Human beings could be just a fluke of nature. Like the dinosaurs and just like all things on this planet. They come into being and then dissolve. Religion comes out of a high density of people trying to answer questions that are not answerable. Why are we here? What is the point of life? What happens when we die? These are very unsettling questions. All kinds of civilizations have come up with answers to these: Greek Mythology, Egyptians, Native Americans, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Indigenous people before they get imperialized, Hindus, and Buddhists. If all these people have come up with different answers to these very questions then it is proof that religion is invented. Where would all these answers come from if it was not invented? A specific religion can put to rest where they came from simply by saying they came from God. Can we really trust the word of people 2,000 years ago? Not to say these people are not trustworthy, but instead that we just do not know what happened back then. Parts of stories get left out. History books are written by victors. Things happen.
All this leads me to believe that religion is made up. All the many teams in the religion league are made up. Having said that it is important to realize that this does not mean religion is bad. Religion has important functions for society. It gives all the people in this religious community a sense of moral guidance. It assists in keeping people away from doing bad things. Which all of society can not have, if it is to function? Other function of religion it makes people feel as part of the community. People are integrated into these beliefs that all people have, so it gives them comfort to continue to believe. Am I the only person entertaining the idea that religion is invented? Most zealots will not entertain such an idea. This is because they have a lot riding on religion being real and coming from God. If they even entertained such a notion they would be sacrificing the entire way of life they have come to know. Also most people do not want to entertain this idea because then there are no answers to any of the hard life questions. People want to believe there is a God and there is a life after death it makes them feel good. You can not convince someone to believe in a realistic yet bleak future. EVEN IF IT IS THE TRUTH no one wants to think it. ITS DEPRESSING.
Re: religion?
Does it make sense to "take up the cross" as a way to answer all of life’s questions? Could you have made up the foolishness of the cross?
Re: religion?
danjograss3’s suggestion is the standard line taken by humanists in their criticism of belief in God. I don’t want to dispute the argument as such, but just to make an observation based on Romans 1:18-32 which has been echoed by anthropologists. It’s not that mankind has furnished an invention about God as an explanation for things that would otherwise be too painful to comprehend, but that mankind has, in its various cultural histories, an awareness of God from which it has turned. Anthropology shows a declension, rather than an evolution in religious belief, accompanying a moral debasement. This phenomenon seems to me to be more strikingly interesting than the view that man simply invented God. With the latter, one would have expected, as history of religions thinking has mistakenly tried to suggest, that lower forms of religious belief would evolve into higher, more complex forms. The opposite seems to have been the case.
Questions and answers
My understanding has always been that the persistence of belief in God or the supernatural is a simple consequence of our finitude and in particular of our epistemological finitude - if our knowledge is bounded there is always a question to be asked about what lies beyond that boundary. I grew up with the image in my mind of a high brick wall around the universe, like the wall around a back yard or a school playground, and I couldn’t help but wonder what dark impenetrable mysteries would be found on the other side. This inescapable question proves nothing about God, and one can always argue, as the existentialists did, that the whole sense of ‘beyondness’ or transcendence is simply a philosophical illusion. But the illusion won’t go away. Our finitude will never go away. The question is always there, waiting to be asked.
So, yes, I would agree with danjograss3 that ‘Religion comes out of a high density of people trying to answer questions that are not answerable’. Religion is what happens as a community over time constructs a coherent set of answers to those questions - in that sense it is made up. But just as the question about the ‘beyond’ is persistent and inescapable, so is the hope of responding to that question rightly. People will always try to find the right sort of response to that question. Of course, you could argue that the right response is agnosticism or pluralism, but you cannot rule out the possibility that there is a right or best or most hopeful response (not answer necessarily) to the question.
To my mind the biblical narrative of faith simply takes up and explores that hopeful possibility, and concludes that it is worth taking the risk of trusting in a certain set of guiding principles: that what lies beyond is a good creative God who has chosen to be defined and to become present for the world through a dedicated community. Everything else, including the story about the Christ, is a historical outworking of this premise. We could argue over the nature of the historical and personal evidence for the truth of this story, but the real justification for taking the risk of trusting as a community in this response to the question rather than any other is a sense of calling, election, vocation, which comes to our minds in much the same way as the original question. I cannot help but ask the question, I cannot help but wonder, and I cannot help but hear God invite me to trust in his goodness, to find the right sort of response in a movement defined by a crucial redemptive event of grace. It is a call precisely to be hopeful - to embody realistically in ourselves, to the point of self-giving, the conviction that God loves what he has created. But it’s a risky business. We could have got it completely wrong. That’s what faith is all about.
Re: religion?
I’ve deeply sympathetic to this mindset. But someone I profoundly respect gave me a mental image that helps me think through thoughts like these. The idea is that the world is somewhat of an inkblot—and just like in psychology, how we interpret the inkblot tells us more about us than it does about the inkblot. A very simple picture, I know, but it helps me remember that whichever way I choose to think of the world, it is a choice. It is an interpretation. To succumb to the idea that there is no afterlife, that there is no meaning to existence, is simply one take on the issue. So then Andrew’s concern, about responding to these mysterious questions, rightly, or at least in the best manner possible, is crucial. I have chosen the ‘post-evangelical’ mindset as my worldview, not because I can prove it (I can’t!—though sometimes I think I have a few good arguments), but because it coheres, it makes sense of my experience, and (most profoundly) it has made me better (and has articulated the best definition of ‘the good’ I’ve ever heard). I am an evolutionist, but the philosophical Darwinism that asserts that chance is the only thing behind our existence seems to me quite bold (viz. wrongheaded). Some of the ‘intelligent design’ debates seem to me quite silly, but on one level, I really do think the emergence of humanity, and in particular of the human brain, was purposeful. This deep intuition is what pushes me towards the view that there is indeed someone beyond the wall (and inside the wall as well…). Agnosticism is, I think, the most rational response to these questions. But it is not the best response (and a depressing atheism is certainly not either).
My two cents.
Peace.
-Daniel-
Re: religion?
Do all the religions really have different answers to these questions or are they really the same answers but from different view points?
If I asked a group of people what to do if they have a flat tire, what would be the correct answer? I bet everyone would answer the question different if you get to the very details of their solution. The answer would depend on if that particular person had spare tire, or if they had a cell phone and a auto club membership, or if they knew how to change a tire, or if they were near home. But in the end, all of them would come up with the answer that they need a properly functioning tire to replace their flat tire.
I think that is why we have different religions. We are all looking at the same answer from different perspectives. The concept of God is health or wholeness through improvements in our thinking and relationships. Finding God is finding wholeness in our individual mental health and in our relationships on a variety of levels (individual, family, extended value groups, local, national, and global). Religion is the key to that health, but often it becomes a road block when it decides to ignore everything past the family and value group level.
I don’t mean this in a completely pluralistic way that every religion is absolutely correct, but instead I mean that every religion in its heart is absolutely searching for the same thing. I think that all these different forms of searching actually PROVES that God does exist. Why else would all these different cultures all be looking for the same thing?
I’m not suggesting that religions should all combine or waterdown thier individual methods to be compatible. Instead I’m suggesting that the method you pick should be lived in fullness and if you are a Christian you should live a life full of the richness found in that tradition. Pluralism will waterdown all the individual messages to create unity, but it is false unity because it is really asking for a unity only by changing our beliefs. True unity would be allowing everyone to hold their diverse methods but extending love and respect.
Re: religion?
I agree that there is a longing, a wonder, a search that is inherent in being human. I also agree that this is what opens our hearts to religion. Our choice is not in choosing a religion as if we’re evaluating all our options, but in choosing to receive what God is giving.
Again, sorry for beating a dead horse, I don’t see in other religions the cross and the call to downward mobility (rootedness in creation for the sake of the other) that the cross issues.
That’s the rub, too me, of this second Sunday of Lent. We are happy to hear that God wants for us an abundant life. We rejoice in the fact that God is willing to suffer on our behalf to make that desire known. However, when we find out that the way to that abundant life is through the cross we, like Peter, would prefer a more "human" method. I don’t think anyone would make this up much less choose it.
Re: religion?
I agree that the cross and sometimes the downward mobility is missing in most religions. I wouldn’t suggest otherwise and I didn’t. Again, I make no claim that every religion’s detailed answer is correct. Actually I would agree with the original post here that every religion is likely wrong (including Christianity). I think that if your faith rests in a particular religion or set of beliefs, then you are likely to end up missing the point of Jesus.
Re: religion?
Some of the thoughts in the comments on this thread so far seem coloured (whether consciously or not) by the post modern assumption that while reality ‘out there’ may exist, to all intents and purposes we cannot reliably access it. Like Don Cupitt’s image of us sitting in an impenetrable cave, telling each other stories to create a reality to believe in, there is a suggestion that the best we can do is construct provisional, man-made attempts at interpreting the data.
This is letting ‘belief’ be moulded by the culture, rather than a more healthy response of letting belief shape the culture and its mindsets, which I believe a Judaeo/Christian response calls for – and I have in mind primarily the Judaeo/Christian belief system, especially as it finds itself in the marketplace of other spiritualities religions and world-views.
The a priori of Judaeo/Christianity is that God exists - but this is not a naked assertion made without any foundation. My reference in the previous post to animistic cultures which had a cultural memory of one God who lived above the skies, but who was so distant that worship of lesser deities, spirits and demons had filled the vacuum created by the requirements of everyday life, corresponds well with the ‘downward’ evolution of religion which Paul describes in Romans 1:18-32. Far from God being an invention to ease the pain of otherwise intolerable realities, God has become, for many, something or someone who has been abandoned in favour of lesser ‘gods’, or pleasures. Paul is not slow to point out the consequences of such a drift. Anthropologists like Don Richardson (‘Eternity in their hearts’, ‘Lords of the Earth’) illustrate how so-called primitive peoples (whose lifestyles are not those of the noble savage, but ‘nasty, brutish and short’), are not at the bottom of an upwardly mobile evolutionary chain with regard to belief in God, but at the bottom of a descent.
An a priori of the Judaeo/Christian belief system is one that it shares with all the other major religious systems in the world - that the universe is primarily moral, and we are adapted to it as moral agents. (The argument that morality is a social construct and not inherent is well refuted by authors such as C.S.Lewis in ‘Mere Christianity’). However, there is a major difference between Christianity and all other belief systems, including Judaism as it is popularly understood. The major non-Christian religious belief systems are like a man giving advice to someone who has unfortunately fallen to the bottom of a deep well. The essence of the advice is: ‘Try to climb out’, and when that fails: ‘Try harder!’ - but to no avail. Christianity is like a man who lets down a bucket which then winches up to safety the unfortunate person at the bottom of the well. A better extension of the image would be of a man who is lowered in the bucket to help the person at the bottom of the well to safety.
This simple image expresses a truth which lies at the heart of the argument in Paul’s letter to the Romans. The outline is not complex: but requires some historical contextual awareness as well as following its thought process. We have the introduction: the ‘evangelion’ of Christ; the phenomenon and universality of sin – amongst Jews and gentiles – and the failure of the Jewish law to produce the righteousness which it required; the provision of a righteousness (as a covenant term and ‘right relationship’ in non-covenant contexts) apart from the law through Christ; faith being the means of accessing this righteousness – and embodied as a principle in Abraham; identification with Christ through baptism as a means of accessing his death to overcome sin and the condemnation of the law; the life of the Spirit as a means of accessing the life of Christ and appropriating the good of what was promised; the role of Israel in the fufilment of God’s plans shown not to have been a failure; the ethical outworking of this ‘evangelion’ in the communities of God’s people and the wider social community.
This then takes us back to the key question: was Jesus the historical person that Paul, the gospels and the other New Testament authors claimed him to be? Are the claims reliable, or merely further fictions to shield us from the pain of overwhelmingly bleak realities?
There have been some sporadic conversations on this site about whether the Christian faith is an imaginary construct by a church seeking to lay the foundations for its own non-historically based mythology. The larger question is whether we can ever know anything at all about anything with any degree of certainty. The OT and NT documents are organised around a narrative which describes God’s dealings with people in history. Either they are a theological invention, or they are a theological interpretation of a history which actually took place, and chime with people’s experiences in the on-going present. What the documents cannot be said to have attempted to do is create a mythology which is an imaginary history.
In short, in the call which we make concerning evidence and the reliability of personal experience, the Christian faith is overwhelmingly affirmative: God exists, and we can know him – using the means of accessing his existence and presence which are amply provided for us. Further, the Judaeo/Christian God is one who has already been seeking us out before we began to turn to Him. There is a requirement here for some humility – and the simplicity of response which Jesus affirmed in children, but he did not always find evident in sophisticated or sceptical adult attitudes.
Re: religion?
Which cultural worldview or "assumptions" would you prefer to color our thoughts and discussions? I assume you would like to color the discussion with only your own modern literalist world view. Why draw a boundry around a discussion that only allows your viewpoint and cultural background to be used?
Most of the time when a debate rages without an end in sight between an option A or option B, the real answer is C (or D, E, F, etc.) C in this case is a combination of A and B. The events in the bible are real, but the telling of the events is a theological invention. The word "myth" implies a certain amount of factual history behind the story unlike the word "fiction". Myths are a melding of historical events and fictional storytelling. This is likely the case with the bible. That doesn’t make it any less important. No stories that are told by passing down orally from generation to generation are passed without the adding each storyteller’s own bit of flair. It is that flair that makes the stories so rich.
Back to the original post…
The fact that religion is a human construct does not lesson the reality of God. When we deconstruct religion we are not deconstructing God, but instead we are evaluating our understanding of God. At the heart of all these religions is a real presense of the creator. All of the different sacred texts take too much time proving why they are the only correct revelation of the creator rather than taking the time to show what God has to offer all people. The one exception to that is the teachings of Jesus (not the NT in whole). Jesus didn’t preach the adoption of a belief system to correct our condition, but instead he taught us to find God through the love of others and the correction of unjust systemic oppression through non-violent protest.
Re: religion?
danutz - I subscribe neither to a modern or post modern worldview, but as an inhabitant of a world shaped by both, I’m not living in hermetically sealed isolation. I want to understand where my faith affirms, and where it calls into question the prevailing worldviews of my culture.
My point is, if you can pause a moment before hitting the keyboard, that Christian belief is both within, yet stands over and above culture. It is essentially transformative - on a personal and community level. Its prophetic task is to bring a necessary critique to all culture. However, it has to accommodate to the thought-forms and language of culture. In doing so, it has always been in danger of compromising to the culture. When this happens, when Christian apologists are merely spokespersons for the culture, it as good as dead. It’s all part of the business of being in the world, but not of the world - which the church has all too frequently, sadly, misinterpreted.
If I can make out what you are saying about options A and B - you are repeating in different words my own position: which is that the OT and NT documents are organised around a narrative which describes God’s dealings with people in history. The telling of that history is from a theological perspective. (That’s an oversimplification, but it’s a starting point). The narrative was not fictitious, otherwise it fails on the grounds of its own terms of reference - eg Paul’s explicit position with regard to the resurrection of Christ, and more generally, the accomplishment of Christ as the particular fulfilment of Israel’s destiny in history.
Where I disagree with you is in your statement that religion is a human construct - at least, in relation to the central events described in the New Testament, which must include the Old Testament in the sense that the one is a fulfiment of the other. The story does not describe the musings of man about God, but the intervention of God in human history. You are welcome to deny this, but if you do, you are denying the very terms on which the OT and NT makes it claims - that God speaks into human lives, that he has a purpose for humanity which is worked out through his dealings with individuals, Israel, Christ, and the church through history.
Re: religion?
What is so bad about accepting that religion is a man-made construct? Jesus in his human form gave us the greatest message ever recorded. Do you have a problem with it since it came from a human? Would his message have been better if it had been written in the sky by God instead of delivered via a human? The bible is man-made and it is the greatest book ever written. Do you have a problem with our man-made scripture? It seems to me that God is able to accomplish a great deal by allowing humans to create messages, religions, and scriptures. He even uses us to preserve the spirit of Jesus as we become his metaphorical body. Humans seem to be the means by which he "does his work". I don’t claim to know why it works that way, but it seems apparent that is the way it works. Even though we often screw it up, it still seems that he lets this method continue. Go figure.
I appreciate the fact that God charged us with the task of creating these constructs to become the catalysts for his kingdom. It only becomes a problem when we start to think our own man-made constructs are actually themselves divine rather than mediators of the divine and we start to worship them instead of God.
Re: religion?
danutz - a couple of times in recent posts you refer to ‘religion’ being ‘a man-made construct’ (in one post it is ‘the fact that religion is a human construct’). Wouldn’t it be fairer to say that for you, personally, religion is a human construct? This would then be a valid premise on which to explore the many other things you have to say, in your unique style.
The difficulty I have is this: Muslims would presumably protest that their ‘religion’ consists of words given directly from God in the Koran. The same goes for other belief systems of many kinds. I personally wouldn’t have a problem questioning some of their claims, but I would need to take account of what they believe, rather than assuming the debate can be conducted on the basis of a common agreement that what they believe is a purely human construct.
When it comes to the OT and NT accounts, you are presumably saying that every time God is said to have spoken - to individuals, through prophets, to nations, in the giving of the law to Moses, the calling and forming of a nation, the giving of that nation a unique identity, the coming of Jesus and his unique and self-expressed calling and relationship to God, the central issue of the very imparted presence of God by His Spirit - that all of these references to God are ‘human constructs’? That they are simply what people imagined God might have said or done, if he existed, rather than what he actually said or did, in a way that the hearing of his voice also entailed obedience to it and the impartation of his presence was a divine reality? That it was a ‘backward projection’ of what was imagined to have been the case, rather than what people like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Isaiah and Jesus himself might have actually personally heard, experienced and responded to?
Which brings me to another interesting question - that having got us all going on these diverse and interesting issues, danjograss3 has quietly gone to ground. Not a peep from him (or her). Perhaps he found something more interesting to do! Maybe the next discussion topic should be "danjograss3 - a real person, or merely a human construct?"
Re: religion?
As for the original post of danjograss3, I think the debate here only proves exactly what he was saying. I attempted to make the case that you can be Christian and still wrestle with the questions he posted here.
Peter, maybe instead of trying to prove that belief in your own religion/dogma is the only way, you would be better served to try and express how your own religion can accomodate his questions and doubts. Doubts are key to faith. One of my favorite movies is kevin smith’s "dogma". In that there is a dialogue that expresses that your faith is like a glass of water. When you are a child, it is easy to fill you because you are a small glass. As you grow the glass becomes larger and you need more water to fill it. However most of us go around with a big glass and try to get by with the same child size amount of water.
Re: religion?
I don’t think the debate has proved anything that you have been saying, danutz. I have questioned some of the assumptions on which danjograss3’s assertions were made, in a way that I hope was not unsympathetic to whatever his his personal feelings may have been. I don’t feel therefore that I need to accommodate his questions and doubts; rather I would take them seriously, and look at them carefully from different angles.
Of course doubts are part and parcel of faith - and fall within a range of ways in which faith is tested so that it can grow into maturity. Questions without answers are often the substance of faith which is tested, but this doesn’t mean we should cease to ask questions, or that we should cease to have faith.
Judaism and Christianity are faiths which entail the ‘scandal of particularity’. They do indeed say this way, and not another way, and that’s not because I say it, it’s because they say it. To pretend otherwise is to be in denial. I’m not trying to prove it, I’m simply reminding you of something which you seem to be overlooking.
Re: religion?
I didn’t say it proved what "I" said. I stated that it proves what the original post said.
Peter, I appreciate your bent for apologetics, but I feel like the best starting point for apologetics in conversations like the one started in this post is actually from the point of an apology. That is why I come at these types of debates from such a harsh self critism of my own faith. Humility means accepting that there is a valid foundation for the disbelief expressed in this post and not dismissing it or trying to disprove it. Then we can make the case that these issues are NOT from God but are a result of the man-made religions. Instead of passing all the inconsistencies and mistakes off on God by building up ourselves as owners of the one religion that is divine, lets own up to the inconsistencies as human products and then search for the truth that draws us all to search for the power that created us.
Re: religion?
danutz - Thanks for your correction.
I have to admire your idealism: that there is a God out there, but religions have got it all wrong, and if we could come up with a better religion (with which to present to God), all the peoples of the world could come together in a common love for each other. If your premise was true, that everything which has been said about God is a human construct, then any new system would be as valid as another - so why not give it a shot?
Actually, it already has been tried - in the attempts of the European romantics to come up with a religion of humanity in the 18th/early 19th century. A religion of reason. It seemed at last mankind was emerging from the oppression of religious superstition, which would be cast aside as he came into his true destiny - the true goal of the humanist enlightenment. These hopes received a dent with the reign of terror during the French revolution, and Beethoven tore out the inscription of his third symphony when Napoleon seized the crown from the hands of the Pope. Just over 100 years later, the 1st World War put paid to any lingering hopes of such evolutionary progress - although it has made some occasional, half-hearted attempts to reappear (remember George Bush Senior’s ‘new world order’?) It seems we are not so reasonable, and not so loving towards each other after all.
Why then have human constructs of religion throughout history failed (according to your assertions) to come up with anything that meets your own criteria? If there is a God out there, wouldn’t you think it odd that he has failed to communicate successfully his wisdom to humanity? What kind of a God does that make him? Why should I think that you could come up with anything better?
You are right - I am an apologist for the Christian faith - and particularly because, when looked at carefully, it seems to me to have the best diagnosis and the best solutions for the human condition. But I am prepared to let my views enter the market place of competing viewpoints. I haven’t seen you engaging with any serious Christian viewpoint yet.
You are suggesting something rather contradictory - that it reflects ‘humility’ to agree with a viewpoint which you approve of (danjograss3, in this case), but it is not humility to express a viewpoint that incurs your disapproval! I think it shows more respect to danjograss3’s viewpoint, and does him more of a favour, by taking what he says seriously, but asking some searching questions, and not simply agreeing with everything he said. You will note, I did not dismiss his viewpoint.
You say that you have subjected your own faith to harsh criticism, but you haven’t produced any particular reason for rejecting swathes of that faith - other than some repeated but unsubstantiated assertions. So I’m not even sure what you are rejecting, or subjecting to criticism. Could you tell us sometime? It is not a virtue in itself to be harshly critical - even of yourself.
Yes, I agree that mankind is very inconsistent. No, neither I nor anybody is the owner of any religion. To continuously say that all religions are man-made does not make the assertion any the more truthful. Maybe that truth which you urge us all to search for is the one you inadvertently rejected when you were going through your radical faith self-criticism: "The stone the builders rejected has become the chief-cornerstone". And who was it that said that ‘truth’ is not an enlightened set of ideas, nor a religion, but a person - "I am the way, the truth and the light"?
Re: religion?
Peter, you are putting some odd words into my mouth. I never said we should have a new religion that joins all current religions. I suggested we all keep the traditions that apeal to us but acknowledge the good qualities of each. That is a big difference. What is so bad about offering good will and a few nice compliments and recognition of the good in other religions and/or Christian denominations?
There is a certain humility that would be manifested if we as Christians would publicly state that our religion is man-made but that our cheif goal was to create something that helped foster Jesus’ vision. We should say, "right or wrong our religion is what helps us with this transformation and we are going to continue to practice it with all our hearts but we will yield to the kingdom and the spirit and self-correct as needed. All glory is to Jesus’ grand vision rather than our own man-made rules and traditions." I’m talking about unity and respect between religions, not a single melting pot.
I think a key factor in the growth of Christianity (prior to its being forced on all the Roman’s weaker opponents) was that the message was one of inclusion. The original message was "it doesn’t matter if you are not one of the chosen people(jewish), just follow Jesus’ message and you can be a part of something bigger". That is a powerful message and it is a shame that we changed it by creating a new "chosen people" that we force everyone to join in order to participate in the kingdom.
I said we should embrace something that Jesus called us to be a part of which he called the kingdom of God (Jesus’ vision). The something new is the kingdom. That is not a religion. I’m asking us to all confess that our attempts at religion are creating skewed views of the kingdom. We mistake our constructs for the kingdom and try to downplay everyone else’s attempts.
As for truth, I agree that Jesus told us the truth. That is what I’m suggesting we follow even if it means dropping our man-made constructs.
Re: religion?
Hi, Danutz… just a quick comment.
I can agree with most of what you say here, but then we are left with the one point of contention: Jesus, by all Scriptural accounts (and his followers, from historical accounts) had this crazy idea that he was the Jewish Messiah and the Son of God.
On top of that, he also stated that the way to find God ultimately goes through Jesus himself. If we accept that is true (and you say that you believe Jesus told us the truth) then it leaves us with an exclusivity that no amount of good will or humility can overcome.
NOT saying we shouldn’t be humble and respectful of other religions, because clearly there is some truth to be found in most, if not all, of them. But a claim to be a part of the Kingdom of God seems to be directly tied to a belief that Jesus was the Christ, the door into that Kingdom. To state otherwise seems to me to be a watering-down of what Jesus himself said. Man-made or otherwise, a religion with such a claim at its center will by its very nature be problematic in an attempt to create unity between religions.
Re: religion?
gdargan, I’m not sure what it is you agree with, but thanks. Maybe you are just being polite? I don’t think the idea of Jesus being the "son of god" is very crazy. If you take into account that the terms "son of god", "lord", and "savior" were all used for the roman emperor who was the son of apollo in Roman mythology, then you can realize that these were common terms that Jesus follower’s would have intentionally plugged into the stroy of Jesus to show us all how politically motivated his message really had become. It was a statment his followers made to show rebellion from the power of Rome. Those terms tell us more about what his followers thought about him than it tells us about what Jesus thought about himself. There are some other threads on this site that go into more detail about that particular debate so I won’t restate the whole thing. I think it makes sense that the author of the Gospel of John would also write that statement "no man comes to the father but through me" into his story of Jesus. That statement tells us what the 2nd and 3rd generation Christians were experiencing through the the stories of the historical Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit combining to form the figure of Christ or the "post-easter Jesus".
I would not limit God by thinking that he could not make himself known in other traditions. I don’t know that for sure because I’ve never looked for God anywhere other than through Christ. Have you? The closest I have come is that I knew an atheist that I am confident had the spirit of God in him as much as I do in me. He is now a follower of Jesus, but I am sure he had God in him before he ever believed in God. If millions of people tell us that they found a relationship with God through their traditions, then why would we not believe them? What do we gain from rejecting their feeling that they "know God" other than just coming off as arrogant? If the kingdom of God is "within us" as Jesus tell us, then it makes sense to me that the shape and form of the kingdom is going to have millions of different appearances becasue it has millions of different bodies to express itself through.
Re: religion?
Except that Jesus wasn’t primarily speaking in a Roman setting, he was speaking in a Jewish setting. Granted Rome was always in the periphery, but when Jesus made statements like "I and the father are one" and "before Abraham was, I AM", he wasn’t speaking about Roman emperors or making political speeches. He was claiming to be somehow ontologically connected to the One True God of the Jews. This is why Jewish religious leaders kept trying to kill him, and finally succeeded, in part by painting Jesus as a political rabble-rouser.
If you say that the truth of God is being revealed in all creation, including all religions, I would agree with that statement. But God revealed is not the same as God attained. To know some of God’s truth is not the same as knowing the God of truth. And this, it seems to me, is Christianity’s fundamental claim: In Christ, we know God. Not that we can’t know something of God in many other places and ways. But we don’t attain God (or rather, God does not attain us) until the experience of Christ takes place.
I don’t know if this is where you are coming from, but I have always found it odd that people want to take Jesus and water him down to the point where he is just another human conduit of God’s truth who didn’t really say anything that was truly universe-shaking, and then decide to follow that Jesus. Doesn’t seem nearly as impressive to me.
Re: religion?
I would never say Jesus is "JUST another human conduit of God’s truth who didn’t really say anything that was truly universe-shaking". That is something that I think you would like me to say, but I won’t. How could being a conduit of God’s truth be a "just". Be careful about putting the word "JUST" infront of something when you repeat what someone says (or when you paraphrase what you think someone says). That is poor manners in a conversation/debate and I’ve been guilty of doing it myself at times. You hear me talk about Jesus’ humanity and you translate that as "jesus didn’t say anything universe-shaking". That isn’t fair. Maybe you were referring to the original post, but he didn’t speak about Jesus at all so that doesn’t fit either.
As far as the "I AM" statements in the Gospel of John, I think those are statements made by 2nd and 3rd generation followers and storytellers that tell the story with a "character" called Jesus that is not the same Jesus that historically lived in the first century. This character (I believe is based on a real live person) in John’s Gospel is speaking the words of later Christians in a narrative form that shows us what the real flesh and blood Jesus had become to them many years later. For them he was "the way". They are powerful statements and very important statements, but are not likely to have been spoken by Jesus in the flesh. I do however think that they were inspired by the holy spirit through the story tellers. So in that way you could say Jesus still spoke them. This explains why the words of John are so different than the words in the synoptic gospels. They are seperated by a whole generation of life and stories.
So in summary, I would not say Jesus is JUST anything, but instead he is MORE than a man and MORE than a spirit and MORE than a story. He is all those things and more.
Re: religion?
Point taken. Thanks for the clarification. I did not mean to offend, but at first glance it appeared you were making statements similar to those of other people I’ve talked to, who say that Jesus was nothing more than a great human teacher that gave us some "Godly" wisdom ("God" being defined as the ultimate truth found in all religion), just like all religions do. That is an illogical and un-Scriptural view.
However, I wonder how you assess your view of Jesus? What I mean is, if you don’t think the "real live" Jesus said those things, why should the statements of his followers carry any more weight? Are you saying that the Holy Spirit inspired the Gospel writers to write things that were historically inaccurate? For what purpose? If the writers made up things that Jesus didn’t say (as opposed to simply writing down their own recollection and "take" on things), it doesn’t bode well for the credibility of the faith. I am more than willing to allow for human imperfections in written Scripture and trust the Spirit’s guidance, but there are some things that seem foundational and must be held as tenets of the faith, otherwise Christianity can be whatever we want it to be.
Saying that Jesus is "more" than man or spirit or story is definitely a good point to be made, but we must go farther. If Jesus is not fully human AND fully God, we do not have Christianity; we have gnosticism or some other neo-Platonic heresy. But if Jesus is fully God and fully man, simply saying Jesus is "more" doesn’t quite cut it; it seems to me we must say Jesus is "all."
Which gets back to my original statement, this kind of a truth claim doesn’t seem to fit well with an inclusive view in which all religions hold equal claims to God’s truth. I am not saying you hold to that view, I am merely pointing out that fact.
Again, my apologies if I’ve misunderstood your position.
Re: religion?
I would want to add the a priori that we humans experience things that are not satisfactorily explained by a humanist or natural metanarrative. Miracles, for example, are not simply mythological artifacts but the preferred explanation for things people experience in the 21st century. And not only naive, ignorant believers experience such things, but also sceptical and hostile adherents of other metanarratives.
I am not saying that there aren’t natural explanations offered (frequently having to do with psychology, faulty observations, or ignorance that could some day be remedied when science has advanced further), just that these explanations are rejected in favor of competing "unscientific" ones. Where the question of miracles is investigated scientifically (and this happens far more infrequently than science lets on), the results are frequently inconclusive (typically with appeals to possible psychological causes, methodological questions, or hopes that some rational naturalistic theory may come along to explain everything).
It would no doubt be dangerous and unpopular, but I for one would welcome rigorous scientific testing of religions. Studies have been done, for example, demonstrating a statistically higher recovery rate from serious medical conditions when the patients are prayed for; I’d like to see how this breaks down by religion, gender, denomination, etc.
Certainly many things are beyond the ability of Science to repeat or observe (e.g. cosmogony, ancient history, people’s thoughts) but there remains much about modern religious experience that should be repeatable and observable, at least over large populations. Once Science has given this serious attention, it may be more appropriate to discuss the extent to which "religion" (or some specific variant/s) is a human construct. Until then, I’m just hearing "Religion is unscientific because there’s no such thing as God" or "There’s no such thing as God because there’s only nature"—both a priori presuppositions.
Re: religion?
We try to hard to separate the natural and supernatural. This is a result of focusing too heavily on the trancendant nature of God. If we can wrap our minds around a better balance of the image of God "out-there" vs. the image of God "right here" then we can realize that God is not separate from nature, but is in it as well as beyond it. I don’t mean that in the same sense as the hindu pantheistic view of God. In Christian terms, we use the concept of the trinity to attempt to explain this, but there are other explanations that are in some ways better. I think we could learn from some others on how to explain this very "other-worldly" concept.
This panENtheistic view of God also explains in a rational way why people experience God in all religions. For example, I feel that my particular Christian beliefs about Jesus allow me to connect in relationship to the trancendant aspects of God’s nature, but I recognize that God is present in nature and in spirit and it appears to me that people in all traditions benefit from the those aspects of God’s nature. For example, I think that buddists seem to do a great job of experiencing that aspect of God that lives within us. Hindu’s on the other hand do a great job of experiencing that part of God that lives within nature. Christian’s do a great job of experiencing the spirit of God that manifested in Jesus and lives on in the lives and traditions of Christians. Jews do a great job of experiencing the "God up there" or the "father/protector" aspect of God’s nature. I think Islam would fall into the category with Jews because the two are similar in terms of their view of God, but I’m no expert. I don’t say that these can’t overlap, but I’ve just highlighted the major qualities in relation to image of God.
In summary, it seems to me that most religions have just focused on one or 2 aspects of God’s nature and if they become over zealous, then they can miss all the other great things about God.
Re: religion?
Power of prayer doesn’t extend to patient health, study shows…
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BY JEREMY MANIERChicago Tribune
CHICAGO - Praying for a sick cardiac patient may feel right to people of faith, but it doesn’t appear to improve the patient’s health, according to a new study that is the largest ever done on the healing powers of prayer.
In fact, the researchers from Harvard Medical School and five other U.S. medical centers found - to their bewilderment - that coronary bypass patients who knew strangers were praying for them fared significantly worse than people who got no prayers. The team speculated that telling the patients about the prayers may have caused "performance anxiety," or perhaps a fear that doctors expected the worst.
"Obviously, my colleagues were surprised by the unexpected andcounterintuitive outcome," said Rev. Dean Marek, director of chaplain services at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a co-investigator for the project.
It was a strange end for the mammoth prayer study, which cost $2.4 million and enrolled 1,802 patients who had bypass surgery. The majority of funding came from the British-based John Templeton Foundation, which supports research at the intersection of science and religion.
Previous studies had examined the power of prayer for medical patients, with mixed results. Most did not have the statistical power to reliably detect the effects of prayer, if it had an effect.
The new study, which appears in the April issue of the American Heart Journal, was designed to be large enough to see if patients who knew they were being prayed for had better recoveries.
The people who prayed for the patients were strangers - either Roman Catholic monks or believers belonging to other Christian denominations. Those who prayed were given the patients’ first names and last initials, and instructed to give a simple prayer for a quick recovery with no complications. The researchers said they could not find a non-Christian group that could work with the scheduling demands of their study.
Bypass patients who consented to take part in the experiment were divided randomly into three groups. Some patients received prayers but were not informed of that. In the second group the patients got no prayers, and also were not informed one way or the other. The third group got prayers and were told so.
There was virtually no difference in complication rates between patients in the first two groups. But the third group, in which patients knew they were receiving prayers, had a complication rate of 59 percent - significantly more than the rate of 52 percent in the no-prayer group.
Researchers said the study was never intended to prove or disprove the existence of God or to settle theological questions. But they had expected that knowing someone was praying for the patients might help those patients relax and bring about a state of well-being, which can reduce strain on the heart.
"In this study we did not find that was the case," said Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School, a principal investigator of the study.
The researchers were at a loss to explain the worsened outcomes in their study. An accompanying editorial in the journal criticized the study authors for taking "an almost casual approach toward any explanation, stating only that it `may have been a chance finding.’"
The editorial authors, led by Dr. Mitchell Krucoff of Duke University Medical Center, wrote that the study leaders had not anticipated that prayer might be harmful and had "allowed cultural presumption to undermine scientific objectivity."
In light of the significant findings, the editorial concluded, researchers "must be vigilant in asking the question of whether a well-intentioned, loving, heartfelt healing prayer might inadvertently harm or kill vulnerable patients in certain circumstances."
Any attempt to study the power of prayer objectively runs the risk of scientific and theological problems, said Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, director of ethics at St. Vincent’s Hospital and New York Medical College.
"God is not just another therapeutic nostrum in a doctor’s black bag," said Sulmasy, who is also a Franciscan friar. "It seems fundamentally sinful to conceive of God as our instrument."
Marek, a Catholic priest, conceded that it may be an unfair test of God to measure whether detailed prayers are granted.
"The best prayer probably is, `Thy will be done,’" he said.
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Peace & Blessings,
Tim
Re: religion?
Thanks for the interesting article. The simplistic explanation, though, would seem to be not that prayer is harmful, but finding out one is being prayed for is harmful. Still a lot of variables to test to make sense of the results, but I appreciate the efforts to experiment in this area.