Alex’s Heresies - embracing a physical reality

Dr Francis Macnab of St Michael’s Uniting Church in Melbourne, Australia is very much part of the progressive Christian vanguard. Christian traditionalists will be shocked and free thinkers will applaud…

“THE TEN Commandments, one of the most negative documents ever written.” With that provocative claim posted high over two city streets, controversial cleric Francis Macnab yesterday launched “a new faith for the 21st century”, a faith beyond orthodox Christianity.

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Dr Macnab says Abraham is probably a concoction, Moses was a mass murderer and Jesus Christ just a Jewish peasant who certainly was not God. In fact, there is no God, in the usual sense of an interventionist deity - what we strive for is a presence both within and beyond us.

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“The old faith is in large sections unbelievable. We want to make the new faith more believable, realistic and helpful in terms of the way people live,” he said. (Read article in The Age newspaper 16 Sep 2008)

Useful links

Previous church addresses:
http://www.stmichaels.org.au/dr-macnab/previous-addresses

The Jesus Seminar (progressive Christian academic group):
http://www.westarinstitute.org/Jesus_Seminar/jesus_seminar.html

Alex McCullie

An amusing cartoon referred by a friend (thank you Karl):

http://newlin-deschler.com/Pictures/dvorak/Prayer-Cures-Headaches.jpg

Alex McCullie

Scary international legal developments to protect religions and Islam in particular from criticism…

There are strange happenings in the world of international jurisprudence that do not bode well for the future of free speech. In an unprecedented case, a Jordanian court is prosecuting 12 Europeans in an extraterritorial attempt to silence the debate on radical Islam.

The prosecutor general in Amman charged the 12 with blasphemy, demeaning Islam and Muslim feelings, and slandering and insulting the prophet Muhammad in violation of the Jordanian Penal Code. The charges are especially unusual because the alleged violations were not committed on Jordanian soil.
(read more Wall Street Journal - opinion piece 10 Sep 2008)

Alex McCullie

In Italy comedian Sabina Guzzanti faces up to five years jail for telling a joke at the pope’s expense. This is reminiscent of Muslim anger over the cartoons. (See article at TimesOnLine 12 Sep 2008.)

The Christian religious explanations for the creation of the universe, Earth and, more particularly, humans have always seemed incredible to me.

Let us take the approach of the traditional Christian who is on the softer end of bible interpretation. I am using Marcus Borg’s description of a traditional Christian from his book The Heart of Christianity. Essentially the traditional Christian believer sees the Holy Bible as the true Word of God and Jesus as the son of God and part of the Trinity. Being on the softer end, though, some of the Bible may be interpreted metaphorically such as the story of Genesis to incorporate the developments of science.

So here’s my guess of the modernised Christian story.

15 billion years ago (that’s 15,000,000,000 years) God created the universe - all known time and space - in the same way as hypothesised by scientists as the “Big Bang” theory. However the scientific explanations do not involve God. Now, you should remember at this point that God’s overall objective is to create us some 15 billion years as the only living creatures with both physical and non-physical (”soul”) forms. As you know souls can join Him upon death for people obeying God’s laws. Back to the story. Then about 10.5 billion years later God created Earth (consistent with the latest scientific theories) and some 500,000 years later created simple life forms. It’s important to remember that God created the rules of the universe that gives us the apparent order we find and, as part of that, evolution. But God intervenes, presumably,  to ensure that He gets the outcome He wants. So even though Evolutionary theory suggests that all living things, including humans, got here by a combination of chance and selection, the chance may be illusionary as God needs to manipulate the processes to achieve His outcomes - human beings. So through a relatively meandering process of evolution and appearing as if driven by purely selection and chance, humans appear some 150 000 years ago - 15 billions after the start of the universe - according to God’s design.

Let’s fast forward to some 2 500 years ago when God decided the time was right to directly influence humans by appearing. He chose a small wandering tribe in the Middle East to start His work. It was a good start but more was needed so some 500 years later God placed his embodiment into this Middle Eastern tribe in the form of Jesus. For over 30 years Jesus preached around the Middle East, gathered followers and performed miracles for before dying, resurrecting and returning to God (even though in some sense he is God). This cleansed our original sin as described in the metaphorical story of Adam and Eve though it isn’t clear how we have the same original sin in the more scientifically-aware version of Christian creation. From that point his teachings spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond through disciples like Paul (Saul of Tarsus).

So we have a couple of major choices. We can believe the scientific explanations as they stand without God. Or, we can except those explanations but believe God developed the rules and intervened selectively to produce us. Surprisingly there appears to be no verifiable physical evidence of God intervening contrary to the scientific explanations. I should mention that our lack of knowledge about beginning of life and universe should be no justification for hypothesising a god. In fairness though adding a god does make many people feel special and have something better to look forward upon death so perhaps that isn’t a completely unhealthy delusion. I guess Richard Dawkins would disagree.

Alex McCullie

In case you missed THE Sarah Palin video. Palin’s religiosity is a very scary from someone who may run militarily the powerful country ever (video). In fact the whole video reinforces every stereotype of religious belief that atheists attack.

Alex McCullie

Want to explore different progressive and traditional religious and non-religious ideas? Then I would recommend a Canadian site http://www.religioustolerance.org.

By religious tolerance the site says:

To extend religious freedom to people of all religious traditions, even though you may well disagree with their beliefs and/or practices. Having tolerance toward another religion does not require you to endorse that faith group’s beliefs; it simply indicates your respect for its right to exist and for its member to hold different beliefs without being oppressed.

Alex McCullie

Slightly left of field but amusing…

http://spotonce.com/story.php?title=Geek_1-0_vs-_Geek_2-0__Pic

Alex McCullie

Shaun Nichols, Professor Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona makes a plea in a Scientific American article for free will (and rejection of deterministically forced decisions) on the basis that we need the belief in free will to be moral. Nichols details a psychological experiment showing that participants cheated more when they we told that free will doesn’t exist. (see article). Also here is a contrary response by Tom Clark, Center for Naturalism.

Alex McCullie

An amusing article appeared in the on-line news website, The Onion, : Evolutionists Flock to Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain (5-Sep-2008). Now religious apologists will be saying that secularists do believe in a god after all - just the wrong one.

 

Alex McCullie