Steve,
I just finished reading your book, "Falling in Truth". I'm not certain why I am writing you. Searching for a kindred spirit, I imagine.
I am 43, and I was baptized as a JW at the age of 15. My parents were not religious, so I didn't get introduced to the JWs by them, I found them on my own. I was looking for people who could show me how to live my life devoted to principles guided by unconditional love. I had been reading the New Testament, a paperback Good News version, that a favorite aunt had given me, since the age of 9 and the story of Jesus and the leper had touched me very deeply. I could picture Jesus standing face to face with the leper, and in response to the leper's entreaty, "LORD, if you but want to, you can make me clean", and Jesus, with tears in his eyes hugging the man and replying "I WANT to, be made clean." This story has been kind of a motivating factor in my life, to see other's hearts and not the outside, not their faults, like leprosy, and to reach out to them and take their pain away from them and hold it myself. This is how I have always wanted to live my life. At the age of 14 I started looking for Christians who could teach me how to do this. How to practice love this completely. I spent a lot of time reading about the early Christians and imagining how people who are motivated by true love would behave.
About 8 years ago, I realized that not only did the WTBTS NOT teach its members how to practice love, it's teachings actually had the opposite effect on them (and on me). I'm not sure why it took me 20 years to figure this out, and, to be frank, I am ashamed that i wasted so much of my life involved with a group that has a message of hate, instead of a message of love, but it happened. I never felt comfortable in the 'organization'.
For a long time I couldn't quite put my finger on why I never felt comfortable, but it boils down to the fundamental nature of the WTBTS and my fundamental nature being at such odds. I am very very sensitive to emotions of other people, body language, personal energy, etc. Sensitive to a degree that makes me think that I am gifted in some way. And, the spirit that I always got from the WTBTS was one of insistence on bureaucratic conformity regardless of the consequences. I never 'reached' out to be an 'elder' or a 'ministerial servant' because I always viewed a hierarchical power structure with suspicion and felt that it went against principles of love.
Anyway, from reading your book, I am certain that you understand the source of my uneasiness -- the doctrines of hate, the idea that men could be the sole authority on everything and anything and never be questioned, the lack of love among the members, the insistence on conformity from the power elite, the list goes on and on.
I am not writing you in order to air grievances against the WTBTS. I am writing you to discuss what love is. I'm nothing like the scholar that you apparently are. So, I'm not certain how to begin researching what love is. But, I do have some intuitions that are related to my sensitivity to emotions, feelings, and energy.
I have often thought about what the universe might be. Where did it come from? Why is it here? I feel that just as there are physical laws such as gravity, magnetism, etc., there are also spiritual laws like love, generosity, giving, forgiveness, kindness, gentleness, etc. I sense (feel? believe? think?) that there is some kind of connection between the spiritual and the physical universes. That when the universal spiritual laws based on love are being violated on a large scale that there are consequences in the physical universe. I couldn't really explain this in a mathematical sense, but instinctively it goes something like this. The physical universe is energy (matter being just a form of energy), energy flows in a circle, if we expect something from the universe we have to first put it into the universe so that it exists in measure large enough for us to get it. Love being a very pure and very powerful form of energy, when there is a lessening of love then the universe gets out of balance and there are very undesireable manifestations in the physical universe.
Love, I think, is the most important thing there is. Love has to be practiced in a practical way in our daily lives. It always seemed odd to me that the Bible does not teach its followers how to truly practice love. A Buddhist monk named Tich Ne Hanh (spelling?) wrote several books on how to practice love in practical ways that affect our daily life. What I like about these writings is that the motivation is not 'to please God', the motivation is to benefit others. I have been looking for writings based on research which would discuss love in terms of practical steps a person can take to apply it more fully in their everyday life, in the present moment. Because, all we have, really is the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, the present is all we have really. One thing that bothered me a lot about the WTBTS was that they not only did not teach their members how to live in the present moment, they taught the opposite of that, to live in some unspecified future time when the 'new system' finally arrives. I don't think that is living, to be living in the future.
I have a lot of wounds to heal and a lot of ways of thinking that are very unhealthful to change. It took me a long time to figure out how to live in the present moment and how to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. Guilt is such a powerful weapon.
I want to thank you for your book.
Kindest Regards,
S. D.
S.,
Thank you for writing, and pouring your heart out. Yes, I think we are kindred spirits in many ways. I, too, have felt this powerful sensitivity (I call it "empathy"). I think I have unfortunately hardened myself in the last 10-15 years, though, and lost some of that. I remember when I was a child, if someone else cried, I cried too, almost instantly. I experienced their emotion of sadness directly.
But I don't know if it's possible to live like that for long. I had to stop watching the news and reading the newspaper. It was too overwhelming (like Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem Renascence, where the weight of the world overwhelms a too sensitive soul).
But I think that this empathy is the key to love, and to the "feeling" (really a "knowing" at an instinctive level) that all is one.
I agree completely with your conclusion that the WT fails to promote a spirit of love. I remember, when I got into it at 17, I was a vegetarian out of love for animals, and they took that away from me. They said that the Bible related that God gave us animals to eat, and God would know better than me what we should eat. Whenever I wanted to do some charitable act, it seemed they would find an excuse for not doing it.
And, while I reject the Bible as a whole, I must admit that there are some simple, heartfelt images one can derive from it (as you point out in the case of Jesus and the leper), which whether historically true or not, capture the spirit of love, and can inspire one.
I am glad that you have escaped the clutches of the Tower. Don't regret the time you wasted with them; I look on it as an education of sorts. It taught me not to be so gullible, for one thing, and freed me from a lot of superstitious nonsense for another. Remember: many people NEVER make it out, and waste their entire lives.
You're right in saying we shouldn't dwell on the past; Now is the important time! Think about all the things you can do with your newfound freedom!
BTW: You might also enjoy reading my essay entitled "Rational Compassionate Living", which further discusses this idea of "ethics through empathy" (particularly in part 2). It is available on my website.
Thanks again for writing, and please feel free to write again.
Best regards,
--Steve
Steve,
I like that word empathy. Your experiences of crying when others cried, is something that happens to me even now. I do not agree that it is a good thing for a person to become less sensitive, I think the modern society wants to mold us this way.
I love being around children because they are so spontaneous, so uninhibited, and I always wondered, why cannot adults be just like that? I think that this is what Jesus meant when he talked about childlike being a very highly prized quality. So, I started thinking about this, why CAN'T adults be childlike? And, I came to the conclusion that there is only one reason why we cannot be childlike, and that is because society breeds (beats?) it out of adults. Our societal institutions are set up to purposely remove childlike qualities from us as we get older.
I remember once going to my daughters' elementary school, they both go to the same school, and spending the day there. All day long all I heard was "stop running", "stop laughing", "stand in line", etc., etc., some of the children were playing tag and I was playing with them, and we were chasing each other around a corner and one of the teachers started yelling at the children, and then I came running around the corner and I said "aren't you going to yell at me too?" Then I asked why weren't the children allowed to run and play? Didn't the school know that that is how children learn best, through play? I didn't get a good answer to that, only that it wouldn't be 'proper'.
Please encourage others to write giving their ideas on what love is and how a person can mold their personality to become pure love.
Kindest Regards,
S.D.
Steve,
I was telling some of my friends about your points about Noah and the flood. We started talking about how hysterical a movie would be if someone made a movie based on Noah the way things REALLY would have been.
We imagined something like this, Noah hears 'God' tell him to 'build an ark', Noah then calls the family around the dinner table with exciting news "God came and talked to me today and told me that he wants us to build an ark and put two of every kind of animal in it, isn't that exciting"?
We could imagine one of Noah's sons, a smart alecky type, someone the WTBTS would say is 'running ahead of the organization by questioning everything', a few days later at the dinner table saying "Dad, I've been thinking about this ark with two of every animal in it thing and I've come up with a list of questions that you need to ask God the next time you talk to Him".
To gather two of EVERY kind of animal we will have to send expeditions to every corner of the earth, we will need special equipment and training in order to capture all these animals and we will need transport to get to where they are and then get them back here. For example, we will need two koala bears, but koala bears only live in Australia and they only eat eucalyptus leaves, so we will have to go to Australia, capture some koala bears, gather lots and lots of eucalyptus leaves and then figure out a way to preserve them for several years so that the koala bears do not starve and then we will have to transport the koalas back here.
I did some calculations on how much food will have to be in the ark and we will need 750,000 bales of hay and 1,000,000 lbs of grain, not to mention all the special leaves and roots and berries and vegetables and fruits, etc, etc, etc. Since none of us are experts in gardening or food preservation we need training in how to raise all this food and how to preserve it. Also, we will need two or three arks just to hold the food and a way to tow them along behind us and a way to get from our ark to the food arks.
.....
...... etc, etc.
So, the makers of the movie would sit down and calculate all of these issues and the movie would basically be the smart aleck son explaining all the things that Noah did not think through, but have Noah tell God and have God smack his forehead with his hand and provide a way to solve each problem, but address the problems as they come up.
So, now the big day arrives and all the animals are in the ark and they close the door and the window and it is PITCH BLACK inside, which of course it would be, and someone says "light a torch" and someone else says "ARE YOU NUTS, the ark is covered inside and out with pitch, which is highly flammable".
And on and on it goes as the hapless arkonauts struggle against all the problems which God and Noah did not think through correctly.
We then made our guesses as to how the movie might end. There were several options.
-
Because the ark is far too large to be made out of wood it promptly cracks apart and sinks.
-
The 10 lb. raindrops totally rip the ark to shreds (as it is sinking from cracking apart!!)
-
The hapless arkonauts bravely get up early every morning, in pitch black, breathing fetid air, and labor tirelessly feeding and watering all the animals and then every evening begin their manure collection and disposal duties, and fall asleep totally exhausted and then wake afeter one or two hours of sleep to begin this all over again. So, after a week or two of this the arkonauts sink the ark themselves. We had a great laugh picturing what the arkonauts would look like after two weeks of this existence.
-
The ark runs out of food and the animals eat each other (and the arkonauts)
-
The ark miraculously makes it through the 1 year and 150 days and come to rest on a mountain top which looks like the surface of the moon because the ten pound raindrops totally pulverized all vegetation and turned the top soil into a fine powder, not only is there no vegetation, but the thousands of tons of seeds, roots, bulbs, and potted plants that the arkonauts brought with them cannot possibly grow. None of this really matters because the arkonauts and the animals are quite insane at this time and could not possibly begin a new civilization.
-
The funniest possible outcome would be for the hapless arkonauts to overcome all of the issues, make it through the 1 year and 150 days and then on the day that they are to come out they hear a rapping on the door and voices outside and they open the door and the "ararat flood rescue commission" is there trying to figure out what this giant building is that looks like a big box and are there any survivors of the local flood and as they gaze in wonder at the 'two of every kind' and 'seven of the clean kinds' of animals and they are in total amazement at the amount of work that went into this project they laugh hysterically when they are given the answer to the question, "but what is it all FOR"?
--S.D.
Steve,
I just finished reading your discussion of the Bible books. I am ashamed to admit that even though i have read the Bible cover to cover at least 100 times, in addition to daily readings of specific sections that I liked, so parts of the Bible I have read far more than 100 times, I staunchly believed that the Bible in no case contradicted itself, and never once did I see for myself the contradictions that exist. I find this very odd, because normally I am a pretty quick study. I have thought and thought about why this would be so when I read the Bible, but not other books. Perhaps it is because before I started reading the Bible I was convinced that it was God's infallable words, so even though I read contradictions they never 'registered'. Have you seen this phenomenah with other people?
One thing that I was wondering as I read your discussion of Paul's writings, who decided which material would comprise the "Bible"? And, more importantly, I think, why did 'they' come to the conclusion that there needed to BE a Bible? I find it difficult to believe that I never asked questions like this before. I don't know what your opinion is on this subject, but it seems to me that Paul was no more than an itinerant philosopher, styled after any of the Greek itinerant philosophers, and that his writings are more or less debates with other philosophers. This is what made me wonder who chose the materials which make up the "Bible". I have read lots of writings of the earliest Christians and there were quite a few which were of higher quality than a lot of Paul's writings. Also, I am wondering who decided that the Apocrypha does not 'belong' in the Bible? The reason that the WTBTS gives is that the Apocrypha contradicts the Bible, which would be the case even if the Apocrypha was 'true' since the Bible contradicts itself.
I wanted to get your opinion on something. Since I began reading things without the blinders on, so to speak, I am struck by the very profound fact that I have no idea what the Bible's message is. What I do for a living is help businesses change the way they do things to make their products and services more attractive to customers, or to be more effective at providing the products and services. One of the rules that I have is that any business I work with has to be able to say what they do in one or two sentences and this statement has to have a very clear value proposition to the customer. Before I will help the company with looking at their processes, policies, and procedures, I help them write this simple statement, if they do not already have one. I have found that a company which cannot tell you in one or two sentences what they do, do not have clear enough objectives to be able to be effective at communicating to cusomters what they are offering. So, I wanted to put the Bible to this same test. I wanted to say in onen or two sentences what the bible's message is. And, I cannot do it, because I do not KNOW what the Bible's message is.
Would you like to take a stab at this? In one or two sentences, what is the message of the Bible?
--S.D.
Steve,
How do you respond to this argument? The universe that we live in is based upon mathematical laws, if these mathematical laws did not exist, then we would not exist, other universes may or may not exist, perhaps, but that wouldn't do us much good, so I say that the existence of these universes based on something other than the mathematical laws that we have observed is totally irrelevent. Since the universe that we exist in is based on mathematical laws, the mathematical laws must have existed before the universe came into being. So, the question then ecomes Who is the Great Mathematician? Not the person(s) who observed and documented these mathematical laws for us, but the being(s) who formulated them in the first place? I think that for the mathetmatical laws to exist their must be a being who formulated these laws. I imagine that your initial reaction to this will be, but using your own logic, you then have to say that the existence of this being who created mathematics proves that their must be a being who formulated the being who created mathematics, which proves ......
So, I offer this as an explanation to break this endless discussion of the being who created the being who created the being..... The universe is dimensional, the being who invented mathematics existed outside the universe, therefore this being is non dimensional. Now, I am not certain if saying that something is zero dimensional is the same thing as saying that it is non dimensional, or if zero dimensional is in the series 0 dimensions, 1 dimensions, 2 dimensions, 3 dimensions, etc., or if being non dimensional means something else.
In summary, this is what I am suggesting:
A non dimensional being creates mathematics
This non dimensional being creates the dimensional universe based on this mathematics.
Supposing this being does exist, does this make the being God? I guess here I am defining God as 'that which caused the dimensional universe to exist'.
What say ye?
--S.D.
S.,
You've given me an awful lot to respond to!
I feel a certain sense of excitement coming from you in looking at things in a new way (thinking for yourself about them, rather than letting the WT tell you what to think). I think this is great, and I want you to resist any urge (drilled into you from your days in the Tower) to find a "substitute WT". Remember that no one else has all the answers for you -- I don't even have all the answers for ME... yet ;-).
And -- unlike when you were a JW -- you are free to disagree with me and still be my friend.
With that said, I'd love to take a stab at some of your questions...
1. Why people don't see the contradictions in the Bible?
Yes, that amazed me too. I had read and studied it, but I never saw them. I think it's because we start out with the premise that the Bible is "the whole truth and nothing but the truth," and we make that thought of paramount importance, so that our minds don't allow the contradictions to be seen.
One visitor to my site told me that I needed to pray prior to reading the Bible, and then the contradictions would magically go away. I think he was on to something: if you approach it with the attitude that it is the truth, and any contradictions are due to a lack of faith on your part, then your mind will do its job of protecting you from the real truth.
2. Who decided which books make up the Bible?
Well, that's a very interesting question, and one I've been thinking about a lot lately too. It seems to me that this would be one of the first questions a person would ask when handed a collection of writings "inspired by God". An enormous amount of trust has been placed on the anonymous Bishops and Priests from the 3rd-4th century who voted which books would be "God's Word". What if they were wrong? It's interesting that the JW's contend that the Catholic Church is Babylon the Great Empire of false religion, and yet they trust them implicitly when it comes to this: the very basis of their own religion! A thorough discussion of this can be found at:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/NTcanon.html
Also, it's important to note, that not only do we not know who voted the writings in, we don't know who wrote any part of the Bible (even Paul's writings are now thought to be largely -- if not entirely -- forgeries). Anonymous writings authorized by anonymous clerics!
3. Paul as itinerant philosopher.
Yes, I agree. I think Paul was largely the inventor of Christianity. According to the Gospels, Jesus never said to start a new religion with himself at the core. He said to follow the law, not abolish it. Paul seems to have combined the mystery religions in with the idea of an actual historic person (or maybe Paul didn't really think Jesus was ever a real person, just a convenient myth to hang salvation on, and the Gospel writers embellished his idea by manufacturing a biography). There is much evidence that this is what happened (scholars agree that Paul's writings predate the Gospels). There is a book published by Barnes & Nobel on this which is called "The Mythmaker: Paul & the invention of Christianity" by Hyam Maccoby. It's well worth a read. Another good book on this subject (which shows how there were many mythical saviors prior to Jesus but which fit many of the details of his "life") is "The Christ Conspiracy" by S. Acharya (this is available on Amazon.com or via her website (see the link from my site)).
4. What is the Bible's message in 1-2 sentences?
You got me! There were so many different writers with so many different points of view, that I think it's not possible to say WHAT its message is (without someone being able to find a contradiction of that message in the Bible). Most Christians would probably say, "Jesus died for your sins," but if that's the entire message, why wade through thousands of pages of nonsense about the flood, and the war atrocities of the Israelites, and the insanity of Revelation?
5. Who were Paul's associates?
Another excellent question! I imagined that Paul was traveling around with Timothy & Barnabus, but I don't remember why I thought that, exactly. He told people to "follow" him, so maybe some people did.
6. God as existing outside the dimensional universe & creating its mathematics, etc.
Well, what you're saying COULD certainly be true, but I don't think it PROVES that God exists. I don't think that the existence of God is provable (or disprovable) by the very nature of it. Now, I'm not talking about the God of the Bible: that creature is fairly easy to disprove as it contains inherent contradictions, and after all, is simply a glorified primitive chieftain of a barbaric, ancient tribe.
But whether a conscious creator of the universe exists apart from the universe... well, that enters into the realm of the unknowable, where your guess is as good as mine. To me, it is something of a moot point. If something made a deliberate, conscious effort to create the universe, that's fine. But it seems to have no practical value if something that powerful (and conscious) does not use its power for good today. For instance, if I am caught in a flash flood, and I'm drowning, I want a God I can pray to who will help me then and there, and it makes no never mind to me if he once created the universe. Since I know that people better than me have prayed and drowned, I realize that there is no God of love watching over me. That's the "God" I can "prove" does not exist (by such evidence), and that's the only one that really matters to me.
Now, I know believers like to make excuses for God, and they've come up with a lot of creative ones (like the JW idea of his having a "bet" going on with Satan). But I don't buy any of these excuses about "God's timetable", etc. If I saw someone drowning, and it was in my power to save them, I wouldn't make any excuses. I would expect at least as much (if not better) from this "God of love".
Best Regards,
--Steve
Steve,
Thank you for the admonition for me not to find a 'new WT', I can see how I might be giving that impression that that is what I am looking for. What I do for a living is help people figure things out, some people call it business process engineering, I think that is a very fancy term for what I do, help people figure things out. Anyway, the way I approach figuring things out is to ask questions and then get 4-5 'correct' answers side by side and weigh the ones that seem to make the most sense for the problem at hand. That is a way that I like to use to discuss things, ask lots of questions. I also teach, and I run my classes that way, I ask my students lots of questions. I have had students complain before, "we are supposed to be asking YOU the questions", to which I usually respond, "you don't know enough to know what questions to ask, answer my questions then you might learn something and can ask me about what you have learned".
Anyway, I have found other victims to shower with my questions also, so don't feel lonely.
You brought up a very interesting point, the WTBTS views the Catholic Church as Satan incarnate, pretty much, yet it was the Catholic Church that assembled the writings that became known as the Bible. Hmmmmm. I can't recall ever seeing that as a 'Question From Readers'.
Something that I am having a very hard time with, is the thought that the material world is all there is and when we die we are food for worms. I have to think, though I cannot prove it, that there is a spirit world, there are spiritual beings, there is some meaning to our life besides becoming food for worms. I think back to the argument about the Trinity used in your book, that a person has a consciousness/mind that is separate from their body which is immaterial and which is 'I'. If we ask, where is this 'I'? We don't really have an answer for that. It is not in the brain, not in the brain cells, but is somehow connected with the brain. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but this place of non-material where the mind is, supposing that is a 'spiritual universe' where beings can exist. Beings like us after we die!! See, I am not being totally unselfish here.
It seems that your primary problem with God is that she allows pain and suffering. From what I can understand, your argument goes "If God is love then suffering cannot possibly be allowed to exist, and if God is not love, then we are better off not knowing about 'God'". Is that close? So, this brings up an interesting question. If God is love, exactly what obligations does God have in regards to intervening in our material universe? Does God have to pay my light bill? Or keep me from breaking my arm? Or only intervene if my life is in immediate danger?
Another thing I was thinking about from your response to my question about the 'being who is outside of our universe' is if a being did create us, do we owe that being anything? I think I have already answered my own question here, as to what my children owe me. I love my children deeply and show it in lots of ways and they love me back and show it in lots of ways, but I would never say that my children 'owe' me anything.
The main reason I asked you about 'the universe is based on mathematics, does this not prove that there is a creator of mathematics' question was to see if this is sound logic or not, as I am not that experienced in the use of logic.
It seems to me that you have studied literature from a view of seeing if a given work was 'good literature'. Like one could read a play of Shakespeare and then ask basic questions like did all the characters make sense, that is did all the characters behave true to their character (did Will do a good job of character development), did the plot make sense, were there any illogical contradictions? You never say this,but from the way you analyzed the Bible, it just seems to me that you learned to do that somewhere. I am curious as to how the Bible stacks up in terms of being 'good literature'. For example, I love Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, because I think it is wonderful literature. The characters always act true to their nature, the worlds that are created are very believeable, the plot is always very solidly connected to other things that have happened or are yet to happen. It is a very good read. Say if a group of literary students from another planet were given a stack of books from our planet and the Bible just happened to be one of them and the students were not told that this book had any significance outside of being literature. What would they make of it?
--S.D.
Steve,
I like this idea of thinking about things by writing a 'story' as if it had really happened that way, like you did with the siesta, and my friends and I did with Noah and the ark. I have been reading articles that talk about the question of whether or not Jesus is an historical figure. I was very surprised to learn that there are only 4 authors who are from the first century who mention Jesus, a total of 24 lines of text, and ALL of these references are suspect of being forgeries.
So, in the vein of writing a story as if it really happened that way, what do you think would be the historical record if Jesus is an historical person? My feeling is that RNN (Roman News Network) would have had hundreds of pundits debating Jesus for decades. If someone was travelling all around raising the dead, healing the sick, casting out demons, feeding the multitudes, surely this would have become topic of conversation for everyone, and Rome would have sent people to investigate. I wonder what kind of coverage other important news of this same time period was given in the historical journals? What is your opinion on how much coverage Jesus would have received?
--S.D.
S.,
You wrote:
It seems that your primary problem with God is that she allows pain and suffering. From what I can understand, your argument goes "If God is love then suffering cannot possibly be allowed to exist, and if God is not love, then we are better off not knowing about 'God'". Is that close? So, this brings up an interesting question. If God is love, exactly what obligations does God have in regards to intervening in our material universe? Does God have to pay my light bill? Or keep me from breaking my arm? Or only intervene if my life is in immediate danger?
Yes, that's a fair paraphrase of my stance. I would change "better off not knowing" though. Truth is always worth knowing, so if there is a God, I would like to know. But if it is a God that has no interest in us, then I don't want to waste my life worshiping it. It would be like knowing whether or not black holes exist in space. I am intellectually curious to know, but it will not have any effect on my day-to-day life.
It seems obvious to me that there is no "God" (in the sense of an "Almighty") of "love". Yes, I believe love carries responsibilities. You can't say, "I love you" to someone, smile, and then stand by and watch as a speeding car approaches and runs them over (when all you had to do was grab them out of the way, and you were close enough and strong enough to do so.)
A less drastic example is a "letter to the editor" I read in which someone wrote, "I hate these animal rights hypocrites telling me what to do. My wife and I love animals, but we believe we have a right to wear fur coats." I replied that maybe he should pay a little more attention to what he himself was saying before accusing others of hypocrisy, because love carries responsibilities.
In a discussion with my sister on the issue of evil in the world she said, "If a rapist attacked a woman, you would blame the rapist, and no one else. So why do you blame God for the evil deeds of men?" I answered that I would blame the rapist AND anyone who stood and watched.
The Christian definition of God is that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. By that definition, he stands around and watches every rape. Such non-action is incompatible with love, because love requires action in such instances.
Whether or not God should pay your light bill is one for the theologians who love to split hairs. At some point, one would think, a line would be drawn where God would say, "Okay, you take it from here... you have all you need to cope with day-to-day life and make your way in the world." So, even if God existed, I think she would see that it was healthier for people to work such things out for themselves. But when it came to overwhelming things they couldn't control (rapists, tornadoes, earthquakes, collapsing church roofs...) then love would require that the Almighty would help out a little. Otherwise, saying that he is the "God of love" would be meaningless, and you might as well say that he's the "God of woowoo".
Is the mathematical argument logical?
I'm not sure. I'll have to give it more thought. I think Bertrand Russell (the mathematician and atheist) wrote at some length about this very thing. I'll see if I can find something on it. Personally, I think there's a flaw in the logic, but I don't have time to think about it deeply at the moment. You might also check out the "watchmaker argument" which is very similar, and I know is specifically addressed on some atheist websites (but not mine yet).
Jesus in history.
Yes, I think this is VERY significant. The Roman emperors were known for their curiosity and for importing strange acts and novel creatures in for their own edification and entertainment. At the same time as Jesus supposedly lived (and shortly afterwards) there were some of the greatest historians of all time living in Rome, yet none of them mentioned Jesus. I don't think such a wonder-worker would have escaped notice.
I like your idea of writing a story about how it would have really been. It reminds me of a story I wrote in which a Greek philosopher invented Jesus. I scanned this in (from my 20-year-old typewritten copy) a few years ago but have never gotten around to correcting it and putting it out on the web. I am even more inclined to do so now that I have recently discovered that the evidence seems to point to something like this having really happened (i.e. Jesus was a mythical character who was later mistaken for a historical figure).
Food for worms: is that all there is?
Well, it's a hard truth: but I think it's a truth nonetheless. The best I can prescribe for you is the works of James Watt (famous for "The Way of Zen", but I recommend his odd-titled "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are"). There he describes the universe as "playing" at being separate little consciousnesses, but really being one. I tie this in with Carl Sagan's statement that we are all "star stuff": we all emerged from the Big Bang, and so are all one. Jung theorized about a collective unconscious... but I'm not sure I'd go that far (this is as metaphysical as I get). I don't think our individual thought of "self" continues after we die. I think thought is dependent upon our brains and the electrical activity in our brains. When we die the electrical activity stops, and the engine which produced the electricity shuts off. We melt back into the earth (the cosmos). But since matter and energy cannot be destroyed, and since we are the universe, it isn't really an end: just the end of the illusion that "I" ended at my skin, which separated me from the "rest" of the universe.
--Steve
Steve,
As I think about, and talk to you about these issues, it amazes me how hard it is for me to reason intelligently about some of these questions. Normally, I don't have any problem reasoning intelligently about things.
What does a God of love 'owe' us? I like to think that I am a loving person. So, I will use myself as a standard to compare to. According to the theologians, God sees everything. Let's see, if I saw everything, then I would see when someone was trying to rob someone else, and I would definitately intervene. So there would be no robbery in the Steve world. Same as regards rape, murder, child abuse, sexual abuse, stealing, fraud, all the normal things that most people would say are 'crimes'. All gone. Disease? Please. I would eradicate disease. Wars? Ditto. Drunkenness? Gone. Drug abuse? Gone. Poverty? Gone. Ignorance and fear? Gone. Dictatorships or otherwise abusive governments? Gone. Racism? Gone.
What would the world be like, if I had the powers attributed to God? There would be no crime, no war, no poverty, no hunger, no crooked politicians, no disease, no misery. Everyone would have a nice home to live in that they built themselves. Everyone would have constructive work. Everyone would have the time and resources to do creative things like paint, sculpt, write, draw, sing, dance, etc. Everyone would be educated in schools that encourage individuality. That is the kind of world that I would make if I was God.
I'm sure the theologians would say: "Sorry God, but you cannot end all suffering now, it isn't the correct time, remember your plan that you made that mankind would have to suffer for XXX thousand years before you did anything?" My response would be, "oh that, yes I remember, but YOU are forgetting that you are talking to God, I can just ignore that plan and fix all the problems on earth now".
And when the Devil said "but God, we made a bet, I bet you that I could get people to worship me instead of you, and I am winning, it isn't fair for you to change the rules now". I would say, "God can do anything He wants to do, deal with it."
So, I have to come to the conclusion that a God of love does not OWE us anything, but would do all of these things for us because Her heart would move Her to do them. Just as my heart would move me to do all of these things for people, out of a very imperfect love.
Wow.
Thanks my friend for helping me see this so clearly.
--S.D.
S.,
Glad I could be of some help. Letters like yours are what web-site owners like me live for!
Peace and love,
--Steve
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