I've got a number of things to say in this entry but i'll start with questions of religion. Religion is and ought to be emotive, but it should be possible for someone to step back from it and decide what it is. One thing which bothers me about the conflict, apart from it being a waste of energy, is that people don't even agree on what a religion is. Atheism, for example, is not a religion. Even if it were a set of beliefs, atheism still wouldn't count as a religion because it would lack rituals and other aspects of religion. There is way too much emphasis on belief when religion is talked about. Here's the video:
There are other things going on apart from the religious stuff. One is that i have temporarily removed 'You Could've Thought Of That' in order to prepare the second edition, which is aimed equally at adults and children. This version will have a glossary, some ideas will be removed, the language will be clarified, there will be some illustrations and i will add forms at the back for the reader to add her own ideas. There will also be a new cover.
Meanwhile, i have a few plans for the Other Channel. I will put hypnosis scripts accompanied by slideshows there, along with a plug for the print version of the book and an exhortation, which will doubtless be ignored, to subscribe to the channel i actually want to work as opposed to the one which is 'phoned in but works anyway. I will also ask for suggestions.
Once again twiddling my thumbs waiting for the video to process and upload, but there's other stuff going on provided i get some privacy and computer time today.
Right, here's the vid:
Basically, i believe that if Jesus was around us today, he'd be on the side of the anti-religious new atheism to which we lazily refer as atheism. Militant atheism and Jesus's mission have a lot in common and share many motivations. Gandhi once said that he liked our Christ but didn't like our Christians.
Here's a bit of a rant list about what people professing to be Christian have to my knowledge done:
Plant people in a crowd to pretend to be converted by a street preacher.
Make posters deceiving people into thinking a meeting was organised by spiritualists when it was actually propaganda against spiritualism.
Suggest that God wouldn't want my wife to wear a black T-shirt but a nice long floral dress.
Accuse a friend of lying when he thanked God in a prayer that he was getting more freelance work because it was the "wrong" kind of work and they couldn't believe God would bless something which wasn't a "proper" job.
Gang up on a gay member of their congregation and chant "OUT, OUT, OUT!" like they were at a Nuremberg rally until he left the church.
Obviously there are many other examples, but these are close to me in the sense that i know the people involved or have experienced them personally. I'm conscious of things like the embezzlement, active paedophilia, greed and materialism of people professing to be Christian, but these are not my personal experiences. My own current experience of church is wonderfully positive, as it happens. I should also mention that once again i've failed to express quite what i meant because i believe that in some circumstances, glossolalia is a valid emotional or spiritual activity.
But, how can you ever say it's Christian to exhort the poor to give all their money away to the church as a test of faith? An individual might make that choice for themselves, but they can't impose that decision on anyone else, particularly when the person attempting to impose it happens to be a millionaire.
So it comes as no surprise, really, that actually looking at the sayings of Jesus, assuming him to be merely a fictional character, come out on the side of anti-religious atheism on the whole. You can even go further than that and play with the idea that he was actually an atheist himself, although going by what it says in the gospels that would make him dishonest and a hypocrite. However, if you wanted to get a powerful message across and the whole world, as far as you knew, was theistic and would probably kill you before you got anywhere, it wouldn't just be suicidal to assert that God didn't exist but also stupid, because it would defeat your aim by getting you murdered before you got anywhere. Epicurus was very probably atheist but decided against saying that he was for similar reasons. However, of course i believe that Jesus knew there was a God. I also believe he was a historical character, and the idea of the Jesus myth is an example of the oddly old-fashioned views taken by the so-called "new" atheism, but that's a blog entry for another time
Today is the twenty-seventh anniversary of my conversion to Christianity, so it seemed like a good idea to commemorate it by posting yet another talking head video:
This follows on from yesterday's video about Christian atheism. My conversion experience happened soon after leaving home. I was in a hall of residence at a university and very much missing my friends, though not particularly my family. I was feeling isolated and depressed, and was befriended by Christians. I already believed in God, so it didn't seem like too big a jump to become Christian, but my misgivings were around the idea that questioning would become problematic. I was assured that it would not be, so i took the leap of faith and committed myself to Christ. This is in the entirely conventional evangelical sense of being a "born-again Christian". That is in fact what i am, in spite of appearances to the contrary.
Almost immediately afterwards, i had huge problems. I tried to ignore them, prayed about them, searched for answers in Scripture about them, all to no avail. I hid them from other Christians, but wrote screeds and screeds of stuff about them. Then i went home for Christmas.
When i came back, i decided to confront the issue head-on. I raised the first issue with my friends - rejection of other religions. Later on came the equally troublesome issue of Christian homophobia. I continued to raise similar issues throughout the rest of the year. Many of my friends were fine about it, but a few saw me as recalcitrant and uncooperative, and that my approach was as if the problems were uniquely mine. I think they had a point with the last bit, which was quite insightful, but even now haven't managed to do anything with it.
After nearly a year, i completely gave up on the religion, having decided that St Paul was the worst thing to have happened to the planet since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and went on to live a largely secular life. I could mention how God pursues people who have done this at this point, but it would probably annoy the secular readers, so i won't. Suffice it to say that i was not impressed by religious approaches, although i still found them interesting. Jainism was a particular interest of mine, as expressed on YouTube.
The years went by, i became anarchist and vegan, did postgrad, got married of all things, had children and then, after twelve years in the wilderness, came back to Church. This time, i did it on my own terms, and also on God's, but then i would say that wouldn't i? In the meantime i had learned of various things associated with Christianity which were more positive, such as the Student Christian Movement, and realised that the Christianity i had been "sold" was not the whole story. This is an ongoing process.
Now, this may not be very Christian of me but i don't really care whether someone believes in God or not. It doesn't seem to be the most important thing about them to me. I would be more interested in their political and ethical beliefs than their religious beliefs. I think people are increasingly polarised between a narrow version of Christianity and a narrow version of atheism, and those two narrow versions have a lot more in common with each other than people like to admit. What we need to do is forget our differences and work together to make the world a better place. This conflict is a waste of energy and does nothing to benefit the weakest, poorest and oppressed. That's what we need to be doing: building a Paradise on Earth. That's an urgent priority and we have to stop squabbling and do what we all know we're meant to be doing with our lives.
This is addressed to atheists who used to be Christian. Have you ever had a conversation with a Christian which goes something like this?
You: I used to be a Christian but I stopped believing in God.
Christian: Ah, but the Bible says you can't lose your salvation, so if you stopped believing, you can never really have believed in the first place, can you now?
Well, this is my response to that:
Unlike some of the other claims certain Christians make, this is practically known to be false by ex-Christians. For instance, the claim that homosexual acts are sinful might be backed up by an argument and the claim that the planet is only a few thousand years old at least has the merit that yes, the world could've been created last Thursday for that matter with a load of spurious evidence and false memories, although it very probably wasn't, particularly considering that God, being perfect, is not supposed to deceive us. This, however, requires a much higher degree of scepticism on behalf of the Christian because unlike the other claims, it seems to be one of two things. Either the Christian is accusing the ex-Christian of making a false statement, possibly of lying in fact, or they are claiming their memories of being a Christian are false.
This is an extremely silly thing to do because this means the atheist doesn't just believe confidently that the Christian is incorrect, but is so close to certainty that it would be laughable to quibble about the hair's breadth of difference between the two. And yet they still do it.
In Christian theology, there is a concept known as the "perseverence of the saints". This means you cannot give up your salvation. It's a bit like being British. Provided you have at some point in your life honestly believed in God, God's goodness and you have acted on that knowledge to repent of your sins and commit yourself to Christ as fully divine and fully human Lord and Saviour - basically, what it says in the creeds - then you are, in terms of evangelical Christianity, now permanently saved, i.e. a Christian. You can't lose it again.
Clearly there are a lot of people who no longer believe, and i was one of them for something like twelve years. This was after i committed myself to Christ. I genuinely, honestly believed and i really lost my faith and stopped believing. That really happened.
I also suggest that atheists can use this fact to annoy Christians and defeat their claims, by claiming honestly still to be Christians in terms of that theology. The trouble with this is of course that once again, a Christian is being presumptious - i am suggesting that this is what you do, which isn't really my place, is it? However, i do think it might be amusing, on occasions, to be arsey and say "Yep, I'm Christian. Of course, I don't believe all that rubbish about imaginary sky beings or God being his own father and turning into a zombie who went into space, but none of that matters. All that matters is that I committed myself to Christ one weekend a quarter of a century ago when I was in an emotionally vulnerable position, then recanted when I came to my senses on Monday. Praise the non-existent Lawerd!"
If i've got this right, today's video ought to be on atheist religion:
Yep! After a bit of fiddling, that's done it.
Jainism is an ancient world religion though it hasn't spread far beyond Northwest India. Here in Leicester, however, is the Jain Samaj Europe, the European centre of Jainism. This isn't as impressive as it sounds when you realise how few Jains there are. However, Jainism is very interesting because it is unlike many people's preconceptions on religion in several ways.
Firstly, it is strongly atheist. It actively denies there is any such thing as a creator of the Universe, a sustainer of the Universe or an omnipotent being. There is even a lengthy passage in one of its sacred texts which wouldn't look out of place in 'The God Delusion':
"Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected.
If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now?
How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression.
If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally.
If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense?
If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could.
If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all modality, would have no desire to create anything.
If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe?
If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble.
If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else
If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not make creation wholly blissful free from misfortune?
If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all,
And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place?
Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature."
This is from the tenth century CE text the Adipurana. Note the date. Jainism is considerably older than that. It's an ancient religion, itself claiming to be the world's oldest religion, but then so i imagine do many others, so that particular feature doesn't make it special. Note also that it does not respect the idea of worshipping any God that might hypothetically exist.
Jainism is also entirely physicalist and naturalist. It sees the world as entirely physical. The physics is of course somewhat different from contemporary scientific physics, but this is to be expected in an environment where alleged hypotheticodeductivism or other scientific methods had yet to be used on a systematic basis by a community of intellectuals. Nonetheless, it sees the soul as physical, karma as a form of matter and enlightenment as the process of ascension to the top of the Universe, which incidentally is seven hundred light years high.
Furthermore, Jainism seeks no converts and claims not to have a monopoly of truth. Its doctrine of anekantavada involves the claim that humans cannot perceive the whole truth and that apparent incompatibilities can mask a deeper unity inaccessible to the human mind. It also claims that it will die out - there is no real eschatology, no idea of the world ending (or beginning for that matter), no day of judgement.
OK, so what makes it differ from a philosophy of life? Well, Epicureanism is substantially similar. Nonetheless, that is not a religion. Jainism has temples, images of its "heroes" such as Mahavira, which are of course to be emulated rather than worshipped, a total world view, rituals, priests, ethics (in spades!) and, well, everything on Ninian Smart's list. Epicureanism had none of those.
So it's an atheist, physicalist, anti-proselytising organised religion. It has deeply dodgy characteristics of course - people are admired for starving themselves to death, menstruating women are not allowed in temples and humans are seen as spiritually and physically the centre of the Universe and superior to all other beings - but one thing it does not do is share any of the major characteristics of the Western concept of religion.
My son, of course, is an atheist. I too used to be one. However, Liz and i are now long-since lost to atheism and have a cosmic imaginary friend instead. Here's my interview with my son about his atheism:
Incidentally, this is the wrong upload. There was a better version, subtitled all the way through, which was unaccountably smaller than this file and i naturally assumed it was the older version, wrongly as it turns out. Anyway, there it is and there it stands. The audio is also annoying, although comparing it to this:
reveals that it's at least partly due to my son not speaking more loudly.
Of course, it could be that this video is entirely staged and bears no relation to how my son and i really feel about the issue. That's something you're just going to have to take on trust for now unless you find evidence in the video to the contrary.
An interesting comment, and also one some might find offensive, is that he describes the Gospel depiction of Jesus as "a hippy", which was certainly a cultural depiction of the figure popular in the late '60s and early '70s, and in fact one i would've agreed with at his age. This is all, of course, socially constructed and the historical Jesus is very hard to reach and sketchy, as he noted, although interestingly he does in fact believe that there was such a historical figure. This perception probably reflects what might be seen as our anachronistic lifestyle and values, although i would myself in no way regard myself as a "hippy" - i have long hair, but so do Rastafarians, for similar reasons. However, hippies are a bete noire in my son's personal cosmos.
This video was primarily uploaded to demonstrate that we needn't be at loggerheads with each other just because one of us is theistic and the other atheist, or even, though this isn't illustrated here, theistic and anti-theistic. I'm happy that there were several helpful responses underneath and plan to make more videos on this, for instance as interviews between myself and anti-theistic friends. However, the main point of this is to indicate that there is no need for hostility between people whose beliefs differ, and that there's a stereotypical version of "Christianity" out there which both the New Atheists and a certain strand of people who call themselves Christian share. They agree on what Christianity is. However, in fact there are a whole load of people describing themselves as Christian who feel no sense of affinity with that belief system.
The technical difficulties with this video were considerable. The sound is bad due to our positioning and distance from the camera and the subtitles disappear in the middle. However, i'm keeping it up because it's got a response. Could do better, i think.
