Tuesday, February 27, 2007

eSkeptic Feature Article - An Elemental Impulse

An Elemental Impulse by Paul Gabel, the author of And God Created Lenin: Marxism vs. Religion in Russia, 1917–1929.

The separation of church and state was so construed by the state that the churches themselves and everything that hung in them, was installed in them, and painted in them belonged to the state, and the only church remaining was that church which, in accordance with the Scriptures, lay within the heart.

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

While Vladimir Lenin was languishing in Europe waiting for revolution, he championed freedom of religious expression in Russia. But when he took power in November 1917, he reverted to the Marxist imperative of destruction of all religious faith — whether institutional or psychological. Marxist theory predicted that the end of class warfare would automatically lead to collapse of the class-based superstructure of religion, and Leon Trotsky held that the superstitious Russian muzhik was on the verge of atheism already — all that was needed for the whole rotting corpse to collapse was a good shove (like murdering Orthodox Patriarch Tikhon). But Lenin knew that the task would not be easy.

While the Bolsheviks worked to persuade foreign governments that no religious persecution existed in Russia, Lenin and the Cheka (secret police) decided to help Marx’s automatic process along by arresting clergy and ordering them shot, imprisoned, or exiled, often without trial.

The government spied on priests, censored their sermons, raised their taxes (as unproductive citizens), and ordered them to live outside the villages they served. It seized churches and monasteries, and reopened them as antireligious museums. It abolished religious schools and prohibited religious education until the age of 18. When a disastrous famine struck the Volga region between 1921 and 1923, the Bolsheviks used it as an excuse to confiscate gold, silver, and pearls from the churches — allegedly for famine relief but actually to line commissars’ pockets — while refusing to sell the tsar’s crown jewels to buy bread for the starving. The Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, and others offered all non-consecrated treasures, but everything of value was stripped from places of worship.

The Bolsheviks promoted a “progressive” schism within the Orthodox Church with a panoply of communistic priests — after all, hadn’t Jesus united Palestine’s working class and ordered the wealthy to offer their riches to the poor? The government poured so many resources into this Living Church (in contrast to the Dead Church) that people began calling it the Red Church. Finally, in 1927 this tactic was abandoned in favor of support for the newly elected Patriarch Sergei, who submitted to pawn-like status.

Wild pageants erupted in the largest cities, mocking and ridiculing the Christian celebration of Jesus’s birth. Young, working-class atheists paraded through the streets carrying effigies of religious leaders of every faith they could think of. They dressed up as priests, monks, rabbis, mullahs, and shamans, while fellow demonstrators taunted and mocked them. An article in Izvestia described some of the characters: God embracing a naked woman, the Virgin Mary, the pope in a fancy motor car blessing the people, a monk riding on a coffin full of holy relics, a priest offering to marry anyone for a price, a Protestant pastor, a Jewish rabbi, a yellow-robed Buddha, Marduk of Babylon, and a group of devils with long tails and horns bringing up the rear.
And God Created Lenin (cover)

ORDER the book

For centuries monks had been manufacturing “relics” of saints using cardboard, wax, animal bones, and goat hair. The Bolsheviks discovered these frauds and filmed them so the people could see how they had been deceived. The Communist Youth League and the League of the Godless distributed millions of scientific and antireligious tracts throughout the countryside. They replaced religious holidays with workers’ holidays — the Day of Industry for the Feast of Transfiguration, and Harvest Day for the Feast of the Intercession — as if traditions could be invented. And they organized festivities on Sundays to lure young people from the churches. Bibles could no longer be printed or imported. Even the teaching of chess was marshaled to the cause — emphasis on logic would surely undermine irrational faith.

The Orthodox Church seemed such an easy target. Almost a thousand years old in Russia, it was a product of pagan and Christian syncretism. The peasants planted pagan penis figurines in their fields to encourage crop fertility and paid the local priest to sprinkle Holy Water on their crops to ward off pests. Their faith was not spiritual but habitual. They worked during the week, drank and fought on feast days, then confessed their sins and went back to the same regimen in endless cycles. Most considered priests to be magicians rather than God’s delegates on Earth. They indulged in what would seem to Westerners as the silliest of superstitions and seldom prayed for anything except better weather.

As each day went by with no divine retribution, it seemed to the Bolsheviks that they were right. If God had created Lenin, He could have uncreated him with a snap of his omnipotent fingers. And if God truly existed, why had he not done so? Surely the party had crossed any line that the Almighty might have drawn to limit the behavior of man. It would seem that they had exceeded even the transgression of Eve, yet their leaders were neither banished from Eden, turned into pillars of salt, nor consumed by fire.

Yet on days of ideological frailty they must have felt like the early Christians waiting daily for the Second Coming that never came. There was even a church revival during the 1920s as many citizens — especially the intelligentsia — rediscovered what they had lost. Nikolai Bukharin wrote words in 1919 that he could just as well have written in 1991, when the Communist experiment was over:

It has been comparatively easy for the proletarian authority to effect the separation of the church from the state and of the school from the church, and these changes have been almost painlessly achieved. It is enormously more difficult to fight the religious prejudices which are already deeply rooted in the consciousness of the masses and which cling so stubbornly to life.1

The Long Run

Religion is like a nail: the harder you hit it, the deeper it goes in. Our efforts should have been directed toward drawing it out.

— Anatoly Lunacharsky, Commissar of Enlightenment

While the Communists ruled Russia, religion (Christian or otherwise) never died out. It had its setbacks, to be sure — there were not enough priests, many churches were closed, and it was dangerous to be too vocal about religious ideas — but religious emotions had burrowed deeply into the Russian collective mind.

By 1936 Stalin felt that he had made progress on the antireligious front, but rumors circulated that about 40 to 45 percent of the population was still religious. Being well along in the process of wiping out all conceivable rivals to power, he was in a tolerant mood. Attending a meeting on the writing of the 1936 Constitution, he commented: “Why should the clergy be disenfranchised? Not all of them are disloyal.”2 However, the January 1937 nationwide census revealed a surprising endurance of religious sentiment; apparently many dared to check the box “believer” as a silent protest, and many who were indifferent toward religion could not quite bring themselves to check the box “unbeliever.” Stalin was furious. He could avoid embarrassment only by refusing to publish exact numbers, though the figure of 50 million believers leaked out. Another Western source claimed that 57 percent had claimed believer status, which if true would amount to some 80 million persons. These figures were astounding when we consider that respondents’ names were on the forms!

Why this religious persistence? Communists, obsessed with science, approached the churches of Russia as if they were a product of some type of malformed science. They believed that if they could simply educate the populace in “correct science,” religion would go away. Hence they scratched along the surface of religion, exposing internal contradictions, revealing the origin of gods in early man’s fear of natural forces, and ridiculing the existence of miracles.

Though this method, coming from a lack of appreciation of the deeper psychological aspects of religion, did have an effect on some individuals, it could not penetrate very far into the social psychology of the masses. Robert Casey, writing in 1946, used a different metaphor: “The Soviets accomplished little more than the pruner who cuts the leaves and surplus branches from the treetops. The result in the long run was to encourage a more healthy growth.”3 During the Great Patriotic War of the early 1940s, Stalin even had to appeal to the people’s faith to keep the country united against Hitler’s onslaught.

In the early 1960s Nikita Khrushchev, irritated with the lack of antireligious progress, ordered a new crackdown on the churches and their clergy. Completely lacking imagination (never a socialist strong point), all of the same failed tactics were regurgitated to be tried again. Believers just went underground and waited it out — time was on their side.

Eventually, as post-war standards of living inched upwards, Russians developed a certain apathy toward the church, but this does not appear to be a result of Marxist prognostications or Bolshevik tactics — rather it mirrors the Western European experience of less suffering leading to less church attendance.

Excuses abounded. In the early days, failures on the antireligious front were attributed to practical difficulties with implementation: inadequately trained cadres, poor organization, lazy workers, and communications problems. Then Soviet apologists pinned the survival of religion on carryovers from tsarist times. Marx predicted that post-revolutionary life “would be stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it had emerged.” This still seemed a reasonable explanation for religious persistence when Emelyan Yaroslavsky, head of the League of the Godless, used it in 1923:

The human spirit is characterized by inertia. Although the body already finds itself in new relations of labor, the mind lags behind in grasping the new forms. Traditions, legends, have their hold on the brains of the living.4

Stalin’s contribution to the Marxist excuse factory was his “surrounded by capitalism” theory, arguing that since the Revolution was supposed to be international it could not come to fruition while capitalist nations existed on the Soviet periphery. While the USSR was temporarily a mere enclave of socialism waiting for ultimate world victory, religion within the country could be expected to have some life left in it.
The Even Longer Run

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.

— The Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov

Over tens of thousands of years is such a thing as (collective) life without religion possible? Did Bolshevism have a chance of wiping this ancient way of thinking from the map of Russia and the minds of its people? In spite of their tactical blunders, were there reasons for failure beyond their control — reasons that less ideologically blinkered leaders could reasonably have been expected to understand, or at least to notice? Is there an elemental impulse toward some kind of worship?

The Protestant reformer John Calvin believed there was a semen religionis — a religious seed common to all humanity that, when expressed, could remain pure (as in his denomination) or be corrupted (as in Romanism). The German philosopher Rudolph Otto called this the sensus numinis — an innate sense of awe and longing for the otherworldly that was the basis of all concepts of god. Julian Huxley argued that religion is “a function of human nature,” but Leo Tolstoy upheld a universality of religious experience that had nothing in common with the forces of nature. It was based, he thought, upon man’s awareness of his insignificance, his isolation, and his sinfulness.

Modern-day neuroscientists have even found that stimulation of certain neurons in the temporal/limbic system of the brain can produce intense sensations of joy and visions of being in the presence of God.5

My personal theory, which is as plausible and unprovable as any other, is that a religious sense exists as a consequence of the evolutionary process. Over millions of years hominids with larger brains were favored due to their improved ability to interact socially, communicate linguistically, and obtain food. As computational power expanded, these same brains incidentally acquired the ability to grasp their loneliness in the larger world and to anticipate their own deaths. Those who could not imagine a purpose for living turned to less purposeful lives and were marginally less likely to survive to reproductive age, or even to be interested in reproduction. As people without purpose were weeded out of the gene pool, increasingly large percentages of the surviving population were capable of turning their powerful minds to thoughts of gods, whose “existence” would itself become the purpose of life. Man became an animal that could no longer “live in a world it is unable to understand.”6 The neoconservative Irving Kristol observed:

If there is one indisputable fact about the human condition it is that no community can survive if it is persuaded — or even if it suspects — that its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe.7

Perhaps we know too much for our own good.

Another explanation for the universality of religion that I find attractive imagines religion as a forward extension of the gullibility or impressionability that a child needs to learn language and culture. The child must have the capacity to trust that whatever surrounding adults say is true and useful. It is similar in process to neoteny (the retention of juvenile features in adult animals). Just as over thousands of years wolves/dogs were selected by man for retention of their adorable juvenile features and for obedience, thus retaining them into adulthood, humans’ childish acceptance — providing “answers” to the unknowable — gradually extended into adulthood in the form of religion. Faith could be simply an extension of that adaptive trait, with priests (“fathers”) as guides.

Regardless of any anthropological theory of religious origins, the ubiquity of a religious sense cannot be denied. Writing in the 1930s, the anthropologist Ruth Benedict concluded:

No matter how exotic a society the traveler has wandered, he still finds the distinction [between religious and nonreligious] made … And it is universal. There is no monograph in existence that does not group a certain class of facts as religion, and there are no records of travelers … that do not indicate this category.8

Michael Bakunin took up this issue in his 1871 God and the State, where he pointed out that universality is no more a proof of validity than was the commonly held belief that the sun revolved around the earth proof that it did. Writing in the immediate post-Darwinian world, he saw religious universality as a stage in man’s development from the animals and supported the study of religion only as a method of supplanting it as the human mind moved forward. Nonetheless, Bakunin admitted the pervasiveness and necessity of faith up to modern times. “Nothing,” he wrote, “is as universal or as ancient as the iniquitous and absurd.”

Nicolas Berdyaev (along with the Grand Inquisitor) asserted that man was by nature a spiritual being and that “the soul of man cannot live empty of religion.” Nothing can take from him the urge to venerate and adore something higher than his mere self. There is an imperative toward the superhuman.

Universality within societies implies the inherent nature of a behavior or trait. Of course, what applies to societies does not necessarily apply to every individual within that society. There is a natural sexual desire that can (sometimes) be overcome by vows of abstinence; presumably there are celibate monks and nuns, though I doubt there is one who has never entertained a sexual fantasy from the day of his or her vows. An evolved biophilic love of pastoral lands with moving fresh water can be overcome by an individual’s desire to live in the desert. In the same way individuals pledged to rationality and humanism can overcome a natural religious tendency; modern societies contain a significant minority of nonbelievers. (The Bolsheviks seem to have accomplished it, except for a smattering of “Godbuilders,” who tried to fashion a new religion out of Communism so they could fill the gaping spiritual void they, themselves, had created.)

If faith is inherent in the human condition, then the Bolsheviks were doomed from the start, for their goal was not just the physical destruction of church buildings or the legal destruction of religious institutions, but the emptying of minds of even the possibility of religious thought or emotion. Marx, Engels, and Lenin, of course, rejected the premise of a religious human nature, arguing that ever since separate social and economic classes emerged, religion had become nothing but a tool of the ruling class. The Bolshevik rejection of innateness is what led them on their hopeless quest.

Five years after the Communists lost control of greater Russia — after decades of antireligious parades, endless propaganda, and cruel persecution — Russian Orthodoxy still claims (at least nominally) almost 72 percent of the population and “no religious affiliation” claims less than 19 percent9, which is roughly the figure in America, where no such antireligious crusade occurred. That tells us something significant about the religious nature of our natures.
References

1. Bukharin, Nikolai and E. Preobrazhensky. 1966. ABC of Communism — A Popular Explanation of the Program of the Communist Party of Russia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 253.
2. Timasheff, N.S. 1943. Religion in Soviet Russia, 1917–1942. London: Religious Book Club, 65.
3. Casey, Robert Pierce. 1946. Religion in Russia. New York: Harper, 105.
4. Yaroslavsky, Emelyan. 1990. “Is the Communist Movement Antireligious?” In William G. Rosenberg, Bolshevik Visions: First Phase of the Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia, Part I. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 242.
5. Carter, Rita. 1998. Mapping the Mind. Berkeley: University of California, 129.
6. Quoted in Guthrie, Stewart Elliott. 1993. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. New York: Oxford University, 32.
7. Quoted in Pinker, Steven. 2002. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking, 131.
8. Quoted in Davis, Nathaniel. 1995. A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy. San Francisco: Westview, xviii.
9. Chart, Time, May 27, 1996.

Reprinted with permission from Skeptic.com. Subscribe to eSkeptic by sending an email to join-skeptics@wood.lyris.net

Only Reasonable That Christians Invented Science

However, that just makes sense. And it makes absolutely no sense to consider that believing in God is a hindrance to science. First, imperially and historically, this can be disproved. Secondly, why do folks do science? Primarily because the want to know more about how things got the way they are.

Frequent contributor and now friend, Bernardo, commonly maintains that there are two ways of thinking about the universe and how it works. One involves purpose and one doesn't. However, at the root of every desire to know must lie the desire to know not only how, but why. And folks who are serious about their Christianity are always desiring to go deeper, learn more, about God and his purposes. And there is no way to do this without also being aware of the natural world. Thus Biblical Christianity and Science are natural kissing cousins. (I used that on purpose. Heh heh.)

Monday, February 26, 2007

A Third Proof Of GOD

If you and I are able to communicate, we will find that our minds work almost exactly the same. This is true all over the world. It is true of primitives, isolated tribal groups, and sophisticated first-worlders. Why haven't our minds evolved in very different ways? Why don't we have Babylonian confusion?

Because God created our minds.

The rest of the story

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Self Awareness and Natural Selection

I've seen many attempts to show how reptiles became birds or bats learned to use sonar, but I have not seen any (they may exist) attempts to give a step-by-step evolutionary explanation as to why self awareness was so useful that it flourished. And in a related way, why would self-deprecation, depression, and all the other aspects of self awareness contribute to better dispersal of genetic matter?

I should probably leave it for another post, but I have a tendency to think in a stream-of-consciousness kind of way. Personalities have a very substantial range of differentiation within humans. One would say that these differences could not all be beneficial, yet they all seem to be universal throughout various societies and over time. Shouldn't some of them have selected out by now.

If you agree that these aren't related, tell me. I'll be happy to separate them.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

The Perfect Father

In bouncing about the atheist and naturalist blogosphere, it seems that one argument against God is that a perfect God would act somehow differently than God has. He wouldn't have had some of the laws He is credited with. He would have made people and even animals different, so that they wouldn't suffer so much or do evil things to one another. And He certainly wouldn't allow his children to suffer and die in such seemingly immoral ways. One possible way of getting a better understanding of his concept is to compare God to fathers. This would make sense in that God has directed us to see Him that way.

As a father, I have sired two children, adopted two, and am helping to raise one more. In today's world that would make me at least in the top 10% of experience.

In the course of deciding to have children, I did not stop and think: "Maybe I shouldn't do this, because the world is a nasty place, and some children turn out nasty no matter what you do." I wanted children (and grand kids), as did my wife, because they provide a great deal of joy, because it is part of our "citizenship" to propagate, and undoubtedly because of biological urges that are harder to define very precisely.

As part of my expectation in having children, I knew I would need to sacrifice substantial time, energy, emotional energy, money, and ultimately my life for theirs if it came to that. When you think about it that way, one might wonder why so many folks make the decision so easily.

As a father I am put in a position to decide how to raise the children. How much and what kind of discipline? How much intervention? How do these things change at different ages and maturities? How do I make decisions when there are two or three children involved and all can't be served at one time? What if I'm forced to make health or life-and-death decisions that effect one child differently that another? It goes on and on.

Then there are the rules. I'm a great believer in making sure the rules are clear, known well in advance, administered constantly, and handled the same among all the kids. Rules about when they can get new privileges and what it takes to get these. Rules about what happens when stuff doesn't get done as it should. Rules about when and what kind of discipline will be meted out for what? Rules about how to treat others in the family and why?

In order to keep this post within some kind of reasonable size, I will stop here. Hopefully, it is clear about how God the Father has basically done the same thing with his Human children.

Now for a bit harder set of comparisons. What if someone walked in my house and threaten my children, and said that his whole family was dedicated to trying to kill my family? I think I would be justified in taking him out, and maybe his whole family.

What if I had to allow one of my children to die so that the rest could live? I know for a fact that all will die or one will die? Get harder.

What if one of my children had to die so that 100 members of my family could live? What if it were the entire community? What if my child was 18 and he was merely going to be put in a position where he might die in order to provide a better life for the community?

What if I felt that I needed to make a rule in my house that I would beat a child within an inch of his life if he raped another of my children? We will assume there is no other authority to intervene.

I'll leave this for now. I'd love to hear some comment.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Another Proof Of GOD

If I am a fish looking out of the water at a fly, I see the location of the fly and propel myself out of the water in that direction. If I don't take into consideration the refraction of light coming into the water, I will miss the fly.

Everything that I think I know is impacted by things about which I have no idea. Those who are currently claiming that the earth will warm by 4 degrees over the next 40 years admit that they no next-to-nothing about clouds. Thus there may be actions of the clouds that will dramatically alter their predictions.

In order for me to make predictions about thousands of things each day, I assume that certain conditions that existed last time will exist again this time. I also use deductive and inductive reasoning to come up with variations on these predictions.

In reality, however, I don't really know if the apple will taste sweet and not kill me. This is because I don't know if it has been adulterated as to taste or poisoned. I don't know everything. Therefore, in the broadest sense, I don't know anything.

However, I act every day on the basis of this reasoning, and so does everyone else, theist and naturalist alike. This is because we believe that things are coherent, structured, and uniform. There is no actual basis for believing this without God.

See here for more detail.

Proof Of GOD

Just read some material produced by a couple of philosophers that are no doubt famous, but new to me. I will give a lay interpretation of what I read.

Assuming there is objective truth, and one would expect that both naturalists and theists would agree that there is a metaphysical reality, we cannot know that truth unless there is a God.

I will presume to make two arguments for naturalists. I'm sure you'll correct me if these are not accurate. 1. Humans have evolved as a result of our ability to survive and reproduce. 2. Christians and other theists have invented God. A corollary to 2 is that the invention of deities would be a survival method.

To the extent that we have invented gods or others things that we believe to be objective reality, but that are in fact myths that help us survive, our minds are not able to actually differentiate between objective reality and these myths. If this is true, then this would also be true for naturalists. Therefore none of us really knows what objective reality looks like.

Alternatively, if God is God (the Christian definition), and He has made man in his image, then He has both created objective reality and created in humans, minds that can discern what is real. Thus He has created naturalists who are able to discern what is real also.

Clearly, folks of all types and stripes have some varying opinions about what is and isn't real, so this ability is not perfect, except in God. However, to the extent that we possess the ability at all, it must come from God, not from evolution.

For all the details see here.

Monday, February 12, 2007

A Perfect World - One Without Evil - What Would It Look Like?

I would love to be a novelist. I've tried, but don't have the talent. In reading about novels, however, it turns out that what holds the interest of the reader is conflict, resolution of conflict, tension, especially life and death, building to some kind of climax where things are at stake, and there will be winners and losers. Things like that.

I think humans are fascinated with not just fictional things of this nature, but are actually made better (and worse) as they face real and imagined crisis.

Some who have a not-very-thorough understanding of how the Bible describes heaven often suggest they don't want to go there because it would be boring.

I don't believe heaven will be boring. I don't think the description we have sounds boring. Something will replace conflict and fascination with death, etc., to make heaven even more exciting by far than earth. But I don't believe I can comprehend what God has in store.

That is why I laid down the challenge. Any time I've tried to create a perfect world, it soon becomes clear that my version would not be better than the one we have. Different, but not better. Try it.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Is Skepticism Good Science?

As a youngster in science classes, we were taught to observe nature, look for things about which we might find classification, causes, rules, laws, etc., construct hypothesis, construct and conduct experiments for testing those hypothesis, then make our conclusions. Such conclusions might lead to the establishment of theories, or show that we were on the wrong track, or suggest new hypotheses. At no time do I ever remember the teacher suggesting that we look at nature with the intent of overthrowing common sense. The goal was positive, not negative. Now, it seems that many in the science community seem as intent on destroying foundational beliefs in God as they are in discovering how nature works. Certainly there seems to be more joy when a new "discovery" carries with it some aspect that will tear greater holes in the fabric of Christianity.

Not to say that this doesn't work both ways. Christians are pretty happy when they think they have found a breach in the walls of science. Especially if those breaches are in evolutionary or astrophysical science. Thus we are skeptics of science in much the way that some scientists are skeptics of religion. Each group is less skeptical of its own dogma.

For the purposes of this blog, my concern is that naturalists look at things that are totally self-evident and work overtime to try and find bizarre explanations, which explanations usually require at least as much faith as faith in God, and usually have much less evidence of any type.

I will admit that there are times when Christians look at things which are pretty self-evident and work overtime to try and fit scripture into current scientific thinking.

Another idea in the middle of formation. Maybe you all can shoot me down or add to what I've started.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

What Would Be Your Tipping Point?

Returning to one of the basic concepts of this blog, "rational," "reasonable" humans generally review evidence both before and after making a decision. Even if the decision is taken at an early age and fully due to the influence and authority of respected elders, teens and young adults will almost always need to own their own decision at some point. This need to take ownership is at the root of most "positive" rebellion. (Disrespect being the negative type.)

So it is the contention of this blogger that both sides of this debate come to their positions, at least to some measure, by reviewing the evidence available to them. Then, once having come to a decision about faith in God, they are in a constant battle to hold on to that decision. There may be a natural inclination to indoctrinate oneself by selection of input (friends, reading material, memberships, etc.), and their will be the normal tendency to dismiss materials that don't fit into the belief system. However, both sides will find plenty of information slipping past these filters to challenge basic assumptions. Thus, the weighing of the evidence is a never ending proposition.

If this is true, then evidence matters. The questions then becomes: "What was your tipping point?" and "What might tip you back?" Note that the two questions are not specific to either side of this debate.

For me the tipping point out of the church was hypocrisy. The tipping point back in was realizing that there was plenty of that everywhere I looked, and church folks actually had less of it. The tipping point to agnosticism was 5 points in evolutionary theory. The tipping point back to God was to learn that those 5 points were either fraudulent or found to be not true.

So what was your tipping point? What would it take to tip you back?

Monday, February 05, 2007

Natural Consequences of Naturalistic Thinking VS and/or In Concert With Spiritual Thinking

The Naturalist declares: "Everything that is came into being by chance. To some extent, at least, there is cause and effect, though the amazing natural physical universe and the living creatures on earth, have come about by some combination of random occurrences within a system that has rule sets that never, or at least have never, changed. Most importantly, whether or not this is true, we will pursue knowledge assuming it is correct. This will keep us from being sidetracked by God-in-the-gap type of approaches that might hinder the determination of how things really came to be the way they are."

The Spiritualist declares: "God did it, and you can try to prove natural processes until the end of time, but it won't change the fact that God spoke the universe into existence, and he can just as easily speak it out of existence. However, he has provided us with a text that tells us His plan, and that He is worthy of our trust that He will not deviate from that Text. Since, up until today, the rules of existence are seemingly unchanged, He has been worthy of that trust. Case closed."

These two positions are commonly being seen as VS. Why couldn't they be combined? This post will argue that the vast majority of Christians see these two as potentially in combination. And it would seem that the consequences of either of the first two standing alone are not what either side would want.

I think it is reasonable to say that a purely naturalist view leaves open the potential for everyone to have their own moral code, and for this moral code to be changing as quickly as science comes up with new ideas. That has been the experience of my lifetime, and seemingly the experience of history.

I could so easily go to the eugenics issue which was born straight from Darwin and survival of the fittest. We could talk about the dictatorship of the proletariat, a result of economic and social sciences. Maybe we should look at the morality that grew out of some of the best known scientists of the 50's. Kinsey or Dr. Spock come to mind.

In the 60's science told us that we had the cures to STD's and we engineered a method for birth control. Combine these with the God is Dead thinking and you get "make love, not war," and "everything is OK if it doesn't hurt somebody else."

Christians have done some pretty sad things over the years using or misusing the Bible to back them up. However, that same book seems to constantly work as a corrective for evil. (Slavery) And, if there was not a Divine author, it just becomes one more book to choose among for a moral system.

If we take spirituality out of the "marketplace of ideas," even the ideas in pure science, we lose the balance. Science may seem pure at its root, but he who is believed to hold the "truth" will not only be held up as an idol, he will believe himself to be one. Thus, the holder of the truth will feel compelled to make recommendations for how that truth should play out in the future. I love engineering almost more than I love science, but engineers have created some of the most horrible disasters ever. (Like global warming, if you believe it is man-made.)

If we all become naturalists, will the art and literature and science and music be anything close to as powerful as it is now? Where does passion come from? Where do we derive our desire to leave a legacy? Would you die for Darwin? For Ayn Rand?

So, like the USA, where we have balance between the branches of government, and then more balance between federalism and the states, and then leaving the power in the hands of the folks, our system of finding truth is divided between the pure scientists, the philosophers, and those who offer a spiritual dimension. I have a hard time imagining the system with one of the three taken out. And it was Christianity that created scientific inquiry, so I have a hard time imagining our system functioning without that leg either.

In a system where only the theologians hold sway, they now hold "truth" in their pocket. They become the idols and believe themselves to be little gods. Folks follow them mindlessly, and no one who has that kind of following can easily keep their humility. Even if the first generation is benevolent in either a pure theolically driven or pure naturalism driven system, the second generation will assuredly use whatever means necessary to hold onto the power. I think this is what you are seeing in the new Dawkin's approach. He is turning vile in an effort to hold onto the small amount of power that he thinks science has amassed.

This is a theory in development, first draft. Take your shots.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Are We Worthy to be Participating in this God vs No God Debate

No, I haven't lost my mind. I realize that if I win the point here, no one will ever have a reason to visit this blog again. However, any good debate must have worthy opponents. When I participated in debate in high school, we spent hundreds of hours preparing for a very limited issue. I feel confident that those who are so far giving their ideas, thoughts, and opinions in this forum, are very bright. It would also appear that each one has spent quite a bit of time researching and thinking through the issues. And, believe it or not, I don't raise the issue in this post to discourage young thinkers, or those who are new to the subject from commenting. I have been commonly amazed at the insightfulness that comes from those who are fresh to this or any subject.

No the issue here is more philosophical. I can't speak for you, but I see myself as one very small organism among 6 billion or so similar assemblages of matter, which taken together are a minor blip on this planet, much less the universe. To suggest that we, individually or together, have gotten it right more often than wrong would even be a stretch. In fact, one of my favorite retorts to an employee who is concerned that they screwed up is: "I've probably already screwed up something more costly today. Go, and screw up less."

So, if I'm a naturalist claiming that science (the folks who brought you "little boys and little girls are basically identical without society telling them how to act - Uh Huh) has so much wisdom that they know Darwin was right, and the big bang is fact, and string theory is going to explain it all, I have to really wonder if we are truly that smart. Then, should I really be turning to the believer in the lab next to me, and telling him with great assurance, "There is no God, and your Bible is just the greatest marketing tool in history."

On the other hand, if I'm a God follower, and think I have it all together because I have most of the population on my side, should I be getting all snooty and telling the naturalist that evolution is total bunk. After all, the pea brain that God gave me is not capable of figuring out how to get my 2 year-old to use the potty. But I claim to know how the Grand Canyon came about in 10,000 years?