Of all the religions that are practiced today, the most pathetic must be Satanism. It seems to essentially be Ayn Rand light and in its social Darwinism sounds like the very flower of the Grand Old Party. No black masses, no human or animal sacrifices, not even a belief in the existence of their deity. It seems to be more about Oprah-like individual empowerment.People who appropriate symbols of strength are usually weak.
There are different forms of "satanism." - both as a philosophy and as "a practicing religion." ... mostly: it is a philosophy that "man is his own god" and "ought to act and live that way."
Then there is the insideous occultic philosophy of "Luciferianism." - namely, that Lucifer is actually the god of this world and is greater than Yahweh or any other god. According to this mindset: lucifer is 'a good guy' who just wants us all to "be free" to pretty much "do as we please" and NOT be shackled by MORAL RESTRAINTS of religion or GOD. - this group has LOTS of adherents, ... many of them in secret and occultic societies.
"I've been reading through your comments again as I work on my assignment. This time I am wondering if I can explore these comments with you as part of my ownexplorations. "Having read your own email in response to mine, I will understand if you do not wish to comment or explore them. It would be exploring them as issues rather than specific to your mother's death though I guess any comment may reflect on that. "While I have noted these comments from what you have written, they are not comments that are unique to what you have written. They are comments I have heard from others as well. "I must have done something terribly wrong to be suffering this pain". "I believe that was a comment of your mothers and I have a recollection that I heard her say that too. I am sorry now that I did not explore that with her. "The other question is one that is implied and you yourself commented that the question is as old as Job: Why should the good (the nice) suffer? A similar question is found in "Why should bad things happen to good people?"
You ask some big questions. While Nancy makes dinner, I'll try to pound out my thoughts for what they are worth.
(Some of the contents of this essay comes from interactions I have had with several people going back many years.)
As regards to mom, I heard her make that comment, but it of course needs to be contextualized in the pain and depression that she endured, so I don't give it any weight at all.
"Tell me about your God of love," an atheist wrote to me a few years ago, "forall that I see is 1 Samuel 15:3, 2 Samuel 24:15, 2 Samuel 6:6, and 1 Chronicles 21:14." Never let it be said that atheists haven't read the scriptures. Sometimes they have read it only too well. And I must admit thatI too I have trouble squaring God's command to "slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" with the One who said "Permit little children, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." That God would inflict pain or even allow pain has challenged man since the days of Job.
Grandma June provided one answer to Natalie Angier. "When I was eight yearsold, my family was in a terrible car accident, and my older brother almost died," she writes. "The next night, as I lay scared and sleepless on my paternal grandmother's living-room couch, she softly explained to me who was to blame. Not my father's Aunt Estelle, a dour, aging wild woman and devout Baptist, who, as usual, was driving recklessly fast. No, the reason Estelle's station wagon flipped over and Joe was thrown out the back window was this: my father had stopped going to church the previous year, and God was very, very angry."
A 16 year old had a question for an advice columnist: "When I was a little girl it was not so bad because I got used to the kids of the block makingfun of me, but now I would like to have boy friends like the other girls andgo out on Saturday nights, but no boy will take me because I was bornwithout a nose-although I'm a good dancer and have a nice shape and my father buys me pretty clothes. I sit and look at myself all day and cry. Ihave a big hole in the middle of my face that scares people-even myself-so I can't blame the boys for not wanting to take me out. My mother loves me,but she cries terribly when she looks at me. What did I do to deserve such a terribly bad fate? Even if I did some bad things, I didn't do any beforeI was a year old and I was born that way. I asked papa and he says he doesn't know, but that maybe I did something in the other world before I was born, or that maybe I was being punished for his sins. I don't believe that because he is a very nice man. Ought I commit suicide?"
The basic formulation for the problem is as follows: If God is good, He isnot God. If God is God, He is not good. If God is good, He would wish tomake his creatures happy. If God was all-powerful, He would be able to dowhat He wished. But His creatures are suffering. Thus, God lacks power or goodness or both. Either God doesn't exist or He is impotent or He is evil.
In The Brothers Karamazov, the greatest novel of the 19th century, Fyodor Dostoevsky puts into the mouth of the atheist Ivan the one irrefutable objection to a personal God, that the only possible religious answer is that human suffering will be justified by the divine harmony and the end of history. It's a hollow argument made by some theologians to explain the holocaust-that Hitler was God's punishment of European Jews for their secularization and Biblical prophecy was fulfilled when the state of Israel was born.
"Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have childrento do with it, tell me, please? It's beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say,perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn't grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh,Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just,O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept tha tharmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking atthe mother embracing the child's torturer, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' but I don't want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protectmyself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpected tears to 'dear,kind God'!"
The classic counter is that God made man not as robots but with free moral agency. God freely limited his own freedom and put no limit on ours. God thusly could not have created a moral universe without at the same time freeing man's spirit. If God had programmed all humans to be good, therewould be no evil but there would be no virtue as well. Evil exists because free will exists. Blind force, instinct, or the orchestrations of God do not compel us. This reply to suffering makes sense only if weassume that God is not in control of all that happens. If God controls plane crashes, terminal cancers, and atom bombs, then God must be responsible, just as I must be responsible if I allow my child dies after I let him to play in the traffic. If those actions are bad, then God must be fundamentally evil and also the author of evil. I cannot believe that. Rather, I believe that God created a contingent universe and delegated tohumanity the freedom to work through the vicissitudes of life-dealing withwar, disease, and poverty. By doing so, humanity develops morally, intellectually, and technologically. So this is another reason why I believe God's self-limiting sovereignty and that we determine our own destiny in the face of life, death, and God.
It is commonly said that God is omnipotent, having the power that admits of no bounds or limitations. The word itself doesn't exist in the Bible, which firstly makes the claim suspect. There are certainly many references to God the creator, that the winds and the sea obey Him, that Satan is bound by His will, and that "in Him we live and move and have our being." All of this is true. But it doesn't follow that God is all powerful in the sense that God intervenes in natural law. We see this is Jesus rebuke of Satan when when Satan tried to tempt him in the desert (Matthew 4). I also believe that God constrains Himself when it comes to consience and will. We say this with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Our Lord said "Not my will, but thine be done." I read that to mean there was nothing preordained about the choice that Jesus made.
My boys brought home their report cards yesterday with almost all As and a few Bs. They are the best answer I can think of to the problem of pain. Their intellect is to a great extent than perhaps I would want to admit mere chance--that mystery of DNA alchemy as well as the accident of birth that put them in community with great schools and teachers that mades them who they are are with their unique minds, temperaments, and appearances. The smallest chemical inbalance could have made both children profoundly retarded and barely sentient. Let us say that my children were disabled. Can we really say that the enabled children are blessed by God and the disabled are cursed by God? But what isn't luck are the chain of choices Ben and Zach will take in the future with the power and the potential to be a a physician or a porn site web master. And this, I believe, is where God comes in-- not in orchestrating the rain that falls or whether we like or don't like vanilla ice cream, but in inspiring and sustaining us to to live up to our full intellectual and emotional potential. I see the converse of this in what I call atheist infomercials, those annoying but strangely fascinating televangelist shows that purport to make you rich and healthy if only you will send in your contributions to a sliver-tongued man of the cloth. What is perhaps even more heritical are those who ascribe to God such soveriengnty that they decline to take commonsense medical precautions on behalf of their children, such as blood transfusions. Whatever these people may profess, they are by their actions the walking embodiment of evil. For by their actions, they are practical atheists in the worst sense, as they reject the existence of a God that can gave us doctors and medicine and our minds to make such decisions.
My view accords with the view of Harold Kushner, whose young son had progeria, the rapid aging disease. By the time his son had died at 14,the boy looked like an old man. "An aching sense of unfairness" ledKushner to write the best-selling book When Bad Things Happen to GoodPeople. Kushner argues that bad things didn't happen because God wants topunish us for our sins, test our strength, or teach us lessons. (In mymother's case, what possible lesson or opportunities for personal growthwould be imparted as she lay on her broken back starving to death?) Instead, Kushner sees randomness to the universe. Lottery winners are merely lucky-not blessed. And when bad things happen, we shouldn'tquestion ourselves or God and be angry because the world is imperfect andunfair. Insurance companies call earthquakes and hurricanes that kills hundreds of people "acts of God", but they use God's name in vain. These are acts of nature, not acts of God. Nature is morally blind. The act of God is the courage of us to continue in the face of disaster.
But I think this somewhat of a sterile argument that doesn't address the core issue of the suffering of the innocent. I think for example of thetwo million Jewish babies and children that were swallowed by the maw ofthe Nazi death camps, including kids of relatives of my wife. It makes me think that if there is a God, it's a God who is blind. That children must die so that we will be good strikes me as incomprehensible. Following the death of his young boy, Huxley replied to a letter from the Reverend Charles Kingley: "As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the otherday, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read as part of his duty, the words "If the dead rise not, let useat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die." I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alternative involved a blasphemy against all the best and noblest in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What! Because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given back to source from whence it came, the cause of great happiness, stillretaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and willspring from that cause, am I to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovelin bestiality? Why the very apes know better, and if you shoot theiryoung, the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in the forge."
I have great sympathy for this reaction, and should I lose my wife or child,my grief would be as great, but I could not be persuaded that their lives hadbeen at no purpose leading us to chuck our ethics. I think of the Oxford don C.S. Lewis who aggressively promoted the classic Christian answer to evil and suffering in The Problem of Pain that I mentioned earlier. You may remember the movie "Shadowlands", played by Anthony Hopkins as Lewis, in which he had acrisis of faith when he watched his young bride die of cancer. At the end ofthe day, there are no satisfactory answers-only the consolation of faith in the One who also suffered-- and our friends. In one of the last scenes in"Shadowlands," we see the professor hugging his young step-son after his wife had just died-- both in tears.
Perhaps that is the only real answer in the face of the silence and distance of God. Faith is not all green pastures and still waters. The comforters in the Book of Job put forth their rational arguments, and at the end Job-without an explanation but with the existential experience of God-turns for questioning to wondering silence: "I will lay mine hand upon my mouth." In this fragment of time on this island in space,we are in this together and we must help each other out. Evil and sufferingis inextricably part of the human condition individually and institutionally, and if there is one thing we must believe in, it is that we can make a difference. To live is to suffer. To suffer is to find meaning. And, if there is purpose in life, there must be purpose in suffering and death. The Psalmist said that "My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth." It did not say, "My tragedy comes from the Lord."
The bad that happens in our life has no meaning. But we can redeem it by giving it meaning.
"There seems to be a very thin line between a "tough love" God and a "not there / uninterested" God. How do you distinguish which God version correctly explains the human situation? Faith alone?"
I cannot say that I've nailed the question of theodicy. But it is my attempt to reconcile what may very well be irreconcilable-- the existence of an imminent God to the more deonstrable existence of nature bloody of tooth and claw. You're certainly right about that thin line. Perhaps one way to analogize it is look at our relationship to Our Father in Heaven to our father on earth-- parents and their relationship to their children-- not when thir kids are able to harm themselves by playing in the street-- but as adults themselves-- making what we hope are sensible choices at the university but with us there only in spirit to guide them. Could it be that God expects that level of maturity from us, not to expect magic tricks, a hand on the back of the bicycle, or checks in the mail but to look within ourselves and to others to make the right decisions and take the right actions?
I have my doubts that people who switch faiths impact in any substantial way their essence. I wish I didn't have to conclude that, but my observation of everyone who has claimed some kind of born again or conversion experience shows only the most superficial behavorial changes or no change at all. The honest , brave person still remains honest and brave and the fearful and dishonest person still remains fearful and dishonest without respect to his or her new label.
Just as a tiger doesn't change its stripes, their essential wiring remains unchanged by embracing a new faith, so far as I can tell.
No matter what our real age is, we are all about six year old. By that time, our core nature has crystallized, and very little can be done to change it. I know this is a profoundly pessimistic view of man, but it comes out of observing humanity as a landlord for 20 years. When it comes to people, past is prologue and character is destiny.
What seems to be common however is two things. Firstly, I see a somewhat transient boyancy of the spirit-- a feeling of hope and security. However, generally that melts away unless that person is inherently boyant, hopeful, and secure. Secondly, and more subtly, I see old behaviors getting re-framed using religious words and habits. For example, the workaholic now becomes a churchaholic, the street-wise bully now becomes the pulpet-wise bully, and so on.
This is not to say that the conversion experience is not real and it does not matter. Of course it is real and of course it matters. I just don't think it is as behavorially life-changing as most people think and wish.
Here are excerpts of an article in today's New York Times Magazine. It profiles "New Calvinist" Mark Driscoll, the "cussing pastor", who disdains "prohibitions of traditional evanglical Christianity. Taboos on alcohol, smoking, swearing and violent movies have done much to shape American Protestant culture-- a culture that he has called the domain of "chicks and some chickified dudes with limp wrists." Moreover, the Bible tells him that to seek salvation by self-righteous clean living is to behave like a Pharisee."
It appears that to Driscoll's way of thinking, it doesn't matter what you do, so long as you believe the right things. Among those right things is contempt for women and gays.
It wouldn't surprise me if Driscoll turns out to be flaming gay. It wouldn't be the first time that a fanatical authoritarian turns out to be a homosexual.
For all their cutting edge, I must say that their church has the ugliest splash page I've seen anywhere. Here is my advice on how to re-tool their site.
If, tomorrow, you should establish that the New Testament writings are frauds, how would that change the minds of a single Christian?
I believe a lot of Christians would say "my faith is founded on lies", and cease to be Christians.
This is an interesting psychological point, but I believe that you generally are wrong. And example is the "salamander letter" purporting to show that the original account of the Mormon leader Joseph Smith's discovery of the gold tablets wasn't true. The church's reaction?
"The so-called 'Martin Harris letter' [the Salamander letter] is no repudiation of Joseph Smith, but rather probably is a further witness of the Prophet's own account of the discovery of the gold plates. (Deseret News, Church Section, Sept. 9, 1984)"
Whenever indisuptable facts arrive on the scene, the church is quick to absorb those facts so long as they don't harm core dogmas. In this case, the facts turned out to be a fraud, and since the Smith writings where in themselves frauds, it was a fraud of a fraud. The key word is indisputable. Thus, despite the plethora of writings in the Bible that attest to a geocentric Ptolemaic cosmology, few Christians today believe that the earth is flat. Not so, in the case of evolution vs. special creationism, where the only indisputable fact is doubt.
Do you like the traditional or contemporary church services?
Many years ago, I was a member at Willow Creek Community Church and also a youth leader. It was exciting and an eye opener to be part of an organization that in effect putting old wine in new wine skins-- modern media but a four-square traditional Bible-based message. By contrast, some of the mainline churches have lost numbers, most notably the Episcopalians who are traditional in the structure of their services while often jumping on every modernistic bandwagon that trundles their way-- new wine in old wineskins. The WC model is the way to go if the goal is numbers. Having said that, the modernistic (mega) churches also are a flawed model in my opinion. With its seeker orientation, messages tend to be superficial and inoffensive. At Willow on a Sunday morning, you would be lucky to hear more than a single Bible verse in the sermon. It was essentially an anonymous place, which many people prefer. Again, you would be lucky to encounter someone you knew on any given Sunday. The turnover was tremendous-- a veritable revolving door. It also annoyed me that they had little use for the gospel classics, preferring even during the advent season songs from the Maranatha backlist. The effect was that most people didn't sing at all although the enjoyed the rock music and the drama. My preference is a mix: I like the traditional songs and sermons but also the contemporary and creative media.
Who would not want to have the whole truth instead of just a piece? Of course in this view, Jews are now two testaments behind with a lot of catching up to do.
I have a hunch that this speech marks the end of Romney's race, although this will only be revealed in hindsight. I think it is a mistake for several reasons. Some people will see it as an attempt to legitmize inexplicable dogma. Others will be offended by the implication that he is a man of faith and other candidates are not. This is the aura that Joe Lieberman projected. As a political move, it's not a winner, as the LDS are I believe about four percent of the population. Kennedy's speech was given at a time when Catholics were about a third of the nation, by contrast. Finally, there is also the contradiction between claims of ethics and the reality of the way some church members live their lives. I'm impressed by their family solidarity and general wholesomeness. I'm less impressed by their missionary zealotry. I ran into this buzz-saw about two decades ago when some LDS kids took me to court on behalf of a tenant I was evicting for non-payment of rent. There is also the strange phenomena that the LDS state of Utah is a hot-bed of scams. I don't know if there is an relationship between rip-offs and the LDS faith, but the facts are the facts.
I might also mention that my respect for Romney has eroded since the YouTube debate, especially beause of his spat with Julie Anne over immigration and his inability to forumulate a clear position as regards to waterboarding, placing his moral compass in the hands of his advisors and lawyers.
Shed a tear for the poor elephant. It has fallen on hard times.
The difference between Kennedy and Romney's speeches is that Kennedy was saying that faith must be separate from American politics whereas Romney seemed to be saying that faith is integral to American politics-- too bad to those who lack that faith or any faith. While they are both motivated to win votes, Kennedy's motivation also appears to be diffuse anti-Catholic nativism whereas Romney's motivation seems to be to identify with a specific Christian brand. Who do you suppose has a better understanding of the Establishment Clause? I think the elephant is in its last throes.
"Troupes of monkeys are out of control in India's northeast, stealing mobile phones and breaking into homes to steal soft drinks from refrigerators, lawmakers in the region have complained.
"Last month, the deputy mayor of Delhi died when he fell from his balcony after being attacked by monkeys.
"Efforts to drive out the animals is complicated by the fact that devout Hindus view them as an incarnation of Hanuman, the monkey god who symbolises strength."
Two Jehovah Witnesses stopped by today. I was still working so I couldn't chat with them. They left me copies of their publications Awake! and The Watchtower. The publications contained a mix of human interest stories ("The Plight of the Shark") and sound ethical instruction ("How to Protect Your Children"). I admire the Witnesses for their political neutrality and their refusal to take up arms but not so much their views of end-times and blood transfusions.
Apparently your theism does not push you to believe absurd and readily falsifiable things about the world. I try to be economically on my beliefs, especially faith-based beliefs. One of my core beliefs is that the great division among world views is not between theism and atheism but between reason and unreason-- uncritical and fanatical thought. One test for reasonable or rational belief is the extent and williness of those that hold that belief to aggressively test that belief in the market place of freely competing ideas, moderating their beliefs in the light of new information. Totataliterian and authoritarian beliefs naturally do not meet that test. I also make a divison between thoughts and actions. I really don't mind how nutty someone's convictions apparently are, but the time to draw the line is when thoughts translate into demonstrably hurtful actions. I had a good example earlier this week when two Jehovah Witnesses knocked on my door. The Witnesses prohibit the transfusion of blood for any reason, and I wonder how many of their flock went to the grave because of that immoral dogma.
Senator (or about to be former Senator) Larry Craig of Idaho, a family-values, anti-gay crusader who got caught in a men's bathroom in Minneapolis, MN soliciting sex under the bottom of a stall from an undercover policeman. He pled guilty to a lesser crime two months later and announced today that he is quitting the Senate because he embarrassed himself.
And let me guess.....the guy is a Christian?
In my time as a Born Again, I lost track of the number of hypocritical Church leaders who were caught doing the exact opposite of what they preached. They have a penchant for it.
There certainly are a lot of hypocritical Republican perverts.
As to why there are so many, I think it has little to do with their religious background. The Democrats have also had their scandals, most notably, Bill Clinton. However, I think the reason why so many Republicans are now coming out of the woodwork is because they have enjoyed six years of power with little accountability-- control of all branches of government and most of the press as well. Power is now sliding away from them, and wth that you will see even more scandals. Power corrupts, and power has corrupted the Republicans. A moral Christian Republican is becoming an oxymoron for our times.
CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour traveled to six countries on four continents to examine religious fundamentalism in the three Abrahamic faiths Judiaism, Christianity, and Islam.
I thought the issues were fairly and exhaustively presented in the segments that I saw on Islam and Christianity. What I inferred from the documentary was that the fanaticism of Islam at present was the more virulent and potentially deadly than that of Christianity as it is inseparable with the militerism and nuclear ambitions of Middle Eastern nations that lack the philosophical secularism of western countries. Secondly, I think the emotions that are felt are real, deep-seated and metasizing and there are no clear or easy solution on how to neutralize them. Finally, it also seemed clear that the fanaticism of the faithful was more often than not a political rather than a religious expression, which may seem like a paradox if religion and politics are one and the same.
I would take a stronger postion that that. I would say that there is no way for the US Government to deal with this militant fundamentalism. But the fundamentalism exists within a broad world culture and it needs certain things to be able to flourish. It needs to be able to depict itself as oppressed by an outside enemy. We do not need to contribute to the fundametalist self image. We do not need to nurture that self image. And when we do choose to nurture and cultivate that self image, as we are doing in Iraq, we should not be surprised when the seeds we have planted and tended bear their bitter fruit.
I think you are right. Paticular tin-eared policies of the US has contributed to their myth of Moslem victimization. Surely, one step to reduce this would be to eliminate our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. However, I think it is also true that we are hated for values that we deem are essential, such as the separation of the clergy from state policy and law and the idea of democracy and independent thought generally. Perhaps part of the answer is to conduct a two-tier approach-- strong military deterrence-- not US boots on the ME ground, which actually has an anti-deterrence effect --combined with efforts for dialogue and co-existence, in which one finds the word existence.
And, to repeat your first statement, we need to eliminate on dependence on (I would say addiction to) middle eastern oil.
There's actually two ways to do that.
1. Add a tax of $x dollars per gallon or barrel to fund a national project to create a viable energy alternative.
2. Another solution may be just as effective. Start a war with Iran that would close the Straits of Hormuz increasing the cost of oil and decreasing supply so that other viable energy alternatives are created. Republican neo-cons call this the free market solution.
