I have to say through sheer tenacity the Christian's are winning... I'm now in conversation with no less than three highly respected Christian ex-colleagues on the benefits of talking to Jesus (thanks for a great lunch, and your prayers Markus, and I look forward to our next get together).
The big problem I have with talking to devout Christians (or devout anything) is that they are biased. Where can I find an unbiased assessor of religions?
That said, I see no harm (and potentially a great deal of benefit) in talking to Jesus and the Abrahamic God to ask for some guidance with my faith. Until now it has been a one way conversation, but I promise to try a little harder and report back.
If I knew the correct forms of address for Buddha's help and the correct Hindu deity (probably Shiva), I'd give that a try too. Please feel free to fill me in on these or other (popular) religions.
I have just read Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, an epic work of fantasy fiction whose key subjects are growing up, the dangers of organised religion and killing God. Touching on Angels, Witches and Daemons in between and leading to a concept of the soul being released into a common consciousness (I think) he calls dust. It's interesting that I find a work of (originally children's) fiction contains more to think about than much "real" religious literature.
And a lovely quote from the author:
"I don't know whether there's a God or not. Nobody does, no matter what they say. I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away.
Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them."
p.s Random music connections during the writing of this post I've had Amazing Graze, Chopin's Death March, Arcade Fire's Antichrist Television Blues and Tom Wait's Altar Boy (but I'm not sure that is significant)
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Monday, 12 November 2007
Losing my Religion?
I haven't been as plain with you folks as I should have been. about a month ago I mentioned an e-mail from a christian friend of mine (spiritual can of worms) and my problems with an answer. Well I actually answered him not long after that entry but haven't mentioned it before now as I haven't got my head around what I wanted to say here in the blog.
As I said back then, I am a religious apathist in that I have failed to study Religion enough over my life to have gained the insight needed to choose a faith I can put my trust in, but recently I have put a bit more thought into the subject.
I was born into an Anglican family and raised in the Christian faith as taught by the Anglican Church. My family was not very religious, but personally I became strongly religious at an early age, even at one time wanting to become a priest. I spent many of my younger years involved in devotional music, singing praises and devotions to a god I didn’t know or understand. I was a good singer with one of those beautiful pure voices young boys have. I was a devout Christian by the age of 10, the age at which I was confirmed, I don’t remember having to practice the catechism much.
I have blanked the loss of faith from my memory although I suspect it may have had something to do with my mother being taken away from me at the age of 11 by a brain tumour! The church told me this was god’s will, and no god helped me to understand why this should be his will. By the age of 13 I had a religious clean slate and no motivation to refill the slate., and that is how it has remained.
I picked up the (New English) Bible again as my friend suggested, and have read much of both the old and new testaments by now. Sorry to say I have found no comfort in its pages, I found only unbelievable and irrelevant testaments from men of dubious moral fabric (in the old testament), and little more than a few stories of Jesus Christ's ability to perform miracles (in the new). Jesus, at least, attempted to teach a policy of Love one another, but still under the threat of a jealous and somewhat nasty God. I find it difficult to believe that the world's largest faith system is based on such flimsy evidence of an all powerful God. Why should we find faith in the god that has shown nothing of significance, either directly to us all or revealed to the "blessed", for the last 2000 years.
Perhaps I'm oversimplifying but I see two sides to the value of religious teachings; one is the putting down of a basic set of moral values (the fundamental laws of a society) and the other is to help us understand our place in, and our spiritual connections to the universe from before birth to beyond death.
On moral values it seems that (most of) mankind has a built in Empathy to other living creatures that allows us to build a small set of laws without divine intervention (unless of course you see empathy as divine). Many religions (and countries) unfortunately use a fear principal to impose these simple laws.
A much tougher role of religion is to help us in understanding our place in the universe. Tough because it requires us to understand things that are clearly impossible to fully understand. There are two ways of dealing with this, either we have faith in what somebody else has had revealed to them (Check out the revelation of John if you want nightmares with no apparent value), or we have faith in our own observations of the Universe. We are lucky to live in these enlightened times where we sometimes get a glimpse, through Science, of things that are starting to reveal other planes of "existence". Just imagine, for instance, places without time as calculated by Mr. Einstein and his followers. It is such phenomena, and just the pure fact of the universe's existence that provide hints at a greater god. I think it is our purpose to get as close to that god as possible by striving to understand our universe. Do we get to become part of that understanding when we die? Who knows.
So where does that leave me:
I feel some alignment to the teachings of Buddhism where there is no specific concept of God but where the teachings are spiritual in nature, and I feel very close to Deism and the two core features of Deism: The rejection of revealed religion and the belief that reason, not faith, leads us to certain basic religious truths.
A quote from Thomas Paine (the father of Deism) sums up my current feelings on death:
"I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, and that he will dispose of me after this life consistently with His justice and goodness. I leave all these matters to Him, as my Creator and friend, and I hold it to be presumption in man to make an article of faith as to what the Creator will do with us hereafter."
And before that I will strive to understand a small bit of the universe concerning cancers, by fighting this thing until the end.
As I said back then, I am a religious apathist in that I have failed to study Religion enough over my life to have gained the insight needed to choose a faith I can put my trust in, but recently I have put a bit more thought into the subject.
I was born into an Anglican family and raised in the Christian faith as taught by the Anglican Church. My family was not very religious, but personally I became strongly religious at an early age, even at one time wanting to become a priest. I spent many of my younger years involved in devotional music, singing praises and devotions to a god I didn’t know or understand. I was a good singer with one of those beautiful pure voices young boys have. I was a devout Christian by the age of 10, the age at which I was confirmed, I don’t remember having to practice the catechism much.
I have blanked the loss of faith from my memory although I suspect it may have had something to do with my mother being taken away from me at the age of 11 by a brain tumour! The church told me this was god’s will, and no god helped me to understand why this should be his will. By the age of 13 I had a religious clean slate and no motivation to refill the slate., and that is how it has remained.
I picked up the (New English) Bible again as my friend suggested, and have read much of both the old and new testaments by now. Sorry to say I have found no comfort in its pages, I found only unbelievable and irrelevant testaments from men of dubious moral fabric (in the old testament), and little more than a few stories of Jesus Christ's ability to perform miracles (in the new). Jesus, at least, attempted to teach a policy of Love one another, but still under the threat of a jealous and somewhat nasty God. I find it difficult to believe that the world's largest faith system is based on such flimsy evidence of an all powerful God. Why should we find faith in the god that has shown nothing of significance, either directly to us all or revealed to the "blessed", for the last 2000 years.
Perhaps I'm oversimplifying but I see two sides to the value of religious teachings; one is the putting down of a basic set of moral values (the fundamental laws of a society) and the other is to help us understand our place in, and our spiritual connections to the universe from before birth to beyond death.
On moral values it seems that (most of) mankind has a built in Empathy to other living creatures that allows us to build a small set of laws without divine intervention (unless of course you see empathy as divine). Many religions (and countries) unfortunately use a fear principal to impose these simple laws.
A much tougher role of religion is to help us in understanding our place in the universe. Tough because it requires us to understand things that are clearly impossible to fully understand. There are two ways of dealing with this, either we have faith in what somebody else has had revealed to them (Check out the revelation of John if you want nightmares with no apparent value), or we have faith in our own observations of the Universe. We are lucky to live in these enlightened times where we sometimes get a glimpse, through Science, of things that are starting to reveal other planes of "existence". Just imagine, for instance, places without time as calculated by Mr. Einstein and his followers. It is such phenomena, and just the pure fact of the universe's existence that provide hints at a greater god. I think it is our purpose to get as close to that god as possible by striving to understand our universe. Do we get to become part of that understanding when we die? Who knows.
So where does that leave me:
I feel some alignment to the teachings of Buddhism where there is no specific concept of God but where the teachings are spiritual in nature, and I feel very close to Deism and the two core features of Deism: The rejection of revealed religion and the belief that reason, not faith, leads us to certain basic religious truths.
A quote from Thomas Paine (the father of Deism) sums up my current feelings on death:
"I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, and that he will dispose of me after this life consistently with His justice and goodness. I leave all these matters to Him, as my Creator and friend, and I hold it to be presumption in man to make an article of faith as to what the Creator will do with us hereafter."
And before that I will strive to understand a small bit of the universe concerning cancers, by fighting this thing until the end.
Sunday, 14 October 2007
A spiritual can of worms
A very good friend and one of the most intelligent people I know, who also happens to be a very devout christian sent me an e-mail today. When we spoke last at one of our Sunday Brunches, I mentioned if he or his lovely wife come across any tips, tricks or treatments that might be worth looking into that they should let me know.
So here he was offering me a tip that suggested that I might start talking to god and reading the bible as a way to relieve suffering and even possibly towards healing. Of course I wasn't suprised by this tip, it was only to be expected that a true christian friend would feel it their duty to try and help me with christian ideas, and I thank him for being a true friend. His suggestion, however, opened a spiritual can of worms that had already been pushing at the lid.
I am not an atheist and I have always called myself an agnostic but that is not exactly true except that I have not experienced anything that allows me to believe in the existence of a god (the usual sitting on the fence style arrogance that you would expect from an agnostic) .
But if I am really honest with myself I would be better described as Religious Apathist.
That is I rejected the church (Anglican) and the asscociated religion (Christianity) I was brought up with in a very early blank period of my life but then made no real attempt to look at what I really believed in for the next 37 years. I'm sure this isn't an uncommon state for many people modern western society, even more common is those that claim a religious belief without actually understanding it or practising it.
It is not uncommon for people faced with the prospect of an early death to turn back to their default religions by way of insurance and a longing to believe in something. I can understand this attraction for finding spiritual peace.
But what does someone do when he has cast off one set of beliefs, and hasn't really got time to learn another (or even relearn the old)?
At the moment I am not ready to return my friend's e-mail, but I will pick up the Bible again and read John as he suggested.
So here he was offering me a tip that suggested that I might start talking to god and reading the bible as a way to relieve suffering and even possibly towards healing. Of course I wasn't suprised by this tip, it was only to be expected that a true christian friend would feel it their duty to try and help me with christian ideas, and I thank him for being a true friend. His suggestion, however, opened a spiritual can of worms that had already been pushing at the lid.
I am not an atheist and I have always called myself an agnostic but that is not exactly true except that I have not experienced anything that allows me to believe in the existence of a god (the usual sitting on the fence style arrogance that you would expect from an agnostic) .
But if I am really honest with myself I would be better described as Religious Apathist.
That is I rejected the church (Anglican) and the asscociated religion (Christianity) I was brought up with in a very early blank period of my life but then made no real attempt to look at what I really believed in for the next 37 years. I'm sure this isn't an uncommon state for many people modern western society, even more common is those that claim a religious belief without actually understanding it or practising it.
It is not uncommon for people faced with the prospect of an early death to turn back to their default religions by way of insurance and a longing to believe in something. I can understand this attraction for finding spiritual peace.
But what does someone do when he has cast off one set of beliefs, and hasn't really got time to learn another (or even relearn the old)?
At the moment I am not ready to return my friend's e-mail, but I will pick up the Bible again and read John as he suggested.
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