Life's Purpose

I joined a new online forum today. It looks small but promising. Why did I join a new forum when I'm already entangled in too many? Because I wanted to try something new, and what better way to try it than in a new place? What new thing am I trying? To post messages as clear, concise, and direct as I can make them. No wasted words, no superfluous ideas. Just the nitty gritty. Absolute economy of thought and expression.

I posted three messages there this morning. The first addressed the general issue of crime and punishment and replied to a particular post asking for "one reason" why sadistic murderers should live. Here is what I said:

Should we punish with death a man with cancer for his tumors, a blind man for being unable to see, a man with potent desires to torture and murder and with no conscience to inhibit him from following through for torturing and murdering?

My second post agreed with someone who wrote that he opposed the death penalty because of the harm it did to those who carried it out. I simply quoted Roger Ebert's perfect words on the matter:

The most compelling argument against capital punishment, for me, is not that society should not execute, but that society should not make anyone into an executioner.

Finally, I reponded to the question of the purpose of life with the following:

I believe that my life's purpose is to be happy. And I believe that happiness is being and doing the best that we can be and do for ourselves, others, and the world.

I don't presume to speak for what others should consider to be their life's purpose. But they're welcome to adopt mine if they wish.

I think I'm off to a good start in that forum. I wonder if others will agree. Time will tell.

The Middle Way?

I’ve just concluded an unpleasant experience on a message board. I began posting with the hope that we might be able to dialogue about religion and spirituality there in a more respectful and meaningful way than is often the case in online forums. But the moderator accused me, falsely I believe, of relentlessly bashing Christianity and urged me to seek help for my “mental illness.” It’s interesting to observe within oneself the thoughts and emotions that can surface and swirl through consciousness at times like that. I didn’t feel hurt by what he said. But I did feel angry and determined to refute what I considered to be his groundless accusations of Christian-bashing. In fact, I became narrowly focused on this and almost only this for over a day. In retrospect, I think it was pretty much a waste of time and energy, especially when the moderator ended up snipping key parts of my explanations and attacking his expurgated and distorted representations of what remained of them. One of the lessons to be learned from this is, I suppose, to pick your forums quite carefully and to leave, before getting too emotionally involved, if things don’t look like they’re going to work out. I had warning signs of this rather early on, yet I stayed on, hoping that misunderstandings could be overcome and meaningful dialogue pursued. I was apparently wrong.

But toward the end of my brief participation there, an interesting theme was raised concerning my negative comments about Christianity. This is what the moderator wrote:

I tend to doubt that you have any real interest in the goodness and truth in all religions because you seem so consistently to go out of your way to overlook the good and see the bad.

I replied with the following:

Different people take different approaches to religion. Some, like Ibn `Arabi, may look from the outset for what they find true and beautiful in all religions. Others, like Nagarjuna, begin by trying to clear away false or dubious beliefs to make the heart and mind receptive to truth. Alan Watts likened conventional religion to covering a window with blue paint to represent the sky instead of cleaning the window to see the real sky directly. It seems to me that religion might work best for some of us, perhaps for many of us by being a spiritual window cleaner rather than the window painter that the religious traditions, some more than others, seem to be.

But I know that many would disagree with me on this and say that some window painting needs to be done, and, furthermore, that our ultimate fulfillment or purpose is best achieved via a mature and systematic tradition and supporting community. One of the themes I wish to explore is how true this is and how one EVER sees the sky through the
blue paint—i.e., God through the mental clutter of traditional scripture and dogma.

The moderator responded this way:

I worry you are so concerned with cleaning the window that all you can see are the specks, spots, smudges and fingerprints on the glass that you never actually get around to looking through the window. I am sorry if that seems rude, but that is the impression I have of you.

I think that he made a good point. It’s easy to go too far to the negative extreme, just as one can go too far to the other extreme and try to see God through a spiritual window too caked with old paint and smudges. The elusive secret may well be to find a point of harmonious balance between the via negativa and the via positiva. I’m looking for it. I hope that I can find it.

Religion as Cuisine

I recently discovered a message board run by someone who seems very interested in God and religion as a path to God. This person has posted some intelligent notes on his perspective and graciously allowed me to post responses to what he and others on the board have said.

In one of his first messages, he compares religions to cuisines and argues that just as we would no more claim that one cuisine is the only cuisine worth enjoying or that because there are so many different cuisines in the world, we shouldn’t enjoy any of them, neither should we claim that only one religion is true and the rest should be condemned or that because there are so many different religions, we shouldn’t embrace any of them. On the other hand, he takes issue with those who argue that we shouldn’t mix cuisines or the elements of different religions “cafeteria” style so long as the “plate” we come up with is wholesome and nourishing. With some reservations, I agree with what he wrote, and this is how I replied:

I believe that it IS legitimate to doubt any religion that explicitly claims to embrace the one true God who has revealed Himself through the one true sacred text in a world filled with many different notions of God revealed through many different sacred texts. The monotheistic religions seem especially guilty of this, and they compound their guilt by threatening with eternal torment those who don’t accept their “truth” as THE truth.

Nevertheless, some scholars of comparative religion have argued that there is a “perennial philosophy” of shared core beliefs that can be found in all the great religions traditions, and I am drawn to the idea of using these common beliefs or principles as the foundation of my own spiritual path. For it seems to me that those principles on which all of the world’s religions agree are more likely to be true than are those on which they differ. Ken Wilber has identified the following as the seven principles essential to most if not all of the world’s great religions:

1. Spirit, by whatever name, exists.

2. Spirit, although existing “out there,” is found “in here,” or revealed within to the open heart and mind.

3. Most of us don’t realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin, separation, or duality—that is, we are living in a fallen, illusory, or fragmented state.

4. There is a way out of this fallen state (of sin or illusion or disharmony), there is a Path to our liberation.

5. If we follow this Path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience of Spirit within and without, a Supreme Liberation, which

6. marks the end of sin and suffering, and

7. manifests in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings.

What I am striving to do is construct and follow a spiritual or integral path that encompasses these principles. Thus, I will probably never subscribe to any formal religion, but I WILL try to borrow intelligently from all of the great religions those elements of theory and practice that can be compatibly combined with essential elements of science, philosophy, and other disciplines to yield an approach that works for me. This may not be the best way for everyone to proceed, but it may well be the ONLY way that will work for some of us.

Happy Anniversary

Today is my second wedding anniversary. How blessed I am to be married to my wife! Far more blessed than she is to be married to me, I'm afraid. For not only have I not been as good a husband to her as I SHOULD be, but I have also failed to be as good a husband to her as I COULD be. I love her dearly and have been good to her, but I could have been better and wish that I could be even better, much better than that. For that is what she deserves, and it is something I can never give her. I can never be what she deserves, even if I give her the best of which I am now or ever capable. And so it is with some sadness as well as glowing happiness that I read the following words in the card she gave me today: "I can't imagine a more beautiful life than the one we've built together." For I can imagine a more beautiful life, and I'm quite sure that she can too, and we could have one if only I were capable of more and better than I am. However, while I cannot be more than I am, I can certainly be ALL of the best that I am, and I hope that a year from today, I'll be able to say that I came much closer to it than I have so far.

Unconditional Respect

It may have been time for me to leave the religious forum in which I posted the note included in a previous entry here. But, alas, I was unable to do so. It seems that I had more to say and learn there and still do. This is what I said there today:

i give respect to those who deserve respect

I guess I understand the notion that "respect" is something that one either deserves or doesn't. But it seems to me that a problem with this notion is that, since most of us are far from perfect, it's pretty easy to find reasons not to respect almost anybody. And a sad but predictable thing happens when we judge someone not to be worthy of our respect. We treat them disrespectfully, and guess what happens? They return the disfavor. And we turn around and do them one better. And they do us one better still. And pretty soon you can have a very ugly situation.

This world has a lot of ugliness in it. Wars, famines, epidemics, natural catastrophes, and lots and lots of hatred and mistrust. Indeed, a litany of ugly things could stretch almost interminably. But there is also so much beauty in this world! Louis Armstrong celebrates some of it in one of my favorite songs, the classic "What a Wonderful World." And some of the most sublime beauty in the universe lies at the core of the human heart and soul—the beauty and unbelievable power of goodness and love. Some cynically dismiss these qualities as sociobiological adaptations selected for their survival value. I see them as what a Mahavishnu Orchestra song calls the “Smile of the Beyond.” They are a light shining from a divine source not up or out there but “closer to us than our own heart.” Now this is not necessarily the divinity worshipped in church, mosque, or synagogue, but the divinity that does the worshipping, yearning to connect with the ultimate mystery of itself.

When I look at people in person or via their postings in forums such as this, my ideal is to focus not on the ugliness that exists in all of us, but on the beauty that is also there. In some, it is right on the surface and readily evident to all. In others, you have to look deeply and keep on looking to find it. But it’s there, in all of us, eager to shine forth into the darkness. All we need to do is encourage it. Unfortunately, I don’t always encourage it the way I’d like. My ideal is to focus on the goodness and beauty in each of us, but the sad fact is that I too often focus on the ugliness and lose sight of the beauty, and my blindness to the beauty translates into conduct that dishonors and disrespects others and magnifies my own ugliness. And is it any surprise that the people I treat this way do the same to me and to themselves?

No, I don’t want to think in terms of people earning or losing my respect or even love. I want to think and feel in terms of unconditional respect and love for the beauty that lies in each of us, and even for the ugliness that, as the philosophical Taoists say, enables us to see and appreciate the beauty for what it is. It’s not easy to do this by any means, especially when people, with or without our provocation, disrespect, dishonor, or even hate us. But, as Spinoza said, “all excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.”

Reply To David Stern

One person with whom I had many exchanges in the Catholic forum in Yahoo in which I participated posted a comment to my previous entry. Here is my reply:

Dear David,

I was pleasantly surprised to receive your comments. Although I invited those in the Yahoo forum to check out my blog and offer comments, I didn't expect that anyone would. Now I'd like to address some of your points.

Of course it is easy for you to come to that conclusion as you are not a practicing Catholic.

I'm not sure "conclusion" is the correct word for it. I try to keep my mind open to the possibility that there is more truth to Christianity than I realize. And, even though I intend to write a book summarizing my misgivings about Christianity, how can I be certain that my research, contemplation, and life experience won't effect a radical change of heart and plans?

As near as I can tell you practice nothing.

If you read my essay on "Integral Spiritual Practice," you know that I don't engage in a formal religious or spiritual practice. However, one could say that my life is my practice. Since I was a boy, I've been intensely interested in spirituality and philosophy in the classical sense of the "love of wisdom," and I meditate, read, reflect, thank the Lord virtually every day for my life and good fortune, and strive to mindfully manifest lovingkindness, equanimity, empathy, compassion, joy, and wisdom. Of course, when I speak of the "Lord," I am referring to something quite different than what Catholics appear to mean by the term. There is a book by Eknath Easwaran called Original Goodness that eloquently expresses his and my understanding of the Lord.

you did not participate in a discussion of faith and how the posters experience God; rather you urgently kept asking the same two questions about hell and “homosexual union.”

David, if the Church is wrong about hell and homosexual unions, then I believe that it's a fundamentally flawed institution, no matter what individual Catholics report of their experiences of God. Although I did invite Catholics in the Yahoo forum to talk about their faith and personal experiences, I focused on Catholic teachings and concepts, and, with all due respect to your perception, this focus consisted of more than "the same two questions" about hell and homosexuality.

In Living Buddha, Living Christ Thich Nhat Hanh asserts the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ.

Thich Nhat Hanh has given no indication I'm aware of that he believes in the Catholic concept of Jesus as the unique son of the Big Boss in heaven, and when he writes that "the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ," this is to be understood in terms of the Buddhist understanding of interconnectedness--Nhat Hanh calls it "interbeing"-- in which every object and event in the past and present universe exists and functions only relation to all of the others. I believe that Catholics would find this antithetical to their own understanding of the Eucharist.

Do you suppose he is able to do so by assuming a stance of mutuality toward Catholicism rather than deconstructionism?

I respect Thich Nhat Hanh's non-confrontational approach to dialogue with people of other faiths. However, I also believe that there's a place for respectfully asking questions that go to the heart of a faith's teachings, and this is what I endeavor to do when I discuss Christianity.

Maybe he can teach you if you want to be taught.

I have many teachers, and Thich Nhat Hanh is certainly one of them.

David, thank you for writing. I'd be more than happy to continue dialogueing with you in public or in private.

A Fond Farewell

I have spent entirely too much time recently discussing Christianity with Catholics in an online religion forum. The last several entries in this blog are excerpts from that involvement. There are so many other things I should have been doing, including posting new entries in this blog, which I didn’t because I was too busy discussing abortion, homosexuality, hell, faith, moral absolutes, and other controversial issues online. Yet, I would like to think that it wasn’t a complete waste of my time. For I felt so much passion and pleasure doing it that I realized how important it is to me to understand and discuss Christianity. Seldom do I feel more engaged and alive than when I am doing this, despite the fact that I believe that Christianity is essentially a hopelessly flawed religion. Nevertheless, it is time for me to get out of that forum and do other things. And so I posted the following there to announce my departure and my plans.

I want to thank everyone who discussed Christianity with me these past several weeks. I enjoyed it very much. I also learned more about your beliefs and my own than I knew before. Perhaps you also learned more about mine. Non-Christians sometimes think Christians are gullible and stupid. I don’t agree with them, and our discussions here have reinforced this for me. On the other hand, Christians often think non-Christians are sinfully proud rejecters of God’s will and grace. I believe that both Christians and non-Christians can earnestly and intelligently hold the positions they do. This doesn’t mean that all do so earnestly and intelligently, but some do.

I believe that I will never be Christian. I do plan to study the faith more, but I suspect that I will always disagree with too many of its fundamental tenets to embrace it. In fact, I intend to write a book someday titled “Why I Am Not a Christian.” Some of you may know that the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote a book with this same title decades ago.

Yet, I also intend to write a book that summarizes my ideal of a new religion that links humankind with Ultimate Reality in a way that more people of this age can find credible and inspiring. And like most new things of value, my hypothetical new religion will borrow from the best of what has come before, including Christianity, and integrate it with the best of our new scientific, philosophical, theological, and spiritual understandings of the Kosmos.

I believe that the best of Christianity is to be found in the writings of its great mystics and in the Sermon on the Mount. I believe that these writings and their insights compare favorably with the best in all of the world’s religions. I believe that if more Christians embodied the wisdom and spirit of these writings, the world would be a happier and better place, and people would flock to the faith who are now unimpressed or even repulsed by how few people who call themselves Christian consistently try to live up to its ideals and manifest its spirit.

But I believe that this shortcoming stems more from inadequacies in Christianity itself than in those who profess to be Christian. I believe that Christianity’s understanding of God and humankind is unrealistic, and that it preaches and moralizes too much and strives too little to open people’s minds and hearts to direct and transfiguring apprehension of God’s loving and unifying presence.

I know that many of you will shake your heads and say that I’ve really gone off the deep end. Not only do I turn my back on the one true faith, but I also presume to offer the world something better, something truer and more fulfilling. What megalomania! What sinful arrogance! “Place your faith in the divine authority of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior and in that of God’s revelations through Holy Scripture and Mother Church,” you will want to tell me. But my faith does not cling blindly to the authority of texts and institutions that claim to speak for what Alan Watts called “the which than which there is no whicher.” My faith lies in my capacity to discern spiritual fact from religious fancy, divine truth from human fiction. You may call this egotistical. But my faith lies not in myself or in anything uniquely mine, but in a natural, though often underutilized, capacity that lies in each of us as a glorious reflection of the divine.

Thank you all for your time and trouble, and I wish you all profound peace and happiness.

The Discussion Continues

Here is part of the reply I received in a Catholic forum to a message I recently posted there and reposted in my previous blog entry.

I don’t think we have the same understanding here. The Catholic Church doesn’t teach that homosexual couples are incapable of experiencing deepening feelings of love and commitment through sexual “relations.” Of course they are capable of feeling that. Any two people can feel deepening love and commitment that may be associated with sexual pleasure, kissing, cuddling, or even handholding. The argument is not that homosexuals are not capable of feeling this -- the argument is that a true “marriage,” in which a couple truly become “one flesh,” requires a physical union of two complementary sexes that complete each other sexually and together comprise one whole – a union of which is always ordered toward the generation of new life (whether new life is actually generated or not).

Now, scientifically it can be shown conclusively that two males engaged in sexual activity DO NOT share the totality of human sexuality (they lack the female component in both physiology and capability) – and therefore can never comprise a complete union, which is marriage. To put it bluntly, just sticking one part into another does not make “union.” Marital union is achieved by uniting two incomplete, different yet complementary expressions of humanity into one complete whole. And it is not MERELY the sexual organs we are talking about here. It is all the physiological and psychological differences that are unique to male and female – that together comprise the totality of what is human (and the total image of God, by the way). THAT is what unites into an organic whole. The physical act of sexual intercourse brings all of this into unity, and only that complete union is CAPABLE of creating LIFE ITSELF – propagating the human species, and sharing the very power of God, who is the Creator of life.

That, and only that, is what human sexuality exists for. It is a perfect design. It needs no modifications or alternatives. And that is why a true marriage can ONLY be achieved by one man and one woman. Anything else falls short of this perfect unity in completeness – and can never be held up as equal to that perfect design.

And here is how I replied:

Thank you for showing me that I had previously misunderstood part of your and other people’s representations of the Church’s arguments against homosexual relations, and I’m pleased to see that the Church doesn’t necessarily teach that homosexual relations can’t have a unifying or deepening psychological effect on a homosexual relationship.

However, it still seems to me that if homosexual couples can love and commit to one another deeply in ways that are virtually indistinguishable from what we can see in the best of childless heterosexual marriages, and if sexual relations can foster such relationships in homosexual couples, then, while the Church may never view a homosexual marriage or partnership as being on equal terms with a heterosexual marriage, it could follow St Paul’s advice that “it’s better to marry than to burn” and accept homosexual marriage as preferable to the highly probable occurrence of damnable sin committed by homosexuals in whom the human need for physical as well as psychological intimacy is too powerful for there to be any realistic expectation that it will be resisted on a widespread basis. This would be a compassionate application of empirical human psychology to morality in place of a morality that tries to conform all human behavior to what I’ve previously called a “Procrustean Bed” of abstract theological ideals that ignore concrete human reality. The Church now confronts homosexuals who want to remain within its good graces with a terrible choice: Either they submit to the earthly torture and disfigurement of the Procrustean Bed, or they refuse to submit and figuratively or literally burn in hell. Or they can relinquish belief that the Church’s teachings about morality and hell and almost everything else have divine authority, which, so far as the Church is concerned, is likely to plunge them into hell. It just seems to me that a supremely loving, just, and merciful God and a Church that truly represents and serves him, would take all of this into account and permit homosexuals to marry.

And even if the Church could not go that far, I fail to understand why it not only refuses to marry homosexual couples within the Church, but also actively opposes civil marriages outside the Church. For it’s one thing for the Church to say that you can’t be a homosexual Catholic in good standing with Church teachings and marry someone of your same gender with or without Church blessings, but it is quite another and different thing for the Church to use the full weight of its influence to prevent secular society from performing and recognizing CIVIL marriage involving Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

If the Church could produce conclusive evidence that such marriages would seriously victimize innocent people on a scale that would cause grave harm to society, it might have a case. Yet, it seems to me that the only case the Church can make is that an alleged God allegedly says that homosexual relations and a marital legitimization of them are wrong because only a man and a woman can form a metaphysical union of “one flesh” that is “open” to “propagating the human species” even if a given heterosexual couple’s capacity to do this is nullified by physical impossibility.

Evidence vs Authority

I've been engaged in friendly (and sometimes not-so-friendly) discussion with Catholics in an online forum for the last several days about various teachings and policies of the Church. I am now discussing the Church's teachings about homosexual relations. The Church teaches that homosexual relations are "intrinsically disordered" acts of "grave depravity" contrary to God's scriptural commands and to natural law. I take issue with these teachings on several grounds and have not been reticent to express them. Someone wrote the following to me last night:

So you dismiss the accumulated wisdom of centuries, indeed millennia, of COHERENT thought that has endured through civilizations the world over throughout history -- you call it antiquated garbage merely because you choose to disagree with it, and instead you offer the allegedly superior wisdom of what "they" say?

This is how I replied:

"Coherent thought" can simply mean false conclusions that logically follow from false premises. "Accumulated wisdom" can simply mean logical but false philosophical or theological arguments that have been accepted by those who either lacked the means to observe the real facts or by those who had the means but were so deferential to authority or so kowtowed by threats against life and limb or livelihood that they wouldn't observe them or admit what they saw if they did. Centuries of "coherent accumulated wisdom" said that the sun circled the Earth, and the Church denounced and suppressed all challenges to it until it finally couldn't any longer.

A hallmark of any proposition about the real world is its testability or falsifiability. One can make all kinds of logical arguments about the way the world is, but if one cannot show how those assertions could ever be tested and shown to be false or, at least, cast into serious doubt, they aren't worth the paper they’re written on. Well, homosexuals are part of the real world, and so are their feelings. But tell me, Marko, how would anyone go about falsifying Catholic teaching that homosexual couples can't experience the same deepening of their love and commitment through sexual relations that heterosexuals can and have those results accepted by the Church? You and I both know that the Church would respond and has responded to any such attempts the way the Church leaders did when Galileo tried to get them to look through the telescope. You could give the Church hundreds of well-designed psychological studies showing conclusions that counter Church teachings, and it would say, “ These results can't be true because centuries of accumulated wisdom inspired by God tell us otherwise." For the Church, it's not "I'll believe it when I see it" but "I'll see it when I believe it," and the Church has too much invested in its anti-homosexual stance to believe and consequently see any facts to the contrary anytime soon.

You asked how I could presume to dismiss the accumulated wisdom of the Church. It’s easy. If the Church says the Earth is flat and I can see that it’s round, I say the Church is wrong. How would you dismiss anything the Church teaches? If you can’t think of any conceivable way, then what good are those teachings and your belief in them?

Absurd vs Rational Faith

The fullest use of reason tells us that we can be certain of nothing but our own conscious experience. We can't be certain of the existence of anything outside our conscious experience because we have no way of stepping outside our conscious experience to verify by a means independent of our conscious experience that anything exists outside that experience. Thus, we cannot be certain of the world that seems to be outside us or of a God that is said to be. Thus, those who claim certitude of the biblical God speak falsely, and a God who would command us to feel certain enough of his existence to love, obey, and serve him upon pain of everlasting torture if we don't, is a God who asks us to misuse and dishonor the rational faculty he allegedly gave us.

I am a man of faith. Not in a biblical God who commands us to feel certain of that of which we cannot be certain, but in my capacity to discern the absurdity of this alleged command and to dismiss it as nonsense unless and until somone can show me good reason not to. So far, nobody has.

Addendum to Yesterday

Here is an addendum to yesterday's entry.

Nature aborts approximately 75% of all pregnancies. If the biblical God made nature, one could say that God aborts all of these pregnancies. In other words, God aborts vastly many more pregnancies than people do. Some would say that if God does it, it’s not an abortion. But this seems like a silly play on words. A miscarriage and a medical abortion have the same result—a “baby” dies in the womb. It’s an abortion.

Yet, do Christian opponents of abortion rail and protest against God for aborting these poor “babies”? No. Do they mourn these innocent victims of God’s abortions? No. It’s perfectly okay with them if God does it, but not if people do. They say that when God aborts a conceptus, it’s God’s plan for that child, but not when people do it.

Yet, what is the real difference for the conceptus? Do Christian opponents of abortion truly believe that the soul of a conceptus aborted by God meets a different fate than does the soul of a conceptus aborted by humans? What would that difference be? Does the soul of a conceptus aborted by God go to heaven and the soul of a conceptus aborted by humans go to hell? The soul of the conceptus aborted by people was no more responsible for what happened to it than was the soul of the conceptus aborted by God, so why would it not go to the same place that the souls of conceptuses aborted by God go?

Some Christian opponents of abortion say that we don’t know where any of these souls go, but that they have faith in God’s supreme justice and mercy. How could this faith lead them to any other conclusion than that God sends all aborted souls to heaven? For how could God be just and merciful if he penalized these innocent souls by sending them to anywhere but heaven?

Some Christians say that God can do anything he wants and that it’s good simply because he does it. So, if he wants to send the souls of conceptuses aborted by humans or all aborted souls to hell, it is good because he does it. Well then, one could use that same argument to say that if God ever tells us to rape our children, it’s good because God has told us to do it. If everything God does is good simply because he does it, we have no grounds for saying that anything he could conceivably do would be evil. If a Christian wouldn’t accept a tautological definition of God’s goodness, then he or she implicitly believes that God’s acts are not good simply because he does them, but because they meet standards of goodness that we use to judge all acts, including God’s or those attributed to God. Our standards of goodness tell us that innocent aborted souls must go to heaven and that a God who didn’t meet this standard would not be good. If God is good, he must meet this standard and send all aborted souls to heaven.

So, all aborted souls go to heaven. On the other hand, souls whose bodies aren’t aborted have a very good chance of going to hell, for the Bible says that the gate to heaven is narrow whereas the road to hell is wide. Christian opponents of abortion say that all souls should be able to choose for themselves where they will go. But if that’s true, why does God deny this choice to 75% or more of all souls? What’s more, what woman who truly loves the “pre-born child” in her womb would want it to end up suffering everlasting torture in the dungeon of hell?

Christian opponents of abortion say that a woman who aborts her child is selfish. But if she aborts her child because she wants to spare it suffering in this life and a strong possibility of going to hell in the next even though she knows that she could spend eternity in hell for doing it, she is committing the most selfless act imaginable—risking the damnation of her eternal soul to guarantee that her child’s soul enjoys everlasting bliss in heaven.

So, a Christian cannot credibly argue that abortion is wrong because it’s necessarily a selfish act of the mother that harms the “pre-born child.” I have shown that abortion is the ultimate gift that one could give to any child—a non-revocable ticket to everlasting bliss, and that it can be a supremely selfless act on the part of the mother. Abortion may violate God’s command not to abort, but what external standard of goodness dictates that God’s command is good? If our standard of goodness says that everyone should have the chance to choose for herself whether she goes to heaven or to hell, doesn’t God himself violate this standard for more than 75% of created souls? If God does only good, then abortion can't be wrong because it deprives souls of their choice. There must be some other reason. What is it? If there isn’t any and Christians continue to insist that God's innumerable spontaneous abortions are good, shouldn’t we humans do our best to follow his good example?

A Christian and a Philosopher Discuss Abortion

Christian: Abortion is murder.

Philosopher: ‘Murder’ is the unjustified killing of a human being. How is abortion the unjustified killing of a human being?

Christian: The unborn child is an innocent human child in the womb, and there is no justification whatsoever for killing an innocent human child in the womb.

Philosopher: In the early stages of pregnancy, is the conceptus any more a human being than an acorn is an oak tree? Would you say that destroying an acorn is the same as killing an oak tree?

Christian: We’re not talking about acorns and oak trees. We’re talking about the murder of innocent human children.

Philosopher: You haven’t explained how a conceptus in the early stages of its development is any more a human child than an acorn is a young oak tree, and how destroying this conceptus is, in principle, any worse than destroying an acorn.

Christian: The unborn child has a soul; the acorn doesn’t.

Philosopher: Leaving aside the question of how you know that these two claims are true and assuming, for the sake of our discussion, that they are true, how is the soul of a conceptus harmed by abortion?

Christian: It is denied the opportunity to live.

Philosopher: Are you saying that this soul doesn’t live after its body is aborted?

Christian: Of course it lives. Our bodies die, but our souls are immortal.

Philosopher: What happens to the immortal soul of a conceptus after its body is aborted?

Christian: It goes to heaven.

Philosopher: How does going to heaven harm a soul?

Christian: It doesn’t get to experience the joys of this life.

Philosopher: Isn’t it also spared the sorrows and sufferings of this life and ephemeral pleasures infinitely less than the everlasting joys of heavenly bliss, and isn’t it also spared any and all possibility of going to hell?

Christian: It is not for us to make that choice for the child. It should be allowed to choose for itself after it’s born whether it will obey God and go to heaven or disobey God and go to hell.

Philosopher: So, aborting a conceptus doesn’t harm its soul; it deprives it of the chance to choose a course in this life that subjects it to everlasting agony in hell in the next?

Christian: Yes.

Philosopher: Some might say that sparing a soul the opportunity to make this horrendous “choice” is the most humane and justifiable thing that one could do, and, if it is, then aborting a conceptus is not ‘murder.’

If a philosopher and Christian had a real discussion along the lines of the hypothetical dialogue above, I’m sure that it would be much longer and more complicated than that dialogue. And any reasonably well-informed and thoughtful Christian would probably make a far better account of himself than the hapless victim of my mouthpiece the philosopher. Yet, the dialogue raises some points that I’ve never seen discussed in heated debates between the religious opponents of abortion rights and those like myself who support these rights, unless I’m involved in the discussion. I don’t know if this is because these points are too ridiculous for intelligent and sane people to argue, or if it’s for some other reason. I leave that for the reader to decide.

However, it seems plausible to me to argue the following:

If you believe that there is a heaven of everlasting bliss where the good people go and a hell of never-ending torment where the uncleansed sinners go; and if you believe that the souls of the aborted automatically go to heaven, whereas the souls of the rest of us face the very real possibility of agonizing forever in hell, it is neither harmful to the soul to be aborted, nor necessarily selfish of a woman to resort to abortion. In fact, a woman who knows full well that aborting her fetus could plunge her into hell but goes ahead and does it anyway because she wants to feel absolutely certain that her fetus’ soul can’t go to hell could be said to be committing the most selfless rather than selfish act imaginable. In fact, one could even go so far as to argue that the most selfish thing anyone could do would be to give birth to a baby when they know that its soul might well end up in hell someday. And if you say that Christianity teaches that aborted souls don’t go to heaven, doesn’t that seem like just about the most absurdly unjust and unfair religion you could ever imagine? Are you going to use a religion LIKE THAT as the basis of your argument against abortion rights? If you say that Christianity doesn’t say where aborted souls go, do you believe that the God that your religion says is supremely loving, just, and merciful would send these utterly innocent souls to anywhere but heaven?

Of course, I don’t believe in heaven and hell or the God of the Bible, and so typical Christian arguments against abortion rights carry no weight with me whatsoever. Yet, it is no doubt equally true that secular arguments for abortion rights have no persuasive power over Christians. So, I like to frame objections inferred from Christian teachings themselves to argue against Christian arguments against abortion. Some might call this “fighting fire with fire.” Unfortunately, I doubt that my “fire” has ever persuaded a Christian opponent of abortion to change his mind. But it’s sure fun to throw a curve at these “true-believers” from time to time.

An Unbelievable God, Part 2

Someone replied to my previous message in what seemed to be a very earnest and respectfuly Christian manner. This is what he wrote:

You sound like a very intelligent person with very valid concerns about adopting a faith in the judeo-christian God. Many people have, and still have, those same concerns. A am not a religous official or biblical scholar, but I would like a chance to address your concerns. First of all, you asked how people can believe in something that cannot be proven (paraphrasing your first statements). That is really the essence of faith and truely the definition of it. Faith is believing in that which cannot be proven. We all have faith in things, religion, people, pop science, etc. I am sure you put your faith in things or people every day, for those things have proven themselves faithful and unfaithful. So now, why put yor faith into a God that you have heard so many bad things about. Well, if that is all I had to go on, I wouldn't do it either. So you are joined by millions, and that would include me if I didn't step and try try to find out for myself who this God really is.
Some people are more sceptical than others, some more analytical, some more stubborn, etc. Thank God we are all different. I was of the more analytical group. That made me even more resistant to a faith in God, especially when I didn't analyze the facts myself. But at a point in my life ten years ago I made the choice to objectively examine the basis of this faith, namely the Bible, and find out for myself if I should put my faith in Him. Well, after hearing the evidence, inconclusive as it was for there would be no reason for faith if it was conclusive, I had no choice but to obey my understanding and accept this faith. Yes, I could have chosen to reject it still, but I would have to had rejected the process I use to examine all things in my life. I am too reasonable for that. So, I must conclude that to reject the case for faith in God, you must examine the evidence yourself, or you are merely forming your opinions and beliefs on what others say, and you seem too intelligent for that. Others will tell you you don't have to do this, but what they are not telling you is that you are placing your faith in them and what they say. I am not trying to influence you into believing ANYTHING, just trying to influence you into finding out for yourself. If you do that, like I have, and put your faith in God, like I did, you will be labeled a Nut,Jesus-Freak,Right Wing Extremeist (though my faith and politics are two different things). But hey, if using my own mind to decide what I want to believe is being one of those things, then "guilty as charged".
The other questions and concerns you have, Old Testament judgements, heaven and hell, loving God, etc. will surely be answered when you take the time to find out what God says about himself (the bible) and not what others say. Ususally these others never got to know God but just passed a judgement based on what they heard. Again, you seem too intelligent for that. It is important however, to examine the bible with someone who does know the book and can explain things that may seem unclear to you. Clarity will come with experience of the material, not manipulation by others. My suggestion is to find a bible-study group and be up front with them that you just want to know what the bible says. Most "Christian Fundamentalists" ( I like that term because it suggests that you "really" believe in your faith )will be very kind and respect your wishes to not be proseltized (sp.). I hope you may become certain in your faith, whether to believe in God or not. Both ways are a faith because either side of the issue cannot be proven. God Bless.

This is how I replied to him:

Thank you for your uncommonly gracious and thoughtful response. I’d like to address some of your points.

I agree that the essence of faith is unproven belief. We have faith in things that seem true or comforting to us but which we cannot know for sure to be true. For if we were sure of them, there would not be faith; there would be certainty.

You say that you have faith in an unproven biblical God. I say that I don’t have faith in this God. You say that you came to your faith by thoroughly examining the Bible, and you urge me to conduct this examination for myself and see what happens. But I am a busy man with many obligations and interests. The amount of time and energy I would need to spend studying the Bible to the degree that you recommend would divert me from these other activities. In order for me to do this, I must have a preliminary level of faith that it is worth doing. I do not yet have this faith, any more than you would likely have faith in my telling you that before you can legitimately embrace Christianity, you must invest at least the same amount of effort in studying the sacred texts of all the great religions traditions that you have in studying the Bible so that you can make an informed choice. I could argue that the sacred text of any religion can seem plausible and compelling when examined by itself by a mind seeking a comforting sense of purpose and security and that it is only when all the sacred texts are examined and unbiased comparisons are made between them that one even begins to be in a position to choose intelligently or perhaps decide that no established religion is sufficiently more compelling than any other to choose any of them.

You say that if I study the Bible the way you recommend, my concerns about Old Testament and other passages implying God’s indifference or outright cruelty regarding human suffering will be allayed. Do you mean that I will understand that there is no everlasting hell; that God didn’t drown innocent babies and children in Noah’s day or inflict any of the other slaughters, plagues, and pestilences attributed to him in Holy Scripture; that there really is a way of reconciling the problem of pandemic evil in the world with God’s alleged omnipotence, omniscience, supreme love, supreme justice, and supreme mercy; that we, some 2000 years afterwards, are not required to believe without proof that Jesus was the one and only son of God and that he died on the cross as a brutally bloody sacrifice that was the best way an omniscient God could devise to purchase our redemption? These alleged acts, qualities, and demands of God are so overwhelmingly implausible if not repugnant to me that unless you can assure me that they are not literally true, I could no more read the Bible looking for salvation than I could read Mein Kampf for the same reason on the assurances of others that if I really take the time and make the effort to study and understand this wonderful book, my preliminary concerns and revulsions will be dispelled.

Something tells me that neither you nor any other Christian is prepared to make this assurance. Even if you tried, you would then be faced with the onerous task of explaining why I should regard a sacred text consisting of so much myth and metaphor rather than literal truth and a religion grounded upon it as more worthy of my embrace than any other sacred text and derivative religion. Can you do this?

An Unbelievable God

I recently became involved in an online discussion about the biblical God. Here is one of my posts there:

Catholic and other Christian fundamentalists say that we humans are faced with a simple choice. We can either love, worship, and obey God as the Bible literally portrays “him,” or we can suffer everlasting torment in hell. But I say there is nothing simple about believing in the unbelievable, much less loving, worshipping, and obeying a God in which one cannot believe. I cannot believe in God as the Bible literally portrays him. I have many reasons for this, but some of the most pressing ones concern the Bible’s numerous accounts of God inflicting undeserved suffering and death on countless human beings either through direct acts of deliberate murder and destruction or by designing a world in which rampant natural calamities harm and destroy lives, and God’s consigning people to everlasting torture in hell. I cannot reconcile any of this with the Bible’s insistence that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and supremely loving, just, and merciful.

Catholic and other Christian fundamentalists tell me that a loving, just, and merciful God drowned all the little babies and children of the world in Noah’s time except those on the Ark, and that a loving, just, and merciful God made hell and sends people there for not loving him and following his rules. Yet, how could anyone believe that such acts are just, much less merciful, acts of a loving God? If we would not call a human parent loving, just, and merciful who says, “Love and obey me and I will reward you beyond your wildest dreams, but don’t love me and don’t obey me and I will throw you into a fiery furnace,” why would we regard the biblical God as being any better? Indeed, isn’t the biblical God infinitely worse than this because not only does he threaten a fiery furnace that burns and burns forever or some everlastingly torturous equivalent, but he also forces us to choose between him and never-ending reward on the one hand and never-ending punishment on the other without even proving to us that he and these realms exist as anything more than myths in an ancient religious document? How could anyone believe that this is a “simple” choice, and that those who “choose” neither God and heaven nor hell because they have perfectly good grounds for doubting both, deserve to go to hell and end up going there?

Movie Review: The Assassination of Richard Nixon

In 1974, a Baltimore man named Sam Byck attempted to hijack an airliner so he could crash it into the White House and incinerate President Nixon, and he sent audiotapes to Leonard Bernstein detailing his motives. The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004) is “inspired” by this historical footnote. In it, Sean Penn plays the role of Sam Bicke, a pathetic man who is desperately out-of-place in 1974 America.

In simplistic terms, Bicke is a total “loser.” He’s been separated from his wife (Naomi Watts) and three children for almost two years but entertains pitiful delusions of reconciliation. He has one friend, a black auto mechanic (Don Cheadle). He flees from one job to another, ending up selling office furniture for an unctuous boss who gives him self-help books on tape and a tape recorder-player with which to boost his ego, fire up his motivation, and master the pushy art of friendly persuasion. But Sam doesn’t have the drive to study the tapes in a serious way, the social skills to translate their theory into effective practice, or the temperament to persuade people to buy things they don’t really want for prices they don’t want to pay.

Not only that, but he is too busy trying to force himself back on his wife who wants nothing more to do with him than to collect his child support checks to help her meet the expenses of raising the children and maintaining the house while she moves on with her life; too busy struggling to get a loan to start up an ill-conceived business with his friend to sell and install tires out of a bright red bus that doesn’t even run; and too busy railing against the corrupt unfairness of a social system that rewards people with obscene amounts of wealth and power for lying, conniving, and manipulating while people of integrity and decency flounder and fail to find success or happiness.

As Bicke’s failures mount, he becomes increasingly unhinged, quitting his job, stealing from his brother, making an abortive attempt to kill his ex-boss, and then seizing upon an insane plan to assassinate President Nixon and destroy the White House in a blaze of glorious triumph of the little man over the iconic symbols of oppressive and immoral wealth and power. As he explains in his rambling tape to Leonard Bernstein, he’s going to demonstrate that even the smallest grain of sand on the vast beach that is the American and world populace can have a mighty impact on everyone.

Sean Penn has to be one of the finest actors on film, and I believe that this film features one of his greatest performances. In fact, I think it’s stunning. I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job of capturing Bicke’s alienation from society; his bumbling social ineptitude and incessant self-preoccupation; his maddeningly clueless pursuit of the impossible; his crushing despair as he sees his marriage, his friendship, his career aspirations, his relationship with his brother, and his entire life inexorably disintegrate; and his irreversible plunge into the black depths of tragedy.

Some have criticized the film for being a rip-off of Taxi Driver. I may be in a distinct minority, but I actually found Penn’s Sam Bicke to be a more believable and compelling character than DeNiro’s Travis Bickle, and Assassination a more involving study of alienation and decline into madness than Taxi Driver.

Others have complained that The Assassination of Richard Nixon is an unmitigated and unrelenting downer with no redeeming message or point. I admit that I have probably never squirmed with as much discomfort or felt such unremitting bleakness while watching a film as I did while watching this one. My wife kept saying with exasperation, “He’s stupid . . . a stupid man!”

Yes, I believe that he was stupid in terms of social or emotional intelligence, and not terribly bright intellectually or strong in any other way, and that this unfortunate constellation of inadequacies crumbled into madness under the demands and pressures of everyday life. I believe that this was the “point” of the movie and that it was portrayed so masterfully that it was all the point there needed to be. If one watches this film with an open and compassionate mind and heart instead of being clouded by expectations of a “good time” or by judgmental contempt for the protagonist, one can gain deep and valuable insight into the anatomy of alienation, despair, and desperation to “be somebody” in a world that is oblivious to your existence when it isn’t being contemptuous of it.

Sam Bicke is so pathetic that it’s hard to sympathize with him when he constantly whines about deceit and injustice at work and in life, doggedly pursues his estranged wife who obviously has no interest in reconciliation, and pushes awkwardly and overbearingly for a business loan that hasn’t an iota’s chance of being approved. But there are many people in this world who are like Sam Bicke to some degree or other, and they are human beings who hope and dream until they feel so defeated and hopeless that they live out their sad lives in lonely, lingering obscurity, or eat, drink, or drug themselves to quicker death, or destroy themselves and sometimes others in sudden, ugly acts of shocking violence.

I believe that it is incumbent on us as individuals and as a society to minimize this suffering and destruction by taking more of an interest in the Sam Bicke’s of our world, showing them that we do care about them, providing them a niche in society where they can feel nurtured, valued, and loved, and making expert help available to them and steering them toward it when they need it.

I had never even heard of The Assassination of Richard Nixon until recently, but as soon as I did hear of it, I just had to see it. I’m glad I did. Bearing in mind that I’m a pretty tough grader, I give it an A-.

Father, forgive them...

I recently wrote that even though I questioned the literal resurrection of Jesus, I wanted to believe that the biblical stories of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection could have valuable symbolic meaning. An example of this is the verse from Luke 23:24 where Jesus is close to death on the cross but nevertheless beseeches God to have mercy on his Roman and Jewish persecutors: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

To me this story is the highest expression of love and wisdom. It doesn’t really matter to me whether the story is literally true or apocryphal. It represents a level of consciousness far beyond what most of us could ever hope to attain but toward which we should all strive. For it seems profoundly true to me that those who hurt others without just cause do so out of a fundamental lack of empathy or understanding of the injustice and suffering they’re inflicting, and that the proper attitude to harbor with respect to people afflicted by such deficiency is one of unconditional empathy, compassion, love, mercy, and forgiveness. Not only does it feel better to love than to hate, but also a society filled with people who love rather than hate defective souls seems more likely to raise fewer defective souls who commit hurtful acts.

To love these individuals doesn’t have to mean letting them walk away from their destructive acts without facing any consequences. But it does mean that those consequences are imposed without hateful vindictiveness that damages the punisher and society as a whole as much if not more as it does the punished. Whether Jesus actually felt this way and said those words or not, my heart-of-hearts tells me that this is the way to be and draws inspiration from the biblical passage I cited. What I find terribly curious is that most people who call themselves Christian and espouse belief in the literal meaning of New Testament Jesus stories seldom manifest or even aspire to manifest this kind of loving wisdom. How truly Christian are these ‘true-believers’?

Mindful Driving Through Life

A key reason why I like Eknath Easwaran’s teachings so much is that he expresses them with wonderful metaphors that make his messages so clear, compelling, and memorable. For instance, in yesterday’s thought for the day, he likens the mind lacking in the discipline of mindfulness to a poor driver. Just as the poor driver may inadvertently wander into your lane and then dangerously overcorrect until he eventually causes an accident, an unfocused mind

“weaves through life, running into difficult situations and colliding with other people.” However, a mind focused by mindfulness practice and complementary disciplines stays in its own lane. It cannot be swept away by an impulsive desire or fear; it cannot be haunted by an unpleasant memory or by anxiety about the future. There is no skill more worth learning than the art of directing attention as we choose.”

Now, when I find my mind wandering or racing from one thought or whim to another, I will think of the poor driver and try to stay in my own lane.

The Ressurection: Myth or Fact?

I watched a 20/20 special last Friday exploring the Resurrection story of Jesus. The program featured comments by leading Christian and history scholars and a tour of the most likely places of Jesus’ crucifixion, entombment, and movements after his resurrection. The overall theme of the program seemed to be that Jesus truly did rise from the dead in some fashion and that we have ample grounds for believing this.

Scholars argued that no one of that time, including the Romans, is on record as having denied that Jesus’ body disappeared from his tomb shortly after his death. Second, all of his disciples claimed to have seen his resurrected body even if they didn’t always recognize him at first. Third, and most compellingly, although most of his disciples were in hiding after his apprehension and during his execution, their lives changed profoundly after claiming to see his resurrected body. From that point on, they and their followers openly declared their faith and risked and in many cases had inflicted upon them arrest, agonizing torture, and death for that faith. Finally, quite a number of men lived around the time of Jesus who preached and had followings of their own and claimed to be the Messiah and to work miracles, and they too were crucified. But we don’t know anything more about them, whereas Jesus’ life and story grew into the most popular and powerful religion the world has ever seen. An itinerant preacher for only a year or two (biblical accounts differ on this) who lived only into his early thirties became, after his death, the most famous if not revered person in history. How could all of this have happened if Jesus was not truly the Son of God and did not truly rise from the dead?

I don’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God. I don’t believe that he rose from the dead. I believe that Christianity is based on a fairy tale. I don’t claim to know for sure that it is, but I never cease to be amazed at how otherwise intelligent and sensible people of today can believe the biblical story of Jesus without question and at how an American politician who said he or she doesn’t believe it wouldn’t have a proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of being elected to high office, whereas one who espoused belief in such an equally implausible figure as Santa Claus or a flying saucer God would be mocked and scorned right out of the campaign if not committed to a mental hospital.

I wrote a moment ago of the “biblical story” of Jesus because that is essentially all it is. So far as I know, there is scant and totally unremarkable mention of Jesus by any of his contemporaries other than his followers. Virtually everything believers think they know about Jesus comes from a few books in a religious document designed to spread and reinforce the Christian faith, and even these books were written decades after Jesus’ death. And, interestingly enough, even these books differ in what they say about the matter. Most of our information about Jesus’ life comes from the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Yet, Mark ends with an empty tomb, and the other Gospels differ on important details regarding who saw Jesus’ resurrected body and how and where they saw it. This hardly seems like the stuff of indubitable historical fact.

But even if all these books agreed with one another and told the same story, there would still be serious problems with the story itself. There is the terribly vexing question of why an omniscient and omnipotent God of supreme love and mercy would create human beings with a nature he always knew would sin and require redemption, and why he would decide that the best and only way to provide redemption was to incarnate himself into Jesus and suffer and die on the cross and then require that everyone from that era until the end of the world believe the biblical story of Jesus if they were to be saved. If we are to believe what the Gospels tell us, even Jesus’ own disciples didn’t believe that Jesus was God incarnate whose mission was to redeem humankind by his death and resurrection until they allegedly saw him resurrected. Though they lived with him, heard all his preachings, and saw all of his alleged miracles, they were devastated when they saw him apprehended by the Jewish authorities, and they ran and hid from the Jews and the Romans lest they meet the same fate as Jesus. And when some reported seeing Jesus alive again after his death, most of these same disciples didn’t believe it. As far as they were concerned, Jesus was dead and so were their hopes of him being the Messiah who would deliver their people from Roman dominance.

If even these disciples who knew Jesus more intimately by far than anyone didn’t understand his mission and didn’t believe he was the Son of God and didn’t believe he died for our sins and was resurrected until they allegedly saw his resurrected body with their own eyes, how in the world can we, almost two thousand years later, be expected to believe a word of it? Interestingly enough, one of the scholars, Fr. Richard McBrien, interviewed in the 20/20 program said that he sometimes has difficulty believing it. If a Catholic priest and leading authority on Catholic teachings has this difficulty, how can the rest of us, especially those of us outside the Church and outside Christianity entirely, be reasonably expected to believe at all? Yet we are told that we will suffer forever in hell if we don’t and rise to heaven only if we do. This seems utterly and completely absurd!

Of course, we are still left with the questions of how Jesus’ disciples allegedly transformed from dispirited, terrified men in hiding after Jesus’ arrest to bold evangelists risking limb and life after his death, and how Christianity went on to become the world’s most popular religion. How could this have happened if Jesus wasn’t truly the Son of God who rose from the dead to redeem us?

I admit that it’s difficult to explain, but when seeking an explanation, doesn’t it make sense to pick simpler, more plausible explanations over more complicated and less plausible ones? If so, is it simpler and more plausible to believe that Jesus was what the bible and Christian religion say he was, or that he was a mortal man who died on the cross and that his followers felt so desperate to find justification and meaning for the lives they had led with Jesus and the sacrifices they had made that they succumbed to a kind of collective hallucination and delusion about Jesus’ resurrection that gave them overriding purpose for the rest of their lives? Is it simpler and more plausible to assume that Christianity became the world’s most popular and powerful religion because it’s the true religion, or that Jesus lived in the right place at the right time for his followers to influence Roman civilization to influence all of dominant Western civilization with the Christian message? Does anyone believe that Jesus would have the impact he did on the world if he had been born and executed in Tibet or Mexico?

I would like to believe that Jesus was an extraordinarily wise and spiritually realized man whose biblical story of life, death, and resurrection is a mixture of truth and myth that can have powerful metaphorical and transfiguring meaning for humankind. But I cannot, using the tools of reason and commonsense that God himself allegedly gave us, believe that Jesus was literally what the bible and conventional Christian teachings tell me he was. How can anyone?

A Sufi's View of Alleged Desecration

One of my favorite websites is Beliefnet. It addresses all the great religious traditions from every perspective and posts readers' comments on every article. Many of those comments are thoughtful and eloquent. One of the most thoughtful and eloquent comments I've ever read there was posted by someone who identifies his religious affiliation as Sufi. Sufis are Muslim mystics who value direct religious experience over dogma, love over righteousness. This man is commenting on an article about the Newsweek story concerning the alleged desecration of the Qur'an by interregators at Guantanamo Bay. I wrote about this myself in a recent entry. This man makes some of the same points I did, but how I wish I could have expressed them as beautifully as he did!

A book is paper, its words penned in ink. It is no more and no less holy as a form than any other.

Reverence is paid to the source of wisdom and knowledge that is communicated through a holy book to the heart and mind of the reader. If a person desecrates the book it is the deficiency of the person who desecrates that is shown, and is no cause for any other reaction but pity towards the person who does it.

Neither Mohammed, nor Allah, nor the faith of a Muslim is diminished by the blashemous act of a non-Muslim. Allah is more than any form, including the Qu'ran. Reverence is reserved for the One, and mercy towards those who need it is the best response.

The Power of Minimalism

I listened this morning to a conversation between Ken Wilber and Rick Rubin. Rubin is a very successful music producer who has worked with artists ranging from Nine Inch Nails to Public Enemy to Johnny Cash. He says that many producers are solely concerned with making money, but that he has always put quality first. He wants to bring out the essence of the best of what a talented artist or group has to offer, and he believes that the best way to do this is generally to strip their songs to their barest elements. If this unadorned essence has the power to move people emotionally the way the best music does better than almost anything, then he and the artists collaborate to make the song as good as possible. If it doesn’t, then throw it out. He says that this is an unusual approach because it takes so much more time and effort to pare greatness down to its vital core than it does to throw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink into a mediocre song to blanket its shortcomings under a diverting canopy of pleasing sound. Wilber says that the same applies to writing a book, and he paraphrases Karl Marx who said something like, “I don’t have the time to write a short book.” But Wilber and Rubin agree that taking the time to slice away the flab and say what one has to say with compact precision and power is time well spent.

I agree with this in principle, but it is so, so difficult for me to write as concisely as I would like. I know that I often use too many words big and small to get to my point and that I’ve probably turned off a lot of prospective readers by doing it. But it takes so much time and effort to figure out precisely what I want to say and then strip away the excess verbiage until only the raw essence remains. And when I’ve struggled and strained to the point where I think I’ve done this, my prose sometimes seems colorless, rigid, indifferent, and even simpleminded. Yet, something tells me that I need to keep trying, that if I can’t make my point, the whole point, and nothing but the point with unvarnished clarity and concision, I don’t really have a worthwhile point to make, and if I don’t have a worthwhile point to make, why write at all?