspicion.

so far as religion encourages people to positive virtues such as compassion, truthfulness, and respect for all and enjoins murder, theft, assault, and slander i see it as positive, and i am pleased when religious or spiritual people come to a universalist ethical stance. but the strictures around birth, death, and sex are too often an insult to humanity. i consider the attempt to make birth control unavailable to anyone, for instance, to be immoral. we don't even have to look further than today's news to see the influence of religion in war. all sides claim divine backing. so i see big R Religion as a curse on humanity. our cross to bear, if i may make light here.

Is Nothing Sacred?

2005-03-14T05:40:00.001-08:00

I'm sorry that Philalethes has had to struggle with the limitations of Haloscan in responding to my post below. He is welcome to continue our discussion on his own board (but please link back and alert us), or to post here, as far as I'm concerned. For those who thought my previous post was intemperate, I just ask you to read Philalethes's original post, to which I linked, and decide for yourselves whether my response was proportionate and in keeping with the tone he had established.

I think that rather than continue to respond point by point, and risk an adversarial dynamic with my friends, I would like to begin at the beginning. In my last two posts, I have been striving, apparently unsuccessfully, for clarity. People are upset with me for using words like god, faith and religion in the ways they are usually used in English, to have the referrents they normally have in public discourse. When George W. Bush talks about faith, and God, he isn't talking about the kinds of personal experiences of transcendence that Speechless discusses here: he is talking about organized systems of very specific beliefs centering on an all powerful, sentient being purported to have created and to rule the universe, who demands specific forms of worship and who makes promises to the faithful and threats to the rest of us.

Before we can have a discussion, we need to agree on the meaning of our important terms. Otherwise, we will not really be communicating. I requested two posts down that before people engage in discussion about whether God exists, they define the term. If God, to you, means an entity which does not intervene in the universe, is not in the universe, does not communicate with humans, and has no describable properties, I would say that is a pretty good definition of something that does not exist. (I am reminded of the Gahan Wilson cartoon, of priests and acolytes bowing down before an empty pedestal. A passerby asks, "Is Nothing sacred?") For an entity to exist, it must be part of the observable universe. Its existence must have consequences, we must be able to detect it. We cannot say that we have detected something unless we know what its properties are so that we can distinguish it from any other entities we might detect.

So this is all I ask. We're here because we want to have dialogue. We want to learn what common ground people share, where our beliefs may differ but not in any way that seems to matter, and where we disagree in important ways. We hope to resolve the latter or at least to better understand our disagreements. Please do not call me ignorant, or denigrate my intelligence or my learning, as some have done. That does not help to make your case.

Just address the issues at hand. If you believe in God, or you wish to defend faith as a partner of reason, first define your terms. What do you mean by God? What do you mean by faith? If you do believe in this God, however defined, why do you have this belief? If in the process you wish to distance yourself from most people who call themselves religious, that's fine; but then don't be angry with me for criticizing beliefs which, as it turns out, you also criticize. Let's keep the discussion on topic. Everybody who is sincere, constructive and thoughtful is welcome here, and I at least promise to eschew ad hominem arguments.

Humanist ethics, science, and religion

2005-03-11T09:38:00.000-08:00

Our friend Philalethes is pretty upset by my comment that "the question of whether we proceed on the basis of faith or science has great implications for the future of humanity." Phila (who I was once pleased to defend as a lover of truth, not a stamp collector) seems to have two main objections:

That the idea of such a choice is implausible because people will always have faith, so it is unrealistic even to propose a path without faith;
Many scientists have behaved unethically, so we need (apparently) faith to make us good.

Phila offers no evidence for the first assertion, except for proposing that people cannot reliably distinguish truth and falsehood, by which he appears to mean to imply that scientific conclusions aren't really distinguishable from faith-based beliefs. I would note that a few centuries ago, no-one at all, as far as the historical record reveals, publicly claimed that God did not exist. Of course any European who did so would have been tortured to death by the Christian authorities, so we cannot be sure what some people may have believed in private. Today, however, I am one of a growing percentage of people in the United States and Europe -- including 60% of all scientists polled, by the way -- who do not believe in God and are willing to say so publicly. So there is a historical trend away from faith, at least in the so-called West.

As for our ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, it is obviously imperfect (or people would not hold such false beliefs as the existence of God!) but the whole purpose of the scientific enterprise is to improve it. Humanists, realists, free thinkers, whatever you want to call us, begin with an attitude of skepticism. We don't believe anything on faith, or simply because some authority said so. We have standards of evidence. Even the greatest authorities, the most august personages in the pantheon (irony duly noted) of reason have no claim on future belief if the evidence takes us elsewhere. Newton's picture of the universe, with a fixed frame of reference, we now know to have been mistaken. It accounted for observations within the precision available in his day, but we now know that Einstein's theory was more accurate. This in no way diminishes our respect for Newton, of course.

Here are some examples of clearly distinguishable truth and falsehood:

The earth is at the center of the universe and the sun, planets and stars revolve around the earth,

vs,

The sun is at the center of the solar system and the earth and other planets revolve around it, but the sun is just one of some 100,000,000 stars that orbit the center of our galaxy, which is one of a couple of hundred billion galaxies that we can observe.

In sexual intercourse, the man implants a tiny miniature human in the woman's womb which grows into a baby,

vs,

The man deposits thousands of sperm cells which swim toward an ovum cell that originated in the woman's body. One of them gets there first and fuses with the ovum, whereupon each cell supplies one set of chromosomes to make up a complete complement of human genes. The cell then divides, and redivides dozens of times, with various cells following disparate paths of differentiation to produce the structures and tissues of the body.

Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed all believed each of the first propositions. We now know them to have been mistaken. In other words, knowledge advances. Indeed we can distinguish between truth and falsehood, if we care to use the methods of structured observation, measurement, and testable prediction -- supported by replication and intersubjectivity. That means, when Galileo asked the church fathers to look through the telescope, they refused, because they realized that if they were to see what he had seen, they would be forced to change their beliefs. As people of faith, they could not do that. They condemned themselves to live in ignorance.

Phila says that I am in error in saying that solutions to problems must be arrived at rationally. "That assumption is objectively false. The only coherent criterion for judging problem-solving behavior is its ability to solve problems. Double-blind studies can solve problems, but so can an inspired guess. So can drawing lots or flipping a coin. So can dreams, and in the case of Kekule's 'discovery' of the benzene ring's structure." First I would ask, how can any assertion be called "objectively false" if we cannot reliably distinguish truth from falsehood, or rationality is not the only path to truth? Phila contradicts himself before he even gets started.

But let us proceed down his path anyway. An inspired guess or a dream can provide us with a hypothesis, but Kekule didn't decide that benzene consists of a 6 carbon ring because of his dream: he proclaimed the hypothesis to be correct because it accorded with observation and logic. The dream was just a way in which his brain operated on the problem. And we draw lots or flip coins not to answer questions about what is true, but to make decisions about what to do when we lack other sufficient criteria or when we wish to be surprised, as in a game. This is an irrelevancy.

Next, Philalethes proposes that scientists, such as Joseph Mengele and the perpetrators of the so-called Tuskeegee Syphillis Experiment, have proven themselves capable of atrocities. He also points out that science -- by which in this instance he seems to mean technological developments rather than simply knowledge -- "could, at this moment, be leading us over a cliff." I most certainly agree with him about this. However, I don't see how faith is of the least help here. Indeed, it is people of faith who appear to be the biggest problem. Some of them deny the reality of global warming, and of evolution, which is the source of dangerous emerging infections and drug resistant variants of already common pathogens. Many ministers today, including those with the largest individual followings such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, preach from the pulpit that Christianity exalts the individual rights of property owners over the collective interest of the community, or that God demands we invade and bomb other countries.

It is a fact that humanity's powers, as enhanced by technology, have run dangerously ahead of our ethical consensus and our social organization. But surely faith is the last place we should turn for an answer. As I have said many times, here and elsewhere, ethics are an attribute of humans. We have ethical impulses, ethical principles, feelings of right and wrong, not because God put them in us but because evolution did. Ethics are essential to our adaptation as social beings with culture. Without ethics, we could not have society and without society, we would not survive. Culture, language, the ability to construct a bewildering variety of societies, codes of law, ways of life -- these make us unique among the species of the earth. But to understand our situation, and secure our future, we must look to ourselves. God, a mythical human invention, is not going to do anything for us at all.

That does not mean that science is going to tell us what ideas or behaviors are morally right, and it certainly does not mean that scientists -- people with certain training or credentials -- have any monopoly on ethical belief or reasoning, or that scientists ought to rule the world. I believe the precise opposite, that the danger of technofascism is as alarming as the danger of theocracy. We must democratize rationality, democratize knowledge, and above all democratize social decision making. But democracy can only succeed if the great majority are equipped with critical thinking skills, and are liberated from the blinding and controlling strictures of faith.

Getting down to brass tacks

2005-03-10T10:02:00.000-08:00

"God" is a somewhat unusual word. Most nouns have what I would call a non-problematic referrent. If I refer to a horse, a cloud, a house or a banana, very few people are going to give me an argument about what those words really mean. Of course most words can have their meaning extended by analogy or metaphor, for example we might say that a running back is a "real horse," but that doesn't mean we have any confusion about what species Corey Dillon belongs to. We might argue about whether a particular structure is good enough to serve as a house, but we aren't disagreeing about what a house is, just our standards for habitability.

God is a horse of a different color. Most people say they believe in God, but they obviously aren't all talking about the same thing. Wikipedia has a straightforward, fair and balanced entry which begins, " God is one of many terms used to describe a perfect, supreme being, generally believed to be the ruler or the creator of, and/or immanent within, the universe ." We can see immediately that this definition excludes many (imagined) entities that are called God. The Greek and Roman Gods, for example, were neither perfect, nor creators nor rulers of the universe. They were more powerful than humans, but they all had their limitations and their ethics were often questionable, at best.

The major religions nowadays however tend to believe in something that more or less fits the Wikipedia definition but let's face it, it's kind of vague. Most people who call themselves believers in God insist on a great deal more specificity. For example, they may insist that God demands that we call a guy who lived in Palestine 2000 years ago his "son," and if we don't, he will torture us for all eternity after we die. They may insist that God doesn't want us to eat pork, or he hates homosexuals, or he loves everybody even if they are sinners, or he doesn't care what we do only that we repent. He's in favor of invading Iraq or he's against it. He wrote the Bible, he gave the Koran to Mohammed, he took human form as Jesus or Krishna or Quetzalcoatl, he's actually female or has no gender, he created the universe 6,000 years ago or yeah, it really is 13.5 billion years old but it was still his idea in the first place.

Of course, no matter what out of the above you believe or repudiate, if you believe that there is a perfect, supreme being who created and rules the universe, you have a problem, because from our point of view at least, the universe sure as hell ain't perfect. It's also obvious that whatever God may want us to do or not do, and you can pick 2 from column A and 3 from column B if you want to, the good go unrewarded and the wicked go unpunished. As a matter of fact, the undisputable empirical observation is that the universe is utterly indifferent to the fate of humans, individually or collectively. Many people pray, but it is apparent that prayers are answered, or not, at random. And come to think of it, there are frequently many people praying for contradictory outcomes. If God picks favorites in these situations, it isn't evident that he has any specific criteria.

So I have a couple of questions for all the believers out there:

What is your definition of God? When you say you believe in God, what do you mean?
How do you know what God wants of you? How did you come to make your particular choices from the menu?
How is it that some believers in God came to make the right choices about what God is and what he/she wants, and some didn't?
If God talks to you and tells you what to think, how come he appears to be telling other people something else?
If God doesn't talk to you, but you depend on other people to tell you what God wants of you, why do you choose to believe those people and not others?
Why, if God is the supreme ruler of the universe and he has particular ideas about what's right and what's wrong, does he not enforce his will?

Actually, I can think of a whole bunch more. But those will do for starters.

That's ethics...get used to it

2005-03-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

Can we consider the possibility that for many, their faith is not a set of ethics, written in stone, but a living growing thriving faith informing their actions?

Here’s a great description of this sense of God’s love making all things new written by my dear old Friend, Sally Rickerman: Explaining her journey toward universalism, Sally says it was her reading of the Old Testament book of Hosea which finally clinched the Universalist point of view for her.
Hosea demonstrated the validity of new revelations concerning the nature of God. His story helped validate for me that new insights and enlarged horizons are constantly available to those who seek with open hearts and minds.
As many realize, before the coming of this prophet, Jaweh was known as a mean, patriarchal, and vengeful god, one who had little love, forgiveness, or compassion in his makeup. Hosea's experience with his wife led him to reason from the specific to the universal, from the particular to the general, from the individual to the group. Based on this, he arrived at the amazing discovery that God was a god of love, acceptance and forgiveness.
The story, as we know it, described Hosea's desertion by his wife, who first became another man's mistress. Then Hosea became aware of her traveling down the primrose path to become the woman of many men. Her next step was to become a common prostitute, and finally she dropped to the depths of society to be sold as a slave. On the slave block in the market square, Hosea found her. Then and there he bought her. Not for vengeance, but for love! Not to humiliate her and grind her under his feet, but to elevate her once again to the position of mistress of his home. Then, it appears, he reasoned from the specific to the universal and concluded (paraphrased by me), "If I, a mere mortal, am capable of this love, acceptance, and forgiveness, surely the God whom we worship is capable of this and more."
Here lies the intellectual basis for my universalist beliefs. Namely, if I a mere mortal am capable of understanding that no Divine Spirit would eliminate from true enlightenment the 98 percent of the past, present, and future world population who have never heard and will never hear of Jesus, then surely the God whom we worship is capable of revealing the Divine Nature, with validity, through many prophets, in many cultures, and in many eras.

That’s a far better description of how I know take the teachings of Jesus, and how it’s understood by most of the Christians I’m associated with. You can claim what you want about how the rules are codified, but you’ll find that for Catholics and Quakers, there is an expectation that God has not stopped speaking, that the work of creation is ongoing.

For example: in the inner city, anything that isn't nailed down gets taken and reused one way or another, and that's not a bad thing. It's the quickest way round the corner to the jubilee. Everybody gets lucky sometimes, and the closer you are to the ground, the more you need to grab what you can. From the perspefctive of the person in need, it’s no more immoral than was the thievery that went into taking the resources from the ground in the first place.

My children and I have a way of coping with stupid things that happen. There’s a Frank Sinatra song, none of us know very well, but the chorus is “That’s life, get used to it…” So we’re driving and somebody cuts us off in the passing lane, if I start sputtering, one of them will start singing “That’s driving, get used to it…” Or if their father completely forgets that we’re going to my sister’s for dinner, and I’m grumbling about needing to wait for him to get home they’ll sing “That’s Daddy, get used to it…” Seems to me that most human ethics are likely malleable based on the situation at hand—That's human ethical systems, get used to it…

The notion that there is one rule, one “dentological” set of ethical principles which should be set in stone is nothing I’m familiar with as a Christian. I’ve come to see the moral relativism of our age as exhausting, but probably not that different from what went on in ages past. The systems which require clearly drawn lines are very earth bound institutions including governments and the church. None of that has much to do with the realm of Spirit, the Kingdom of Heaven. Parse these things too fine and you end up in the same boat with the scribes and Chief Priests at the Temple who tried to catch him in blasphemy or sedition by asking him whether it was right that they pay tribute to Caesar.

To Die For..........

2005-03-03T09:18:00.000-08:00

the supremes have spoken. no more executing humans younger than 18. while i applaud the outcome i think the majority opinion strays from the constitution in its citation of public opinion in our country and of european penal practice. why is it more "cruel and unusual" to kill kids than adults? how much better would it have been if we hadn't relied on "activist judges" to decide that killing minors is a bad thing? surely a public decision by voters and legislatures would be much more satisfactory.

i have no qualms about the death penalty in principle. Richard Speck? Jeffrey Dahmer? Give me that lever. I'll pull it. Most cases are not so easy. Judges, juries, witnesses, and detectives are not always right, as we have found out lately through the exoneration of several death row inmates with the help of DNA testing. Fingerprint "experts" have also been found to be rather subjective in their identification of suspects. Some police and prosecuting attorneys have been revealed as ethically challenged or even outright liars. Defense attorneys are not always competent or properly diligent or even sometimes even awake during trial.

In light of these very real and difficult problems of fairness and justice i think we should stop using the death penalty now for anyone of any age.

Right and Wrong

2005-03-01T14:15:00.000-08:00

Many religious people believe that God is the only source of morality -- that only by referring to God can we know right from wrong. Therfore, non-religious people must be wicked.

The kind of ethics found in the Old Testament is what the pedants call deontological, that is, rule-based ethics -- a list of thou shalts and thou shalt nots. The Ten Commandments are among the most famous such lists in the Old Testament -- but watch out -- there is more than one version. However, there are many more rules in the Old Testament of course. One which is a source of extreme contention in society right now, referenced recently by my friends here, is the condemnation of homosexuality. Christian conservatives pluck the rule that if a man lies with a man as with a woman, it is abomination, from among many other rules which they ignore. For example, a passage in Deuteronomy commands the Hebrews to commit what we today call rape, ordering them to take possession of the women of their defeated enemies. In Leviticus, God commands that people who perform work on the sabbath should be stoned to death, and that people with certain symptoms of skin disease should be driven out into the desert to die. The Bible most certainly does not define marriage as between one man and one woman. On the contrary, men may have as many wives as they can afford, and widows are commanded to marry their brothers in law, no matter if there are already other wives. Men may also keep concubines, that is, sex slaves.

The Gospels have Jesus largely replacing the deontological ethics of the Old Testament with ethics based on what are called principles. Rather than lists of specific commands for actions in specific situations, these are goals or aspirations which should guide our decisions about what to do in general. Matthew famously has Jesus saying that there are only two rules, to love God and love thy neighbor (which presumably does not mean only the family next door but whoever happens to be within one's sphere of action).

Humanists are generally not inclined to deontological ethics. Some have attempted systems of so-called utilitarian ethics, in which we try to order affairs to as to bring about desired outcomes. These are generally considered to have fallen short, however, for two main reasons. First of all, we don't have a crystal ball: it is usually impossible to foresee all of the consequences of our actions, or to analyze complicated social situations well enough to know how to go about maximizing "utility." More fundamentally, we need a set of principles to decide which outcomes are desirable, and how to prioritize them when they come into conflict, so we can't even get to utilitarianism without passing through principles.

It turns out that principles are characteristic of human beings. There are many basic principles that the vast majority of people will readily accept, and that is because evolution made them part of our nature. The selective advantage of our principles derives from the essentiality of society to human life and reproduction. We succeed only by working together, sharing, and helping each other. If we did not do these things, our clawless extremities, dull teeth and slowness afoot would doom us.

In practical application, ethical reasoning is perhaps most advanced in the field of medicine. There, people have generally come to accept the primacy of four principles, which are called justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, and respect for persons (or autonomy). Justice means treating people fairly. That does not necessarily mean treating everyone alike, as people may have different needs, and may, according to some other principles, not be equally deserving (although in medicine, physicians are usually enjoined from making the latter judgment if at all possible). Beneficence means trying to help people. Non-maleficence means not hurting people. This may seem redundant with the second principle, but it isn't entirely so, and most important, it is sometimes helpful in resolving conflicts between the second principle and the first and fourth. Autonomy means that people control their own persons, and have the right to make decisions about what should happen to them.

A fundamental requirement for applying these principles is deciding who or what constitutes a person -- a moral agent, with the status to lay claim to the protection of the principles. That discussion, which is a source of much discomfort in the modern world, I will save for later.

For now, I will just say that these principles are perfectly satisfactory to almost everyone who learns of them, without reference to religion or God. They are also consistent with the principles expressed by Jesus in the Gospels, but they are radically inconsistent with much of the deontological content of the Old Testament. That is why Richard Dawkins, a famous evolutionary biologist and committed atheist, once suggested printing up T-shirts reading "Atheists for Jesus." Upon reflection, it is not at all absurd.

The Other "A" word

2005-02-28T08:11:00.000-08:00

Abstinence is the next A word in our public discourse, right after and closely related to abortion. we're talking of course about abstinence from SEX. in many parts of the country abstinence is the only method touted in sex education classes in schools as protection against sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancy. who could argue that preventing the transmission of stds and preventing unwanted pregnancies is bad? and who could disagree that abstinence is a sure-fire way to accomplish these ends?

so is the actual implementation of this idea having the intended effect? well no. it actually has the opposite effect.

from this article

Despite taking courses emphasizing abstinence-only themes, teenagers in 29 high schools became increasingly sexually active, mirroring the overall state trends, according to the study conducted by researchers at Texas A&M University.

“We didn’t see any strong indications that these programs were having an impact in the direction desired,” said Dr. Buzz Pruitt, who directed the study.

The study was delivered to the Texas Department of State Health Services, which commissioned it.

The federal government is expected to spend about $130 million to fund programs advocating abstinence in 2005, despite a lack of evidence that they work, Pruitt said.

snip.......

The study showed about 23 percent of ninth-grade girls, typically 13 to 14 years old, had sex before receiving abstinence education. After taking the course, 29 percent of the girls in the same group said they had had sex.

Boys in the tenth grade, about 14 to 15 years old, showed a more marked increase, from 24 percent to 39 percent, after receiving abstinence education.

snip........

and here is a bit of commentary in more robust language from mark morford

snip........

Of course teens are having sex anyway, in straight-up defiance of what they sense is pure governmental ignorance and outright lie. But the nasty catch is, as a direct result of these insidious programs -- programs that cannot, for example, contain any information about birth control or sensual awareness or moist philosophies of pleasure -- they're just doing it badly.

Which is to say, you want to virtually guarantee more unsafe sex and increased rates of teen pregnancy and more disrespect for the flesh and a tragic ignorance of all things sensual and delicious and naked in the world? You want more sullen teens and violent youth culture and a virulent 50-percent divorce rate among people who have no idea what good sex is really all about? Keep advocating those abstinence programs, senator.

snip........

so let's keep on throwing money down that rathole. yeah. that's a good idea. but not so good for the reality-based community. or really, bad for all of us. where is that republican demand that government-funded programs must show positive results?

Confessions of a Recovering Homophobe

2005-02-26T19:42:00.000-08:00

Rexroth's Daughter, one of the frequent commenters to this blog, and mistress of her own blog, asked for more details about how my views on gays and lesbians were turned around. I was one of your garden-variety closet homophobes. I was not a gay basher, I wished them well; my encounters with gays and lesbians were cordial when our paths crossed. Along the way, I was casually friendly with a couple of gay men, whom I found to be quite simpatico. Of course, they were in the closet; I knew they were gay, but we never talked about it. I felt a vague sort of disapproval, even though I liked them a lot. I saw them as having a kind of shadow hanging over them.

In August of 2003, as the Episcopal Church met at the 74th General Convention, the issue that took center stage was the vote on whether to consent to the consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. The people of the state had chosen Robinson, a homosexual, who was in a committed relationship with another man, to be their bishop. My bishop voted against giving consent to Robinson's consecration as bishop. The motion to give consent passed, and Gene Robinson was subsequently consecrated Bishop of New Hampshire. At the time, I agreed with my bishop's vote; non-celibate homosexuals should not be ordained bishops. I did not think homosexuals should be priests, unless they were committed to lifelong celibacy. However, I could not quite put aside the thought that the people of New Hampshire had chosen Robinson to be their bishop, and why shouldn't they have him?

As the controversy continued to swirl around, I decided to search out the references to homosexual behavior in the Bible. The source that I found most helpful was from the website of Loren L. Johns, a Mennonite. The Gospels, which, to me, are the heart of the Bible, are silent on the subject of homosexual practice. Either Jesus did not mention it, or the writers of the Gospel did not think it important enough to include in their accounts of his life and teachings.

After the convention, on the local level, there was a good bit of unrest, much argument back and forth, and I soon became uncomfortable with all the focus on the private sex life of Gene Robinson. It started to look prurient to me. Folks would say, "Do you realize what 'they' do?" I would answer, "No, I don't; do you know what Gene Robinson and his partner do? Have they told you in detail what they do?" None of the other bishops were subject to this kind of scrutiny of their private lives, so I thought that maybe we should just let Gene Robinson's private life remain private. It was none of my business. I don't know what he or anyone else does in private, and I don't want to know.

Think about this: it was not people who were in favor of the consecration of Gene Robinson who brought me over to their side by their persuasive arguments. The folks who basically agreed with me were the ones who pushed me to the other side. I was just really put off by their intrusiveness into the sex lives of consenting adults. I could not stand with them, so where did I go?

By the grace of God, and in a rather astonishing evolution - to me anyway - I have come to take a totally different view of gays and lesbians, not to see them as "other", but as human beings like me. In my own church, I see the contribution my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters make. I use the phrase "recovering homophobe", because I believe that long-held prejudices do not die easily.

When Gene Robinson's name is mentioned in the media, it is often, "Gene Robinson, the practicing homosexual bishop." The phrase "practicing homosexual" becomes an ever-present appendage to his name. I see it as an affront to me to have Robinson's sex life thrust upon me every time his name is mentioned. Our local diocesan newspaper not only used this phrase, but did not even bother to use Robinson's name. He was just "the practicing homosexual bishop of New Hampshire"; he who is not to be named, I suppose. I asked the editor of the newspaper either to refer to other bishops as "practicing heterosexuals", or to stop using the phrase with Robinson.

As to the sinfulness of homosexual behavior, I'll leave that between God and the Christian homosexuals to work out. I believe this: we are all sinners. I believe the church is for sinners, for the lost sheep. Jesus said in Luke 5:32, "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

From The New York Times:

Leaders in the global Anglican communion have asked the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada to withdraw their representatives temporarily from a key governing body of the denomination, in an unprecedented move to avoid a schism over the American church's consecration of an openly gay man as a bishop and both churches' blessing of same-sex unions.

We'll see how that goes.

The Dynamics of Grace

2005-02-25T10:20:00.000-08:00

Few things make us feel so strong, so powerful, as a good case of righteous indignation. Few joys are as great as the joy of being wronged.

On the other hand, few things leave us so open, so exposed, so humilitated as being loved. When love is given freely, made visible by another person's actions towards us...what could be more powerful or moving?

Her name was Mary. I knew her for years as a Friend and mother to boys, slightly older than myself. She wasn't a deep thinker or a big talker. She didn't care to talk much about her reasons. She simply cared for those along the way who were hers to care for.

Mary's parents had died when she was a young girl. She'd been raised by a passel of older siblings, aunts and uncles all with a combination of drinking and heart problems. Sometimes they raised her, sometimes she raised them.

When Mary died at all too young an age, she left behind a husband and two sons, all grief stricken, but relieved that her wracked body was finally out of pain. She also left behind a community of people whose lives she touched in little ways, little but profound.

When I make lunches for my children, who are now clearly old enough to do this for themselves, I often think of Mary. Its because of her I still make their lunches. --Her older boy at 17 had been old enough to make lunch for himself, and he had a summer job working across the street from their house, but there was Mary in the kitchen, making the kid his lunch. Surely he was old enough to do this for himself. Surely at 17 he ought to be learning responsiblity?

Joe (we'll call him that) was on his way to becoming a carpenter, a dime a dozen framer for the union was his goal. Mary looked at her son and saw him for what he was, one in a billion, one alone in all the world. She cherished him, but she knew that chances were good the world wouldn't see him for what he was. "I want him always to know and remember that someone loved him enough to make him his lunch, to know that he was that special that I wanted to do that for him."

That was the gift Mary gave to me.

On Saturday after an afternoon of cross country skiing, my children and some friends were squirreled away upstairs. I'd made them cocoa for after the ski. They were already up, playing cards by the time it was ready. Surely they could come down and get it themselves? But then I remembered Mary and thought, I'd like them to know, without even noticing that it was anything at all, that they are loved enough for someone to bring them something nice, just because they are so loved.

And I realized then, as I do very often, that it's thanks to some one else's love that I have that gift in my heart to give. It came from Mary, it came from God, it came from the gift of creation itself. I don't need to name it grace, but that's what it is, and I'm grateful to feel these things, to know them, from the inside.

And you. Do you see it moving that way in your life? Where do you see it? How does it pour out of you? These are hard things to talk about, opening ourselves that way. This isn't nearly such heavy lifting as discerning the origin and possible meaning of the galaxy. Still, in light of the question of beginings, here's an opportunity to consider what acts of love freely given we've accepted and passed along, and to ponder their origin, possibly from one great gift that loved us all into being just exactly as we are. And to ponder all of that, this is just an invitation to try...

Where we live

2005-02-24T06:20:00.000-08:00

The desktop of my computer displays an image called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. It is a photograph of a patch of sky, empty to the naked eye, that could be covered by a pencil eraser held at arm's length. It was produced by the Hubble Space Telescope, which is named for Edwin Hubble, the man who discovered the universe. Really. (Although he had lots of help).

The photo looks back in time 12 billion years. It contains thousands of galaxies, each consisting of 100 billion stars or more. Here's what this and other pictures and various kinds of evidence tell us.

There was a moment of creation, not perhaps of everything that is, but of everything that we can see. Everything in the observable universe, hundreds of billions of galaxies of hundreds of billions of stars, including our own, and all of space, occupied a volume the size of a single atom. (Maybe at one time it was even smaller than that, even infinitely hot and infinitely dense, but our mathematics won't allow us to look back that far.) Space started to expand. Over hundreds of millions of years the universe cooled enough that matter could condense out of energy, and atoms of hydrogen and helium could form. The universe became transparent to electromagnetic radiation, and the remnant of that moment, the so-called cosmic background radiation, is still observable today. Tiny ripples in the fabric of space created slightly denser than average regions, into which gravity pulled surrounding matter. Galaxies condensed out of the cosmic gas, and stars condensed out of the galaxies. In the first generation of stars, heavier elements were formed. Some of these stars ultimately exploded, expelling heavy elements out into the galaxies, so that as subsequent generations of stars condensed from the resulting gas clouds, planetary systems containing heavier elements formed around them.

Our own planet formed about 4 1/2 billion years ago. For the first billion and a half years or so it was largely molten, and under constant bombardment from meteors. Once it even got clobbered by another planet-sized object, knocking off a hunk of matter that formed the moon. But around 3 billion years ago, the earth was cool enough that stable complex chemical compounds could form on or near the surface. I'll want to talk about evolution later, but that's how we got here, 3 billion years later.

Now look back out into space. There is our star, one of 200 billion in our galaxy, which is 100,000 light years across. (Some people think there are 400 billion stars in our galaxy.) There is the local group of a few dozen galaxies bound together by gravity. Then there are something like 200 billion more galaxies within the volume of space that we can see. (The universe could be larger than what we can observe, but is not necessarily infinite. As space has expanded faster than the speed of light, there are probably regions of space whose light has not yet reached us. While it is true that nothing can travel faster than light, the expansion of space has nothing to do with motion.)

From our point of view, but from no other possible point of view, one of the most interesting facts about this universe is that it is utterly indifferent to our existence or our fate. If the earth were to be destroyed tomorrow, it would be of less importance to the universe than destroying a single grain of sand would be to all the beaches and ocean bottoms of the earth. Indeed, billions of planets are destroyed every day in cosmic cataclysms. Undoubtedly, many of them harbor life.

We matter only to ourselves. We know this because we have discovered it with our own senses, and our own reason. We know far more than the people who contemplated the cosmos thousands of years ago and made up stories to explain its mysteries. We will continue to learn, and perhaps one day we will even overturn some part of the story I have just told. But this quest for discovery is what gives our existence meaning -- only to us, to be sure, but that will have to be enough.

"Queerly Beloved"

2005-02-21T10:01:00.000-08:00

so begins cultural icon homer simpson as he officiates to marry two lesbians. and marge says "just because you're lesbians doesn't mean you are less beings."

any of you who noticed the post over at dharma bums featuring our friends Tara and Nickie (go read about them, Tara tells a love story) have caught on to my opinion on the gay marriage issue. i want my friends to have the benefits of marriage. i came to this position like many people do. i have family and friends i like. i found out that some of them are homosexual. back in 1954 when i was in 7th grade, one of my much older cousins started bringing his partner to the standard extended family gatherings, thanksgiving and christmas. jim became a valued part of our family. even after my cousin died Jim spent those holidays with us because he was family, and did so until he moved back to arkansas to be near his blood family.

i don't remember ever even thinking about gayness in high school or college. i don't remember thinking about it for many years after that. there were campy people, such as liberace. they were funny. somewhere in the middle of my life i caught on that some of my friends, or acquaintances, or work colleagues were gay. i didn't care. i don't care. i have friends. some are straight and some are gay.

there is a controversy of sorts about whether gayness is genetically determined or a choice we make. all i know for sure is that i don't remember making that choice. i don't care how people get where they are about it. born that way or decided to be, so what?

for those of you who claim to follow a biblical injunction against homosexuality, i can't resist asking---isn't one of the main citations on that in leviticus? not far from the injunction against eating shellfish? and another rule against mixing flax and wool for garments? consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, eh? a view of the bible as literal and inerrant requires stepping over stunning contradictions and alternate versions of reality. you're welcome to your opinion about morality. don't invite gay people to your house. your bible isn't public law. get over it.

about the gay agenda; there isn't one. what could andrew sullivan and alan ginsberg agree on, other than sex. is there a heterosexual agenda? i don't think so. do ted kennedy and john mccain agree on this week's talking points?