I think you, my readers, will enjoy this interview with geneticist Francis Collins. What a joyous soul. It doesn’t take me away from being an atheist — I seem stuck there — but he makes me envy him his faith, especially the way he harmonizes faith and science. Even if you don’t agree with his conclusions, I think you’ll respect his position.
Filed under: Religion |
Bookworm Room (ARCHIVES) 
Book,
You are not “stuck there” in atheist land, nor is anyone else.
One simple decision to believe/trust in the Messiah of Israel, Jesus/Yeshuah will un-stick you for all eternity!!
You will be welcomed with shouts and open and loving arms!!
Hey, let’s talk!!
In Christ eternally, ExP(Jack)
Honestly, you are not “stuck” in atheism any more than you were stuck being a Liberal. You allowed yourself to be challenged intellectually and exposed to a new way of looking at the same things, and it changed your viewpoint. You were open to it, at least as far as your politics and social values were concerned. And, as far as I can tell, you also discovered that your values have been more in sync with Conservative values for a long time.
So, as far as theology goes, my hunch is that a similar porocess may await you if you are open to it. My guess is that just as with Liberalism, you have and still are surrounded by people who treat religious belief as unscientific and backward, and so it has a stigma attached to it. To be honest, it seems your values are very in line with traditional Judaism- though without the theological framework.
Rather than worry about belief, you might want to visit a local Conservative synagogue. Reform will be too Left for you, take some classes, enjoy the community, holidays, traditions and read some of the very interesting books on the subject. By the way, to struggle with belief and the concept of God is only natural. The name “Israel” means to “struggle with God”, so you’re in good company.
I got unstuck so to speak from atheism by taking my dislike of Revealed Truth and finding a way to reconcile it with science, history, my views on humanity, and on the nature of God.
I see God less as a person than as a force. Whether a force that is the opposite of entropy and destruction (creation) or some other kind and level. A lot of atheists seem to think of GOd in the Christian mode. Meaning, they first saw God as a person, and therefore they disagreed with what that person did (Bible New/Old) and therefore they don’t want to believe because it went against their beliefs (of what a God should do). But that misses the point. What is a God supposed to do anyways, what do we base it upon? We base it upon the words and writings of human people, living back in the ancient times. I mean, if you know history as I know of history, that itself would be a point of interest (conflict).
A lot of people have reconciled this by slightly differing their views of GOd’s actions, or negating certain parts of the Holy Books and creating a human adaptation through reason and experience (Talmud is an example in my view).
Since I started learning about the life cycles of stars and reading science fiction, before I ever even encountered formal religion, I am therefore partial and always have been partial, to the scientific viewpoint of the world rather than the religious. Because disunity between scientific and religious have occured, and because it presents discord and weakness, I didn’t like it. But after reading a few books detailing the history of such conflicts, I revised my view of the conflict, and saw it as less inevitable and more manufactured for human politics and interests. Such times as Galileo for example. It was not so much persecution by religion, as the ianities of humanity. Even if you told the truth, there are procedures and rules to follow. Galileo after all, didn’t believe in the Copernican System. In our world, people cannot declassify whatever they feel like declassifying. If in a future world with 100% free flow of information if only because the internet prevents blockages, would they view our system as oppressive and persecutive of folks like Plame, Wilson, and the leakers in State/CIA/etc? *shrugs* Perhaps, perhaps not. Times change, but people don’t. Following that rule, I was able to reconcile some things from both the biblical viewpoint and the scientific.
There has to be a base, a commonality if you will, if you seek to “reconcile” things. This isn’t like reconciling Islam with rights for women, you know. Or maybe it is, but for now it isn’t. Why? Because there is no common base or foundation from which both sides can build on for whatever deals. Why would Islam give rights and responsibilities to women? There’s no reason, for them anyways. They don’t want to become like the West, they don’t want to become decadent, they don’t want to embrace new and better ways of doing things, and they sure want to keep the male dominated heirarchy of power through keeping their women black eyed, black veiled, and pregnant.
If only so they could abuse the children anyways, via either suicide jihad or sexual deviation. But regardless, this isn’t about Islam.
From my experiences, there are a lot of irrational and unreasonable things going on in religion. But that’s true of any human endeavour, so I don’t hold it against the religion (set of beliefs) itself. Things are what we make of them. ANd Christianity is only as good as the people in it. It matters not what the religion preaches, it only matters what the people in it is doing, whether they are diong good or evil, serving the darkness or the light.
However, this is not a free for all. Meaning it is not without restrictions. You cannot have a totalitarian messiah belief system like Iran’s or some suicide cult (poisoned kool aid) and promote human progress at the same time. So yes, beliefs affect humans positively and negatively, but humans also affect beliefs as well.
More or less, because I view God as a force of creation more or less, I see him in science as well as in human affairs. My previous comments on entropy should give people a clue as to the process by which I combine ethics (something most religions lay claim to) and metaphysics (something which mathematics, science, and philosophy lays claim to). I tend to think that the reality we live in, whether through the hands of humans, the hand of chance, or the vagaries of destiny, can give a glimpse into a higher and inner truth. Truth about us, truth about others, truth about the universe we inhabit, if only a small piece of it.
I believe you can look at the physical processes, like science, and try to get a glimpse into human affairs (Pavlov’s dogs if you remember your psychology). I believe that God can be seen in the physical world, whether because of its order or because of its inherent purpose (life). Good and Evil from a religious perspective, was never enough for me. I needed to connect it to something larger than the beliefs written down by other humans. Whether what they wrote down was true or not, doesn’t really matter to me. Because they were operating under their own limitations. Times have changed, technology has changed, human perspective has changed even if our behavior has not. Things should be updated, even religion, to fit the modern times, in order to become stronger, more true, and more everlasting. For entropy unmakes all things, and even religion is not immune.
This subject is sort of like the which came first thing, the chicken or the egg. Does Christianity make people into jerks and make them behave with prejudice towards people? Or do people who are already prejudiced, latch unto specific religions? In a sense it is both, and in a sense, it is neither. It is tricky, it is quantum really. It is neither one or the other. Or specifically, in a quantum perspective, it is what it is when it is, otherwise it is everything at once and nothing at the same time. This would make more sense if you realized that quantum mechanics view things as not existing until observed. In that sense, things truly don’t exist until you see it. So the state of the “thing” before being observed, is in a state of non-existence, nothing, but it is also in a state of “everything”. Because every possibility exists, but only one path will be taken when that object is observed.
How this applies to human behavior, psychology, and motivations… not so clear. Quantum Mechanics most adequately model and justify free will in my view, but that’s about the limit of what I can use it for concerning human behavior. If I did more research on it, I could probably give you some more connections, but right now, no.
The reason why I call the Bible “Revealed Truth” is because of the belief that God handed down knowledge directly to human beings, and human beings therefore wrote the “Word of God” unto whatever material they had on hand. 10 Commandments so to speak.
This is questionable and unreasonable to me for a couple of reasons. First, why would God, whether a Force or a Person, come down to Planet Earth just to tell a bunch of ignorant savages what was what? Are we the cosmic cornerstone of the universe or something that the greatest power in the Universe would microscopically and through micromanagement, seek to oversee our progress? That seems just a tad solipsistic (had to look up that form of the word). Doesn’t mean it isn’t true, it just means it isn’t all that convincing.
Now Protestant Reformation and similar changes, have introduced some adaptations and answers to this. Namely in the form of “God has a personal relationship with people”. So basically, whatever truth is out there, remains for you to discover personally. But that is very different from the Revealed Truth position taken by theCatholic Church for much of its early history, which said that only clergy could read the Bible and tell you what is what.
That seems reasonable. Truth cannot after all, be “revealed” to people. People have to seek their own truth, people have to work for it, they have to earn Truth. Whether universal truth, that is true for everybody and everything (entropy) or just personal truths like this person fights for evil or this person fights for good.
From a psychological perspective, I can’t really believe that even if God as a person came down to Earth and started talking to people about the infinite mysteries of the universe… that people wouldn’t go crazy. Technically, humans are not capable of understanding everything about the universe. I mean just think about what it would mean to understand, truly understand, the suffering of all the people in Darfur. You think a single human mind can handle such? I’m talking about true understanding, by not only experiencing it yourself but by seeing it through the feelings and despair of all the participants, good and evil. True understanding, true knowledge. You think you can handle such? A person would go mad if he saw even a glimpse of such. And I am supposed to believe fragile human beings can understand the “Word of God” enough to put it down on paper for others to follow? Their understanding would obviously be incomplete, if not totally insane.
So obviously God only revealed part of the truth or it didn’t happen, and people were just searching for their own truths and found something they thought was useful and good. It’s a work in progress I suppose. Not a bad thing, but then again, not something you want to keep working if it is so obsolete.
So I don’t think the Bible is Revealed Truth or the Word of God. But unlike most atheists I know, I am unwilling to throw human history away just because most of it is incomplete, flawed, and problematic. After all, as military strategists say, more can be learned from defeat than from victory. The sum total of human knowledge isn’t just self-contained in “Enlightenment” after all. The Left doesn’t seem to understand or accept this. Their problem, and perhaps all of ours soon enough (British).
Seriously, you can’t even get Rosie and Co to believe the truth about 9/11. How do you think parochial savages back in the ANcient World would have reacted to the “Truth”? Backstabbings, political maneuverings, stupidities… you know, the usual stuff that occurs when humans are around. It becomes very hard to see the truth when all around you, people are losing their heads. Whether about Plame Ops, or Wilson lies, or Cheney hunts… on and on people. Truth is hard to find, for deception is everywhere. That’s why it is useful to think about a higher power. It elevates your quest above petty human squabbles. It allows you to see those underneath you, charlatans like Gore who speak about truth and salvation, but are simple con artists. The higher you rise, the more you see fall. The fools, and the fools that follow the fool. But this truism is always around. Regardless of how powerful or high you think you are, there is always someone or something higher and more powerful. The Left forgot this basic facet of existence, because they thought it was religious and therefore to be shunned. Shunning the truth about existence will not let you see into the Inner Dimension or even the Eightfold Path.
A knowledge in ancient history, specifically ROman and Greek and Egyptian history, is critical to understanding the early rise of Christianity. Does anyone remember Attila the Hun and what time he was around in relation to the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of what replaced Rome in uh… well Rome? These human events tell and explain much about the progress of human endeavours such as religion.
I didn’t seek out to understand religion. It seemed a rather uninteresting and gloomy, if not sadistic, part of human history. I was always interested in military history, fights, battles, wars, and so forth. Trials and tribulations, because they had obvious meaning, survival or extinction. Learning about those who have gone before, is as interesting as learning about another culture. You feel your horizons broaden, while it always seemed to me that religion shrunk the horizons of people who practiced it. But all of history is combined. I could not learn everything I wanted to know about European and Roman history, without learning about Christianity at the same time. And even if I could avoid that, Eric Flint, both science fiction and alternative history authors, would not allow me to.
The Celestial Heirarchy is important. I call it the Celestial because of how big the universe is, almost infinite in a way. Depending upon your model of the Universe anyways, but infinite is more or less accurate, for us anyway. Meaning, there is always someone higher and lower than you. Even if you think you are the lowest of the low, there is someone lower, and someone even lower than that guy. This is a critical component to the Meta-Golden Rule I spoke of here before. Because if eventually you reach a position from which you are the most superior of superiors, then you will have no fear about more powerful people treating you like you treated weaker folks. Therefore, this destabilizes what would be a universal ethic. Celestial heirarchy is universal after all. It just doesn’t stop at the Oort Clouds.
Same goes if you are on the bottom rung of the ladder. If all you do is to be subject to the whims of those more powerful than you, you are simply a slave with no responsibilities of your own for those weaker than you. How does someone on the bottom rank of the heirarchy, treat his inferiors as he would expect his superiors to treat him? He has no inferiors! So what he does is kiss up to the boss, which more or less means that the inferior loses the ethical model, and becomes a slime ball sycophant. That’s not ethical.
People act like there is nobody lower than they are (Palestinians when they kill Israeli children because their superior God will award them and that is all that matters to them) and people also act like there is nobody more powerful than they (Iran, Hugo, UN, Democrats, etc).
These are unethical actions, because it is untrue. It violates the Celestial Hierarchy, by pretending it doesn’t exist and acting according to those pretensions.
As we see with Critical Mess, you can switch it around as well. You can both act as the abuser who is more powerful than those who you abuse (Little girl children), while at the same time believing that you are the victim, the lowest rung on the ladder (it is the drivers that initiated force, and it is drivers injuring bikers).
The non-acceptance of the Celestial Heirarchy produces irrational, violent, and unethical actions amongst human beings.
Both Bookworm and Neo, to name two of the “changers” as Neo calls them, seem to me to be truth seekers. That’s enough for me. They need not ascribe to my beliefs, because I both believe and adhere to the Celestial Heirarchy as well as understanding that omniscience is not desirable or possible for human beings. So if I cannot understand the totality of existence, perhaps I can borrow some of the wisdom of folks like Book and Neo. It is perhaps a reason why they write, but it is definitely a reason for why I read them.
How a person adheres to universal truths or even what that person sees as universal truths, his perspective and philosophy, dictates his behavior and even thoughts.
If a person refuses the Celestial Heirarchy, then he starts abusing his lessers while at the same time injuring his superiors. He hurts everybody so to speak, including himself.
If a person refuses open mindedness, he tends to react with hostility to new ideas, that make him uncomfortable. If you can’t change, just be like a rock and shatter the waves. Either people are like water, flexible, or are they like rocks (Bush and some folks on the Left). Then there are gases, which not only conform to their surroundings, but doesn’t even have a shape except just chaotic motion, which defines revolutions, the Islamic Jihad, and most of the Left.
Water can be hard, just try out ice. Rock can be abrasive, like sand. Rock is stubborn more or less. Sometimes you want to be the rock, like at Thermopylae. Othertimes you want to be as water, say after WWII and giving women more rights because they took on more responsibilities.
You’re not stuck. You’re clinging. Let go. See what happens.
Interesting split in the comments, eh? Some say it’s so simple — just let go — others give you 101 reasons to convince you to let go. I’m sure both approaches are equally ineffective.
Many accept the Lord thanks to a well-preached lesson (the thousands upon thousands that Billy Graham reached, for example), but I doubt if many of them were commited aetheists. More likely they were seekers of some kind or another.
You atheists are a tougher bunch by far because you’ve designed your own unique cosmology — there really shouldn’t be atheist dogma — so a unique set of messages or circumstances are needed. And I think it’s more likely the latter, the circumstances, that will bring you to a change, if you do change. Ugh. That may not be nice. Just having the light spark on whould be so much nicer.
I worry for your kids most. Having God in a kid’s life is so fulfilling, so enriching, such a great model. I’m sure you’re raising marvelous kids; don’t get me wrong, but my oldest were 10 and 8 when I accepted Christ, and they came along with me, and I got to witness their befores and afters. It was beautiful, just beautiful.
Book’s views on religion are kind of clouded, although much can be extrapolated by the perceptive mind. As could occur for Book’s views on politics. Some people ignorantly and foolishly believe Book is authoritarian and right wing craziod with a side of siding with the party line all the time.
Based upon some of what she said, I get the impression that she wasn’t brought up amongst the severely fundamental Jewish community. Certainly she shares many of the same taglines that Jews who continue to vote Democrats, have. She just could no longer tolerate such things, I suppose.
So a lack of religious training or influence early on, combined with disillusionment with some kinds of Jewish behavior and the dogma of the Left, could result in someone with beliefs neither of atheism nor religion. Book doesn’t seem to me to be someone who disbelieves in the existence of God, if only because most classical liberals do believe God exists, since technically the most successful institution in the history of Earth (US Constitution) for preserving human rights, was built upon the presumption that a Higher Power exists. Certainly Book might not agree with anyone religion’s views on the nature of God or what God is, but certainly it would be inconsistent with most classical liberals for her to be an atheist. A person who does not believe God exists. Maybe she means that and maybe she doesn’t.
The other variation is agnosticism, which is more or less sitting on the fence, neither believing nor disbelieving.
Then There’s Deism, a belief in God, but inconsistent with what most religions see God as. Even Protest religions that focus on the individual connection to God.
Christianity is unique compared to Islam, in that there are various different things you can tweak in it for your own needs and desires. Unlike Islam, which is non-tweakable. Obey or… well, or suffer the consequences of not obeying. It is a very disciplined and harsh religion, with many many rules. Where the relationship to GOd is less like a friendship, than a command structure. He commands, you do. Not a relationship of mutual help and benefit.
The Celestial Heirarchy was very important in why God, of one sort or another, is good for preserving rights and progressing human progress.
It is very hard to say that if you give a human being Full Powers to do whatever he pleases, that he should act in an ethical system when that system says that there is no one more powerful than him. Why should a powerful person act ethically then and constrain his power? Even for the forces in the universe, inertial must be met with an equal and opposite force to stop. Why should things stop just cause they are the most powerful around? Ethically it is invalid and metaphysically it is invalid.
Each person must decide what he will believe and why he will believe in it. Book obviously has a set of fundamentals she was unwilling to violate to satisfy the Left. Compromises could be made, but that was the limit of the give.
Any comprehensive beilef system which explains the world and justifies the good and negates the evil, is good for children. Children tend to be intensely curious, if you don’t have an answer to things, they will try to find the answer somewhere else.
It’s easy, actually: you can’t really perceive Him unless you knock on the door and ask to be let in. You can’t get there as exercise in logic because logic pre-supposes knowledge, facts and assumptions that exist beyond our ability to perceive. By contrast, a thinking atheist (versus an agnostic) must arrive at a conclusion based upon a well-developed logical construct that presupposed having all the facts. Without that, it is a faith unto itself. My own faith has been reinforced by many life-experiences and, especially, the experience of knowing His presence. However, an atheist does not have that, leading me to conclude that the strength of his/her faith must be stronger than that of my own. So, Book, did you mean to say “atheist” or “agnostic”?
Good question, Danny. Perhaps I am an agnostic. I don’t hold absolutely that there is no God. I’m not so arrogant. However, I haven’t yet had an emotional or intellectual epiphany that has enabled me to say that, as to my own personal beliefs, I see and feel a greater force in my life that must be God. So, I certainly don’t have a well-developed atheistic viewpoint that announces completely and definitively that “there is no God.”
On a related note, I always have to laugh at the Satanists who renounce God. Without God, there is no Satan. The latter is the dark opposite of the former. Devil worshippers are just allying themselves with evil and immorality, rather than good and morality.
As for me, I must be agnostic because I try to live a morally good life according to traditional religious concepts (although I don’t observe religious formalities, such as regular worship). I’ve always felt that, if there is no afterlife in which I have to answer to a God, I’ve still done okay by my fellow man. (The Abu Ben Adam school of religion). However, if there is a God, I can at least answer honestly to having followed the major moral precepts he laid down (the C.S. Lewis, Last Battle school of religion).
I suspected something of the sort, Book.
Perhaps I am an agnostic. I don’t hold absolutely that there is no God. I’m not so arrogant.
Most classical liberals aren’t arrogant, in that kind of way anyways. And it didn’t make sense to me given what I knew, that you would declare that you believe God doesn’t exist.
Book,
What we believe will never change the facts.
I believe there is a God who is knowable..
You apparently believe there is no God or at least if there is a God, you cannot know Him. (Agnosticism or atheism — you choose).
Neither of our beliefs, regardless how diverse, will change the facts.
I have investigated the facts for over 45 years but just shortly before that, looking at the evidence at hand, I made a decision to believe in Jesus as my Savior. The way I reached my decision, I found out later, was similar to a brilliant mathematician Blaise Pascal’s thoughts. This was called Pascal’s Wager. I was not so brilliant — but just saw a good deal based on fact.
Book, you might investigate and consider these thoughts by Pascal..
The Wager is described by Blaise Pascal in the Pensées this way:
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“Let us now speak according to natural lights…Let us then examine this point, and say, ‘God is, or He is not.’ But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here.
“There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up… Which will you choose then?
“Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose.
“This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances.
“If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.
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Now I (Jack) say, if God does exist in Jesus Christ as He says, (and He does) and you believe or trust in Him, you gain all. But if you refuse to investigate Him and thereby reject Him, you lose the joy and benefits of that knowledge on this earth. Then, after this life, you’ll miss the free guarantee of an eternity with Him in Heaven.
As Pascal says, “He is.” Weigh the advantages vs the disadvantages. This should not be a difficult choice.
ExP(Jack)