Sigh…
So here’s what’s been going on lately. Most of you who read this blog already know that when my wife and I left Christianity, it wrecked most of our family relationships. My wife’s parents and siblings, as well as my own, felt that they could no longer interact with us socially after our deconversion. We were no longer invited to any family functions, and our communication with them all but disappeared. We would speak if it was about religious issues, or if there were logistic issues that needed to be worked out in letting them see our kids, etc.
Over the years, things have gotten a little better, especially with my wife’s parents. Things are by no means back to normal, but at least our infrequent interactions have become more civil and more comfortable. A few weeks ago, I even had a phone conversation with my father that lasted about half an hour and had no references to religion whatsoever. It was nice.
Nevertheless, the awkwardness is still there, just under the surface. And we’re still blacklisted from all the family functions.
Throughout this time, I’ve occasionally reached out to my side of the family with phone calls, letters, facebook messages, etc, in an effort to discuss the issues that divide us. I don’t get much response. I’ve always been puzzled by that, since I know they think I’m completely wrong. If their position is right, why aren’t they willing to discuss it?
In the last five years, I’ve also been sent books and articles and even been asked to speak to certain individuals, and I’ve complied with every request. Why not? How could more information hurt? But when I’ve suggested certain books to them, or written letters, they aren’t read. When I finally realized that my problems with Christianity weren’t going to be resolved, I wrote a 57-page paper to my family and close friends, explaining why I could no longer call myself a Christian. As far as I know, none of them ever read the whole thing. And sure, 57 pages is quite a commitment. But they say this is the most important subject in their lives…
This past week, the topic has started to come back around. A local church kicked off a new series on Monday entitled “Can We Believe the Bible?” It’s being led by an evangelist/professor/apologist that was kind enough to take time to correspond with me for several weeks in the summer of 2010. I’ve never met him in person, but a mutual friend connected us, since he was someone who was knowledgeable about the kinds of questions I was asking. Obviously, we didn’t wind up on the same page.
My wife’s parents invited us to attend the series, but it happens to be at a time that I’m coaching my oldest daughter’s soccer team. So unless we get rained out at some point, there’s no way we can attend. However, we did tell them that if practice is ever cancelled, we’ll go. I also contacted the church and asked if the sermons (if that’s the right word?) will be recorded, and they said that they should be.
Monday night, the weather was fine, so we weren’t able to attend. And so far, the recording isn’t available on their website. However, they do have a recording of Sunday night’s service available, which is entitled “Question & Answer Night.” I just finished listening to it, and that’s where the bulk of my frustration comes from.
It’s essentially a prep for the series that kicked off Monday night. They’re discussing why such a study is important, as well as the kinds of things they plan to cover. What’s so frustrating to me is that I don’t understand the mindset of evangelists like this. I mean, they’ve studied enough to know what the major objections to fundamentalist Christianity are, yet they continue on as if there’s no problem. And when they do talk about atheists and skeptics, they misrepresent our position. I can’t tell if they honestly believe the version they’re peddling, or if they’re purposefully creating straw men.
A couple of times, they mentioned that one of the main reasons people reject the Bible comes down to a preconception that miracles are impossible. “And if you start from that position, then you’ll naturally reject the Bible.” But that’s a load of crap. Most atheists were once theists, so their starting position was one that believed in miracles.
They also mentioned that so many of these secular articles and documentaries “only show one side.” I thought my head was going to explode.
And they referred to the common complaints against the Bible as “the same tired old arguments that have been answered long ago.” It’s just so infuriating. If the congregants had any knowledge of the details of these “tired old arguments,” I doubt they’d unanimously find the “answers” satisfactory. But the danger with a series like this is that it almost works like a vaccination. The members of the congregation are sitting in a safe environment, listening to trusted “experts,” and they’re injected with a watered down strain of an argument. And it’s that watered down version that’s eradicated by the preacher’s message. So whenever the individual encounters the real thing, they think it’s already been dealt with, and the main point of the argument is completely lost on them.
For example, most Christians would be bothered to find out that the texts of the Bible are not as reliable as were always led to believe. Even a beloved story like the woman caught in adultery, where Jesus writes on the ground, we’ve discovered that it was not originally part of the gospel of John. It’s a later addition from some unknown author. To a Christian who’s never heard that before, it’s unthinkable! But if they’ve gone through classes where they’ve been told that skeptics exaggerate the textual issues in the Bible, and that the few changes or uncertainties deal with only very minor things, and that none of the changes affect any doctrinal points about the gospel, then it’s suddenly easier for them to swallow “minor” issues like the insertion of an entire story into the gospel narrative.
Sigh…
I’m going to either attend these sessions, or I’ll watch/listen to them once they’re available online. I may need to keep some blood pressure medication handy, though.
Finding Truth 
“about 6 months ago” – Four.”
Arch, just for clarifications, it’s five. We both were wrong. My only point was that what you quoted made it seem as though this happened last Friday, when in fact it happened last year.
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UnkleE,
I presented two pieces of evidence:
1. The Shroud was examined by three very highly respected laboratories, independently, supervised by the highly respected British Museum. The three labs not only dated the cloth fibers in the shroud, but independently dated three control pieces of cloth. All three labs came up with similar dates for both the shroud and the controls.
2. Carbon dating has proven to be very accurate. No, it will not tell you the precise year, nor even the precise century, but it gives you a several century range. It would NOT confuse a fourteenth century piece of material with a first century piece of material!
3. If Crown can find dis-interested scientists (not members of the Shroud society) who claim the carbon dating done by the three labs was invalid, I am open to seeing the evidence. However, as far as I am aware, no scientist has refuted the carbon dating of the shroud other than those who have an interest in saying it is authentic.
4. The Vatican has never said that the carbon dating done in the late 1980’s was invalid. The Vatican has never said that the Shroud is authentic. In fact, the Vatican has stated it is NOT authentic (pope Clement VII).
How much more evidence do you require, my friend?
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https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/frustration/#comment-25055
Yet another example of Brandon’s now-famous “Testament Twist,” the little dance he does based on his premise that his god is perfect, ergo if scripture suggests otherwise, the scripture needs to be tweaked until it no longer appears that way.
In his list of three, above, he completely ignores the likelihood of a fourth – that his god has a complete and capricious disregard for the feelings of human beings, much as some of us might have for the feelings of ants, doubtless using the “Potter’s Privilege” fallacy.
Or a fifth, that the entire Bible was written by men who had no idea what their god, if he even existed, wanted, but rather used the concept of a god to possess what they, themselves, wanted, under the premise, “god wills it!” – basically the Bush excuse for the Iraqi war.
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“Other than God’s right, I agree that for us we have no earthly justification for this behavior.” – As I suspected, “Potter’s Privilege” —
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Nate –
Let Me answer your questions “Do you think you “would still so readily accept those other claims if it hadn’t been for your personal experiences?
No.
But I would have read with interest and attempted to follow any exposition of actual miracles. CLAIMS of miracles sound like snake-handling and tent revival schlock, but physical evidence that can be examined forensically is of a different genre.
I make the sort of disciplined, structured argument from miracle that would have been able to persuade me that maybe religion was true after all, and specifically the Catholic religion, because it’s the only one that has scientifically examinable miracles.
That’s why I take the approach I do. I remember me, before, and I present arguments that the pagan Crown would have found reasonable.
That is also why I don’t argue from personal miracle: I might believe that the other person was telling the truth, but I wouldn’t have any way to test it.
And the thing is, religion – God – DEMANDS things of people. The Catholic God demands a LOT from people: Religion comes at a very high cost in terms of personal liberty (and libertinism). i would not voluntarily submit to such rules (and still don’t follow them perfectly) if I had serious doubts as to the TRUTH of it.
To be of any use, religion has to be TRUE. Otherwise, the game isn’t worth the candle.
Divine intervention showed me that God is. But divine intervention in somebody ELSE’S life never would be sufficient to convince me. I need real evidence.
That’s why I focus on examinable miracles and not mere claims of miracles They’re the only thing that would have convinced pagan me.
I see some people here who are Seeking Truth, and who would benefit from looking at things in this method.
No miracle, no God. If miracle, then God. Which God? The informational content of the miracles tells us that.
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“Whether we like God’s judgment or hate it, we are nevertheless all herded along by irresistible forces through the chute of life. Some die as veal. Some die as steers. Some are killed in the bullring. All die. And then all wake up and continue.”
Do they get to collect their million dollars when they leave town?
http://www.jhuger.com/kissing-hanks-ass
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I doubt any man, Peter, can possibly imagine the humiliation of that many thousands of Midianite/Kennite women, lined up for hymen inspection. What kind of mentality would a man have to have, to willingly take one who had failed inspection out and kill her?
This biblical atrocity was made even more real by the recent release of hundreds of girls that had been captured by IS for the purpose of sex slaves, given to the bravest of men in battle. One girl so released was pregnant – she was nine, and estimated that she had been given to at least ten men.
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Brandon,
If your god exists, and he is all-powerful as you believe, then he can do as he pleases. If he wants to slaughter every child on earth he has the “right” to do it. But, that doesn’t mean that we should refer to him as “our loving father”. Fear him yes, but let’s call him what he is: a brutal monster.
Can we agree to that?
We will agree that your god may exist, and you agree that if he does exist, he is a brutal monster?
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Unkle E has accused me of not being fair-minded in my discussions with him on his blog. Here is a link to our discussion. Readers can decide for themselves who was not being fair-minded:
http://www.is-there-a-god.info/blog/comments/belief/
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In a nutshell, here is the topic of discussion between myself and UnkleE on his blog:
I presented to him the passages of the Bible that discuss the Ascension of Jesus (only recorded in two books, Luke and Acts, written by the same author, who admits he was not an eyewitness to any of these events, in Luke chapter one. There is no mention of this event by the alleged eyewitnesses Matthew and John in their gospels.)
I demonstrated how if Jesus ascended at a speed at which his disciples could watch him ascend, which Luke says they could, then Jesus was traveling at a speed slower than the speed of light. This is a problem, because even if Jesus had been traveling at the speed of light, he would still not have passed the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest galaxy to ours. Bottom line: Jesus would still be puttering along somewhere between earth and the Andromeda galaxy. Jesus hasn’t made it to heaven yet! Jesus is NOT sitting (yet) at the right hand of the Father. Jesus is still in outer space!! The apostle Paul was wrong! A central tenet of Christianity and the Bible is wrong.
UnkleE would have none of this. UnkleE believes that Jesus ascended into another dimension or some other explanation other than ascending into outer space. However, UnkleE believes that the Resurrection accounts should be understood literally. In other words, the Ascension was not literal, the Resurrection was.
This is what drives me nuts talking to Christians!
How can we have a debate on the Christian belief system when every Christian, including fundamentalists, pick and choose which verses of the Bible to believe literally and which to believe metaphorically or “other-dimension-ally”??
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“To be of any use, religion has to be TRUE.” – The Sumerians – the first recorded inhabitants of the Mesopotamian valley – had a theocracy that lasted for four thousand years, based on their own pantheon of gods. Was it true? I doubt you would think so and I certainly wouldn’t. Was it useful? It held their culture together for 4000 years, the longest contiguous civilization known to man, so I would say so.
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As I’ve said many times before, Gary, at first, Humans placed their god in the sky, as that was where lightening and thunder came from. Then, last century, we learned to leave the earth in machines based on science, rather than superstition, and could find no trace of gods. So they moved him into outer space, where, presumably, we could never go, until we did. Still no gods. The latest ploy is to move him beyond space and time or into another dimension.
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Yes, Arch. It’s called: Moving the goal posts.
Bottom line, if your belief system is based solely on your intense desire to believe it, and not on actual evidence, the goal posts will always move to keep your opponent from ever “winning”.
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Archaepteryx wrote: The Sumerians – the first recorded inhabitants of the Mesopotamian valley – had a theocracy that lasted for four thousand years, based on their own pantheon of gods. Was it true? I
Probably to a great degree it was true. Natural law is God’s will, and men’s minds are made to attune to it.
The Sumerian deities were probably various Watchers, for good and for ill. Accepting worship of what ever sort is a temptation that most men find irresistible, so we can have some sympathy for the temptations faced by angels, who leave their stations to embrace it, help for awhile, but ultimately become twisted by their sins and turn inward to their own desire.
We can understand the intelligent animals below us by looking at us, and the angels above us also, by looking at us.
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Gary M, you wrote: ” If your god exists, and he is all-powerful as you believe, then he can do as he pleases. If he wants to slaughter every child on earth he has the “right” to do it.”
It’s not a theoretical. He DOES, in fact, slaughter every one of his children here on earth, of every species, including us. He does it without exception. He didn’t let the one son he biologically fathered get off without death – a truly horrific one too, one of the worst – and he’s not going to let any of us off either.
Perhaps he snatched up Enoch and Elijah – perhaps they didn’t physically die, but every body else, man, woman, child, dog and flea does.
In that, there is equality before God: all flesh is grass, and we’re just dead men walking. All of us. Children included.
Why worry about it? It is.
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Crown – two words, sea kelp —
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I agree with you, Crown. If your god exists, and if your holy book is true, what you have said is exactly true.
Now, can you admit that if your god exists, and if your holy book’s descriptions of him are correct, your god is a brutal Monster?
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Brandon, this is an extremely tough topic (actually any religious discussion seems to be). If we really wanted to fully hash it out we’d have to work at clearly defining every single word we use in our sentences, but that would take us centuries. I would like to at least make an attempt at some definitions. Do you believe there is a definition of the word “good” in your worldview, and if so how is it defined? Second question: you believe a supreme God exists which I do not, but do you believe that this God can be labelled as completely good?
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Arch,
I just watched the ape video you posted above. VERY interesting! Thanks.
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Nate wrote: “Hi Crown, How do you know this? And what about babies who weren’t baptized? Where do you stand on that?
How do I know that those who die youngest have the least sins?
Nate, I’m going to answer this as swiftly as possible, to sketch out the broad parameters of the answer. I’m not going to use your short question as the invitation to write a dissertation.
In brief, I know God exists because of miracles. I know that the Catholic God is the one I need to listen to, because of the miracles that are able to be studied: Lourdes healings and the Shroud. I know that the particular Catholic doctrine that Jesus is physically present in the bread and wine of the eucharist because of the Lanciano Eucharistic Miracle. I know that Jesus is divine because of the properties of the Shroud.
So, that means that I need to be paying attention to the Catholic Church and to Jesus, specifically.
Now then, I’m a lawyer. I parse authorities. I want to know precisely what rules I am bound to, and what rules I am not bound to, and I am unwilling to accept somebody else’s say-so.
Therefore, when I see rules and principles and philosophies in the Catholic religion, I look at it the way I look at opinions of courts. Judicial opinions can be long, but there is one part of every opinion that is the decision. THAT part, the holding, is the only part that is really BINDING on anybody. The rest, all of the reasoning the judge used to get there, the obiter dictum, is not really binding as law. It tells you how the judge (or judges) were thinking, and the logic tree they will likely follow if a similar case arises again. Obiter dictum may or may not be persuaded. Inferior judges have to follow the HOLDING in the case, the actual thing decided, but they don’t have to follow the logic.
What I’m interested in are the Holdings – the Law – what I actually have to DO, and NOT do, and THINK, and NOT think. The rest is left up to me, and I’ll do as I please.
To know the Law, I begin in two places: the Code of Canon Law, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The former is for clergy to know specific rules of practice. The latter contains the beliefs, customs and rules of the Church.
Well, I read them. I read them and I came to realize that the prayer called the Nicene Creed is a pretty good synopsis of practically the entirety of Catholic theology. But looking at it, and the canon law and the catechistic rules, I noted (with pleasure) that Catholic theologians are scholars, and they footnote their source material.
In other words, modern Popes and Cardinals do not feel they have carte blanche to just make up anything. There is very little that is new under the Sun, and with 2000 years of experience, most of the problems faced by the Church in every climate have been faced before, many times.
The Catechism does a good job of footnoting the documentary basis of authority, with most of the documents cited being either the Bible directly, or various papal encyclicals which, when read, themselves refer to the Bible directly, or to other encyclicals. When I have followed the thread back on every point that interests me, I find that all of the encyclicals repose either on the Scripture directly, or on early patristic writings about the Scriptures; or that certain issues emerged at certain times, and were addressed directly.
And those things that were not so clear in Scripture? Well, transubstantiation is demonstrated by Lanciano (but that’s a belief, not a conduct system), and the special nature of saints is demonstrated by Incorruption (ditto), and the particular importance of St, Mary is demonstrated by Lourdes.
So, I end up having the miracles prove God and vouch for the Church, and the Church, by and by, relying on the Scripture for the legal authority.
I also have the Lanciano and Shroud Miracles to vouch spectically for the divinity of Jesus.
So, based on the authority of miracle, I have my key for opening the Scriptures: with Jesus, and it is Jesus himself, in the text, who gives me the Rosetta stone for reading the rest of Scripture. When contesting with Satan in the desert, Jesus tells him “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds forth from out of the mouth of God”. My goodness that’s a very wordy way to say it. I looked at the Greek: it’s wordy. It could have been just: “every word of God”, but Jesus didn’t say that in the text. Nope, he made it more emphatic: every word that proceeds forth out of the mouth of God.
With the Shroud in mind, then, I look carefully through the New Testament to see what JESUS HIMSELF said and did, Specifically HIM. Peter, Paul, James, Jude and John wrote ABOUT theology, and Luke wrote about the early Christians, but what Jesus said and did DIRECTLY is contained in the four Gospels, the first couple of chapters of Acts, and Revelation.
What JESUS SAID is the Holdings, and the Law. The rest is obiter dictum.
Now then, Jesus referred to the Law of Torah, and the Hebrew Scriptures, and once again, when I go through THOSE Scriptures, I find that all of the LAW given by God in the Old Testament, every word of it, is given in the five books of the Torah. The rest is either a history record of the Hebrews striving and failing to live up to the law (which is pretty simple)., or prophetic exhortations, the bulk of which is to cease idolatry.
I went through carefully and highlighted every word that God himself said. Turns out that only about 8% of Scripture is actually spoken directly out of the mouth of God. And only a fifth of that contains words of LAW: directions and orders.
Fully HALF of the law in the Old Testament are specifications for the tabernacle and temple and specific rites. Well, Jesus pronounced the doom on the Temple, the Romans destroyed it. It’s gone, and so is the Aaronite priesthood. There is a great deal of the law of the Torah that CANNOT be followed, and a great deal more that only ever applied to Hebrews, specifically, in the first place.
There are several “covenants” in the Scripture, but when one reads them, there is not much to three of them. The covenant with man and beast after the Flood is “No flood again that covers all the land.” Check. The covenant repeated over and over to Abraham is ‘Your circumcised descendants will get this land.’ The covenant with Hagar is that Ishmael will be great and will live right there alongside Isaac.” Check. The covenant on SInai is that if you Hebrews, specifically, do everything I say, you’ll have a fertile stable farm in Israel. That’s it. That’s all. And if you DON’T, I’ll hammer you and drive you out. Nothing in ANY of that about life after death, or final judgment. The covenants of the Old Testament are about land: I won’t flood it all, Abraham’s heirs (through two mothers) get it (and they did, and are still there, and still don’t get along), and a specific promise for the state that God set up. Land. Not spirituality. Not eternal life.
Only the New Covenant with Jesus, which requires the body and blood (see: Lanciano Eucharistic miracle) promises life after death and being pleasing to God so as to be able to live with him in his City at the end of time. THAT is the covenant of Jesus.
So, from a legal perspective, there’s very LITTLE law at all in the Old Testament that is applicable, and Jesus repeats, restates, expands and gives new law.
See, this is the great revelation of Jesus, what makes Jesus NEW. The Hebrew covenant was about land and sheepherding, family, basic economics of a specific set of people, living in a specific land – not the whole world, and directly ruled by God.
WIth Jesus, we get the revelation of the bigger picture – of life after death, of judgment. With Jesus, we’re not talking about Hebrews anymore. After all, if Hebrews followed God’s law, and lived under his rule directly, they didn’t need to worry about what came next. He would provide.
But with Jesus, there’s no economic guarantee, there’s no farm, there’s no promise of prosperity. In fact, there’s a healthy does of reality: the people who will be drawn to listen to God are life’s losers, because life’s winners think they have it all here and now, and don’t want to give it up. But they will – they’ll lose their lives and their property, and money and position gave them access to things that are temptations to sin, and God holds men accountable for their DEEDS.
Jesus repeats that so relentlessly: deeds, deeds, deeds, that it’s amusing to see Christians seize on one line of Paul and use that to try to trump God and make it all about what you THINK, not what you do.
Who is God? Paul? No, the Father. And who did the Father commission? Jesus. Jesus is the one on the Shroud, with the miracles.
Jesus is the one who embraced ME in the vision – HIS words are the ones I am going to follow. Any words that seem determined to lead men, or me, away from what JESUS said into something lesser, something…EASIER…something that doesn’t FIT with Jesus…well, who is anybody to countermand Jesus?
So, if one really wants to know the LAW – the things that are SINS – well, for THAT one needs only copy down everything that Jesus said in the Gospels and Revelation. When one does that, and then de-dupes it, one ends up with 7 or 8 pages of law.
Within that law, of Jesus, there are two different sorts of law: things that will get you thrown into the fire at final judgment, and everything thing else. And since he is clearly the final judge, we already know what the judge thinks, because he told us.
On the last page of Scripture, Jesus twice says what deeds will get men thrown into the Lake of Fire at final judgment.
We must go to the Greek, and not content ourselves with English translation that turn the meanings:
Killing.
Idolatry.
Sexual immorality.(includes “filthy” and “dogs”)
Pharmakeia (drug peddling to induce altered, “magical” states)
Cowardice.
Lying.
THOSE are the deadly sins, according to Jesus. THAT is what will get a man damned to the Lake of Fire.
Now, Jesus refers to other moral rules and precepts during his ministry.
When speaking of Gehenna, which is Purgatory, he says that those who are forgiving will be forgiven, but that those who are unforgiving will not be forgiven their sins either, but will be put into prison with the torurers UNTIL the last penny is paid. UNTIL, not “forever”.
With those things in mind, with the basic framework of the law laid out, I can now answer your question: why are little children less sinful?
Well, the littler the child, the less likely the child will be a killer, an idolater, sexually immoral, a drug peddler, a moral coward or a liar. At a certain point, a child is so little as to be incapable of any such thing.
THOSE are the sins that result in damnation and never entering the City (unless forgiven). Little children haven’t committed THOSE sins and don’t NEED forgiveness. Therefore, they have less sin, and less serious sins.
And given that Christ said repeatedly that final judgment is based on DEEDS, how do I know that little children and unbaptized babies (for example) will be admitted to the City of God at judgment? Because their DEEDS were never sinful, and the JUDGE said what the sins were that would result in damnation. They didn’t commit them, so they’re not damned. Obviously.
How do I know? Because I can READ.
Why do I read THAT, and privilege THAT over the other stuff? Because JESUS said it, and JESUS is the one on the Shroud, and the one whose heart tissue is at Lanciano, and whose Mother was sent to Lourdes. And JESUS said that we are to live at the words that proceed forth out of the mouth of God.
So, those are the words of authority, and those are the words, and little children cannot commit the deeds of the worst sins, therefore they do not have as much sins as older people.
That’s why.
It’s pointless to come at me with Protestant arguments for two reasons:
(1) YOU don’t believe those arguments yourself and I know you don’t, so your advancing of the Protestant arguments would be an UTTER waste of time. AND
(2) Miracles tell me who God is, and my allegiance lies with the one who revealed himself to me, so I am unpersuadable, and I know what I’m talking about to boot.
Does it fly in the face of various Christian traditions? Sure. So what? “Christian Tradition” isn’t sitting on that throne of judgment, Jesus – the guy on the Shroud – he is. And I trust what HE said.
That’s why. And why. And why.
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“I’m not going to use your short question as the invitation to write a dissertation” – Really? You can trust him – he’s a lawyer!
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No one is EVER going to convince Crown, or believers like him, who base their belief in reality and truth on personal, subjective feelings, intuitions, and experiences, that they are wrong. It is a waste of time debating them.
Imagine if I said that I believe that the Tooth Fairy is the supreme ruler of the universe; she controls all things, including our eternal destinies. When asked why I believe this, my response is this: When I was five years old, I put my tooth under my pillow and the next morning a five dollar bill was under my pillow and my tooth was gone. The night before I had made a wish to the Tooth Fairy to give me a five dollar bill, and she did! This is proof to me that the Tooth Fairy is real. I dare anyone to prove to me that the Tooth Fairy does not exist. You can’t, can you? Therefore my belief in the All-mighty Tooth Fairy is valid and reasonable.
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Hey, Pauli – long time – how the hell have you been?
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I ran across this, this morning Gary, and found it very thought provoking, possibly you will too – oh, and it continues, should you wish to pursue it further, but the link is contained within the video —
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Gary M: “I agree with you, Crown. If your god exists, and if your holy book is true, what you have said is exactly true.
Now, can you admit that if your god exists, and if your holy book’s descriptions of him are correct, your god is a brutal Monster?”
My God is Nature Itself – the mind behind nature. From my perspective, Nature is brutal. Nature is brutal because the laws of it mean that my body won’t hold together, and that I’ll die, and probably in pain. So will everybody else.
If that were the end of it, then brutality and death would be the last word. But it isn’t. I AM a spirit. I HAVE a body. You too. The body dies, and as it does, it’s horrible. But then, being born is pretty horrible too. So is getting a shot.
God – mine and yours – likes his natural law, he likes the way he made things.
Now, there is no word “good” in the Hebrew. The words we translate as “good” and “evil” are really words that mean “functional” and “dysfunctional” or, more colloquially, what “works” and what “doesn’t work”.
God is God – the word “God” is really “Elohiym”, and it means “Mighty Powers”. YHWH is an imperfect term of the verb to be. YHWH Elohiym – very LITERALLY translated is “The Powers that Be”. Really.
The Powers that Be ARE. Nature is God, God is Nature. You actually agree with me on that. The only difference, really, is that you don’t think that God has a MIND, but I know he does.
You think that, IF God had a mind, IF natural law had a mind, then the fact that it crushes bodies and inflicts such massive pain and universal death makes it monstrous.
Certainly the YHWH Elohiym of Scripture never pretending otherwise. In the Psalms and in the beliefs of men, all obiter dictum, MEN say that YHWH Elohiym – the Powers that Be – are pure “good”, without “evil”, but YHWH ELohiym direclly says, through Isaiah, that he is the creator and sender of function AND dysfunction, of “good” AND “evil”.
God knows that he breaks down our bodies. He knows we don’t like it. As a doctor, you PARTICULARLY don’t like it. You’ve made a profession out of fighting God to stave off the ravages his own laws inflict on the flesh he made. I understand that. I’ve told him many times that if he were to grant me some power, I would ask for the power to heal, and I would walk out my door and just start doing that: healing, healing everything – plants, animals, people. The roadkill would rise from the dead. All of that dysfunction. God’s will is hard on this.
Anyway, I understand you: you deal with disaster and disease, at it’s easier to believe in a blind cruel nature than in an intelligent mind from which it comes.
But it is markedly less cruel when one sees the full picture. We DON’T die when we die. We shed a husk. The pain of the flesh as the spirit leaves it is commensurate with all of the pleasure and interest of the flesh during its life. Most human suffering other than terminal illness is inflicted by the cruelty and callousness of MEN, of evil human systems of economics and power. If men actually FOLLOWED Jesus’ system of charity and love, the margin of suffering of men would be vastly mitigated.
God has an opinion, and men have a different opinion, and God doesn’t change the physics to accommodate human opinion.
Now, we can understand this. Meat eaters and medical scientists whose drugs rely upon animal experimentation know that the animal suffering involved in providing meat and medical experimentation is utterly horrendous. And yet we, a higher order creature, do not spare the animals this misery, because we value something more, something WE think is higher. To the extent animals pray, they pray to be released from the horrors of what humans are doing to them in the lab, and in the slaughterhouse. But God doesn’t release them from our dominion, and he doesn’t release US from his dominion either.
However, death releases us from flesh, and the suffering only lasts for so long.
Does God know what he is doing? Well, Jesus died from crucifixion, didn’t he? So yes, he knows just how very bad what he puts us through is.
And yet he does it.
And so we come to the word FAITH.
Faith doesn’t mean “belief”. It means TRUST.
You believe in God: the laws of nature, of physics. So do I. The same God. The only difference between you and me, really, is that you don’t believe that natural law has a face and a mind, and I know it does. And you don’t WANT natural law to have a face and a mind, because that mind is so radically alien, that it lets children burn to death. I am horrified by that too, even by little things, by the dried lizard – WHY? Father, you can do anything – PLEASE.
Well, he can. And someday he’ll bring all of the dead back to life. But once the spirit busts out of the flesh, things are better at once, and there is perspective. And those steeped in pain often have the richest hues of experience. Perhaps that is why God brings the martyrs closest to him – he put them through hell to make the finest vintage.
Table grapes are watery and plump. To make them, take grapes and water them well in rich soil. But to make the best wine grapes, the soil must be harsher, the plant pruned way back, underwatered, tortured in effect. All of the life force of the plant concentrates into producing a few small grapes. But those are the grapes that make the finest wines. Perhaps human spirits are like that, and the most colorful and interesting spirits, to God, the finest vintage of souls, are the ones whose lives were like tortured grapevines.
Or perhaps God is just mean as shit.
Either way, Nature is Nature, Nature is God, and we’re stuck with it, and him.
The bad news is that we have to die, often alone, often unfairly, and almost invariably in pain.
The good news is that then we get to wake up.
In truth, when a child is dying of cancer, or a cat is pitifully shrieking as it is vivisected for science, there is no solace in this life. There will be no relief but death. But the solace, the only solace, is that death is not the end. It is but a door, and a long and, for those who suffered much, better thing awaiting on the other side. The sowers of pain, however, have a great deal to fear from death, a very great deal.
You don’t believe that. Fortunately, you’re wrong. I have seen the City. I’ve also been in the black pit. There is more after this, and THAT is what balances the ledger for God. THIS side of that curtain ends in horror and death for all. But then we get to wake up.
That’s the saving grace of it all. I know it. You don’t believe it. Perhaps the world of suffering has overwhelmed you so much you hate God for inflicting it, and banish the thought he exists.
He understands you – so as long as YOU don’t kill (and in particular, don’t kill his unborn babies, or support that), or lie, or practice idolatry (not much chance of THAT), or peddle drugs to bring on “magical” states (not likely), and avoid sexual immorality, there’s no reason for God to thrown you into the fire.
You don’t like him, so you disbelieve in him. But you follow his laws anyway, so it will end up alright for you. Your efforts to heal others are to your merit, as long as you use your skills pro bono also, for those who need them but cannot afford them.
You’ll come to the end, step through the door, pop out of your body and come face to face with him, and you won’t be surprised, And it will be ok. Even though you don’t want to believe in him now, because his Father is too mean.
That’s the truth. It’ll be a few years before you find that out.
Go in peace. Heal whom you can. Disbelieve that the Nature that’s killing your patients has a mind and wills it so, if that helps.
That’s all.
Natuire is not a monster. He is not human. But then, in the end, WE are not human either. We’re spirits residing in bodies. We like the bodies and the earth…unless we’re dying in agony and fear, but it’s not our true home.
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