Random comments about Christianity...

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

I went to dinner with a co-worker the other day and we had a very animated conversation about religion…that is me…I don’t listen to the old adage of what not to talk about. But he just added to my experience of my generation.
A couple of days ago it was the 200 anniversary of Darwin’s birth. In the past few years, maybe decades, Darwin’s ideas have gained acceptance even among Christians. Case-in-point was my co-worker, who made a compelling argument:
What is the essential difference between dust and ape? Sure, the good Book says that we were created in His image but dust don’t look like God, we don’t suppose so why must we reject Darwinism because of the implication that God is no Ape in the sky? Instead both dust and ape are raw materials for the creation of man in the similitude of God.

But the problem, I said, was the implications for the Creator. Some of the concepts of Darwinism would not mix with the characterization of God. In order to reconcille one thing you would have to abandon many others. The Lord is mysterious in His ways, but He does not play dice, Einstein might say, but that is essentially what evolution is about. History (which what evolution really is) is arbitrary and indifferent while God is not.

I call the Bible “the good Book” with no irony, with no quotations marks, thus in my own voice because it is a fascinating Book…too bad very few people study their Bibles outside of what is pointed out to them but this is because most do not open the Bible at all until Sunday is upon them. It is a shame. The Bible records instances when the indifference of Nature was felt as indifference from God, but these were marginal expressions that accepted in the end only that this was apparent and true only for a time and that God would again take sides. If Christianity is incompatible with Darwin it is because it posits an indifferent design. We were created not in the image of God but in the image of our previous circumstances. You’re not white because God is white, but because circumstances and history made your forefathers survived other possible ancestors.

Everytime, I have seen, Christians try to slide in an atheist philosophy it is because they do not understand their own religion. We live in a more tolerant society but with deep wounds from slavery and civil war to the Second World War, it’s Holocaust and the Clash of civilizations which really is a Clash of Religion. The rise of reason has negated many truths once held as dogmatic but the borders remain to be fought over. The God of the Bible has failed to stay relevant. Once it’s sphere of influence was in this world, but the days of flood and pestilence and stopping the Sun itself on it’s “tracts”, of “healing” the demonically possessed and curing blindness…these days are passed. God was supersceded by a faith in progress and science; but that was, now we see after history has put such beliefs in the examinating table, nothing but idols that now stand discredited as well…and so it shall always be for man is born and lives in a world not his own and often outside of his control. The brutality of man was once found in God but now that we denounce the brutality of man we are searching to conceal the brutality of God. God is a concept that has already seen it’s best days.

2

I think you need to get past the idea of creatio ex nihilo. God doesn’t create from nothing but rather from pre-existing materials. If so, there is no inconsistency whatsoever in upholding the evolutionary process and Scriptural accounts of creation… You said it yourself, God creates Man from dust, not nothing, and the only law dust follows is, well, something very evolution like!

As I’ve suggested before, the point of Scripture isn’t to tell us how or why things are, as if its authors were writing about ontology or history. Rather it’s purpose is to show us how things could be…

If you do some research you might find that the idea of creatio ex nihilo came about some time after Jesus, with its first appearance, if I remember correctly, coming out of gnosticism… In other words, the idea of God “creating out of nothing” was foreign to Jesus and Jews of his and previous times, when the creation texts were written… (This is taken from the contemporary philosopher John Caputo, so I refer you to his book The Weakness of God for scholarly support of these points).

3

omar:I went to dinner with a co-worker the other day and we had a very animated conversation about religion…that is me…I don’t listen to the old adage of what not to talk about. But he just added to my experience of my generation.
A couple of days ago it was the 200 anniversary of Darwin’s birth. In the past few years, maybe decades, Darwin’s ideas have gained acceptance even among Christians. Case-in-point was my co-worker, who made a compelling argument:
What is the essential difference between dust and ape? Sure, the good Book says that we were created in His image but dust don’t look like God, we don’t suppose so why must we reject Darwinism because of the implication that God is no Ape in the sky? Instead both dust and ape are raw materials for the creation of man in the similitude of God.

K: I think but don’t hold me to it, that even the Pope even conceded to evolution. As far as dust and apes go, you can go with Spinoza’s argument
that god is everything and thus is dust and apes and dogs and snow and…

O: But the problem, I said, was the implications for the Creator. Some of the concepts of Darwinism would not mix with the characterization of God. In order to reconcille one thing you would have to abandon many others. The Lord is mysterious in His ways, but He does not play dice, Einstein might say, but that is essentially what evolution is about. History (which what evolution really is) is arbitrary and indifferent while God is not.

K: read your bible and you see god is arbitrary and indifferent. Read your history and clearly god is arbitrary and indifferent if and this is a big if
he is omnipotent and ever present.

K: I call the Bible “the good Book” with no irony, with no quotations marks, thus in my own voice because it is a fascinating Book…too bad very few people study their Bibles outside of what is pointed out to them but this is because most do not open the Bible at all until Sunday is upon them. It is a shame. The Bible records instances when the indifference of Nature was felt as indifference from God, but these were marginal expressions that accepted in the end only that this was apparent and true only for a time and that God would again take sides. If Christianity is incompatible with Darwin it is because it posits an indifferent design. We were created not in the image of God but in the image of our previous circumstances. You’re not white because God is white, but because circumstances and history made your forefathers survived other possible ancestors.

K: Although I am an atheist and have been for many years, for twenty years I read the bible at least once a year. At one point, I knew it pretty well.

O: Everytime, I have seen, Christians try to slide in an atheist philosophy it is because they do not understand their own religion. We live in a more tolerant society but with deep wounds from slavery and civil war to the Second World War, it’s Holocaust and the Clash of civilizations which really is a Clash of Religion. The rise of reason has negated many truths once held as dogmatic but the borders remain to be fought over. The God of the Bible has failed to stay relevant. Once it’s sphere of influence was in this world, but the days of flood and pestilence and stopping the Sun itself on it’s “tracts”, of “healing” the demonically possessed and curing blindness…these days are passed. God was supersceded by a faith in progress and science; but that was, now we see after history has put such beliefs in the examinating table, nothing but idols that now stand discredited as well…and so it shall always be for man is born and lives in a world not his own and often outside of his control. The brutality of man was once found in God but now that we denounce the brutality of man we are searching to conceal the brutality of God. God is a concept that has already seen it’s best days.
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K: Slavery, civil war the holocaust, the second world war and most importantly the first world war all give voice to the ideal that a just, loving god
does not exist because what just, loving and god would torture his creation with such acts of horror. The god of the bible has failed to stay relevant because
of events on the ground has made it impossible to believe in such a creature. If god is all powerful and all knowing and omnipotent, then why the horror of
the twentieth century. Apologist for god say, we have free will and have chosen our horror, but that means god is not omnipotent. Either he is in charge and
must take the blame or man has free will and god is not all powerful. You can’t have it both ways. The god of the old testament is a brutal and vicious
god, who on a whim will destroy a man’s life, book of job.

Kropotkin

4

I’ll tell you what Ayoshka, let us leave the issue of defining Christianity to others and let us discuss this idea of the “Weakness of God”.
In Genesis the Spirit of God travels over the waters, so they are co-existent with God. As such God is not so much the Creator as He is the Architect, for an architect shapes raw materials into buildings and the like and his work is determined and limited to the materials he has to use and the circumstances under which he must operate.
God, the poor guy, is always having to deal with the laws of this world. he is can only do as far as the materials allow him. He could not have created man in one afternoon because his raw biological materials would not allow it.
I also agree that the purpose of sacred history is not to just point at where we’ve been but where we could be.
Now as far as what I’ve said gnosticism posits that God, Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, is merely the God of this world. Other parts of the Bible, it needs to be mentioned, point out that Satan is the god of this world, which is why I sometimes fail to see the point in calling Christianity “monotheism”.
Marcion (c. 140) was the first to see what you saw. Rather than reconcilliation he posited a division between the God of the Old Testament and the Father Jesus speaks of. In gnostic theology the Serpent was a hero. The God of israel, the creator, the Demiurge, was himself a creation. This is why Yahweh is limited. He is mistaken in being the Ruler of All. Gnostic initiates were released from the power of the demiurge and followed the one true God. Perhaps what we call “Christianity” these days is nothing more “the-version of Christianity that survived”.

5

Omar,

I’m not nearly expert enough on early Christian sects to comment on the latter half of what you mention, but as to Marcion’s seemingly stark “division” I would disagree… I see the God of the OT as just as loving as Jesus… As you’ve described the Bible as a theological collage, with which I agree, there are likely divergent notions of God throughout the text and also signs of a “developing” God just as any character develops over time… But that said, I do see a strong central theme throughout, and that theme is the love I never shut up about!

I’ve made a post about this before, but let me share again my take on Genesis 1. To me God is not so much designing nature with pre-existing materials in this scene (like an architect as you suggest) but rather God is being hospitable with His property… In essence, God is practicing love in Creation, where hospitality is the loving response when we meet someone…

I read Genesis 1 by linking it up with Genesis 18… Abraham in this scene (where he shows hospitality/love to the three strangers) is acting precisely as God acts in Genesis 1…

From NSRV:

“My Lord, if I have found favor in Your sight, please do not pass Your servant by. Please let a little water be brought and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree; and I will bring a piece of bread, that you may refresh yourselves; after that you may go on, since you have visited your servant.”

In Genesis 1 God is not designing with pre-existing materials but rather God is welcoming us to what God has to give, i.e., Let a little light be brought. Let there be sea and sky and earth! …

As for the Weakness of God…

To me God is just a character (kind of like Achilles or any other character whether real or imaginary). The point is not for us to think this character exists in reality, but for us to become images of God, which means for us to adopt God’s loving character (which is precisely what happens in Genesis 1 where everything is good)…

As “just a character” God can’t do any real work in the world as is commonly supposed. So in this sense God is weak. But since God’s character can be adopted by us, there is a chance, through us, for divine action… This is what happens in Jesus. Jesus is an image of God (exhibited by the Father-Son relationship), and through Jesus God’s action is capable of real work… In other words, God in Godself is weak. But God adopted by us is capable of anything we are capable of…

Did that make sense? (Note: this isn’t Caputo’s thinking but my own.)

6

Alyoshka:

— I see the God of the OT as just as loving as Jesus…
O- I see them both as equally punitive…

— I’ve made a post about this before, but let me share again my take on Genesis 1. To me God is not so much designing nature with pre-existing materials in this scene (like an architect as you suggest) but rather God is being hospitable with His property… In essence, God is practicing love in Creation, where hospitality is the loving response when we meet someone…
O- So loving in fact that he puts a snake amongst the children…

— To me God is just a character (kind of like Achilles or any other character whether real or imaginary). The point is not for us to think this character exists in reality, but for us to become images of God, which means for us to adopt God’s loving character (which is precisely what happens in Genesis 1 where everything is good)…
O- You got this out of Jack Miles, the biographer of God. I have yet to read the book but it is on my shelf.

— As “just a character” God can’t do any real work in the world as is commonly supposed. So in this sense God is weak. But since God’s character can be adopted by us, there is a chance, through us, for divine action… This is what happens in Jesus. Jesus is an image of God (exhibited by the Father-Son relationship), and through Jesus God’s action is capable of real work… In other words, God in Godself is weak. But God adopted by us is capable of anything we are capable of…
O- This is what I mean that God has become weaker as science has gotten stronger. There was once a time when all things were His “work”. To some extent, fundamentalists still hold this view with disastrous effect. I guess your answer to Epicurus is that God is willing but impotent.

7

I think we’re both well aware of each other’s positions.

This is just one sign among many of how out-of-God’s-control nature is.
The materials God creates with, as you sort of say yourself, follow their own rules (you say God is constrained by them…). This is further evinced by Adam and Eve’s disobedience and God’s not knowing where they are when He visits the garden… It is crystal clear when God appoints angels to guard Eden and most especially the tree of life from Man, who God can no longer trust…

I’ve never heard of Jack Miles; but at the same time I’m not saying this idea is originally mine. “A character in a story” just strikes me as the best way to describe God’s existence. At the least, it is an undeniable truth. There may be more to God than this–who am I to say?–but this is all I’m willing to work with.

What was Epicurus’ question? How can evil exist with God? Sure, I would say God alone is impotent, but to say “God is willing” suggests that God is a real life being like you or I with a will… I’m hesitant to make any suggestion like that.

Also I’m unsure how the ‘rise of science’ correlates with the ‘fall of God’ in your thinking… Are you saying this literary view of God I’m promoting is the result of a stronger, scientific mind? Or are you simply saying that science tells us time and again that what we thought was God’s work is not, so that as God’s creation is slowly whittled down to nothing we’re left with a God that’s done nothing for us, and that can do nothing for us, and that is therefore a useless hypothesis?

8

Alyoshka:

— I think we’re both well aware of each other’s positions.
O- We are, but I have come to accept yours as a noble interpretation, meaning that although I disagree with it and find no valid reason to assume such an interpretation, the personal origin that gives birth to it is very noble; and what does it matter, all the rest, when that remains? The world can only be changed for the better, as it has, when more of us listen to that humanity that binds us. call it “love” if you wish…what is important is the actions this attitude might yield.

— This is just one sign among many of how out-of-God’s-control nature is.
The materials God creates with, as you sort of say yourself, follow their own rules (you say God is constrained by them…). This is further evinced by Adam and Eve’s disobedience and God’s not knowing where they are when He visits the garden… It is crystal clear when God appoints angels to guard Eden and most especially the tree of life from Man, who God can no longer trust…
O- Satan is not exactly a “raw material”… It is purported to be one of the things squarely under the capacity of God to control or defeat, so it’s existence in the Garden, just as his torture of Job must have been allowed by God, IF Satan and the Serpent are the same being, which is debatable. But, at the same time, God did punish the serpent quite easily. I guess the issue is not one of power but of knowledge. yet another interpretation that can be given is that the serpent served a purpose, for without it there could not have been a proper test to the claim of obedience by Adam and Eve. God, I think, is haunted by the hypocrisy of man and the mystery of man’s heart. Either God knows everything and we have no freewill or he does not and we have freewill. Personally I believe in freewill, though that really has little impact of what I think of God.
God for me must be transcendent of Bibles, Korans and any other canons or else It is just a projection of our selfishness. What God may be, not is, is known by a person after It makes an impact and gains significance, meaning, for that person. Otherwise God “is” like a tragedy…it can only happen to other people.

— I’ve never heard of Jack Miles; but at the same time I’m not saying this idea is originally mine. “A character in a story” just strikes me as the best way to describe God’s existence. At the least, it is an undeniable truth. There may be more to God than this–who am I to say?–but this is all I’m willing to work with.
O- Next time you’re at the book store check out Jack Miles’ “God: a biography”.

— What was Epicurus’ question? How can evil exist with God? Sure, I would say God alone is impotent, but to say “God is willing” suggests that God is a real life being like you or I with a will… I’m hesitant to make any suggestion like that.
O- Interesting…why not?

— Also I’m unsure how the ‘rise of science’ correlates with the ‘fall of God’ in your thinking…
O- Jesus cures many demonic possessions which in today’s world we would simply call epilepsy attacks or other. Now, some might say that epilepsy describes how a demonic possession happens biologically but does not deny the interpretation as to “whom” is behind the attacks. However, medicine does not need to posit God at all to be intelligible. People are prescribed medicine, not penitence anymore. People are hardly ever given an exorcism, where once upon a time, that would have been the one and only option. So that even as medicine and religion have existed side by side, the existence of medicine has undermine the necessity of the Church in everyday life. Once it took a priest to heal you, to stem disease etc, etc. Now they are mostly kept away until Sunday arrives. You still see acts of faith, people receiving their sight back, walking after being paralytic, but these miracles are now the staple of third world countries in which the majority of the people are not very open to science. In ignorance, man is capable of venerating even a photograph as divine.
For this reason, scientific men are a treath to any shaman.

— Are you saying this literary view of God I’m promoting is the result of a stronger, scientific mind?
O- A scientific age.

— Or are you simply saying that science tells us time and again that what we thought was God’s work is not, so that as God’s creation is slowly whittled down to nothing we’re left with a God that’s done nothing for us, and that can do nothing for us, and that is therefore a useless hypothesis?
O- Not useless. Science has not “cured” death nor injustice, and since the rise of the pharisees and Christians, this are the things God is needed for.

9

Happy to hear this. Perhaps it’ll be my purpose in life to show the saving power of love so that someday my case that love is the central theme of Judeo-Christian Scripture will be more convincing!

To me ‘Satan’ is just another character type, the character of the fallen, that probably characterizes many or even most of the beings constituting the “raw material” used in creation… Indeed, there is a war going on between God and Satan, and it’s a war that rages in each of our hearts. It’s not a war that claims lives per se, but rather souls, as each of us either succombs to temptation or stays the course, as Jesus does.

As strange as this may sound I find it kind of liberating that even in God’s garden evil can creep in like a snake… What this means to me is that there is no lasting arrangement whether good or bad, that all institutions have cracks in their foundations and are prone to topple, that just as paradise is shown to be vulnerable so too is the worst regime imaginable… (Love, like the snake, can always creep in through the cracks…)

Or perhaps God is just telling them (the snake, Adam and Eve) how it is… i.e., God is simply pronouncing the logical conclusion of their actions: paradise is lost…

I’m not a big fan of God “testing” us, or at least not when the results of the test have real world impact since this isn’t very consistent with a loving God. What bothers me even more in this story though, and what strikes me as an example where God does not practice love, is His holding back from Adam the fruit of the tree of knowledge. To me love doesn’t hold back, neither knowledge nor life, so I can’t reconcile this action with love. In other words, I don’t think it was Adam who fell in this story, but rather God… Or more precisely both fell, but God fell first. It was God’s unloving action that enabled Adam’s disobedience…

I like to compare the two creation narratives. In the first one everything is good (love is practiced perfectly by all creation) and in the second one, the story of Adam and Eve, everything goes wrong and the next thing you know Cain is killing Abel… (This is largely taken from Caputo.)

I don’t want to be restricted by a text or to proclaim any text as infallible, but I see Scripture (or religious literature) as a wonderful vehicle for conveying what I see to be the religious message… (However I’ll always give it secondary importance compared to real life experience, just as you seem to be suggesting.)

You know, I have a hard time drawing a line between what is literature and what is Scripture, and it seems to me that the only difference is in the degree of profoundness achieved by the text… Scripture is literature that reaches such a level of profundity that it becomes the conscience of a people. Take Homer for example. His characters (i.e., godlike Achilles or Odysseus) became the prototypes of the good life for Greeks until, perhaps, they were given a new prototype in Socrates (I would consider Plato’s dialogues as much religion as they are philosophy).

I know I’m being vague here, especially with the use of such words as “profoundness”, but I truly believe there is nothing different, in form not quality, between Scriptural stories passed down for millenia and a romance novel you’d find at a Walmart checkout… Curious if you have any thoughts on what separates Scripture from the rest, i.e., how we identify which texts are religious…

Thanks for the tip. Wikipedia suggests I am very in line with his thinking…

Because a) there’s no basis for God’s existence, and b) once you let a real life God in the door you spend more time defending God’s existence and reconciling all the problems it creates (such as Epicurus’) than you do focusing on God’s true significance, which you point towards at the end of your post. Basically I don’t think it’s worth it… In fact I don’t see any value whatsoever in the presumption! (Which is all it would ever be…) So truly, I would say it is a useless hypothesis!

Obviously I don’t see any miracle healings taking place (Scriptural examples are just literary devices). The true miracle is not that Jesus made a blind man see but that he offered himself freely to others, no matter who they were, in helpful service. This is what should “blow us away” in these scenes and is what gives the status “miracle” to Jesus’ actions; not that he performed magical acts, but that he was so damned generous!

So while I understand your position here, i.e., how science has replaced God, hopefully you can see mine, i.e., how science doesn’t replace God at all, and that now more than ever, at a time when science is so far developed, we need God even more. What good are doctors who can cure every disease if their healing hands come at a price few can afford?

(But again, I know you see a need for God that is not far from my own… Our differences seem to be subtle on this point…)