Alex’s Heresies - embracing a physical reality

According to history and legend the following is true.

He was born in 4 BCE. A spirit appeared to his pregnant mother, preparing her for the birth of a divine figure. His divinity was signalled by an extraordinary sign in the sky at birth. Other supernatural events were also claimed to highlight his birth.

In childhood he showed an amazing precocity for religious understanding and debate.

As an adult he travelled widely and performed many miracles - healing the sick and raising the dead have been documented. He was also renowned for his sublime teachings.

Ultimately he was arrested and tried by the Roman authorities. Many supporters believed he went to heaven and others saw him after death.

His name was … Apollonius of Tyana.

Alex McCullie

 

Other links
http://www.livius.org/ap-ark/apollonius/apollonius01.html

http://atheismandhappiness.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/apollonius-of-tyana-the-great-healer/

http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/setting/apollonius.html

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/a/apollonius_of_tyana.html

http://mountainman.com.au/apollonius_of_tyana.htm

Alex McCullie

9 I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, 10 but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. 11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15 But women will be saved through childbearing–if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (1 Timothy 2:9-15, New Testament NIV translation)

Is this the inerrant Word of God?

These quotations present problems for Christians. If they view the Bible as strictly God’s Word and therefore inerrant, how do they can they possibly reject authority of this passage from 1 Timothy of the New Testament. Hopefully most believers do using modern sensibilities about how to treat women. But doing so negates the belief that all the books of the Christian bible are strictly the Word of God. Implicitly they are acknowledging that the Bible books have been written and edited over 1000+ years by people who have the usual range of human weaknesses. It comes down to personal choice which parts believers accept or reject. It sounds like the dreaded “relativism” that religious leaders so commonly rail against.

On the other hand if believers accept this quotation as truth, heaven help women.

Alex McCullie

As a further note many use this passage to proclaim Paul as a misogynist even though his other writings support women having active roles in the early Christian church. Today many biblical scholars believe that 1 Timothy and the anti-female text of 1 Corinthians were not from Paul but fraudently added or assigned at some later period (St. Paul and Women: A Mixed Record).

A friend put me onto a Dutch creationist, Johan Huibers, who created a one-fifth size of the mythological Noah’s Ark (from the Hebrew Bible). Like the US creationist museum and glossy books by Islamic creationist, Harun Yahya, creationists love to use PR to convince and persuade rather than boring scientific research like evolutionists. Then they have the nerve to seek to be treated seriously as a genuine ’scientific’ alternative to the theory of evolution. Still there’s enough gullible people in the world to keep these guys in business.

Alex McCullie

As part of countering “you don’t know enough about Christianity to criticise” argument I have embarked on studying the Christian Bible, Christian theology and Christian beliefs and practices. Even before starting I had to make a number of decisions and commitments.

Firstly, what am I trying to understand? Is it simply looking at the Bible text for its inconsistencies and appalling moral prescriptions (and there are many in both testaments)? This is a favourite pastime of fellow critics of religion. However I don’t think that moves the argument forward. I believe a more useful approach initially was to familiarise myself with the Bible and associated beliefs in a fairly non-critical way.

At times this becomes difficult when reading some Bible commentary that accepts all the Bible text as absolute truth even when you know that historically the events never happened. An example is the birth of Jesus. All evidence suggests that his birthplace was in Nazareth and not Bethlehem. Luke’s birth story was more about linking Jesus’s birth to Old Testament prophesy than any historical fact. Also I’ve found many of the evangelical style analyses particularly unpalatable to rationally-based secular thinking. There’s only so far that I can “willingly suspend my disbelief”.

How to go about learning more? Reading articles at random does not give a foundation that necessary for subsequent study. So I’ve started with audio lectures from the Teaching Company. Each lecture series is discounted once a year and that’s the time it’s worth buying with transcripts preferably. I’m working through Philosophy of Religion by James Hall now. Each lecture series is produced and delivered by a university professor and provide a good introductory coverage of the subject. My next topics will be Old Testament and New Testament. Again, wait until the series is on special.

Are there any interesting books? There are books by biblical scholars who take a more academic approach to examining the historical Jesus. There are many books. Here’s a good one to start with: Who Is Jesus? by John Dominic Crossan and Richard G Watts. The book is structured along question and answer lines and presents a historical view of Jesus very different from the one from the Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament, for example.

I hope that helps if you want to study the other side.

Alex McCullie

I’m on holidays in India shortly, so my postings will be few or non-existent over the next month. They will resume from November.

Alex McCullie

I needed a bible or, to be more precise, a Christian Bible. I haven’t opened one for years nor have one at home, so I think the ‘ignorance’ criticism of theists provides some room for attack against critics like me. So this is part of my self-education on Christianity today. Even with the revisionism of the Christian progressives, the Bible’s two libraries of books - Hebrew or Old Testament and Christian or New Testament - are still the cornerstone of Christian belief so I started there.

Why not visit Christian bookshops to get my bible? Traditionally I avoided these places and treated them like adult bookshops - too embarrassing to be seen entering or leaving. I went to The Word (two branches), the Central Catholic Bookshop and The Uniting Church bookshop. Here are my observations on choosing a bible was well as the styles of these Christian bookshops.

I never appreciated the variety of bible versions. I expected one correct English translation of the inerrant Word of God and it used to be the King James Version (KJV). Now you have word by word translations from Greek or Hebrew or, perhaps, Aramaic. There are thematic thought by thought approaches to translation as well as “hip new age” street language translations. Most versions now have gender inclusive updates with person, mortal and the like replacing man, such as the New Language Version (NLV) to Today’s New Language Version (TNLV). There’s mixed support for this with some expressing disquiet about destroying the lyrical appeal of the bible. By the way the latest version of the venerable KJV is NKJV (N for new). Now within each range of bibles you can buy anything from compact travel editions to large-print editions as well as study and student versions with extra explanatory notes. Your next choice is paperback, hard cover, budget edition, fake leather and real leather covers. Then believing becomes really expensive. I liked the idea of specialist versions dedicated to different members of the family - grandmother or grandfather - presumably their access methods to God are different. As you can imagine all explanatory bible commentary assumes its literal truth, so don’t expect any secular criticism here.

The bookshops are interesting too. All staff were very helpful, especially when I mentioned my non-believing status. The Word bookshop had a more evangelical feel with gospel music playing and peachers on video display. There was little or no space given to progressive Christian literature by Borg, Boernhoffer, Holloway or Jesus Seminar. The Catholic Bookshop in Lonsdale Street had materials that strongly supported the Roman Catholic version of Christianity not surprisingly. So, for example, I found The Jeruselum Bible, the original version, here but not elsewhere. Finally, the Uniting Church bookshop felt the most liberal with dissenting texts in the theology section. Here for the first time I found the more controversial Christian authors. Like the others, though, they have a wide range of bibles, prayer books, children’s books as well as other devotional books, brochures and music.

Just for the record I bought a couple of bibles - New Revised Standard study bible and NKJV travel bible.

Alex McCullie

I have added a link to see Born Again (from SnagFilms) for free. See the link at the bottom of the right column below the news feeds.

Alex McCullie

Today’s mainstream churches worry about the declining numbers of “bums on seats” especially amongst the young, the so-called Generation Y. Some commentators write off the support by Gen Y as a sign of their superficiality and self-interest. This may be so. Perhaps the churches should also look at the relevance of their theology and teachings for some sort of credibility gap with people in today’s secular age.

Traditional believers are asking modern, or post-modern, young people to believe that there is a physically undetectable supernatural world - a superior world - where a reasonably well-defined God with infinite knowledge and power is taking a personal interest in our individual welfare in ways we can’t understand. By the way our lack of understanding is commonly stated as a human short-coming. To connect to this God we need to accept the literal truth of the Bible, two compilations of books written, edited, translated and published over the last 2 500 years by many people with diverse interests, histories and motives. The justification for acceptance is that these writings are the true Word of God and that God directly worked through those many writers, editors and publishers.

It is reasonable to assume that many people are seeking a spirituality in their lives beyond their everyday existence. Even though many like me find that special quality in the natural world, others want the greater meaning from something beyond the physical. However most of these same people see traditional Christian claims and beliefs as coming from a series of naive and unbelievable fairy stories from a primitive past still being perpetuated today.

This is nothing new. Many Christian scholars are arguing for an overhaul of Christian beliefs (see references below), in particular, shifting away from a literalistic interpretations to treating the Bible as powerful metaphors relevant to the human condition. This puts the big-ticket items of Christianity under the spotlight:

• Was Jesus really the son of God as well as part of the Trinity?
• Was he born of a virgin birth?
• Did Jesus die and was resurrected to (re)join God and, thereby, save us from our original inherited sin?
• In fact, did Jesus exist at all as one person or was his Bible persona some sort of idealised compilation of preachers?
• Therefore, is the Bible really a mixed collection of historical stories with powerful metaphorical messages written by a diverse range of people rather than the inerrant Word of God?
• If these are wrong or, at least, doubtful, then what does it mean to be a Christian?
• Are there other ways to achieve salvation than through one specific set of religious beliefs?

Asking these questions even in recent times would have been considered heresy. But they are being asked now in progressive religious academic circles. However despite these discussions and questioning amongst theological scholars it is hard to imagine substantial changes at the pews even in a very secular Australia. Many traditional Christians would be unacceptably threatened by these thoughts. Most could not entertain the blasphemous idea that Jesus is not truly the son of God but was only a gifted preacher.

Still these changes seem necessary if Christianity is to be relevant in the 21st Century to younger and future generations.

Alex McCullie

More information

A quick search for ‘Christianity’ returns a vast number of evangelist US based web-sites that promote a fully traditional, literalistic view of the Bible. However here are some alternate search names to check:

• Jesus Seminar - a progressive academic research body seeking the historical Jesus
• Val Webb - author of Like Catching Water in a Net, which covers much of the progressive Christianity mentioned here
• Marcus Borg - prolific author and theological scholar with many popular publications
• John Dominic Crossan - historian of Jesus
• A previous posting with progressive Christian links

200 years after Darwin’s birth and 150 years after the publication of On Origin of the the Species we expected press articles, new books and television shows on evolution. And, guess what, they have started and, of course, the vexed question of its relationship with religion arises.

The Church of England posted an article by Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs entitled Good religion needs good science where Brown admits some church people may have been mistaken in attacking Darwin’s ideas in the mid 19th century. However he spends most of the article attacking Social Darwinism which he implies is a natural outcome of scientific atheism through the misuse evolutionary theory to promote moral improvement through social engineering. I’ll discuss his article more below.

Also the Roman Catholic Church again acknowledges the validity of a religious version of evolution, theistic evolution, and denies the literal truth of the Genesis creation stories (articles: Roman Catholic response (via Reuters), Comment on apologies). However BBC News has an article about creationism in the UK - it may be more widespread than generally thought (British creationists - BBC News).

Back to Rev Brown’s article about good religion and good science. He equates evolution offering some sort of implicit moral progress. This is one of the great myths about evolution perpetuated by allies and opponents alike. There is no sense of progress in the evolutionary theory - all living things including humans develop through chance and adaption to the environments. As environments change, then successions of living things adapt in different ways. Chance comes from environmental changes, reproduction and mutations. Evolution unlike religious practices has no sense of intentionality - no overall purposes or goals. It is a combination of blind processes that acts like a “blind watchmaker” to use Richard Dawkin’s word play on William Paley. So there is no moral dimension to evolutionary processes nor is there any sense of progress to higher life forms nor is there any superiority of one species over any other. On the other hand I would argue that Christianity has traditionally promoted all of these ideas. Despite Brown’s claims about the easy misuse of science, most religious supporters have had no problems applying social engineering on others for the “greater good”. But, of course, this was justified as doing God’s work.

He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned
(Mark 16:15-16)

Alex McCullie

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