On Death.

I have a friend whose cat just died.

I've told her what I always tell people: death seems so cruel, in how it separates us from our loved ones. But many of us do hope to be reunited with our loved ones, and I do not think this is just wishful thinking.

Consider our own consciousness for a second: the fact that we are here, experiencing our lives -- having our "I" that experiences everything -- is miraculous. We can't explain consciousness, in the sense of our self-awareness.

In fact, in the realm of modern epistemology, one could even say there is very little evidence that other people are conscious. Philosophers call our sense of this the "theory of other minds"...we assume other people have their own minds, and their own consciousnesses, because we ourself have that.

So if someone tells you there is "no evidence" for consciousness after passing on, tell them that -- by the standards of modern epistemology -- there is "no evidence" for consciousness in the living. (Indeed, some of the more reductionist philosophers might even consider it embarrassing to their own hypotheses that humans are actually conscious!)

But in the realm of our own self-awareness -- when we don't reduce ourselves with scientific arguments regarding packets of matter and energy -- we know "we" are here, now, experiencing our lives. And it seems to me that an ultimate definition of God would be "that from which our consciousness came from." I can think of nothing more "Alpha" than God, from which our consciousness came -- and I can think of nothing more "Omega" than re-uniting with God, our source, in Whose Image we are created.

I'll spare you the discussions of miaphysticism and other understandings of "hypostatic union" and just point to a Wikipedia article:

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

And if we are all to be reunited with God, then it stands to reason that we will be reunited with each other. I won't pretend to understand how that will work, but I'm satisfied that God is so unbelievably awesome that (S)He has that already figured out.

Good luck, and God bless,

-Scott

"Word of God": More Deceptive Evangelical Christian Semantics

I truly hate to be mired in semantical fiddle-faffery, but Orwell was right: controlling language can control how people think.

I am currently discussing the term "Word of God" with a group of Christians on the Facebook group "Christianity Debate." It seems that those with a Biblical inerrant outlook refer to the Bible as the "Word of God", and whenever they see a writer (in Scripture, or outside of it) use that term, they consider it a reference to the Bible.

First, there is a context to this: off-and-on in the group, we've been discussing the role of human conscience in both our moral lives and our exegesis. A learned (I assume) Christian man explained to me that to appeal to conscience is "special pleading", and a kind of logical fallacy. But this would seem not to be the case when discussing our moral development, because what would these "morals" be without conscience to discern them?

So my new turn of phrase is the say that "morals are the ethics of conscience." Already, folks have been working to develop a scientific ethics -- particularly, business ethics -- through study of Information Theory, specifically Game Theory. But there is no way to make the leap from ethics to morals without involving our consciences.

Fortunately, when talking with Christians about conscience, we have the backing of church fathers who grappled with matters of natural religion through the lense of human conscience -- and attempted to show how these findings were compatible with the Christianity that they practiced. But they did not believe in Biblical inerrancy, any more than any rational and responsible theologian would today.

Today's evangelical Christians don't seem to have a sense of that history. "Word of God", to them, is the Bible -- and Heaven help anyone who dares disagree with what they find written there. But (hopefully) we know better: "Word of God" is the Logos, which Heraclitus termed the Divine Order in our Cosmos.

To clarify: I believe the Logos to be the very fabric of the Cosmos, its set of Natural Laws. We can argue if the Logos is actually part of God, or those Laws that He fixed to create our reality...but there can't be any confusion that the Logos is that Word of God that we find here:

In the beginning was the Word (gk "Logos"),

and the [Logos] was with God,

and the [Logos] was God.

(Jn1:1, of course.)

But mainstream, rational, responsible Christians are not Biblical inerrantists -- and indeed, almost certainly don't fall into this error of thinking "Logos" refers to Scripture. Because while Scripture may be inspired by the Logos...the map is not the territory.

It is becoming more and more apparent to me that this confusion is exploited by irresponsible evangelical Christians to lead their congregations astray. They tell people to deny their God-given consciences and trust in the Bible, which they conflate with the term "Logos" under discussion. But our God-given consciences are just as much a product of that Logos as any inspiration the Logos had given prophets, apostles, or any other churchmen, great or small.

Except for a few sad pathologies, we humans are, indeed, Persons of Conscience. We can't tell this by looking at what passes for "news" on our airwaves, because such media specifically seeks out thos pathologies, and clouds the fact that almost all people act decently when they can. But if we examine great dramas from Hollywood, we can discern that the moral dilemmas found therein would be unintelligable to an audience that didn't have servicable consciences.

Expanding on the latter will be the topic of another post.

Scott Doty
Santa Rosa, California
November 9, 2011

On the Deceptive Usage of the word "inerrant" by Christians

From the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy in the Bible

Quote:

Article XIII

We affirm the propriety of using inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of Scripture.

We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.

Looks like this is an unfalsifiable pseudoscience -- there doesn't seem to be anything they will accept as an error in the Bible, including the "reporting of falsehoods".

(I just wish I'd seen this years ago.)

http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/icbi.html

Love from Logos

[ A reply to Ryan, regarding the marriage of mathematics and metaphysics ]

The Divine Order, or "Logos" (500BCE version) would seem to include an important ontology, one that can be analyzed via information theory.

Specifically, game theory: The strategy for maximum benefit for all players in games of iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas is to "cooperate" with everyone but the "scorpions" in the game.

Like logic itself, this is a fundamental factor in how our universe operates. I've lately been calling this the "Golden Rule Ontology", and I think it has a profound influence in how we, and our universe, has evolved.

For instance, this ontology may explain how we have evolved a cooperative and (dare I say it?) loving instinct.

In other words: Part of the Divine Logos is "natural selection" for love to evolve in our universe. The source of love, then, is the Logos.

(brb, gotta hug my fiance, dog, & cats...)

On The Deceptive Semantics of the Christian Usage of "God"

Quoting from Sweet & Viola's "Jesus Manifesto":

But the 'Good News' is that Jesus doesn't want us to be 'like' Him. He wants to share His resurrection life with us. He doesn't want us to imitate Him; instead, Christ wants to live in and through us. The gospel is not the imitation of Christ; it is the implantation and impartation of Christ. We are called to do more than mediate truth. We are called to manifest Jesus' presence.

This may be a fine Christian expression of piety -- but is it Holy?

I don't think so.

The Christian semantics revolving around their use of the terms "God" and "Jesus" and "Christ" demand the closest scrutiny, and a healthy dose of skepticism.

By my lights, a lot can be learned about the Christian point of view through a simple semantics exercise, substituting one word of theirs with another -- which they will _claim_ they regard as the same thing.

So substitute "God" where you see "Jesus", and with a little cleanup, what do we have?

But the 'Good News' is that God doesn't want us to be 'like' Him. He wants to share His eternal life with us. He doesn't want us to imitate Him; instead, God wants to live in and through us. The gospel is not the imitation of God; it is the implantation and impartation of God. We are called to do more than mediate truth. We are called to manifest God's presence.

This is Truth. I would have no problem expressing this very same redacted paragraph anywhere appropriate. But the sort of (so-called) "Orthodox Christians" that I hang out with will complain that this is a Gospel that excludes Jesus's particular experiences and sacrifices, and thus isn't Truth.

But that very reaction proves the lie that they bandy about as one of their "mysteries". To them, they mean "Jesus" as "God-the-Scapegoat", someone of a separate mind and experience that "God the Father".

(And for the nonce, I will set aside the matter of "God the Holy Spirit" -- but He is present in this article, just as surely as it is written with letters and punctuated.)

Getting back to the matter: when a Christian talks to a non-Christian, he will use the word "God" to mean -- in secret -- a very complex idea about the nature of God, what they call the "Holy Trinity". And since I am a fierce advocate of understanding, transparently, the precise semantics being used in such discussions, I think it is quite fair and just to ask Christians employing this device to define what they mean by "God", and examine what they say to that.

What you will find is the rationality of the discussion quickly degrades into a nonsense state, where a non-Christian will have to -- if only out of politeness -- allow the Christian his religious beliefs, as irrational as they may be. Because to them, the "Holy Trinity" is a "Mystery", meaning nobody understands it -- and any Christian who says they do is either lying or heterodox.

Some questions that arise:

...How many minds does God have?
...How many personalities does God have?

and if you wanted to get silly about it...

...Is God one being with multiple personality disorder?
...Did God sire Himself?

Though I do live in the United States -- where the evangelical "Christians"
continue to make quite a nuisance of themselves -- I see the kind of
poisonous crap these self-identified "Christians" are up to throughout the world. And in attempts to have rational discussions with Christians who consider themselves more "moderate" or "orthodox" than the wacko evangelicals: I find that they, too, seem thoroughly indoctrinated in their particular beliefs, to the point that rational discussion continues to fade from the venues where they have encysted.

That all would be fine and good, if these "evangelical" or "orthodox" "Christians" would stop being such nuisances in politics, the public square, and in complicated theological discourses about the nature of God, and evidence for His existence.

This latter matter is a big-ticket item for me at the moment. It seems to me that any evidence for the existence of God the Eternal ends up getting hijacked to oar the slave galleys of their own twisted world view. Because Christians are happy to glom-on to such arguments in favor of the existence of God the Eternal -- but won't stop there, but try to jam these more advanced theological and philosophical matters into their peculiar three-headed mold.

And when they try to make this square peg of "God the Eternal" fit into their "Mystery of the Holy Trinity", rational discussion ceases.

Christians even have a name for when they take a perfectly rational idea, and try to fit it into their irrational framework.

They call it "apologetics."

God the Eternal is, and always shall be: with us and in us. And through us, God makes manifest the woven tapestry we call "reality".

Thank you for your time.

-Scott

Repost of Facebook Note

Repost of a Facebook Note from May of 2009:

I've had it sitting on my profile for a while, my "religious views" reading "sort of Christian/Buddhist with zen practice, Monism, maybe some Alan Watts...it's complicated". I thought that i'd explain that to anyone who cared...probably not many folks at all, my friends tend to be secular agnostics, or atheists.

But in a nutshell: I'm more "spiritual" than religious. And with good reason: nobody really knows what consciousness/self-awareness itself is, so how are they going to attribute that to someone (or something) outside of themselves?

We don't even have a test to determine if someone is self-aware. And as Alan Watts puts it: a lot of folks think the universe is "dumb". But, yet, here we are, and we do each seem to have a sense of "self", and a sense that we occupy the space right behind our eyeballs, with our bodies sort of hanging down from each of us. We can probably figure out, at least in our own cases of "self", that part of the universe is "smart", not dumb.

Along these speculations: I have a good friend up at the U. of Toronto who turned me on to the zen philosopher Alan Watts. And I think Watts was definitely on to some very powerful ideas; he explored the meaning, structure, properties, etc. of human consciousness from his own zen perspective.

Watts' ideas are fascinating to comprehend. One such idea is this: just like an apple tree "apples" (verbing "apples" to indicate producing apples), the universe "peoples". But there, his analogy breaks down: because an apple tree will eventually drop its apples...but *we* continue to be a part of the universe. He had a great alternate explanation of this: Keep your eyes on the rocks, because: Watch out! The rocks will eventually grow people.

But we still have this illusion that there is the "I", and the rest of the world external to that. And not only that, but that "I" doesn't always include our bodies, either. (We don't say "I am a body", but "I have a body" -- in other words, we regard our bodies as "meat puppets".)

Most folks leave these ideas to the philosophers, theologians, scientists, and whomever has the "job" of "figuring all that out". But I do think that each and every person has their own philosophy about how they regard the world, even if they can't articulate in words what that is. So a "philosopher" is someone who has taken the time to share their own philosophy with the rest of us supposedly self-aware creatures.

But that doesn't mean you have to accept it (or do anything with philosophy whatsoever) -- it just means they had some ideas that they thought important to tell us about (for whatever reason). "Theology", in this definition, just means you (probably) have "God" or "Gods" or "Goddesses" or "cosmic muffins" or whatever wrapped up in your philosophy. (God knows I do.)

With some encouragement, I'll probably write (again) how I went from the religion of my childhood, to religious critic (esp. the one I grew up with) in high school, then through many years of theological speculation (including discussions with a friend who had been kicked out of more seminaries that he could count), then through some transformative events that left me wanting to figure out just _what_ I believed, if anything...

...and from there, developed a philosophy based on some counter-intuitive principles of game theory. Said principles suit me fine, and seem to be "hints" of a kind of "Higher Order" that is as subtle in our universe as our own consciousness...and just as difficult to quantify.

Combatting a Particularly Nasty Strain of Idol-Worship

There's no easy way to break this to fundamentalists, so I'm just going to state my conclusion "bang" -- then, while the fundies huff and puff themselves into apoplexy, I will explain my reasoning through an appeal to conscience.

"Sola Scriptura" is idol-worship of ancient texts.

A well-meaning fellow explains this thusly: "One thing that Sola Scriptura insists on is that only God is holy, all of humanity is not."

The only way to make sense of this statement is to accept your well-poisoning that "Scriptura" is "God".

At best, this is an error, and a circular argument. At worst, it illustrates exactly what I'm saying now: This is idol-worship.

Also, they apparently conflated "Sola Fide" with "Sola Scriptura", and overloaded "holy".

Indeed, this is something that needed to be brought up sooner or later anyway, so might as well bring it up now:

"One thing that Sola Scriptura insists on is that only God is holy, all of humanity is not."

Only if you overload "holy" to mean "perfect", in a classic black/white fallacy.

But in the real world -- where reasonable people live -- this is a greyscale: People are "more holy" and "less holy", not "holy" and "not holy".

And I'm telling you right now, that someone defending Genesis 6:6-7 without question is less holy than someone whose conscience is disturbed by that exposition.

Can you understand why to be fettered to this ideology is slavery to some pretty rotten ideas?

God is beyond human comprehension -- even if you say an author is "inspired!", God is still beyond his or her ken!

And this is why Judaism evolved beyond idol-worship, your "Ark of the Covenant", Asherah, tablets of the 10 Commandments, etc: because someone can come along and smash your graven image...and then what are you left with?

But: God, the Creator, abides -- not because of holding a text, or an ark, to be "sacred": but _despite_ the horrible things the so-called "fundamentalists" say about God!

Genesis 6:6: And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

RIIIIIGHT. Which is more likely in this case -- that God was caught off-guard, as the text implies...or that this is a legend about God, not to be taken literally?

Genesis 6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

"Man" means Humanity.

Including the babies.

Yes, dear fundamentalist, "Sola Scriptura" readers: The God _you_ worship (paraphrased): drowns babies because their parents caught Him off-guard.

That is not God, the Creator, that you worship: but a libelous legend about God that you hold to be "inerrant": thanks to your ideas of "Sola Scriptura". This is a graven image: an idol, a golden calf.

The Calvinist response to this is absolutely absurd and ridiculous: that God killing the babies in Gen 6:7 is not to be held to our quote "human standards" unquote of morality.

Yes, friends: These Calvists are called to live by their "Perfect Example", whom they find in Jesus Christ -- but we are to ignore the Example set by God's alleged previous dealings with humankind?

Ladies and gentlemen: If that is what it means to be a "True Christian" -- to ignore our consciences when evaluating a supposedly sacred text -- then count me out!

Because you self-proclaimed, alleged "True Christians" are shackled to a golden calf: the idol of this bronze-age doggerel that you proclaim to be "inerrant".

I do not say this lightly, nor with any amount of enjoyment -- but only, because somebody has to say it: It's this kind thinking, around this fundamentalist "Sola Scriptura" idol-worship, that is responsible for centuries of abject pain and misery.

And I am long past the age where I would feel good about such a proclamation. I write this with no pride or hubris, but as an absolutely wretched human being, miserable with heartache, to the point of pain and nausea.

God is so much more greater than any human being can write. I know this from personal experiences -- experiences that if I were to relate, very few reasonable people would understand or believe. Even I don't understand these experiences fully, and sometimes I believe that maybe I'd gone off my cams, rather than trust the evidence of my senses.

The Bible is a holy text, to be sure -- but inerrant? No: that is idol-worship, and anyone saying otherwise deserves scorn and rebuke.

If you have comments regarding this post, please post them here...but for now, I'm not going to look at comments, but will be with my loved ones, watching the sunrise.