Old King Log

In response to my last Blog 'Andy' gave a very considered and reassuring reply to my angst over the faith vs. reason struggle I highlighted in my last posting. His suggestion was that a Deist belief might provide a means of reconciling these two parts of my personality/psyche.

I have considered this and will consider it further, but the trouble with Deism takes me back to a comment Dan made last year when I was contemplating 'Why Terrible Things Happen'..

In that he (an ardent atheist) mused:

"you might consider what kind of deity you (want to) believe in. Can we presume that the existence of torture, famine, etc. rules out an interventionist deity (or at least a non-sadistic interventionist deity)? We must surely reject the "mysterious ways" argument: there's no mystery in being tortured to death. So you are left with Old King Log, the ultimate cosmic observer, who winds up the universe and lets it run until heat death or big crunch, perhaps taking notes or writing an amusing commentary on his blog. And what is the point of that?"

And that is the problem in a nutshell -- if God is simply the spark, the source of the 'Big Bang' then is that it? And if that is it, then again it leave the questions about purpose and contingency unanswered... that is unless Deism is more complex and nuanced (which it probably is).

More to follow...

I looked into the void and the void looked back

I have always felt an internal conflict between my faith and reason, almost as if two aspects of my psyche are in constant conflict with each other. Being an academic, especially one who has been influenced by post-modernist reflections on discourse and the social construction of norms values and so forth, reconciling my intellect and my faith has always proven difficult.

You see I can accept that religion was a form of mind control for the masses, I can see that society, the family, the relationships between men and women are all social constructions but if I then deny faith and embrace atheism I am left with the void. What is the point of life, there is no point, we become apes clinging to a rock... our existence merely contingent on so many historical and evolutionary accidents. And whats the point then of anything, of being 'good' rather than evil, of love (it will die with us), children (they will die), the only constant then becomes the second law of thermodynamics -- entropy. Trouble is I cannot accept that, therein lies the problem, I cannot accept that that is all there is, I stare into the 'void' and recoil. Which invariably leads me back to faith.

This has been compounded by the fact that so few of my colleagues are anything other than agnostics at best. Indeed for many years I expounded atheist views but was always drawn back to faith by the bleakness of the atheist message. To paraphrase Nietzsche I looked into the void and the void began to look back. So I returned fully to my faith about 3 years ago and have been more comfortable in my own shoes than ever before, however I continue to be plagued by the conflict. Just as the part of me drawn to faith recoiled from the void of atheism, equally the intellect in me finds it hard to reconcile with the answers Christianity sometimes gives -- be it on the evil that men do and the apparent indifference of God to that evil, on the judgement of non-believers (even if they have lived selfless and virtuous lives), on sexuality and so on and so forth. This weekend I have had a recurrence of the 'Is this all there is' thought process and feeling and the despairing that such thoughts engender.

So I will continue this conversation about faith, and solider on the difficult journey that I know faith is...

God is not on the Ballot

It has been a while since my last post, and I am working on a piece.

In the interim a great post by Jim Wallis (author of God's Politics) on his blog, that I would like to share with you.

http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=3166

As a preivew Jim writes:

"In 2008, the kingdom of God is not on the ballot in any of the 50 states as far as I can see...

With more than 2,000 verses in the Bible about how we treat the poor and oppressed, I will examine the record, plans, policies, and promises made by the candidates on what they will do to overcome the scandal of extreme global poverty and the shame of such unnecessary domestic poverty in the richest nation in the world"

The rest is in a similar tone... if only more US preachers were like Jim and less like those that preach a message of intolerance and literal interpretation of a text that was never meant to be read literally... (and for most of its history was never read literally).

Why Do Terrible Things Happen?

The folly of a man spoils his ways; but he blames God in his heart. (Proverbs 19:3)


I do voluntary work for a help line and this morning I answered from an Alf Garnett (Miserable old right-wing git) type that begun, “Why does God let shit things happen?”. Of course the nature of the help line means that I was not able to mount a defence of God but it got me thinking nonetheless. I would have liked to have answered “Why do you want to blame God for bad things?”, or “Why do you think that God should intervene to make all well in the world?”

Similarly about a year ago my wife's mother asked me a variation on this when she said, “If God is good why does He let such terrible things happen”. Of course this is a question that has plagued priests, popes, philosophers and theologians since the beginning of the Judaeo-Christian faith and I am far less capable of answering this question than they... but here goes.


On the one hand there is the apparent logical contradiction that if God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent (all knowing, all present and all powerful) then He is somehow complicit in any tragedy, disaster, war, famine etc because He allowed it to happen. Similarly for those who believe in a devil then the very fact that the devil exists and has the power to seduce Man into sin and evil also implies a degree of complicity. How can God punish us for a sin that he knew we would commit? Or worse that he allowed the Lord of Evil to tempt us into committing?


Of course the classic way out has been the doctrine of Free Will. God did not create robots but instead gave human beings the freedom to choose to accept or reject God. However this is also logically flawed since, if God is omniscient (all knowing) then He already knows if you will accept Him or Reject Him. In other words your fate has effectively been pre-determined.


The problem is known as theological fatalism and it goes like this:

1. God is omniscient
2. Since God is omniscient, God has infallible knowledge
3. If God has infallible knowledge that tomorrow you will for example murder someone, then you must murder someone
4. You invariably murder someone
   

Hence one of the schisms in Christianity between the doctrine of Free Will and the Calvinist doctrine of predestination (the belief that only the righteous are saved).

One way theologians have sought to find a way round this is by arguing that because God has created us with Free Will, because he wants man to accept or reject Him voluntarily, he chooses to somehow limit his omniscience freely to preserve man's freedom to choose.

Another was first put forward by Thomas Aquinas in the 16th Century. Aquinas argued that because God stands outside time he knows both when any act will occur in the future, and what the consequences of that decision were in the past – He can see the big picture that man as contingent linear beings cannot. What to us appears as a tragedy or a tragic waste may have ramifications and repercussions that we cannot anticipate or indeed ever know (for a good take on this read the excellent little novel: “The 5 People You Meet in Heaven” by Mitch Albom)

However remember this is not just a theological problem. Genetically what we look like, how tall we will be and many millions of other features of our complex life form will be determined by our DNA . However how we live and what we choose to do (Free Will, nature vs. nurture) combined with random chance (Chaos) will determine how and when we die. Plenty of philosophy and political theory has been deterministic: Hobbes, Hume, Hegel, Marx , Fukuyama.

Of course this argument and these questions will continue to be asked because the answer is not simple or straightforward, and because on a simple level we often cannot face that perhaps the real reason Shit happens may be that it is the consequence of our decision or of the collective decisions and effects of the society we live in.

I will end with an extract from a conversation between the Chief Rabbi in England Jonathan Sacks with the veteran BBC Radio 4 journalist John Humphrys in a famous series of 3 interviews Humphreys did in 2006 called 'Humphrys in Search of God'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/misc/insearchofgod.shtml

Jonathan Sacks: I am sometimes asked where was God in Auschwitz.

John Humphrys: And you say where was man in Auschwitz?

Jonathan Sacks: And I answer as follows: God was in Auschwitz in the command "thou shalt
not murder", in the words "you shall not oppress the stranger", in the words "your brother's blood cries to me from the ground". God was saying those things to the German people and they didn't listen. I cannot let human beings off the hook by blaming things on God; if I do then I'm betraying the mission that he sent me and sent all of us. We cannot escape from responsibility..

Dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden!!!! Oops

Sometimes I do despair at the words and deeds of my fellow believers… the latest thing to make me go ‘oh dear, oh dear, oh dear’? The Creation Museum opened in Kentucky and the exhibits showing man living in the Garden of Eden 6000 years ago alongside dinosaurs (who were killed off in the Great Flood). http://www.creationmuseum.org/

With ammunition like that it’s no wonder that Dawkins can sell so many millions of books.

How to respond? By challenging the view that the Bible is both a literal account of creation and the Word of God. Anyone who knows even a rudimentary history of Christianity knows that the present shape and form of the Bible came about as a result of many debates and discussions about what to leave in and what to leave out (e.g Coucil of Rome and the Gelasian Decree) – in other words the subjective choices of early spiritual and political leaders. Hence why there are so many Gnostic gospels (the ones that didn’t make the cut) and why the Catholic Bible and Eastern orthodox Bible contain books you won’t find in your standard Protestant/Anglican bible.

In addition the books of the Old Testament, derived form the Jewish torah are not historical accounts in the modern sense of historical narrative, nor were they written in the order that they necessarily appear in the Bible. Much of the Old Testament is written as a form of Hebrew poetry with its emphasis on parallelism hence why there are multiple creation stories in Genesis.

While there is ongoing debate many historians argue that Genesis had multiple authors and that much of what appears are oral (hi)stories passed down from much earlier generations which draw on a rich storehouse of Mesopotamian legends as old as 3000 B.C. Tales of Eden-like paradise appear in Egyptian, Persian, Indian, and Babylonian myth as do forbidden trees, serpents and floods. Much of Genesis is also a family story a story tracing the patriarchal ancestry of the Jewish people. There are even references to Polytheism or at least other gods in the Old Testament (e.g. Exodus, 15:11; Jeremiah 2:28 – or the reference to “in our image” in Genesis 1:26). You can conveniently explain this away if you are a literalist, but I’m not -- for me its part of the tale of how the faith of the Jewish people emerges from the polytheist traditions of Mesopotamian civilization.

Most scholars accept that there are at least two creation stories in Genesis, an earlier one -- the so-called 'J' account of the southern jewish kingdom of Judah who called God, Yahweh (Genesis 2:5-14) and a later one 'P', ironically inserted first, written by the preistly Pentateuch during the Babylonian exile (Genesis 1-2:5). The 'J' story clearly drew on oral histories and shares similarities with other Eastern creation accounts. While 'P' may have been one person or several but this account should be read as an anti-imperial story.

The 7 day creation story was not literal but a stark contrast to the Babylonian creation story. Unlike the Bayblonian creation which had to be recreated every year in spectacular rites, the Jewish creation was complete. Unlike the Babylonian cosmos where the Gods fought each other Yaweh was obliged to fight no-one since he was the only God. For example the sea was not a terrifying Goddess Tiamat that had to be appeased but instead "the raw material of the universe". (Armstrong, 2007, p.28). Similarly the sun, moons and stars were simply "lights in the dome of the sky to give light to the erath" (Genesis, 1: 15). In P's account Yaweh did not assert his supremacy by fighting other gods but simply spoke a command and "one by one the components of our world came into being" (ibid.)

P's account was a story to console, to reassure to remind the Jews in exile in Babylon of their religion of their covenant with Yaweh at a time when many were turning to the religion of their captors. It stressed that rather than humans being created as servants for the gods, playthings in a cosmic chess game that Yahweh made man in his own image – and that when He saw what he had created it was good. In other words that man had intrinsic value, was special… which is a beautiful idea.

Most Christians accept that the Bible is inspired by God but written by men, it is not then as in Islam the divine word of God, a single authoritative text. It is a beautiful rich collection of history, poetry, philosophy, law. Because it a catalogue of writing compiled over centuries it is absolutely chock-full of contradictions and of contradictory images of God – from the wrathful vengeful ever-present “jealous God” (Exodus 20) to the God of love nowhere better encapsulated than in the sacrifice of his only son for the sins of mankind.

If you’re a literalist I can see how these contradictions challenge the very essence of your belief, since if the Bible does contradict itself, if the world isn’t 6000 years old then on what is your faith built? But for me faith isn’t about what it does or doesn't say in the Bible but instead is built on that other meaning of faith -- 'trust', that and on the amazing grace so beautifully articulated in the hymn by John Newton. For me that means a faith which can comfortably teach the story of Adam and Eve to children alongside the story of evolution; and that is a story of a time 65 million years ago when dinosaurs ruled the world. A time when there was no Fred (or Adam) Flintstone.

Intolerant atheists

Just a quick one.

Have to say I am shocked but not surprised at the firestorm caused by the comments made by the Director of Education at the Royal Society, Professor Michael Reiss, about creationism. First of all let me make clear that I am not a creationist but what shocks me is that he has been forced to resign because of the comments he made. So much for freedom of speech and freedom of expression. His sin, so to speak, was that he made a speech in which he suggested that creationism should be discussed in science lessons if pupils raised the issue. What he argued was that rather than tell children who hold a creationist view that they were simply wrong that instead there should be debate in the classroom. In his speech Reiss said that his personal experience had led him to believe it was more effective to include discussion about creationism alongside scientific theories such as the Big Bang and evolution.

Instead a media firestorm broke wrongly accusing Professor Reiss of advocating the teaching of creationism alongside evolution as a scientific theory. Others attacked him for abusing his position while still more pointed out that Professor Reiss, a biologist with a distinguished career and a plethora of publications to his name, was also (shock horror) - an Anglican priest – implying that there was some surreptitious plot by Christians to subvert the hallowed halls of the Royal Society.

Sadly this intolerance is all too common… many atheists are equally as evangelical and dogmatic about their views as many fundamentalist theists, and post Dawkin’s ‘The God Delusion’ appear to be on a McCarthyite witch-hunt to expose, ridicule and root out anyone who holds public office and believes in God.

Randomness and Purposelessness

If you have to ask me why I can never be an atheist then the simple answer is that I cannot accept that the only reason we are here is chance and that our lives/ my life is no more significant than that of a cat, dog or single-celled amoeba.

Of course I know this makes me guilty of anthropocentrism., valuing human life as more complete, more significant and more valued than animal life but its where it all starts.

Anyway if we boil it down faced with the ultimate question of existence we have two essential choices:

1. Accept that the probability of life forming on this rock we inhabit was infinitesimally small, but by a coincidence of probabilities it did and that eventually after the dinosaurs were wiped out mammalian life thrived, evolved into primitive man and one generation led to another until we reach the 20th Century in which I was born. Accepting this I will, if lucky, get 75-80 years to experience life’s rich tapestry before ceasing to exist, my life extinguished like a candle being blown out, my metaphorical footprint in the sand soon eroded away until all trace of my life on this earth has vanished. Furthermore that this very planet will cease to exist and all record of human existence will vanish as well.

2. Accept that there is some deeper metaphysical nature to life, the universe and existence. Some cosmic purpose as to why this rock, why this solar system and why I am here.

Faced with these two propositions I choose the latter and hence the quest for an understanding of that cosmic purpose begins.

'Galaxy Song' -- Monty Python

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.
That’s orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcTHBOjnUss