Mystery to Mystery

Taking the Literalists' Literalism Literally

2010-02-05T05:49:00.000-08:00

Literalists often take the Bible less literally than non-literalist Christians. If you read the story of Adam, Eve, and the serpent in the Garden of Eden literally, as best you can, you will not even find the story of the Fall in it. You won't find most of the things literalists claim it says. They say that this story (in Genesis 1-3) tells the reader about God walking in the Garden with Adam and Eve, their intimate relationship with God, that they were created immortal and, through their sin, lost their immortality (and that when God said they'd die if they ate the fruit he meant "spiritual death"), that the serpent was Satan, that they sinned, and that their disobedience/sin was the reason for their expulsion from the Garden. The biblical text actually says none of these things. God walking? It never mentions this. Intimate relationship? There is only a brief exchange between the humans and God. "Spiritual death"? Neither explicit nor implied. Satan? Never mentions him. (By the way, "satan" is never used as a proper name anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.) Sin? Well, they disobeyed and God got angry but it was a setup from the outset, like putting the cookie jar on the table and saying, "Don't eat any or else!" It never says that this disobedience qualified as sin and to insist that all disobedience to God is sin is a human judgment. Expelled for what they did? No, for what they might do later (eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life).

Normally, there is no good reason to presume that the Bible must be read literally. There is no commandment saying, "Thou, dear reader, must read this book literally." Of course, that wouldn't be a good reason to do so either. The decision to read it literally is a decision to interpret it that way. Given everything else we know about myth and the mythic mind, it would be a pretty silly way to interpret it. Still, as I hope we have seen here, looking at what it literally says can be a useful tool when it comes to measuring the claims fundamentalist Christians make about the Bible against what it actually says or doesn't say. As far as that goes, it is useful for countering the liberal bromide that the message of the New Testament boils down to "Love One Another." It says, literally, in about twenty passages, that unless one believes, one is condemned.

Another thing it doesn't say, by the way, is that it is the Word of God. Fundamentalist Christians often try to devalue what the sceptic says by holding the Bible up as God's Wisdom while non-believers swim in nothing more than man's wisdom. But, if the Bible never says to read it literally or that it is the Word of God, then insisting on its literal meaning or divine inspiration looks more and more like the wisdom of man and so does the Bible.

Introducing Me and My Blog

2008-08-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

One reason for this blog is to use it to explain why I am so critical of Christian fundamentalism. I am writing a book on it. My rejection of it is not because I am an atheist or a cynic or Jewish (well, okay, partly because of that) or because I just have an analytical mind and didn't know what to do with my M.A. in philosophy. It’s because I see little difference between thinking people of different race are inferior and thinking people of different or no faith have an inferior relationship with God or are misguided. It’s also because, if any group is going to make outrageously grandiose claims about itself—that it’s way is the only way—and outrageously judgmental claims about how lost everyone else is, then it damn well better be able to show why such claims are true. Christian fundamentalism has utterly failed to do that and doesn’t even know it. In fact, it doesn't care. It is a religion not of reason but of faith. In fact, it believes in faith and in belief more than it does God. It is an idolatry of faith. So this blog is not for fundamentalists but will be for those who want to better understand the many reasons Christian fundamentalism is indefensible....spiritual, moral, and intellectual folly. It dehumanizes others and stands in the way of making a better world.
My other passion has been doing nature photography and being in the mountains. It began in the Sierra Nevada in the 50’s. I've placed one of my images in each blog entry. You can see more at my color nature photography website http://www.earthscapephoto.com/ where they can also be purchased.
In time, I’ll post some poetry and other writings.
I’ll also insert some sound files of me singing some of the songs I’ve loved playing (guitar) and singing for years.
I call my blog "Mystery to Mystery" because, the older I get, the more strange and unnecessary beliefs seem to me about where we come from and what the alleged God wants of us and where we're going. To me, the fear and the need for assurances tell not of faith in God but of a lack of it. It all inspires me not to get right with God or to even figure out if there is one but to live with gratitude in the creation and as a part of it, and let the rest take care of itself.

The So-Called "Law of Attraction"

2008-08-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

I spent too many years when I was young in magical thinking. I dreamed and day-dreamed about things just coming my way as time moved on, including the naïve notion that my marriage would simply work out as we got older and, naturally, matured. Then I thought that we must "make" things happen. But it seems to me that what we see in human life on earth is that (1) there obviously is serendipity, (2) sometimes we pull off something completely through our own efforts while, at other times, accomplish things we could not possibly have done alone and are due at least as much to other people's dreams, and (3) some things we think about "all the time" and work for never happen.

I lump the recent popularity of belief in the alleged "Law of Attraction" in with "magical thinking." It is also self-focused and myopic. On the one hand, it is obvious that much of what becomes manifest in our lives are things we've given a lot of thought to. Duh. On the other extreme, I ask you, don't you think there have been billions and billions of humans throughout the history of our species who have spent weeks, months, years, perhaps their entire, short lives praying for the war to go away, for their children not to get killed or die of plague or be taken into slavery, for some food or water where there's hardly any, to not be raped or have their village burned and/or plundered? And that they prayed and thought about these things all the time? That their hopes, their requests to their god(s) or to God were foremost in their consciousnesses in a more sustained way than most of us have ever thought about anything? Yet, for billions who have done this, relief did not come, right? They were raped, they did starve to death; war, famine, disease or scoundrels swept away their children; their lives or villages were destroyed in spite of their prayers and supreme focus on what they wanted.

If there is some kind of attraction between our thoughts and the things we want to manifest in our lives, it is certainly no Law. Laws don't have gross and glaring exceptions like these.

Bible Verses Implying that Jesus was NOT God

2008-08-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

It should not be assumed that I take any of the following verses as authoritative. I only submit them because they come from the very book held so dear and holy by those who insist that Jesus was and is God:

Mark 9:37 (plus Matthew 10:40, Luke 9:48, and John 13:20), "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me."

Mark 10:18 "And Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.' "

Mark 12:29 Jesus said "Here, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord." The words "our God" indicate that Jesus had a higher God over him, a stronger God than him.

Mark 13:32, "But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Matthew 7:21 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven."

Matthew 19:17, Jesus responded to one who addressed him as “O good master”, saying: “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God.”

Mat 24:36, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.

Luke 22:42 "...not my will but Thine be done"

John 5:19, “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise’.”

John 5:30 "I can of myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is righteous, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the Father who sent me."

John 7:28-29 "...I have not come of myself. I was sent by One who has the right to send, and Him you do not know. I know Him because it is from Him I come; he sent me."

John 7:16 "Jesus said: 'My doctrine is not my own; it comes from Him who sent me.'"

John 8:40 "You are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God”

John 8:42 "Jesus said to them, 'If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but He sent me.' "

John 8:50 "And I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks and judges."

John 10:29 "My Father is greater than all."

John 14:10, “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”

In John 14:28, Jesus says, “The Father is greater than I.”

John 15:2 "My Father takes away every branch in me that bears not fruit; he purges it; that it may bring forth more fruit." Here, we see Jesus' acknowledgement that he is an impefect sinner just like the rest of us; he too must be purged and purified.

John 20:17, Jesus tells Mary Magdalene to tell his followers: “I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God and your God.”

1 Timothy, 2:5, “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

Intelligent Designers & Creators

2008-08-01T17:23:00.000-07:00

The common argument for an Intelligent Designer or for God is, in the history of philosophy, called "The Argument from Design." It goes something like this: "The world is so complex and so beautiful and organized that there just has to be a God!" or, more recently, "....there must have been an Intelligent Designer behind it all!" However, the argument does not prove the existence of the biblical God, as so many think. In the 18th Century David Hume wrote a book called "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" in which he showed why the argument just can't get you from your awe over the beauty and complexity of nature to the existence of the Lord God of the Bible. It's quite simple: if it proves there is intelligence behind the creation at all, it still would not tell you if it's the biblical god or some other god; it can't tell you if the designer and the creator are one and the same or separate or even more than two. It can't tell you if the intelligence(s) behind it is perfect or good or just or all-knowing or omnipresent, practices "hard love" or ever incarnated as a Jewish tekton (GR. someone who works with his hands). It can't tell you whether or not the creation was assigned by God as a joke to a committee of adolescent gods or for some other reason. If there is divinity, I'd have to say that, for me, given not just my thoughts but my experiences, the Hindu conception of it seems much closer to the truth than the biblical one....like Paul Tillich's idea that God is not a being at all but the ground of all being. Karen Armstrong seems to confer. But I have no conception of it. It's just mystery and treating the biblical myth of the creation as the only true one is ludicrous, provincial and self-centered--especially when accompanied by the "imperative" that it be taken "literally." Taking it literally arises from a decision to interpret it that way. And who in their right mind would interpret any Mideastern mythos that way?