The Christianity Chronicles – Why it’s all a crock

Free Will – what is it?

If you’re a Christian, it doesn’t only mean you believe in the Bible, in Jesus etc, it also means you subscribe to a particular architecture of thinking. Architecture is an interesting metaphor, because we know you get functional architecture, aesthetic, and then architecture that is meant to take your breath away [but fucking expensive to maintain, and otherwise impractical and rarely functional].
In these ‘Chronicles’ I aim to demonstrate, using very simple explanations, why our conventional views are – not flawed or slightly off – but entirely misinformed, entirely mistaken.

In order to be a believer requires that believers subscribe to a set of pillars to hold up their faith. These are, in no particular order, free will, the soul, guilt, sin, heaven [and thus hell], life after death [which is a separate concept to heaven in a sense, which I will explain], and a personal God. 7 concepts. I will be discussing each in turn, as briefly as I can, starting with this one:

Free Will

According to Christianity, God gave us free will, in an act of incredible kindness, and almost having faith in us that we would, wisely, choose to ‘pay back’ this generosity by recognizing that he – sorry, He – gave it as a gift in the first place. In other words, to not recognize [and in some ways thank/worship] the giver of this gift, to not pay Himback with worship and adoration we ought to feel guilty or ashamed.

What are we to use our free will for? Well, in Christianity we’re offered this choice. Call Jesus our saviour, and have eternal life with him, or reject him and go to hell [apparently an unpleasant place]. Is that what free will is for? To make a choice a butterfly or a rat would intuitively make – flames or forest, I’ll take the forest.

But let us leave Christianity’s inner workings for a moment, and look at Free Will as something standing on its own. Let’s forget what Christians say it is for, or where it apparently came from [a gift from above]. Let’s look at the mechanism of it.

On a daily basis we make hundreds of choices using our free will. We decide which clothes to wear, whether to take our cellphones with to work, what to have for breakfast, which route to take to work, what time we mean to arrive, which colleagues to greet, how productive we mean to be etc etc. Perhaps God cares what color socks we wear, and whether we brushed our teeth. Those are decisions we make each day using our free will. You might not think so, but each movement we make is also a matter of free will. You use free will to get up out of your chair, and the manner that you get up is a function of your free will. The manner in which you walk, and swing your arms comes from your free will. Every stroke on a keyboard, every click, is your brain wanting to know something/see something. Every movement you make, whether you smile, or wink, your tone of voice, it all comes from your free will. God’s gift to you, right?

It might surprise you to think of Free Will as something that comes from a particular part of the brain. No, it’s doesn’t materialize out of the ‘heart’ or ‘soul’ or some amorphous idea of consciousness. Free Will actually resides in a particular area of the brain. How do we know this? When that part of the brain is damaged, our free will evaporates.
Before we look at a few examples [science likes to use specific cases, things like facts and evidence] first an experiment to test whether your free will is working. First, use your eyes and look to the top left corner of the screen. If you did that, you exercised your free will. Even if you didn’t, perhaps because you’re a Christian hunting for disagreeable and unjustifiable comments here, you didn’t, but then you exercised your free will not to do so. Try it again, glance to the right corner of this screen, and hold your gaze there for a period of time, you can decide how long. It is quite a magical experience to see, hey, I can actually order my body around consciously whenever I like! Trick is, to remember to do this with our thoughts, to discipline our appetites. As the pilot of the incredible thing that is a human being, each of us – in terms of our free will – has a tremendous responsibility. [Sadly, few of us even realize we have a free will, so few take ownership of it and maintain coherent discipline over ourselves, and what we do – how much TV we watch, what we do with our time and money etc.]

Last exercise in free will. Close your eyes for a few seconds.

Now that you’re back, and buzzing with the potential power free will has for you [to control you in positive and powerful ways using your own sense of personal power or, forgetting about it, to relinquish control to mindless oblivion], let’s look at a case or two where free will is absent, and try to imagine what that is like.

A woman with brain damage to a supplementary motor area of her brain appeared unresponsive in hospital. She lay quietly in bed with an alert expression. She could follow people with her eyes but did not speak spontaneously. She gave no verbal reply to questions put to her even though she appeared to understand the questions since she nodded in reply. She could repeat words and sentences, but only very slowly. In short, her few reactions were very limited and rather stereotyped. After a month she had largely recovered. She said she had not been upset because she had previously been unable to communicate. She had been able to follow conversations but she had not talked because she had ‘nothing to say’. Her mind had been ‘empty’. I immediately thought she had lost her Will – where was the damage [to her brain]. It turned out to be somewhere in or near a region called the ‘Anterior cingulated sulcus,” next to Brodmann’s area 24…I was delighted to learn that this was indeed a region that received many inputs from the higher sensory regions and was at or near the highest levels of the motor system…You normally only have a single will at one time, although a split brain can have two.

[Later] I was reading a paper by Michael Posner in which he mentioned a curious condition, produced by a particular kind of brain damage, known as the ‘alien hand’ syndrome. A patient’s left hand for example, may make movements – usually rather simple and stereotyped movements – that the patient denies he himself is responsible for. For example, the hand might spontaneously grasp an object placed nearby. In some casesthe patient is unable to get the hand to let go and has to use the right hand to detach the left hand from the object. One patient found that he could not make his ‘alien’ hand let go by his own willpower, but could make it release its grasp by saying ‘let go’ in a loud voice!
And where was the damage? Again, in or near the anterior cingulated sulcus (on the right side for the alien left hand) but also in that part of the corpus callosum, so that the region on the left could not give the instructions to the left hand that the damaged region on the right was unable to give. *

From Nobel prize winner Francis Crick’s THE ASTONISHING HYPOTHESIS, page 267-269.
In other words, if God gave human beings free will [the freedom to move, to make choices whether to accept the reality of ‘God’ or not], he gave these choices, to move, to live, to breathe, to every other living creature also. Thus, in terms of free will, man is no different from insects and puppies in the choices we make.

A few more points to make. In the dialogues I have with Christians, many refer to Bible texts, quotes etc. This seems to me to be a ‘stereotypical’ response, which infers that the person elects not to use their free will and investigate their inner reality, but rather refer to a inflexible rule or statement or idea written, edited, polished and rearranged over centuries of Bible writing, by someone who wrote it in a different time, for a particular set of circumstances, in a different language. In all probability, if the writer, as he was writing it [for it is never a she], if the writer were told to which uses his writing would be used, he would likely be horrified. Imagine how a Jewish scholar would respond to his ideas on the promised land and the struggle to be free to be adopted in Africa, by black South Africans seeking to overthrow their white, some of them Jewish oppressors, and in Korea, who sought to rid themselves of Japanese oppression. The Jewish scribe would have said he was writing with only one people in mind – his people, in Israel, period. God’s chosen people. Of course, hundreds of years later you can add a few softening texts to say ‘er, by the way, this also refers to everyone else’ even though it’s almost always a story of Jewish people facing a majority of non-Jews.

Of course free will goes to the heart of Christianity, where new Christians promise to ‘give their lives’ [in effect their free will] to the Lord. Any person who does this can naturally be easily influenced to give their money, or do as the leader of a congregation asks. Peer pressure also plays an important role. Faith [trust, loyalty, confidence] naturally is the abandonment of a particular free willed act – thinking [knowledge/information/awareness].

Coming back to the early paragraphs above, Christianity really offers a very simple equation. God gave you free will, and once you recognize that, you have to give it back. It may seem fair and logical, except it isn’t. When you buy a pet, do you remind your pet on a daily basis how much money you paid, or that you are its owner? Most congenial pet owners have a pet for the joy and companionship of having a pet. They expect little in return other than moderately decent behaviour, and as is often the case, particularly with cats, the cats control their owners. You can hardly imagine a scenario where pet owners take their pets to a vet to have the free will part of their brain interfered with so that pets will love them, because it is part of the transaction of buying a pet that a pet ‘must’ obey its owner.
Pets love their owners because their owners love them, and care for them. We love God because we have to, and because, really, we don’t have much of a choice [without free will anyway]. And we’re commanded to do so: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, strength and mind].
So what about free will in the modern era? Are we – as consumers, salary earners – really free? Yes, but not if we never wake up and make the choice to be.

The impact of television is as powerful as it is because it is a strong form of audio-visual hypnosis. You have pictures flashing at you, scenarios repeated, with music and words to reinforce the message. People are far more susceptibleand impressionable to this than most of us imagine [which is why televangelists are also very successful]. I experienced this myself in July when I watched the Tour de France from an exercise bike. While watching the riders on a monitor attached to my spin bike, I was able to ride sometimes for over 2 hours with an average heart rate of over 120. It felt like 20minutes. In reality of course I am sitting on a machine, going nowhere, and staring intently at an LCD display, sweating profusely. But the hypnosis, the attention given to the plight of the riders somewhere in France is so captivating, it feels like one is right there with them, and so the act of pedaling with them seems hardly as hard as it would be facing the reality of being in a gym, on bike, riding like hell, going nowhere and having just few droplets of sweat and an elevated heartrate to show for it.

We ‘motivate’ and ‘manipulate’ our free will in many ways besides. From music, to alcohol, to, yes, the books we read, and the thoughts we fill our minds with. To the things we say to other people. In the end though, free will is yours to take control over your life, your thoughts, your moods, or there to give away. When you give it away it tends to be in the service of others, sometimes but not often in a good sense. Not in the sense of sacrifice, but free will surrendered as a result of ignorance, as a result of a lazy attitude to one’s own experience and sense of self. Commonly we are too lazy to think, and in this sense, offer our free will to others, who do our thinking for us. Movies, music, television.

The author quoted about, Francis Crick, is one example of someone who made an effort to find out what is happening in our brains. Those who read and investigate this area would eventually discover books like The Astonishing Hypothesis. But for a large group of people, the only book they ever really read is the Bible. A book that teaches its readers not to think, not to question, and not our will, but someone elses, be done. Whatever you do with your Free Will, each moment you can choose to allow others to steer your existence, or, at any moment, elect to once again be the captain of your thoughts, words and deeds in the real world, a world alive and of your making. Which is it going to be?

Disagree? Leave a comment or SHOOT THE DONKEY.

The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

Mere Christianity

Men make gods in their own image; those of the Ethiopians are black and snub-nosed, those of the Thracians have blue eyes and red hair. - Xenophanes

Unusually I was in church this morning. It's somewhat awkward, somewhat enlightening and usually interesting. Awkward because I make no bones about the fact that I'm a heathen, an infidel, a kaffir or to use the contemporary jargon, an agnostic.

So why am I there? Good question. I'm there because I do believe in community, and I do believe people ought to interpret the world and examine themselves in terms of a higher power, towards a higher order of the universe. I'm there to amuse myself with the intelligent delusions of our community. What explanations and comforts we give one another to deal with the troubles of our time. I'm also there because my girlfriend gets some comfort and value in the experience and I think it informs our relationship to some extent (with respect and good values). I'm not there because I'm searching for a personal relationship with God, or wanting to be saved etc.

Interestingly the preacher today said that if we only believe Jesus was a good man (as I do), we should all walk out the door, close the door and go and do something else. That's something I might not disagree with.

The value of Christianity (and other religions) is that it does bring people together. In a world that is increasingly isolated from itself, anything that brings structure to our communities, restores relationships and creates a family of people, motivates people to care for one another, is something to cherish, something to encourage.

There was a great example in this, when a 42 year old man witnessed today about his travails in Zimbabwe. He'd lost his mother in the war. He'd tried to have his child aborted as a young man of 20 and his son was then born anyway (fortunately with no defects). The son then evagelised the father 20 years later. At the same time a Zim war veteran was in the congregation who made an unnecessary gaffe as far as I was concerned [the only reason we didn't kill people like you was because I'm a rotten marksman]. Sorry, not a very nice joke that. I'm sure that in that building and in that setting, they were able to talk to one another and see each other as belonging to the same group (called church-on-a-sunday). And that's at least a step forward.

What I got out of the sermon were 3 things.

1). The circular and linear flow of God's grace.

If you are going in circles, it is because some aspect of your life is out of sync with the truth and you will keep coming back, repeating a scenario again and again. Once you find your true calling and respond with the correct attitude, you begin to move forward. Linearly.

2). We must smash our mirrors and start making windows in our lives

For me mirrors represent vanity, self indulgence, consumerism, a regimented and self-centred view of the world. It's a selfish me-myself-and-I paradigm. We need to connect with others, with the world around us, and see what is happening around us (and allow ourselves to be see).

3). Think critically

At one point the sermon was so powerful and effective I suddenly doubted my own perception that Jesus was a human-construct, the making of God in man's image etc. The preacher said that the entire template of human culture, East and the West, BC/AD time, everything, is based on 12 men accepting that Jesus was God. You probably need to hear the entire pitch to be as convinced as I was.

I then asked myself, "Why is it that you don't believe?" The answer is because the Bible is a flawed book. It was not written once but over thousands of years, hundreds of writers, has been edited and shaped (that is books switched, swapped, left in or left out) by hundreds of scholars and customised thousands of times, fine-tuned voted into and out of existence along with the existence of God. Language gave birth to religion, and only once language existed did it breathe life into the possibility of God. Languages also have evolved, and at some times religions have taken various forms, mysticism, superstituon, monotheism, polytheism, animism, and then the more conventional Abrahamic, Indian and FarEastern religions that survive today.

What Christians see today is the finished, polished result of a rather messy haphazard process. Something like evolution, in fact very much like it.
There is also this text (from C.S. Lewis) which asks us to make a choice since there is no middle ground (apparently):

Either Jesus Christ was God and the redeemer of mankind or he was a raving lunatic. There is no middle ground. The facts simply do not support one. Lewis says that we must take Jesus as the Savior of mankind or we must not. “We must take it or leave it.”

There is another possibility. That Jesus was a political figure, a political leader that became a martyr for a persecuted race of people during a time of siege, and revolution (one the persecuted people ultimately lost). That race of people has remained persecuted ever since, and the martyrdom (or perception of it) has continued ever since which to some extent explains the utility and relevance of these faith texts through recent history. They have been modernised and contemporarised by countless politicians. The view above recommends a radical approach, a fundamental following of the gospel untempered by critical thinking. We could also make this sort of statement:

Either that object in the sky is a UFO, with crew from a far advanced civilisation, or it is nothing. There is no middle ground. The facts simply do not support one. But don't come with patronising talk of weather balloons or tricks of the light. Take it or leave it. And obviously, common sense, logic, suggests that it is neither nothing or a UFO, but rather something for which we do not have specific information and must then remain inexplicably in the in-between space. People are loathe to not classify, label or identify something.

"...it was more possible that the human race possessed a spark of divinity that was worth cultivating than that a mysterious being was up there in the ether somewhere with anthropomorphic qualities of goodness and mercy running the whole show, and maybe it was the job of clergy to nurture that divine spark in us and make something of it."

I found it interesting that both Jim and I sold out...maybe that's too harsh a term...but in my austere novel THE HALF FULL MOON which is about the desert of the real, and the true nature of the original human being, about the threat of extinction to the human race (set in the Kalahari), I also flirted with divine inspiration and interference. Is it not (only) through the divine that we authorise radical change to ourselves and society? This is a peculiar subscription for us though, if you think about it, that we effectively endorse this view even in our fictions, while in our lives we are chagrined by the washes of diffused 'religion'.

...some analysts believe that the message of questioning authority is an important one.

I'd say the message is not healthy either way. Children are going to begin reading the books out of curiosity anyway. What is being shown is that the emphasis seems to be centralled on this very question of authority. Let's call it what is is: rebellion against authority. Ultimately I don't believe that the real issue is whether authority is good or not, but whether we are ready to honour and submit. The truth is that we are all part of a structure - nobody is above the law.

SHOOT: This guy seems to suggest that curiosity or being curious is dangerous, subversive or wrong.

"Ultimately I don't believe that the real issue is whether authority is good or not, but whether we are ready to honour and submit."

That's an extremely silly statement when you think about it. So wherever you are, whoever your master is (God, Satan, Hitler or Mandela) you submit without making sure who/what it is you're submitting to? Crazy!!!

'For if God’s greatness entails being invisible, intangible and inscrutable, then he can’t be disproved — but nor can he be proved.'

One argument that is almost never raised when non-Christians converse with Christians is this one: Why would an all-Powerful God have to resort to an elaborate drama that is the life and times of Jesus Christ? To put this into pure and simple terms: if you have a child that has misbehaved (because you said so), would it really be necessary to slaughter someone that is very close to you (as a substitute for yourself) as a way to say, “Okay, I forgive you, everything is fine.”

It seems to me Christians never think critically about the fundamental premise of Christianity, that God has to resort to an extravagantly operatic scenario (which demonstrates extreme cruelty in addition to a lack of both absolute power and divine imagination) in order to relieve mankind of the burden of sin. If someone does something wrong, do you set out a hundred year plan filled with tests, culminating in something where blood can be spilled? Blood sacrifice is an ancient practise, yet we are barbaric enough, us human animals, to still believe in it. Sacrifice a man, and what's wrong is restored to right. Wow, very progressive. The only way to restore justice to the universe is through a negative - so a negative cancels out another negative. Interesting mathematics. Using that logic it's hard to imagine a species capable of surviving a particularly tough challenge, and a number are lining up right now.

The Church of Oprah

It's not really the church of Oprah per se, but this is an interesting debate. Hysteria (the commentators voice has an...er...interesting urgency), hype, or a few kernels of wisdom, a glimmer of truth between the karma and the dogma. You decide (well, you will anyway).

Mr. McCain’s description of a sermon he delivered :

One day I talked about the parable of when they asked Christ whether they should pay taxes and he held up a coin and said, “Render unto Caesar, etc.” My point was and still is that when we were flying in combat, we weren’t doing God’s work. We were doing Caesar’s work. So for us to go to prison and then ask God to get us out was not fair to God, to our religion, to our beliefs and to ourselves. It wasn’t a miracle that sent a SAM [surface-to-air missile] to hit my airplane. It was a guy, a technician at a SAM site.

I think it was important, a little bit for the stability factor, that it wasn’t God who was going to perform a miracle, end the war and bring us home. It was men. It was Caesar. I think the majority of those guys felt the way I did but we just had some, just as people turn to faith healing and that kind of stuff, we had some of that. A lot of times I would pray for strength and I think sometimes I got it. Pray for patience to get through the next minute when things were bad. I just don’t think it’s fair to expect too much out of what is basically not the Lord’s business.
More.

Quote from WORLD MADE BY HAND

In the wee hours of this morning I finished James Kunstler's post-oil book.
Here's a quote:

"...it was more possible that the human race possessed a spark of divinity that was worth cultivating that that a mysterious being was up there in the ether somewhere with anthropomorphic qualities of goodness and mercy running the whole show, and maybe it was the job of clergy to nurture that divine spark in us and make something of it."

I found it interesting that both Jim and I sold out...maybe that's too harsh a term...but in my austere novel THE HALF FULL MOON which is about the desert of the real, and the true nature of the original human being, about the threat of extinction to the human race (set in the Kalahari), I also flirted with divine inspiration and interference. Is it not (only) through the divine that we authorise radical change to ourselves and society? This is a peculiar subscription for us though, if you think about it, that we effectively endorse this view even in our fictions, while in our lives are chagrined by the washes of diffused 'religion'.

If you think about it, both Kunstler and myself have resisted the easy way out, which is escaping our worldly troubles through 'salvation and living forever' by simply declaring and committing to faith in a saviour. Yet in both our stories we certainly flirt with the idea of a divine presence, but one that is human in its divinity (and its source), not a sort of disparate alien power originating from elsewhere in the universe. I called my 'Jesus' Alcala, 'the desert dragon', and she was a supremely wise but feminine force, and appeared both fragile and able to circumvent some of the limits we take for granted. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I specified whether her origin was an Earth origin, or a product of the universe forming. I have an idea it is probably both, as divine consciousness is based on a omniscient consciousness and connection to everything. Interesting.

What Color is God?

Setumo Stone's article "I refuse to pray to a 'white' God" got me thinking. I have a couple of very successful and intelligent Christian friends, and I'm not sure if we've brought this up before. When I lived in South Korea, some of the Jesus' looked Asian, and I remember then I did a bit of research, and found that many cultures 'modify' Jesus to look like, well, whatever the culture is that's worshipping him.

This says a HELLUVA lot. Jesus would be turning in his grave if he knew to what extent his ideas had been 'hijacked' by the gentiles, and he would propbably hunt down the Apostle Paul (formerly Saul), and throw him across the gulf separating heaven from hell. When Jesus said: Love your neighbor' that implicitly meant: 'Love your Jewish neighbour." Everything Jesus did he did for the Jews. Original Jewish law stated: "Thy shalt not kill." In those times it wasn't necessary to specify: "Thy shalt not kill other Jews." Obviously killing people from other tribes (heathen, infidels and gentiles) was nothing to cry about.

This same psychology continues today in fundamentalist religion. And it is easy for outsiders to point fingers and say: 'Well what happens if you throw a grenade (in the name of God of course) into a mob, killing people from your own Faith, aswell as the infidels, heathens, idolators and other filthy...er...human beings?' Well the Faithful have a clever counter-argument. If you kill someone from your own Faith (God forbid), you do him a favour because you speed him on his journey to heaven. The idea is that he will then 'thank you' when it is your turn to join him in heaven. As for those of other Faiths, you are doing everyone (including them) the seservice of cleaning up the world on God's behalf.

Great argument, but I just have one question. Since God is obviously the color of skin that yours is, and since everyone else (whose isn't) is expendable, and since you are clearly chosen...how about doing yourself a favour, and sending yourself to heaven? I mean inagine? You get to play on harpstrings like TODAY and feel no pain and sing songs all day. I mean, clearly, if you're so holier than thou you definitely don't belong here with the unclean. Get busy living on Earth. That's where we are now. But if you can't do that, if you really believe in the afterlife and that's what you're all about, what are you still doing right here with us?

Get real!

Errr...Houston (and Everyone Else) We Have A Problem

Why can't we all just...get along? Pictures from London emailed by W. Thanks, I think.

Atonement

Briony - 18 years old: I am very, very sorry for the terrible distress that I have caused you. I am very, very sorry...

After 'Becoming Jane' I had rather gone off the English Country Garden Flicks. Fortunately I discovered that this movie has been nominated for PLENTY of Oscar nominations. It is not set in the Victorian (yawn) era, but in the last century. The ethos of this film evokes another poignant story, one of the best novels I have ever read, set during World War 1 (Birdsong,by Sebastian Faulks). Birdsong's terrible strength lies in the understating of a harrowing and hartrending reality not very long ago. Atonement is more sentimental, but I might easily have been tjanking at the end, if I hadn't been sitting somewhat self-consciously (and self-consciously on my own in the cinema) elbow to elbow with sweaty couples.

It is an intelligent and beautifully rendered film. What's more, it does the job of demonstrating the cruelty of life and the fallibility of human beings in a drammatic and powerful way. The casting, acting - everything is superb.

For a review, go here.

In Christian terms, Atonement is rather less Oscar worthy. After all the sacred symbol for this religion is based on 'Atonement for original sin'. I am not sure which concept is more sinister or obnoxious. Original sin was coined by Augustine to render a prior term 'ancestral sin' obsolete. The premise is simple, if vulgar: Adam did something for which humanity would be permanently blemished, and only God could then make up for this blapse.

Dawkins rightly makes a mockery of the old barbaric ritual of blood sacrifice - in Christianity it is the absurd idea that God needs a drama to bring this about, killing himself, shedding blood, in order to 'forgive' mankind for these sins (sins committed by a symbolic Adam). A real drama to forgive a symbolic transgression? Or a mixture of metaphors?

It is somewhat ironic to realise then that without the death penalty (as an integral part of social/government justice) we would have no Jesus Christ. And another moral conundrum: "If Jesus had to be betrayed and then murdered in order that he could redeem us all, isn't it rather unfair of those who consider themselves redeemed to take it out on Judas and on Jews down the ages....Judas betrayed Jesus only because Jesus asked him to play that role." - Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion

The Secret Flaws

The Secret is mostly about The Law of Attraction. It posits that what we focus on, we attract into our lives. To further state the point, we have to decide what it is we want. This may seem absurdly simple, but many people go through their lives not doing this: making specific their goals, deciding what exactly it is they mean to get out of life.

Wishy washy wants and likes don't count. Say what it is you want. Make the decision.

The Secret seems to me to fail in the sense of only painting the first step in a process. A good analogy is a book like Scott Peck's The Road Less Travelled. It provides a great context, and great paradigm for affecting change. The problem is, now that you've decided who are, and what you want to do (essentially, something you can do on the couch, or lying down), what do you DO then, and HOW do you DO it? In this sense, a great follow on to The Road Less Travelled is Gray's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Habits are what? Things we reguarly DO. The first book provides an idea of who you are and why you should do what you should do. The second explains HOW to do what you'll be doing.

The Secret breaks off after Why and Who you are. There are a few incidental remarks about acting on where our focus is. They're assuming an awful lot, that masses of indebted, overweight and otherwise lazy people are going to focus on Mercedes Benz' and holidays in the tropics, and somehow the Mercedes is going to drive itself into the driveway and they're going to be beamed up, at no effort, to their island paradise. Sorry, not going to happen.

The Secret is true in the sense that when we visualise what we want and what we intend for ourselves strongly enough, we are also able to both recognise opportunities and motivate ourselves to respond to them in ways we were perhaps not conscious of before.

I can testify to the fact that I have been inspired to lose weight and gain fitness. That's who I see, and what I see. But doing so requires commitment and effort over a period of time. Do abs magically appear just because I focus on them? No. But that focus is the reason I was at gym at 7am this morning, and the reason I was able to put in that extra effort. It's also the reason I will go again and again and again. It starts with focus, but after that, it comes back to effort, willingness, commitment (all factors of motivation).

The other chronic flaw in The Secret is this: there is an insane sense of entitlement implicit in The Secret. They suggest that every human being can attract abundance, and that there are no limits to the abundance we can attract. Re he he heally? Actually, there are limits, and these limits are very real. Not every human being can own a car on this planet. Right now the human population is approaching 7 billion. There are still less than 1 billion vehicles, although this figure is increasing quickly. Even so the resources to fuel less than 1 billion vehicles are being strained in terms of supply. Can the world support a car per person? Can we produce 7 times as much fuel as we do now? Get real! We can't do that; not the way the world is currently configured.

This idea of abundance is true in the more important sense: in terms of happiness and love. But it is grossly incorrect to assure people that every person can have abundance in terms of material possessions in particular. The entire planet is sick because of our collective compulsive shopping habit, many species are becoming extinct as human beings suck away resources, leaving fewer for other species, and polluting the environment as they do so.

There is a way to live in abundance, and it doesn't involve dominating other human beings, or taking away resources from other living things. It is by connecting ourselves to the world, and the universe. The Secret acknowledges this, and that energy forms the basis of everything. It flows through everything. Do we not realise that we human beings are gorging ourselves with disproportionate amounts of energy? Each human being living the Western ideal uses up fantastic amounts of energy on the average day. Are we so irrational that we really believe every human being is entitled to his own house, his own transport device, various boxes and gadgets for music and sound, heating, cooling and communication, all of which requires a lot of resources to build, and many more to run? Are entire forests worth liquidating so that people can drive themselves to the mall to watch movies?

While The Secret is to some extent valid and spiritually astute, it nevertheless betrays an implicit and subtle delusion that masses of people subscribe to - entitlement, greed, investment in things above people. Our relationship with ourselves, each other and the other living creatures, and also non living elements, is what determines the extent to which not only the universe but also ourselves are in balance. Right now, the species of homo sapiens is supremely unbalanced and unhinged. To reach equilibirum will require massive cultural and lifestyle shifts, and new, more modest levels of consumnption - at least until we can harness technologies like fusion that allow us to get something for nothing.

Under 16 year olds may not rub each other up the 'wrong' way

Good luck implementing this law. It might be more effective to start up 'Jesus Camps' and get the young uns to pledge 'until marriage do I remain a virgin'. Unfortunately, it turns out these sort of pledges delay the birds and bees stuff by a few months, at best. In my case it was for quite a bit longer, but then again, look how great I turned out ;-)

So what to do? Here's my shortlist:

- Ban magazines from the home
- Ban the internet
- Ban trips to the mall
- Ban dating of any kind
- Ban the use of cellphones
- Ban all TV including the news (coverage on the news now includes lascivious coverage)
- Basically put their eyes out

Ja right. This actually reminds me of what it was like being at Grey in the mid to late 80's, when there was a delicious mix of the sacred and profane. At that stage the sacred was ahead, but not for long. Madonna killed that naive hope virtually singlehandedly, Roxette, Kylie and Alanis did their thing in the 90's (some of it was still half innocent), the Spice Girls came and went (and came again) and now Britney and her sister(s) have the baton. Is Jenna Jameson performing yet in music videos (and other porn stars) or is this old news by now?

For more on this, read this witty blog.

Ronge Now On Right Track In Terms of Compass' Direction

Last week I posted an article on this blog raising an eyebrow at Barry Ronge's review of The Golden Compass. I was surprised in that review because Barry Ronge had downplayed the anti-Christian statements made in this film, probably because it's the sort of delightful fantasy that seems appropriate for a Christmas flock. It's also the sort of uncomplicated populist view that is easy. Except that Pullman conceived his stories with an explicitly anti-Christian intention, employing an anti-control ethos. And knowing the Christian community, it was probably a little naive to think that this film wouldn't create a storm.

‘Why should Christians sit back and meekly accept these attacks on their faith? When Muslims think their religion has been insulted, they take to the streets, but when Christians speak out, they are called bigots’

Just so: in today's Sunday Times Mr Ronge set things right with this article: Movie sparks a virtual jihad for Jesus. This made the front page of News & Opinion.
In my review of the movie and Barry's review I said: I think Barry is trying to say that it's a flick that can be enjoyed without getting drawn into religious bickering. This is confirmed in this second article of his. Although audiences ought to enjoy the flick for its superb story, its creative exposition of courage and loyalty, and enthralling special effects, it is just too much of stretch to expect Christian audiences not to screetch foul and add poster burning to carol services all over the country.

Barry Ronge calls the brou ha ha erupting the biggest storm in a tea-cup since Harry Potter. Well, for sure Christians are going to object to the nomenclature involved: witches and demons, and the church/Magisterium itself is represented by very Dark Lords. It does demonstrate how silly and precious the Church is about itself. If I want to stir, I can write a story and call my pet dog, who is supremely loyal and good, Demon, and my dad, Lucifer, and basically subvert all the mythology. Does that make it evil? Evil stories essentially encourage malevolence, they have an anti-hero, and they often lack virtue. Most movie stories never eschew courage, and courage is a form of standing by one's beliefs. The Golden Compass is essentially about this, and this is a very encouraging and heartwarming trait in a young person. Harry Potter does the same, so does Jesus, Robin Hood, Hercules and Luke Skywalker. More important than names is intent, motivations, and actions. That's why telephone books don't inspire, but stories about virtue do.

Christians forget, when you criticise their faith, that you are not always attacking morality. You're more often than not attacking dogmatism (the same thing Pullman drives against). Blind morality isn't moral. In Christianity you are revered all the more for accepting something on the least amount of evidence. Sometimes this doesn't work. The pastor of a church I once belonged to went to Mozambique and died of malaria. He died because he refused to take anti-malarials, and made it a faith issue. He left behind a wife and four children. It's that sort of dogmatism that is dangerous and scary.

Christians and atheists ought to be able to agree that what is important is that community is preserved. We ought not to find reasons, take out licenses, to attack one another because the fine print doesn't match. Our intentions, our basic moralities ought to be enough. We ought to find those things that affirm, that we can agree upon. The rest is silliness.

Ronge Review on Golden Compass

With the Golden Compass South Africa's best movie critic goes in the Ronge direction

Barry Ronge downplays the anti-Christian statements made in this film, probably because it's the sort of delightful fantasy that seems appropriate for a Christmas flock. It's also the sort of uncomplicated populist view that is easy. Except that Pullman conceived his stories with an explicitly anti-Christian intention, employing an anti-control ethos. So to downplay that is to really lose touch with the essence the story teller was trying to convey.

I think Barry is trying to say that it's a flick that can be enjoyed without getting drawn into religious bickering. Once again, I think the point is to irk the enemy (as it is declared), to push against dominating and controlling religious thinking. So if you're an atheist (a humanist or a naturalist) The Golden Compass can be enjoyed, even celebrated, on its own terms. If you're anyone else, you probably should stomp on movie posters and kick up a fuss. And it's happening. We'll probably see a lot more posturing over the next few weeks, and hear through the grapevine about absurd geriatric performances* from Sunday pulpits.

That said, I found the movie enormously comforting. I have a lot of Christian friends, so I find it disheartening to have to push alone against this constant tide. It is comforting to know that there are others who also know, implicitly, that for all its good intentions, religion is dangerously deluding. It is good to have thoughtful and imaginative visionaries like Weitz and Pullman who can conceive of a practical and constructive antidote to the unspoken harm that religion does. Religion is often a form of borrowing strength, where, through one's religion, one is empowered or called by God. God speaks to someone and thus they are 'right'. How can you argue with someone making such ridiculous claims. This does a great deal to negate or eclipse firsthand knowledge of something, also called 'reality'. I was happy to see a movie like this, broaching this topic, coming into the public consciousness. The human animal is capable - at times - of actually thinking for itself, awaking out of its programming.

The Golden Compass also portrays some of the great virtues humanity appears to be losing: courage and loyalty. Dakota Blue Richard plays the defiant but devoted friend with a fiery determination. The Polar Bear, voiced by Gandalf (whilst the other wizard from the Lord of the Rings also makes an appearance) demonstrates and personifies both these virtues. His duel with his rival is one of the highlights of the movie.

It is interesting how Pullman has used traditionally evil myths and subverted them into 'good' rebels. He employs witches and demons, who, in this fantasy, might be mistaken for angels and cupids (if only in cute, animal forms).

I also differ with Pullman who said: "For all its length and intellectual complexity, I think Lord of the Rings is an essentially trivial work. It's not about anything important." Tolkien constructed an elaborate, imaginative project to demonstrate the importance of the individual, how even a small person has a vital role in the world. Tolkien also poignantly illustrates through the unusual negative construct (resisting the Ring, the ability to NOT do something) and employing the vital virtues of courage and loyalty. These dual virtues appear to me to be the best foundation for humanity, rather than religion's syrupy and the world's waxy mixed up goo concept for 'love'. Love is hard, tough and disciplined. It's not romantic, except in the sense of retrospective survival, but this romantic sense seems to me to have nothing to do with what real love actually is. This is at least true in terms of the way we think of love and objectification in the modern era.

The daemon concept also provides valuable allegory into the precious and valuable relationships that need to be maintained with ourselves, sometimes also called our 'inner child'. That this is depicted as an externalised extension of ourselves is actually very accurate allegory. Sometimes people behave peculiarly even to themselves, as their pain body is triggered by emotions from others or circumstances. In a very real sense we are not one person, but two, and the inner being is a vital function of who we are. Are we at least aware of this caricature of ourselves? Do we invest in it, take care of it, listen to it?

The 'dust' concept alluded to so often in The Golden Compass is interchangeable with the green streams of code in the Matrix, the Force in Star Wars, the Holy Spirit in Scriptures. It is this something that is also nothing that comprises the compass. It is what the compass points to even when it points elsewhere. It is within this contradistinction that the true answer lies. God, if we insist on such a thing, is a basic unit which runs through everything, connecting everything. It is ourselves, and also ourselves as part of everything else. Once we acknowledge this,once we are aware that something is what it is as much as it is also something else, we begin to understand how the world works, and we can consciously become part of the universe, and part of the corporeal structure of every thing, and if you like - God.

We are all light and dust, and we ought not to be focused on only the finger pointing to the moon, but also on the moon to which it points. It is this context that then expands to include the viewer, bringing about a third dimension, and the knowledge of being in the highest order of things.

*Geriatric: To be insane, stumble, stare at young womens breasts, dribble, incontent, smell of piss.

Oh my god, why do all the geriatric's have to come to the post office at lunch time instead of the other 7 hours in the day when I'm at work and they're doing nothing?

Compass Points To Its True North - Away From Religion

Pullman put it bluntly on his Web site, "All too often in human history, churches and priesthoods have set themselves up to rule people's lives in the name of some invisible God (and they're all invisible, because they don't exist) — and done terrible damage. In the name of their God, they have burned, hanged, tortured, maimed, robbed, violated and enslaved millions of their fellow-creatures, and done so with the happy conviction that they were doing the will of God, and they would go to heaven for it. That is the religion I hate, and I'm happy to be known as its enemy."

- quoted from Wired.com

NVDL: I've seen statistics Christians use to show how many people have been killed in wars by non-Christians. This turns out to be a fudging of the facts, and a condition known as Selective Recall. While Christianity purports itself much as America does, to be in a state of constant threat from other terrible powers, constantly vulnerable, it is the world's dominant religion with over 2 Billion converts. It is neither threatened nor vulnerable, but in fact quite the opposite: it is constantly drawn upon to motivate why 'good' must overcome 'evil'. Classifying one side as good always makes more sense when that classification includes you.

Check this comment - from an Amazon.com thread - out:
M. K. Adams: "Please. Christians (fanatic, secular, or whatever) have killed way more people in the last 100 years than Muslims have in 1400.

I mean the killing of Christian Armenians by Muslim Turks and Kurds amounted to about 1.5 million lost souls.

Compare that with the 3 million Vietnamese that American Christians killed during the Vietnam War. Or the millions of Indian Hindus and Muslims that were killed by Christian Britain during the colonialisation of India. Or the illegal invasion of Muslim Iraq by Christian America for some "phantom" WMD. Or the mass genocide and rape of Bosnians and Croatians by Christian Serbs."

These were all just in the past 75 years. Not to mention the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Genocide of the Native Americans, the Genocide of Austrailia's native peoples. And on, and on.

NVDL: Add to this over 1 million North Koreans exterminated during the Korean war, and over 20 million Godless Russians, and 6 million 'undesirables' (killed by Hitler, who also invoked God when he was in the mood, and when it suited his purposes).

The Golden Compass: The (Bravery and Courage Behind the) Making of an Epic Fantasy

Somewhere in England a cowboy and a witch are flirting on a balloon.

"It's a flying boat," clarifies Sam Elliott, the weather-beaten character actor who plays Texas aeronaut Lee Scoresby. Indeed, the airship looks like a dinghy held aloft by multiple balloons, a visual detail not mentioned in The Golden Compass, the first book in the wildly popular His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman.

"One way to go is the traditional wicker-basket balloon," director Chris Weitz says. "But the kids want more these days." He's wearing a black T-shirt, a tan sweater with rolled-up sleeves, and aqua corduroys. He ambles around the soundstage, casually observing at the production he's responsible for. The budget for the film adaptation of The Golden Compass is $180 million, and almost no element of its production has been simple. "It's really hard to make a movie," Weitz says. "It's hard enough to make a small, bad one — trying to make a big, good one is definitely a challenge to your physical and mental stamina."

Eva Green, who plays the witch Serafina Pekkala, gets ready for the scene, flexing her jaw, adjusting her dress, quietly saying her lines to herself while she makes delicate figures with her left hand. Then she and Elliott climb up a 20-foot-high platform and into the ship. The walls all around them are a punishingly bright shade of green, useful for both burning your retinas and letting digital artists superimpose CG backgrounds later.

A technician turns on a humongous fan, on loan from the farm of Henry Braham, the largest producer of industrial hemp in England, who just happens to also be the film's cinematographer. With the actors' hair artfully blowing back, the balloon-ship begins to rock and sway. Its motion is controlled by another technician, who's wielding a toy plastic spaceship mounted on top of a joystick. A Panavision camera affixed to a SuperTechno 50 crane does an elaborately choreographed dance around the balloon while Green and Elliott look into the distance, which at some point in the future will be more than the color green.

Green says, "There's a prophecy about that child, Mr. Scoresby. She'll decide the war which is to come." Then Elliott muffs a line.

"Sorry, sweetie," he says.

The shot gets set up again. Green looks down at the technology surrounding her. "I feel like I'm in a computer game," she says, cheerfully enough. If she were, it's not clear whether the game would be winnable.

Set in a world of shape-shifting animals and armored polar bears, The Golden Compass was aimed at kids, but it has also been devoured by adults. Drawing in equal measure from Grimm's fairy tales and Milton's Paradise Lost, Pullman's trilogy has become wildly popular over the past decade, selling more than 5 million copies in the US alone. The Golden Compass won an assortment of awards and was dubbed "the most ambitious work since Lord of the Rings" by New Statesman.

In the wake of the success of the Lord of the Rings and Narnia franchises, it might seem like a no-brainer to use His Dark Materials as the basis for another series of epic fantasy movies — but this franchise comes with so many extra degrees of difficulty, it seems unbelievable that it ever even got a green light.

First is the sheer scope of the book: The action shifts from Oxford to London to the frozen northern wastelands of "Norroway" to a hole ripped in the sky underneath the Aurora Borealis, a portal to other worlds. Then there is the notion of "daemons," one of Pullman's great literary inventions. Humans in The Golden Compass have an externalized soul in the form of a talking animal. Children's daemons can change forms at will, but when they reach adulthood, the daemon's flesh becomes fixed and reflects the personality of its human: A servant might have a dog, a sailor might have a dolphin, and an Arctic adventurer might have a snow leopard. The daemons stay in close proximity, which means that every single scene in the movie could potentially have CG squirrels and golden monkeys scampering around. "It's like making two different movies," producer Deborah Forte says.

All those effects are the principal reason why the movie's got that gargantuan price tag. "It really is a lot, a lot, a lot of money," Weitz concedes. "Fortunately, it's more money than I can really understand, so that's helped me not to worry about it."

But most daunting of all, perhaps, is the trilogy's antireligious theme. The book's primary villains are the Magisterium (a renamed Catholic Church) and the Authority (known to you and me as the Lord Almighty). As Pullman once baldly put it, "My books are about killing God." That's not the traditional recipe for boffo box office at Christmastime.

New Line Cinema brought in bargeloads of cash with The Lord of the Rings, but lately it has had more middling success; its big summer movies were Hairspray and Rush Hour 3. The Golden Compass is the most expensive movie the company has ever made. If it doesn't do well, it won't just be a bad year on the balance sheet — the entire division could find itself folded in with its corporate big brothers at Warner Bros. Back in 1998, the heads of New Line essentially bet the whole company on a fantasy trilogy: an audacious wager that paid off as Peter Jackson's tale of hobbits and the Ring brought in billions of dollars. Now, almost a decade later, they're betting the house again.
More.

I had conversations with Pullman about this, and as far as he's concerned, his story is a statement against dogmatic authority of any kind."

"Religious tyranny is one form of tyranny," Pullman confirms. "It's tyranny that's the bad thing. Totalitarian ways of thought are just as bad when they're inspired by religion as by some other body of doctrine."

NVDL: Amen brother.

Comment on ACDP Blog: Where Does the Golden Compass Point?

The Golden Compass has just as much deliberate undercurrent as Narnia. The original children's book was written by Philip Pullman, who famously said, "My books are about killing God..."

A dedicated athiest, Pullman is an honorary associate of the [God forbid] National Secular Society.What then is the message of the film?

In truth, the film has been watered down from the original story told in the books. Essentially the story is about the fight against a controlling authority [like The Matrix, Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Bible Old and New Testament, Jake White's In Black and White], portrayed clearly in the books as the church, or the Catholic Church to be more specific. [Is the Catholic Church an innocent entity?]

...some analysts believe that the message of questioning authority is an important one.

I'd say the message is not healthy either way. Children are going to begin reading the books out of curiosity anyway. What is being shown is that the emphasis seems to be centralled on this very question of authority. Let's call it what is is: rebellion against authority. Ultimately I don't believe that the real issue is whether authority is good or not, but whether we are ready to honour and submit. The truth is that we are all part of a structure - nobody is above the law.

NVDL: This guy seems to suggest that curiosity or being curious is dangerous, subversive or wrong.

"Ultimately I don't believe that the real issue is whether authority is good or not, but whether we are ready to honour and submit."

That's an extremely silly statement when you think about it. So wherever you are, whoever your master is (God, Satan, Hitler or Mandela) you submit without making sure who/what it is you're submitting to? Crazy!!!

Faithless: A Better Option? (RELIGION)

The series of New Atheist tracts that shot up the bestseller list lately have seemed like distress flares launched from the deck of a floundering ship at sea. Surely the enthusiastic reception bestowed on these books, led by Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, signals that something has gone wrong in an unprecedented way with our supposedly religious national culture.Or has it?

James's Faith
The pragmatist who understood the value of religion

By: David KlinghofferThe Weekly StandardSeptember 29, 2007

Original ArticleWilliam JamesIn the Maelstrom of American Modernismby Robert D. Richardson

A comforting observation to be drawn from Robert Richardson’s fine biography of the philosopher and psychologist William James is that America went through a similar crisis more than a century ago, pitting atheism against theism. That we emerged intact then may have been thanks partly to insights offered by James.Those insights remain fresh, both in their expression – he was a fantastic writer (as is Richardson) – and in their content, which has lost little of its relevance.

The only fault in Richardson’s William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism is that the biographer doesn’t draw out the contemporary relevance, the echoes of our times, in his compelling narration of the life of his subject.William James grew up, like his brother the novelist William James, in a household saturated with God-talk.

Their father, Henry James Sr., was permitted by family money to spend his time writing a succession of cryptic, mystical theological texts. Yet as a young man, William James was less interested in religious enthusiasm than in Darwinian evolution. His mentor at Harvard was the anti-Darwinian zoologist Louis Agassiz, whose views James ultimately rejected.

James was a born teacher, going on to teach psychology and philosophy to Harvard students for 35 years. He also had a knack for counseling, possessing as he did a tremendous – if erratic – sympathy for others.

James was devoted to his wife Alice, but Richardson describes him as a “philanderer,” if not an overtly sexual one. He indulged in “a mad crush on every other woman he met,” which he didn’t bother to hide from an increasingly wounded Alice.

Captivating Self Help

Despite bouts of hypochondriac worries and genuine ill health, he was massively productive. Frankly, James’s groundbreaking explanations of how the mind works – as in his Principles of Psychology (1890) -- seem less provocative now than they once did. On the other hand, his less academic contributions to what we may call the field of self-help still captivate.

Less Flaky

Some of his views sound like a less flaky version of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret. That phenomenally popular, Oprah-endorsed film-and-book combo purports to explain how by imagining what you want (wealth, health, anything), you can have it. James thought that there are indeed areas where believing in something can make it so.

Example

He gave as an example that, if you want to win a woman’s heart, it improves your chances to think and act as if she already loves you.He might have been recalling his own affection, at age 28, for a gravely ill young woman named Minnie Temple. It was her death in 1870 that initiated James’s engagement with religion.

Terrifying Vision

A month after, he was overtaken by a terrifying vision. While fully awake, he suddenly saw in his mind an epileptic patient from an asylum he had visited, “a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic,” who “sat there like a sculptured Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely inhuman.” Reeling at the thought that such a condition could befall himself, James took refuge in Biblical verses.The defense of religion became a salient theme in his work.

New Attraction

Why the continued attraction to it? Richardson smartly observes that much of William James’ best intellectual energy was poured into defying academic and elite assumptions: “James moved toward a major idea by starting out in opposition or resistance to received ideas.” One such idea was Darwinism.James the instinctive contrarian lived through Darwinian evolution’s earliest acceptance, which he often noted with approval even as he perceived its challenge to religion. It lead to a view, “widespread at the present,” he said in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), that religion was only a relic surviving from the primitive past. In opposing this “survival theory,” James saw that “the current of thought in academic circles runs against me.” He relished that fact.

Pragmatism

In his philosophic work Pragmatism (1907), James observed had Darwin had displaced “the argument from design” with the result that “theism has lost that foothold.” While rejecting conventional theism for himself, he also chastised the overly refined religious believer who worships a Deity that never impacts the physical world. Such a believer “surrenders…too easily to naturalism” so that “practical religion seems to me to evaporate.”

Why?

Why would a religious person concede so much ground? James pointed out that certain ideas are embraced by an uncritical public simply because of their “prestige.”He himself felt “like a man who must set his back against an open door quickly if he does not wish to see it closed and locked.” Shrewdly, he noted that in keeping a door open for faith he had more credibility because he was not orthodox – indeed he was irritated by orthodox Christianity -- but rather an outside observer.

We can imagine his response to our New Atheists. In dealing with secularists in his own day, he appealed to experience, reason and pragmatism. James argued that subjective experience has been undervalued as a source of enlightenment. In his essay “The Will to Believe,” he explained that personal experience which would confirm religion’s truth “might be forever withheld from us unless we met the [religious] hypothesis half-way.”

In other words, those who reject religion, for fear of being duped, have sealed themselves off from ever knowing whether they are wrong: “I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or willfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason, that a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truths were really there, would be an irrational rule” (his emphasis).


Citing God’s instruction to the Israelite leader Joshua, “Be strong and of a good courage” (Joshua 1:6), James argued that it is more reasonable to act from the hope that religion is true, than it is to spurn faith out of the worry that it might be false. The religious act could even produce its own confirmation. Action creates reality. This is different from Pascal’s wager.

Faith generates reality

It’s more like a vote for faith, which can generate the reality it endorses. The idea wasn’t original with him. It had already been crystallized by the book of Exodus (24:7), which records the declaration of the Jews in receiving the Ten Commandments: “Everything that the Lord has said, we will do and [then] we will understand.” They would comply now with the commandments in the expectation that later, as a result of casting their vote for God, they would understand why He commands what He does. That illumination would confirm that God is a reality. To believe, and know that you’re right to believe, you must first act.That his religious psychology was anticipated in the Bible would not surprise William James. He appreciated Scripture as a “guide to life,” the practical effects of whose guidance can be gauged. According to his philosophy of pragmatism, this is the preferred way to evaluate any truth claim.

Pragmatism, he wrote, has “no materialistic bias as ordinary empiricism labors under” and judges theological ideas by the twofold criteria of whether they have “value for concrete life” and whether they mesh with “other truths that also have to be acknowledged.”Religion should make any individual believer better than he would be without it. It should not, rightly understood, violate science. It should provide a framework for diagnosing the ills of a culture, and for prescribing measures for the amelioration of social and political problems.

If a Biblical worldview does a better job of these than the secular alternative, that makes religion “true.”Yet James, that beguiling man, advocated a sense of humor about the fact that despite our faith, notwithstanding our arguments for belief, we might have it all wrong. Then again, perhaps it’s the New Atheists who have shut their ears to truth. Not that they would be likely to admit the possibility.

NVDL: What we believe, what we focus on, manifests as reality. Thus if a third of the Earth's population - 2 billion - profess to believe in Christianity, is it not possible they these multitudes of prayers, thoughts, attentions, actions - manifest some sort of intelligent field? I believe it is possible. But it is a reverse engineering of God which must, I think, logically break down at some point.

Having attended Nicky Gumbel's(the astute ex-barrister-become-preacher) evocative Alpha Course, I am less inclined to be so dismissive or even antagonistic towards Christinianity. It is possible for people to love - and have relationships - with one another, and maintain differing beliefs. I have experienced this. But I think one must be prepared to listen to the other, and be open and accepting of the other. And hopefully this is done in a mutual, genuine manner.

There are aspects of Christianity - its exclusivity, it's judgemental tone, its even acceptance of urgent scenarios like climate change (as the guise for 'Signs of the End Times'), the disconnect - in some ways - with the world (homosexuality, world crisis), that I find grave and unpleasant. But in other ways, when any person acknowledges, discusses or even ponders 'God', whatever their concept is of God, they, at the simplest level, ponder their place, their relationship vis-a-vis everyone and everything else. And that is always a valuable exercise, and can amount to a simultaneous connecting and cathecting of human beings with the world and it's creatures.

Juan Smith Praises God After Stint in Sin Bin

Juan Smith is a hard as nails oke. He once worked as a bouncer in Bloemfontein, but his bread and butter is still moering people.

He's a good player, and he's a Cheetah, but I don't know why - it irks me when these guys (Danie Rossouw did it to when he was awarded Man of the Match) get airtime and the first thing they do is 'praise the Lord'. Can't you guys do that on hands and knees before you go to bed, you know, like, in private.

Posturing in Public

I think the reason there's this public display, with a bit of spluttering, is because they are not used to or comfortable with praise and adulation, they're used to the arena. And thus to deflect criticism, and calm their own nerves, they call on God for moral support (and support in the sense of a moral backbone).

It may make sense to them, but I really think platforming and broadcasting your beliefs ought to be more private, and more humble. And in the context of rugby, it doesn't quite work does it? It's not a game based on love, but toughness, and the ability to tough it out. I thought that much was obvious.

Grandstanding

Today on the way back from lunch we walked by three or four peculiar gentlemen dressed in white and green tartan collared shirts, standing at the curbside in Rosebank, but looking really out of place. As we stepped past, one of them said: "Can we share with you about our glorious God? Will you accept him as your saviour?" "Er...Let me think about that: NO!"

Church Currie Cup

I have a suggestion though: A Church Rugby League. Soccer has it's PSL and MVELA, we've got the Currie Cup and Super 14, but why stop there? With so many Christian rugby players in our own rugby teams (Boks like Habana, Smith and Roussouw, the Blue Bulls etc) and even the international players (remember the Tongan and Fijian Faithful?), what we really MUST see is a battle of the denominations. That way everyone can wear their Jesus is King t-shirts, and may the best player...er...I mean PRAYER win. There can be a special service after the game - after all the moering - for the man of the match and the various captain's to humbly give thanks for the source of their strength and superior strategy. Fans can applaud them or lay hands on them at the same time. Ah men brother.

Is God for Real?

Making sense out of the nonsense

Over the last 6 six weeks, I’ve attended the Alpha Course. Basically it’s an excellent introduction to Christianity. In exchange for attendance, the prospective Christian gets to meet the local community and imbibe a three course dinner once a week. So, have I learnt anything? Yes! I’ve learn that it is vital that all people connect themselves to the local community, and by implication, give up their hyper individualism.

Aplha is a dated set of DVD’s presented by the charmingly articulate and intelligent Englishman Nicky Gumbel (an ex-barrister). Alpha is very affirming and positive and Gumbel’s analogies are always constructive, and often humorous. Even if you’re not a Christian, his ‘take’ is worth noting.

Christians will argue with this position, naturally. They will say there are many ways to go to heaven, to be saved, as long as it is through Jesus. The idea is that we are born into sin, so basically you’re indebted from the word go, and God, like a benign bank manager, will bail you out of your bankruptcy once you’ve made the appropriate declarations. Really?

This concept makes sense to some Christians; who believe that God is pulling all the strings (you can ask God to organize you parking, give you a nice day, and give your team victory over another). But it becomes difficult to reconcile this ‘reality’ when you start to imagine more than one person praying the same wallowing prayer: “Help me. Give Me. Save Me.” Bruce Almighty found himself in the selfsame predicament.

Flight 93 provides another succinct analogy for how ridiculous our thinking (or lack of thinking) can be: the airplane is in a terminal nosedive and the suicidal hijacker is praying, shouting desperately to Allah, while behind him all the passengers are praying, screaming to God. The airplane nevertheless slams into a Pennsylvania field, killing Christian and Muslim alike.

But the power of prayer, while we’re still making up our minds what to do, and who we intend to be, can’t be dismissed. Prayer is very effective in bringing about specific manifestations in reality. It’s important for people to meditate in a deep, quiet place, on those things of the universe that are important to Being. The act of prayer also does a great deal to reset our paradigms; we are placed once more into the clockwork of the universe, and we’re able to measure our respect for ourselves and others in the world. This is a vitally important practice.

Whereas Christians believe prayer to be a conversation with God, they also concede that it is the person praying who changes, not God. This is interesting, because it presupposes a scenario in which God does not need to do anything. The onus is on the ardent praying person to recognize what needs to change, and take action accordingly.

Those Christians who profess to ‘hear’ God speaking to them actually mean that they read particular verses (even a number of corresponding verses) and then develop a strong response to these messages. Others will describe God’s voice as a ‘feeling’, and often, especially in conversations Christians have with one another, God’s thoughts seem interchangeable with their own. But God’s voice is really man’s voice, and man – whether well or ill-intentioned – gets what he needs done through leveraging the persona of God.

An example: I was in a massive Baptist Church building earlier this year and listened to the pastor (who happened to be blind) saying: “God will provide the poor with food.” It all sounded wonderful, except that this statement required an addendum: “If God speaks to your heart, please respond with tins of food, whatever you’re led to bring.” George W. did the same thing to mobilize his army into Iraq. People understood the move as “God’s work’ and ‘God’s will’. God of course had nothing to do with it, except that when enough people consented to ‘God’s will’, it became God’s will. That’s what faith en mass does.

Thus God’s actions are our actions. This is the reality of the world; it is not the narrow definition of a Christian God, or a Jewish God, or any other God. That God exists there is no doubt. Even Richard Dawkins, one of the world’s foremost intellectuals, would probably agree that the idea of ‘God’ is interchangeable with ‘all that is’. And yes, even you, and even I, contribute to this Isness that is all around us, being created in the present moment.

But is this Isness a God with a personality, an identity, or is the Isness less personal? The answer depends entirely on you. It’s the same answer to this question: what is the meaning of life? No one can provide you with the answer, that’s your domain, for you will someday find yourself pondering the meaning (or lack of) in your own life, and then it is you, and you alone who needs to develop a Life Appropriate and Life Specific response.

The same is true of God. How did God come about? A great way to begin to answer all the most fundamental questions: birth, death, the afterlife, love and God, is to look at powerful firsthand experience. What, really, is your experience of God? Well, that’s what God is for you.

Is there life after death? It’s a question a lot like this one: when you’re sleeping are you awake? Ultimately of course, the question ought to answer itself. In the conventional wisdom of the world, sleep is sleep, and being awake – being conscious – is being awake. So to wonder, as we do, and as we must, about life after death, we are really coming to the core of what we believe.

If Christians really believed that paradise waited for them, why would they and their families endure the burdens of life and work? Why not go there immediately? It may seem like an absurd question, but it isn’t. Fundamentalist Christianity is really taking the bible at its word, and if we did, homosexuals would be jailed or worse, adulterers put to death, and infidels slaughtered on the battlefield.

But many Christians focus on the warm fuzzy stuff in the bible. They say to ‘love one another’ is what the bible is all about. If our idea of the world and God is Isness, then being nice towards one another certainly isn’t a bad idea. Do we need God to tell us what is self-evident: treat people nicely because the world has a way of paying you back for all your misdeeds. This is basic reality.

One argument that is almost never raised when non-Christians converse with Christians is this one: Why would an all-Powerful God have to resort to an elaborate drama that is the life and times of Jesus Christ? To put this into pure and simple terms: if you have a child that has misbehaved (because you said so), would it really be necessary to slaughter someone that is very close to you (as a substitute for yourself) as a way to say, “Okay, I forgive you, everything is fine.”

Is it so hard for human beings to imagine that things are as simple as they seem? Death is the thing that ought to make us think a few times before we do the things we do? We ought to drive more carefully, exercise, treat others well, because after this life, it’s over.

The idea of a second chance, rewards and paradise (effectively for doing nothing but having faith) is the delusion that will doom our civilization. The ‘something-for-nothing’ psychology is an unnatural and insidious deception that most people somehow accept as true. We wish to be celebrities based on our appearance, or win the lottery, or find the perfect partner; forgetting that chance governs a small subset of the universe. Work and deeds governs most of reality.

The idea that each of us (separately and as a collective) are responsible for creating the Isness, is how we save each other and ourselves. Reality is our choice, and each and every day we have a chance to make new choices. Do we accept or reject what is self evident? That’s the choice God has left to us, whatever we may believe.

Kunstler: Shocked!

From kunstler.com:

>Kunstler doesn't pull any punches in this instalment. Easy guy! Waitaminute, then again, let 'em fly Jim.<

Shocked, shocked! Alan Greenspan's memoirs are being flogged across the airwaves, bandwidths and printing presses, and the cohort of those who comment on public affairs in these media are shocked by the Maestro's confessions -- first, that a housing bubble emerged out of his leadership in the banking sector, and second that the Iraq war is about oil. As usual, they're getting it all wrong -- about as wrong as Al himself got it. But that is the way of things in this age of cultural dissipation and gross cognitive dissonance.

Greenspan claims he had no idea that his cutting of interest rates to near zero would produce any irregularities in the US economy. Apparently he hadn't noticed that the Big Fund Boyz called him "Easy Al" for a reason. Or that when you introduce nearly free "money" (as in "available for lending") into a system of financial trade, the recognition of moral hazard tends to evaporate. As the nation's chief bank regulator, Greenspan also apparently failed to notice the upsurge in dodgy lending practices previously only seen among mafia loan sharks, drug dealers, or twelve-year-olds playing Monopoly.

But the really funny part of all this is that the media columnists are acting as though the American public got hoodwinked by Al. Which raises the question: just what the fuck was the public thinking when they bought half-million dollar houses on salaries under 60-K, taking out no-money-down, interest-optional balloon mortgages and other tricked-up contracts? The answer is: they walked into these arrangements with their eyes open because they thought they could get something for nothing.

They thought the trend of steeply rising house prices would continue indefinitely and enable them to wiggle free of any hazard by flipping their houses to an endless supply of greater fools who would be there waiting to turn the very same trick. And the smoothies downstream in the mortgage and banking rackets were no less guided by avarice when they cooked up their formulas for bundling half-baked mortgages into tranches of tradeable securities. Easy Al may have failed to notice what was going on here, but then so did everybody else from The Wall Street Journal to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This, of course, represents an insidious psychology. It could only happen in a culture that has come off the rails mentally, so to speak, as ours has in the sense that nobody has any sense of consequence, neither the leaders nor those who affect to follow the leaders. The leading religion in America is not evangelical Christianity, it is the worship of unearned riches, and its golden rule is the belief that is is possible to get something for nothing. Its holy shrines are Las Vegas and Wall Street. (And, by the way, has anybody heard the evangelical Christians complain about Las Vegas? They complain about a lot of things, but are themselves among the greatest believers in unearned riches -- given their preference for prayer over earnest effort in the service of solving life's problems.)

No, the American public, including the cheerleaders in the media, have only themselves to blame for the bitter harvest now underway in the asset and credit markets. And thus it would be salutary thing for Baby Jeezus, or the forces of nature, or whatever powers guide the universe, to now kick the shit out of them, so to speak, financially, because that is exactly what the American public is full of, from top to bottom, from George W. Bush at his lonely desk on Pennsylvania Avenue to the pitiful, bankrupt householders of Orange County and Boca Raton.

Now, as to the shock of Al's revelation that the Iraq war is about oil -- the media and the public has got this all wrong, too. The logic here seems to be that because the Iraq war is about oil it is therefore unnecessary, optional, a mistake, an indulgence, something we should not dirty our hands in.

In fact, the Iraq war is not about oil, per se, so much as it is about America's behavior here at home, about the choices we make for how we live on this continent. None of those who complain most loudly about our military presence in Iraq have advanced any proposals for reforming how we live here -- and hence for our enslavement to oil, much of the world's remaining supply of which happens to be in the neighborhood of Iraq.

When these complainers start complaining about the ubiquitous acceptance of suburban sprawl and abject car-dependency -- and this includes the environmental boy scouts out there who want to get merit badges for buying hybrid cars -- then they will deserve to be taken seriously. Until then, the American people have got exactly the grinding war that they deserve. Let them whine about it all the way to the Nascar tracks, and let them console themselves with giant plastic bottles of Pepsi Cola and buckets of chicken raised on corn grown with oil byproducts.

On CBS's "60-Minutes" show last night, Greenspan, in his new role as a private sector economic consultant made predictions for the coming months in the US economy. He declared that the financial sector would get over the current credit squeeze as if it were a mild case of indigestion brought on by one too many fried won-tons at the all-you-can-eat buffet, a mere burp, allowing the public to move on to the crab Rangoon and a helping of General Tsao's chicken. This gets back to the previous point about the Iraq war and oil in particular. Al doesn't get it. CBS's sycophant reporters don't get it. Nobody gets it.

We are entering the zone of the long emergency in which the primary resource needed to run the industrial economies will become scarce, expensive, and profoundly destabilizing to markets and to normal life, such as it is known in this country. And the current problem in the markets is a reflection of the resource bankruptcy we are facing. Our problems are not about credit, they are about permanent insolvency.

In his old age, Alan Greenspan's face -- once darkly handsome in his youthful years as a jazz musician -- has taken on the strange appearance of a circus clown. Something about the way his lips have settled into a kind of thick fatuous smile, even when he is apparently not amused by anything. Is it one of God's clever little tricks to leave him looking like a clown in his valedictory years, or has his face just resolved into the perfect embodiment of leadership for a clown nation?