Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

Without tackling the “atheism as a religion” argument here are some interesting statistics on religion from Adherents.com

1. Christianity: 2.1 billion
2. Islam: 1.5 billion
3. Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
4. Hinduism: 900 million
5. Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
6. Buddhism: 376 million
7. primal-indigenous: 300 million
8. African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
9. Sikhism: 23 million
10. Juche: 19 million
11. Spiritism: 15 million
12. Judaism: 14 million
13. Baha’i: 7 million
14. Jainism: 4.2 million
15. Shinto: 4 million
16. Cao Dai: 4 million
17. Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
18. Tenrikyo: 2 million
19. Neo-Paganism: 1 million
20. Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
21. Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
22. Scientology: 500 thousand

 P.S. The scientology figure of adherents is greatly debated. See SolitaryTrees for one such debate.

Alex McCullie

Andrew Denton, a popular Australian interviewer and comedy writer, spoke to Richard Dawkins as part of Denton’s Elders series. It was probably one of the worst interviews I’ve seen for some time. Denton repeatedly tried to take Dawkins where he didn’t want to go – talking about his inner feelings.

Dawkins explicitly rejected opportunities to disclose personal feelings and that’s his right. Denton asked for word definitions like ‘wisdom’ as a way of getting Dawkins to talk about himself. This obviously made him uncomfortable – he kept saying use a dictionary instead. I found, surprisingly, Denton continued this line of questioning instead of then changing direction to make the interview more effective. The whole aim of this type of “celebrity” interview is to garner as much information as possible – let the interviewee talk.

Finally the interview finished and Dawkins had virtually left before the final wrap-up.

Alex

Here’s the link to the ABC. The transcript or video isn’t there yet. ABC televison page

Here is a link to Susan Blackmore’s essay in the Guardian. She also refers to an interesting research paper by Gregory Paul,  freelance researcher, on the dependence on religious belief and dysfunctional psychosociological conditions.

Alex McCullie

If you want to be both, you can be ordained on-line for free through to US$89.95 for the deluxe version. A site for spiritual humanism offers ordaining packages without the need for seminary training. I have no idea whether it is a simple money making activity or someone seriously wanting to allow atheists to conduct civil services and other religious roles.

It doesn’t help in Australia as we have particular requirements before one is able to conduct wedding or funeral ceremonies.

Alex McCullie

Robert Wright of Non-Zero and Moral Animal fame is about to release his latest book, The Evolution of God. Apparently it is a secular look at how religious belief and practice has changed throughout history.

Times OnLine introduction and Amazon link.

Alex McCullie

Here’s a personality test and feedback run by experimental philosophers from Pittsburgh University and Shreiner University (website). Have fun!

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

Richard Dawkin’s site has been banned by a Turkish court after a complaint by Islamic creationist author, Adnan Oktar. (Article at Monsters and Critics blog Article at Richard Dawkins) According to the newspaper articles the complaint was about the defaming of his book, Atlas of Creation, by Dawkins.

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