tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post6227884941813756776..comments2023-09-01T07:04:13.381-07:00Comments on Reflections on Faith and Culture: The Giant Pyramid SchemeGil Bailiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04481878663941134090noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-59999282295620781942009-10-08T04:06:26.372-07:002009-10-08T04:06:26.372-07:00PART II - Continued from above:
One of McIntyre&#...PART II - Continued from above:<br /><br /><i>One of McIntyre's chief complaints when auditing MHB98 was Mann's <b>refusal to provide his data, methods and source code</b>. The Hockey Team's most dreaded opposing goaltender has been reporting the same <b>deceptiveness</b> from Briffa, who for years refused to release his Yamal measurement data. This, despite the fact that HS-defending papers relying solely on Yamal continued to be published in major science journals.<br /><br />But last year, Briffa used the data in a paper he published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Journal. As the journal adheres to its strict data archiving rules, McIntyre convinced one of its editors to help get Briffa's data released. <b>And late last month, the data was indeed published at CRU.</b><br /><br />Last week, McIntyre analyzed the CRU archive Yamal data and proved that <b>Briffa et al. had cherry-picked and manipulated data, intentionally omitting records not friendly to their position</b>. In fact, when Briffa's hand-selected figures were replaced by a broader dataset for the same Polar Ural region (much of which he had deliberately dropped), the <b>Hockey-Stick suddenly disappeared, revealing no significant trend in the 20th century whatsoever!</b></i><br /><br />Marc Sheppard concludes<br /><br />And without the Hockey Stick's counterfeit portrait of runaway 20th century warming, climate crisis peddlers' credibility levels are reduced to those of used car salesmen. Not where you want to be when hoping to sell the instinctively absurd premise that the actions of mankind can influence temperatures in either direction.<br /><br />So they cheat. And they lie. And they have from the very beginning.<br /><br />In 1989, climate scientist Stephen Schneider told Discover magazine:<br /><br /> <b> "To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest."</b><br /><br />Twelve years later, Schneider was a lead author of the IPCC's TAR, the same UN report that formally introduced the delusory Hockey Stick Graph.<br /><br />In his masterpiece work, Heaven and Earth, Ian Plimer assessed the cadre whose own assessments form the foundation of virtually every climate-related scheme, law, tax, regulation and treaty throughout the globe thusly:<br /><br /><b> "The IPCC is clearly an ascientific political organization in which environmental activists and government representatives are setting the agenda for a variety of reasons including boosting trade, encouraging protectionism, adding costs to competitors and pushing their own sovereign barrow."</b> <br /><br />Add lying perpetrators of fraud, and I'd say that about sums it up.<br /><br />Speaking on the Senate floor in July of 2003, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla) rightly called the threat of catastrophic global warming the <b>"greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."</b>.<br />read it all here:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/un_climate_reports_they_lie.html" rel="nofollow">UN Climate Reports: They Lie</a> by Mark Sheppard at American Thinker (Oct. 5, 2009)<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow">http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/un_climate_reports_they_lie.html</a><br /><br />It would seem that the <b>verdict</b> on UN + IPCC +AGW = <b>FRAUD</b><br /><br />* <br />*** <br />* <br /><br />Gil, the devastating economic impact of the Kyoto Treaty is not unknown. <i>If</i> implemented in full the Kyoto Treaty will cripple developed economies worldwide casting a billion and more people back into abject poverty. The scope of this evil deception and power grab is indeed breathtaking!Mike O'Malleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03786963522098086259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-73246900797329377692009-10-08T04:03:41.731-07:002009-10-08T04:03:41.731-07:00Doughlas Remy said...Mr. O'Malley, let's f...Doughlas Remy said...<i>Mr. O'Malley, let's face it. No source is "reliable" unless it supports your presuppositions, even if it cites sources that you consider reliable. Does that seem like convoluted logic? It is. We have fallen down the rabbit-hole... You do not accept the <b>IPCC's verdict</b> on climate change... For climate change, your sole "reliable source" is the Wegman Report, which has the fingerprints of the oil and gas industries all over it. You are a committed apologist for the Catholic Church.</i><br /><br />.<br /><br />Hmmm, well it took Canadian statistician Dr. Stephen McIntyre about a decade to find purposefully hidden data but once again the question of scientific fraud surfaces behind the "IPCC's <b>verdict</b>" on anthropogenic global warming. Is the IPCC mounting a beggar the developed world scam that makes Bernie Madoff look like an ameteur? Yes we have more <b>indicia of fraud</b> [and more evidence of my prudent good judgment ;-) ] among the IPCC climate modellers.<br /><br />I'll quote from <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/un_climate_reports_they_lie.html" rel="nofollow">UN Climate Reports: They Lie</a> by Marc Sheppard at American Thinker (Oct. 5, 2009)<br /><i>For years, claims that UN climate reports represent the consensus of the majority of international scientists have been mindlessly accepted and regurgitated by left-leaning policy makers and the media at large. But in the past week or so, <b>it's become more apparent than ever that those who've accused the international organization of politicizing science and manipulating data have been right all along</b>.<br /><br />This latest disclosure again concerns what has become the favorite propaganda propagation tool of climate activists -- the infamous "Hockey Stick Graph." The familiar reconstruction, which deceitfully depicts last millennium's global temperatures as flat prior to a dramatic upturn last century, has been displayed and touted ad nauseum as irrefutable proof of unprecedented and, therefore, anthropogenic, global warming (AGW). <br /><br />Despite its <b>previous debunking</b>, the embattled AGW poster-child continues to languish in UN climate reports, which are unduly revered and quoted as gospel by all manner of proselytizers. In fact, just last week it had the bad timing to show up in a desperate UN compendium, released just days before Climate Audit published facts that promise to be the Hockey Stick's (HS) long overdue epitaph. And those facts not only assuage any doubt of the chart's fraudulence, but also of the <b>deliberate and devious complicity of its creators, defenders and leading UN sponsors</b>.</i><br /><br />Sheppard continues:<br /><i>the original and by far most ubiquitous version of the HS graph, was derived from a 1998 paper by Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes (MBH98). It was promptly met with challenges to both its proxy data and statistical analysis methodology. Of these, various papers by two Canadians -- statistician Stephen McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick -- stood out in dispelling the AGW-supporting hockey-stick shape arrived at by MBH, claiming it the result of severe data defects and flawed calculations, particularly an invalid principal component analysis... </i><br /><br />CONTINUED IN PART II below:Mike O'Malleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03786963522098086259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-34021811739028728742009-09-30T05:10:36.156-07:002009-09-30T05:10:36.156-07:00Doughlas Remy said ... You do not accept the IPCC...Doughlas Remy said ... <i> You do not accept the IPCC's verdict on climate change </i> <br /><br />Ahhh, there is something we just don't see often enough! The noun <b>verdict</b> in associated with the uber-corrupt UN and its appendages.<br /><br />.<br /><br />Doughlas Remy said ... <i> For climate change, your sole "reliable source" is the Wegman Report, which has the fingerprints of the oil and gas industries all over it. </i><br /><br />Fortunately, I DO indeed have "reliable sources" unlike the IPCC. Unfortunately, you apparent haven't read you haven't read my prior post with enough care to understand that I rely upon multiple sources. ;-)<br /><br />.<br /><br />Doughlas Remy said ... <i> For climate change, your sole "reliable source" is the Wegman Report, which has the fingerprints of the oil and gas industries all over it. </i><br /><br />This seems to be one of those instance where I find that you are no longer trying to persuade me. Instead you seem to be trying to keep "the AGW faithful" on board with a worn out ad hominem attack.<br /><br />Let's check Wikipedia ;-) if you will ;-) . Wikipedia says in part:<br />"Edward Wegman is a statistics professor at George Mason University and past chair of the National Research Council's Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a Senior Member of the IEEE. (The National Research Council (NRC) of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the United States National Academy of Engineering, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.) (The American Statistical Association (ASA), is the main professional US organization for statisticians and related professions. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest, continuously operating professional society in the United States. The ASA services statisticians, quantitative scientists, and users of statistics across many academic areas and applications.)<br /><br />Edward Wegman, a Saint Louis, Missouri native, received a B.S. in mathematics from Saint Louis University in 1965, he then went to graduate school at the University of Iowa where he earned an M.S. in 1967 and a Ph.D. in 1968, both in mathematical statistics. He held a faculty position at the University of North Carolina for ten years. Dr. Wegman is credited with coining the phrase "computational statistics" and developing a high-profile research program around the concept that computing resources could transform statistical techniques. He joined the faculty of George Mason University in 1986 and developed a master's degree program in statistical science. He also has been the associate editor of seven academic journals, a member of numerous editorial boards, and the author of more than 160 papers and five books ...<br /><br /><br />Dr. Wegman assembled an ad hoc panel of himself, David W. Scott of Rice University and Yasmin Said at Johns Hopkins University to prepare the report on a pro bono basis. At the hearing to present it, Wegman said "We were asked to provide independent verification by statisticians of the critiques of the statistical methodology found in the papers of Drs. Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes published respectively in Nature in 1998 and in Geophysical Research Letters in 1999." and "We were also asked about the implications of our assessment. We were not asked to assess the reality of global warming and indeed this is not an area of our expertise. We do not assume any position with respect to global warming except to note in our report that the instrumented record of global average temperature has risen since 1850 according to the MBH99 chart by about 1.2 degrees Celsius, and in the NAS panel report chaired by Dr. North, about six-tenths of a degree Celsius in several places in that report.""<br /><br />Help me here Mr. Remy. I just can't find those oily and gaseous fingerprints ...Mike O'Malleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03786963522098086259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-51482645142058517552009-09-22T04:38:13.088-07:002009-09-22T04:38:13.088-07:00Normaburns wrote: My own mother has often told me...Normaburns wrote: <i> My own mother has often told me, in veiled terms, that I can expect to suffer the torments of hell because I left her faith. This is always like a knife in the heart, even though I know there is love and concern mixed in with the reproach. She is indirect about it and…</i><br /><br />You remind me of one of my Jewish relatives who tells of his Orthodox great grandmother that he always felt a strong twinge of “Jewish guilt” upon visiting this elderly matriarch. ;-) <br /><br />Normaburns wrote: <i> During a trip to Canada with her many years ago, she tried to convert a rather seedy-looking prostitute who approached us in the street. My mother basically tried to scare her with stories of hell-fire. All this makes me sad and, I must admit, angry.</i><br /><br />Forgive me, Normaburns. This is sad. It sounds like religious malpractice. It is hard to imagine a positive outcome resulting from such a reproach. I’d guess that you are troubled by an evidence lack of Christian empathy. <br /><br /><br />Normaburns wrote: <i>I always hoped to convince my mother that hell wasn’t a reality so that she wouldn’t worry about me. But I never succeeded, and my apostasy has been a major—and so unnecessary!—disappointment in her life. She is now very old and, statistically speaking, she cannot live much longer. I know how important her faith is to her, and when her times comes, I realize she will need comfort from someone who can give her reassurance about the afterlife, if only to agree with her that she is going to heaven. I will not be able to fulfill that role for her, but fortunately there are others who can</i><br /><br />Wisdom, discretion, empathy and charity would seem appropriate if she is that elderly. I recall an African American acquaintance born in the 1960s in wealthy integrated Prince Georges County, Maryland. Her elderly working class African American father was a harsh dominating parent. She resented her father but she grew up in the security and easy of an affluent liberal community while her elderly father group up in a Black neighborhood in Jim Crowe Washington DC. Back in the 1930s, 40s and 50s a son of a prominent White family such as Pat Buchanan could throw a punch at a White DC cop and have all charges dropped the following morning. However, a son of a black DC family might well be “pushing up daisies” if he didn’t “know his place” with white DC cops back then. It seems that this particular elderly Black father was teaching his daughter survival skills for a bygone age.Mike O'Malleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03786963522098086259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-18299819639259809582009-09-20T17:07:16.695-07:002009-09-20T17:07:16.695-07:00Thank you for your very thoughtful response, Dan, ...Thank you for your very thoughtful response, Dan, and I hope you won’t leave the conversation. I know I do push people on this subject sometimes, but I see it as a kind of “calling” to challenge conventional notions of hell because I have experienced some personal hurt around the matter and empathize with others who have been similarly hurt. My own mother has often told me, in veiled terms, that I can expect to suffer the torments of hell because I left her faith. This is always like a knife in the heart, even though I know there is love and concern mixed in with the reproach. She is indirect about it and will drop the subject if pressed, but she and I both know what the theology is and how fervently she believes it. During a trip to Canada with her many years ago, she tried to convert a rather seedy-looking prostitute who approached us in the street. My mother basically tried to scare her with stories of hell-fire. All this makes me sad and, I must admit, angry. Why must the price of eternal life be someone else’s eternal suffering? Your earlier comment that “God gives us a gift through hell” did come across to me as an apology for a very toxic concept, and in my attempt to dampen down my reaction, I came across as condescending. Condescension wasn’t half of what I felt, however. <br /><br />I always hoped to convince my mother that hell wasn’t a reality so that she wouldn’t worry about me. But I never succeeded, and my apostasy has been a major—and so unnecessary!—disappointment in her life. She is now very old and, statistically speaking, she cannot live much longer. I know how important her faith is to her, and when her times comes, I realize she will need comfort from someone who can give her reassurance about the afterlife, if only to agree with her that she is going to heaven. I will not be able to fulfill that role for her, but fortunately there are others who can. <br /><br />It has become unfashionable to engage in all this “hell talk,” as you put it. But I see a grave danger in allowing hell to become a part of the repressed content of faith. If our understanding of God is to continue evolving (and I am still defining God as Emil Durkheim does), then it seems to me we’ve got to talk about these vestiges of the Old Sacred that wormed their way into Christianity to become even more toxic than before. I hope this conversation will continue.<br /><br />Dean, I took the quiz you recommended. It shows that I would be in the second circle of Dante’s Inferno. I also appreciated your paradoxes about God and have added them to my collection. You will enjoy the Web site, “Why won’t God heal amputees?” at http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god5.htmAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01421765568250220183noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-28568250541748077182009-09-20T10:51:02.709-07:002009-09-20T10:51:02.709-07:00So, I left the Church for 6 years. I decided I wou...So, I left the Church for 6 years. I decided I would no longer make any spiritual moves that involved fear. Whenever a voice creeped in that threatened hell, or told me to pray, what about the Rosary, etc, I shouted that voice down in no uncertain terms. And those 6 years were very valuable, a time of trusting in God’s love for me without worrying about rules, consequences, punishment. It was beautiful.<br />My continued reading of Girard lead me to a place perhaps similar to Norma, Dean, and Doughlas (though different I'm sure) in which the Catholic faith and religion in general became useless to me, superfluous, unnecessary, as I wanted to destroy and throw out all the stupid, archaic ideas I had learned about God. Christ became more of a "spiritual activist" than savior. Even Hitler was in heaven. How could he not be? God was a marshmallow; he only ever wanted to hug us forever, irrespective of our behavior. <br />But a couple of things happened. I found that without the practice of my faith, without confession, without considering that life requires moral structure—I begin to dissipate in some ways. My newfound “freedom,” beautiful as it was, came with a cost. It had become more of a freedom from something, instead of a freedom for something. I know many non-religious people lead virtuous lives, and many religious people do not. But in my case I was so obsessed with my newfound trust in God, irrespective of my behavior, that my behavior suffered! I knew that trusting God so much that I didn’t need to strive to be a better person or worship or pray was beautiful in a sense, but it had its limits. And so I began to feel a need again, a hunger for the Eucharist and for a liturgical life. But this time—it was not based on fear of eternal consequences. It was based on desire and hunger to worship in spirit and truth, and based on my own need for peace, for a community.<br />Then, my mother died. I watched her all the way to the end, and sad as it was, it was one of the most profound things I have ever witnessed. All the BS was stripped away—it was very simply, a person getting ready to meet her maker. This was life at its most fundamental level: a person slipping away, with money, fame, power, and everything else about earthly life meaningless at that moment. And I have no doubt that my mom is at peace, biblical “statistics” and Cardinal Dulles be damned. (pun intended)<br />And I went back to Mass. It’s still a struggle sometimes: hell, fear, church politics, hypocritical Catholics, our chequered history. The questions will never end—whether it’s about gay people, or hell, or Catholic history. If you demand 100% intellectual and moral satisfaction you will never have faith. But it’s there, in prayer, in Church, in the Eucharist, that I’m fed. It’s there that I prepare for my final moments, whenever they come. Not from terror of judgment, but from need, from necessity, from hunger. I hunger for something.<br />So, again, far be it for me to be hell’s apologist. On many levels I don’t believe in it. The idea of God torturing people is insane. And eternity is not endless time—it’s no “time” at all. The idea of picturing thousands of years of torture is useless. But what may not be insane, though I don’t know for sure, is the idea that God does not rape us with love. We can resist it. And we can keep resisting it. Who would do that, and keep doing it endlessly? Nobody, I‘d like to think. But we don’t really know, do we? But how dare any of us say we can understand the mysterious interplay between divine grace and human will? Do any of you really know, and understand the eternal ramifications? If I write about hell on this blog, you can be sure I’ve come through my own fire to even be able to mention the subject. I try to defer to the Church, but at least I’m willing to say: Gosh—I don’t really know for sure. Anybody else?Dan Floriohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01431746528134190577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-938194154093703192009-09-20T10:50:45.745-07:002009-09-20T10:50:45.745-07:00This will be my final response, on this particular...This will be my final response, on this particular thread at least. You can all have the last word. Dean says, "The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely preferable to the presence of those who think they've found it." Exactly--this blog is full of people who think they've found the truth. You can include me if you like. But in any case I'm not seeing a whole lot of intellectual humility from anyone on here.<br />Norma writes to me, "If you’re stuck on the idea that hell really does exist, ask yourself why you know this. Is it just faith, is it personal revelation, could it be something that you were once taught but never questioned, or could you be getting your information about it from an unreliable source?"<br />It's a pretty condescending paragraph, considering she knows nothing about me. I'm hardly the poster-boy apologist for hell. I grew up in a nominally Episcopalian home. Hell was never discussed. I never felt afraid in that way. In my 20's I found Christ, had a conversion, got religion, whatever you want to call it. It was largely an experience of my own sinfulness, the first rays of light breaking through my ego-structure, and I still think it was an important experience. But I admit that fear was mixed in: What was God going to do to me? Forgive me, yes, but…what if it all goes horribly wrong?<br />I admit, still, this essential terror that seems baked into the religious cake, no matter how you slice it, the eternal threat hanging over our heads, has been the most difficult part of my spiritual journey to live with and ultimately overcome. I hate the idea that life is a test or trial we must pass. I echo everyone’s disgust at how this sort of thinking can affect children and adults.<br />Later, I found the Catholic faith, which many of my relatives already shared. And again, it was a beautiful, important experience when I entered the church. I was in love. It was intellectually, culturally, sacramentally and psychologically more satisfying than the Protestant fundamentalism I was toying with or the anemic mainline Protestantism I grew up with ever could be. But yes--there was fear mixed in. What if I didn’t get to confession in time? What if was in mortal sin but didn’t really know it? (I know—mortal sin requires consciousness to be mortal—but still, worry knows no logic.)<br />Then, after discovering Gil's book, reading Girard, reading and meeting Richard Rohr, and reading Henri Nouwen, among many, many other influences, some I can recognize and some I’m sure I don’t even know about, I had what I still think of as my Break-through: I came not only to know intellectually that God loved me; I came to know his love for me in a deeper, more profound way. I felt accepted at all moments. It was beautiful. The ego games of life held little interest for me. The “recordings” I had played in my head, year after year, were tossed out the window. I had new thoughts. I had new joy. I knew I belonged, was loved, I knew the universe was better off with me in it—not from ego, though ego remained, of course—but because the source of all life and love had willed my existence. I wish for everyone an experience like this, an experience of belonging. Hell for me no longer existed, or at least, it was a place not worth worrying about. God desired to love me in a way that precluded all fear.<br />But, back in Church, in prayer groups, in homilies…I wasn’t hearing about this experience. I continued to hear about fear. I continued to hear about a plodding, scrupulous way of spirituality. I looked around me (judgmentally, to be sure) and saw lethargic, blind people, either not really believing in anything in particular, or believing in order to have eternal fire-insurance. (part 2 to come)Dan Floriohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01431746528134190577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-59586468096075733502009-09-20T10:18:30.093-07:002009-09-20T10:18:30.093-07:00Dan,
To use your example, if we told our children ...Dan,<br />To use your example, if we told our children they would never die, experience and observation would soon tell them that we were lying. Then their unhappiness would be transfered from the reality of death to the deceit of their well intentioned parents and they'd be doubly unhappy. We would be protecting them from the future while despoiling the present. The actor Klaus Kinski said, "I once asked a Gypsy girlfriend whether she ever went to the theater or the movies, and she replied: 'When I was fourteen, two men fought with knives over me. One stabbed the other to death. I touched the dead man; he was really dead. The other was really alive.' That's the difference between make-believe life and real life. Mine is real." <br /><br />There is a saying in Hebrew: 'אין שמחה כשמחה לאיד' "There is no joy like schadenfreude". Taking pleasure in other people's discomfort and misery is why we invented hell. And it's a rather late invention, too. There is no metaphysical tinge to the concept of hell as Jesus used it. None whatsoever. Thomas Aquinas, the model of scholastic scholarship for men studying for the priesthood, said, "...that the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly if they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell." This is the same theologian who proclaimed that reason is in harmony with faith?! Now if only he could abolish his mental slavery to such "reason", perhaps his known repugnance for human slavery would have have been more meaningful and less ironic. But probably the most influential figure for implanting the concept of hell in the Western tradition is Dante, munching on back brains, swimming in rivers of frozen blood, hopeless suffering, etc., etc. The combination of poetic skill, and the use of real historical characters didn't help. Here's a little <br /><a href="http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv" rel="nofollow">quiz</a> that will quickly tell you which level of Dante's inferno any of us can expect in the afterlife. Please lock the door behind you on the way in. <br /><br />Too often religious faith is forced to bend or crumble under the hardship of existential reality. Observation gives way to designation; and what is believed is shaped by the multiple and conflicting impressions received by anyone whose agonies have compelled them to seek solace in the midst of events that have few beneficial effects and fewer known causes. What is it that God actually does? “God cured my cancer”. God is therefore merciful and loving. “God let 6 million of his chosen people die in a holocaust”. God is therefore mysterious and unreachable. Those who bear the claims and promises of faith also bear witness to the hard fact that they are not usually witnesses of the truths they proclaim; merely announcers of the nomenclature in which their chosen truths uncomfortably reside. One person is healed of their illness. Another suffers unrelenting agony unto death. One sleeps in velvet bedding attended by tireless servants; another rummages through gutters looking for crumbs cast off by strangers. The loose ends, broken spirits, frayed nerves and gaping wounds aren’t always amenable to quick fixes and easy answers. The overriding question is, has God shown himself. “in sundry and diverse ways and times”, or is this merely another example in the endless catechism of deflected presence, a presence that can never be pinned down to specifics; whose charity and apathy at times seem indistinguishable from one another until God is shaped to fit the cruel experiences from which he seems absent, and therefore defined by terms that ultimately render him as nothing more then an idol constructed out of meaningless hardship and unassignable suffering? If, as Churchill said, you are going through hell, keep going. In the meantime, God promises to be there with us. Even if we make our bed there.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05050917778880724522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-28738207063894983702009-09-19T10:06:02.997-07:002009-09-19T10:06:02.997-07:00Thanks for your patience, Dan. I know this is a di...Thanks for your patience, Dan. I know this is a difficult subject.<br /><br />Verdi’s Requiem is indeed a sublime work of art, and I always find it very moving—now more than ever because I have finally paid attention to the text. But I am also in awe of the late medieval Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. I can only enter fleetingly into his world through his paintings, but I would not like to get lost there. With reference to Verdi, you said you felt “grateful for any world-view that could produce such a work of wonder and beauty.” I can only say that I am grateful we have such artful expressions of these world-views. <br /><br />I’ll share with you a personal moment of vulnerability. Yesterday, I read a very powerful article about torture as practiced in U.S. detention facilities since 2001. Here is testimony from an FBI officer who visited Guantanamo Bay:<br /><br /><i>On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more... On another occasion,...the detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. Not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.</i><br /><br />When I read this, I just wept. <br /><br />And it is not even the worst of the torture scenarios that the author described. <br /><br />Why am I bringing up torture in a discussion about hell? I hope the connection is obvious. The scene in the prison at Guantanamo Bay must be infinitely mild by comparison to hell because hell, by most accounts, is eternal. Eternity is time without end, like all the grains of sand in the universe.<br /><br />The words of Jesus would have us believe that there are far more souls in hell than in heaven. What I cannot understand is that those souls in heaven do not spend every waking minute weeping. Surely, the Christian life is not just about finding peace and joy for oneself! <br /><br />We teach our children not to hurt others, but we teach them to worship a god who does hurt others in the most monstrous way imaginable. And then we exhort them to “be like Jesus,” who is God incarnated. It’s no wonder that Christians spend so much time agonizing over the nature of God. The complexities and contradictions could tear any sane person apart.<br /><br />Teaching children about hell is not comparable to teaching them about death. We know for certain that death is a part of the human condition, and we must help children deal with that. But hell is not a reality. It’s only part of the mythological thinking that sustains the sacred. Remember Girard: The sacred rests on three pillars: myth, ritual, and prohibitions/obligations. Hell is for the guilty, heaven is for the innocent, and heaven is a place of perfect harmony only because the guilty have been expelled to hell. Again, this is a model for the community. Social order—the perfect society—comes only when it is purged of undesirable elements. <br /><br />If you’re stuck on the idea that hell really does exist, ask yourself why you know this. Is it just faith, is it personal revelation, could it be something that you were once taught but never questioned, or could you be getting your information about it from an unreliable source?<br /><br />It strikes me that very few people who say they believe in eternal damnation have really thought much about what it means or tried any kind of visualization of the kind I proposed. We don’t like to look at it, just as we don’t like to look at torture. But it’s one of the fundamental issues of faith and should not be backgrounded. Hell is perhaps the ultimate expression of victimary thinking, and it is a remnant of the old sacred, whose workings Girard would have us to believe were revealed in the Passion.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01421765568250220183noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-76186185142408653282009-09-19T05:48:03.101-07:002009-09-19T05:48:03.101-07:00Norma,
It's funny because every time I've...Norma,<br /><br />It's funny because every time I've performed Verdi's Requiem I've left the concert hall grateful for any world-view that could produce such a work of wonder and beauty.<br /><br />Hell is a toxic concept, I agree. I hate it, as I said before. And I don't sit around worrying about it. But before we even get to that subject, life is difficult to begin with. You can protect children from the notion of judgment, but you can't protect them from everything. The fact that we all must face death is, to me, kind of a raw deal, but it's the deal whether we like it or not. That's a toxic thing for kids to grow up with. But it's real. When they learn about it and really absorb it depends on culture, circumstances, parents, etc, but ultimately at some point we all have to embrace the reality of our limited, finite, and mortal natures. Undoubtedly the thought of death has caused psychological damage in many people, even to the point of insanity. But there it is. There's no way around it. We would all like reality to be other than it is, with death, aging, disease, abandonment, tragedies, being commonplace, but there is no way around reality. So if we tell children there is no judgment, perhaps they will indeed lead happier, less psychologically toxic lives. But they would also lead happier, less toxic lives if we tell them they will never die, never get old, never face horrible heartache or tragedy, never lose someone they love, never feel that all they've worked for is meaningless, never have their dreams crushed. But will they be better off, really?<br /><br />I like to believe all will come through the trial and join in the great Oneness of love forever. I really do. But the idea that we should cancel the whole concept of a karmic finale, wherein all things hidden are made known, simply because the idea hurts people's feelings, doesn't hold up for me. Understand, again, I hate the idea of any kind of hell. But I also hate a lot of the earthly "mini-hells" that are undeniable and real, and the sooner I grow up and accept life as it is the sooner I can find something like psychological and spiritual health and joy, WITHIN the framework of life's horror, instead of just avoiding it and pretending it isn't real.<br /><br />All that said, my only real answer to this, childish and unsatisfying as it may be, is that I know that I am loved.Dan Floriohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01431746528134190577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-41805126454589318002009-09-18T17:16:18.045-07:002009-09-18T17:16:18.045-07:00So much to respond to, and so little time... Here ...So much to respond to, and so little time... Here are a few random thoughts.<br /><br />Dan, I am looking first at your comment about hell as a gift. (“God gives us a gift through hell.”) I think it would work for me if you were only not talking about God and hell but about an ordinary father and son relationship. In this relationship, the father punishes the son because he loves him and because he wants him to know that his “words, actions, [his] very self, will always matter.” I can hear the voice of the loving father in your script for him:<br /><br /><i>You are not inconsequential; you are important. If the possibility of judgment didn’t exist, it would mean I pay you no mind. It would mean that I do not care what you do, how you act, how you treat each other.</i><br /><br />That sounds to me like good parenting. <br /><br />But sending one’s children into eternal hellfire does not seem like very good parenting. I hope you read my meditation about eternity and suffering. I offered it in the hope that you might just pause to think what suffering for all eternity might be like. As I said, hell is not a card-board cut-out in a medieval mystery play, and now I'll just add, it's not turning over the car keys to Dad. If the words “eternal” and “hellfire” mean what I’ve grown up thinking they mean, then there’s infinite pain there. It is inconceivable to me that anyone, even the worst monster, could deserve anything so horrible. <br /><br />I do not believe we should teach children that there is a hell. Not only is it an unnecessary concept, but it may actually harm them psychologically. The world is full of good people who have grown up without such an idea in their heads, and I know many of them myself. We do not need to be threatened with hellfire in order to do what is good. <br /><br />And think of the damage that it does. I don’t know where the words to Verdi’s Requiem came from (see my quote, above), but they are full of the most intense anxiety, and one can easily hear that anxiety, or terror, in the music itself, especially toward the end. I left the concert hall feeling thankful that I did not share Verdi’s world view.<br /><br />Belief in hell is the perfect setup for a life of anxiety, because the rule book (for staying out of hell) is so “unreliable,” to use a word that’s been bouncing around a lot here. I liked Dean’s assessment, where he wrote, <i>...I don’t regard the Bible as anything approaching an owner’s manual for living. It’s just too self-sabotaging...”</i> Exactly. So how is a believer to feel secure in the knowledge that he or she is satisfying God’s requirements? If God can change his nature between Chapters 3 and 17 in the Book of Jeremiah, how is Joe Christian gonna sleep at night? And then he hears people theologizing and speculating about God’s nature, he thinks it’s all up in the air. Anxiety. Where’s the peace that passeth all understanding? We have enough things to <i>worry</i> about already, who needs to lie awake worrying about hellfire?<br /><br />I think hell is a fascinating subject, one that many modern-day Christians seem uncomfortable talking about. But it is, in my view, a disturbing background that needs foregrounding, bringing out in the open. I have a lot more thoughts about it but will stop there for now.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01421765568250220183noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-64316451986345129742009-09-18T13:51:42.277-07:002009-09-18T13:51:42.277-07:00Dean, I really liked your piece about “2001, A Spa...Dean, I really liked your piece about “2001, A Space Odyssey” and would like to re-post it on my own blog site at http://thebentangle.wordpress.com/, with your permission. I might be able to find a nice graphic to accompany it (a still from the film?) And you could certainly revise or adapt it for my site, as you please. Cheryl and Norma have recently contributed to The Bent Angle, as you will see. It’s a new site and I haven’t built up much readership yet. You can message me there if you prefer. (Just leave a comment.)Doughlas Remyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18421275276424774845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-83257078367114980502009-09-18T12:27:50.857-07:002009-09-18T12:27:50.857-07:00Norma, I thought I submitted this hours ago; here’...Norma, I thought I submitted this hours ago; here’s another try, but without the questions you’ve now answered via e-mail and here. It is in response to your meditation and the two “questions” you posed:<br /><br />When I was a child, I asked my Christian mother such questions, more out of curiosity and concern than defiance. She would shrug and say, “Well, there’s nothing God can do about it. He loves you and wants you to be in heaven, just like we do.” And then she would smile sweetly. <br /><br />It was as though eternal damnation were not much worse than getting a spanking and being sent to bed without dinner. God is good. He doesn’t want you to suffer. He only sends bad people to hell. But don’t worry. You won’t go there. God loves you.<br /><br />“But Ma, the preacher says bad people burn in hellfire forever!”<br /><br />“Don’t worry. Just be good, love and obey God, and you won’t go there.”<br /><br />I shut up, but I fretted, “What if I do end up there? What if I’m bad, or I don’t love God enough?” I had quite a lot of anxiety about this until I had an opportunity to work through it with a college therapist. I don’t worry about it any longer, thank...goodness.Doughlas Remyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18421275276424774845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-42278912895304362092009-09-18T11:12:46.756-07:002009-09-18T11:12:46.756-07:00Part II
Apocalyptic events are neither new, nor pe...Part II<br />Apocalyptic events are neither new, nor perpetually genial if they go unrecognized long enough. Was the new world Noah helped to create any different in its fallen nature than the one it supplanted? Jesus pointed to the Noah story as a prototype of the last days. If Jesus is truly the "lamb of God" shouldn't he stop pulling the "wool" over our eyes by lending his status and corroboration to a myth that uses violent metaphors as a way of ingratiating us to a "loving" God? What does this say about Jesus? What does this say about God? What does this say about us?!<br /><br />Lot is another example of a potential victim surviving the culture that would victimize him. How is that survival to be interpreted, unless it's at the hand of divine justice? Again, we have Jesus corroborating it. If the event described is a mythologized or sacralized account of what actually transpired, it seems that very little of the entire text of the Bible is to be trusted as anything more than a eulogy to the warped religious impulses and sentiments of a perpetually cruel people, and the God whom they believe inspires them.<br /><br />Then we have Gideon—a true example of the outsider, who becomes the custodian of mimetic violence against 135,000 Medianites, and dethrones the cult in the "old fashioned" way, with the help of a God who we are told now despises violence? If these are mythologized texts, what value can they impart to true experience, if our willingness to be moved by them is compromised by the knowledge that they never happened, and therefore cannot happen again? (I would be relieved to know that they never happened, but then I would be suspicious about the revelatory character of a book that uses as object lessons stories that have no apparent value or relation to the thing they're trying to convey). Is this the way God teaches us to love? By telling us stories that are filled with violence? Has it worked? Can He be strong enough to save us, if He's unable to deliver an uncorrupted message to us? Why is there any violence in His message at all? Are we supposed to be shocked into a renewed sensibility by a candid and tedious display of what we already know about ourselves? Unfortunately, I don't know. I'm just an ape at a watering hole with a bone in my hand. Should I use it as a weapon or a tool?<br /><br />Before the concept of eternal life was embraced as a religious creed, only grudging and protesting victims were accorded divinized immortality through the transcendentalizing of mimetic contagion and violence. Yet living on in the memory of those who murder you seems a pitifully cheap legacy which is hardly worthy of comparison with what people long for when they speak of the power of the resurrection. People turn to Christ primarily because he promises eternal life, not because he possesses a precocious anthropological sensibility. When men become gods, they live only until replaced by other “gods” who are like them; when God becomes man and dies at men’s hands, men live forever through the one they killed. But the nagging question remains, is this just symbolic speech, invoked to reveal a merely anthropological insight, or is it more? In light of these ideas, is the good news of the gospel anthropological, metaphysical or both? And how are they reconcilable?<br /><br />If the socio-anthropological reading of scripture is true, then the mystical and metaphysical reading is certainly at odds with it. Gone is the Jesus who performs real miracles: walking on water, raising the dead, healing the sick and feeding the multitudes. In its place is a savvy anthropological spiritual genius who diverts scapegoating rituals, reconciles rivalistic combatants and scolds the duplicity and obfuscation inherent in the machinery of victimization. <br />(continued)Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05050917778880724522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-41140497883081251302009-09-18T10:15:52.911-07:002009-09-18T10:15:52.911-07:00Hi Doughlas,
Thanks for the article. I cringed wh...Hi Doughlas,<br />Thanks for the article. I cringed when I read it, because there's a lot of truth there. But then, I don't really expect politics to ever be anything but disappointing, even though I try to hold my cynicism at bay. In the mean time, wont someone please get Mr. Cooper some affordable health insurance!?<br /><br />I decided I'm voting for <a href="http://ic2.pbase.com/o6/53/447553/1/78789849.d0Ppuav0.Sam.jpg" rel="nofollow">this</a> guy in the next election, cause I like his campaign poster. ;0)Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05050917778880724522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-71352807991687798042009-09-18T09:31:19.112-07:002009-09-18T09:31:19.112-07:00Doughlas: Should you wish to use the meditation, y...Doughlas: Should you wish to use the meditation, your suggested revisions are hereby approved. Thx.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01421765568250220183noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-36499295995559248122009-09-18T09:14:31.787-07:002009-09-18T09:14:31.787-07:00Hi Norma,
Thank you for your response. I think G...Hi Norma,<br /><br />Thank you for your response. I think God as a literary character that develops over time is a reasonable one. If there is a God, we are given fitful glimpses at best, even in the expressed nature of Christ, from whom we get the biggest glimpse of all. I go with the God-is-bigger-than-we-can-imagine scenario, rather than the no-God-at-all scenario. I don't puzzle over God's nature much either, because I think we can only approach it tangentially through parable, analogy, and metaphor. Which is what I think the writers of the Bible were attempting to do. Because of the strange mixture of violence and virtue I don't regard the Bible as anything approaching an owner's manual for living. It's just too self sabotaging in that sense, in spite of the good intentions of the writers. I think we're meant to live our lives and to see God or what we call God in our experience. After seeing Waco, Texas, Jones Town Guyana, and several dozen other biblically based experiments in studied insanity, using the Bible as a prescription for living a "holy" life is asking too much.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05050917778880724522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-50297907246443954362009-09-18T09:12:51.241-07:002009-09-18T09:12:51.241-07:00Part III
The sick are healed, not because they’re ...Part III<br />The sick are healed, not because they’re cured of their physical infirmities, but because they’re awakened to their calumny and personal participation in a myth; the multitudes are fed, not because the loaves have been increased, but because their dietary scrutiny has been blunted sufficiently to allow them to share a meal without killing each other; and the dead “rise” not because they are restored to life, but because everyone recognizes their personal culpability in murdering them in the first place. To “arise” then, is to awaken to a new revelation, but the revelation is grudgingly sparse in its talk of a literal resurrection of the body, which is Paul’s defining proof for faith, and which he further proclaims is meaningless and foolish without it. Of course, Paul also expected the return of Jesus in his own lifetime, and shaped the urgency (and I would guess the proscriptions) of his letters around that fact. I wonder what he would have said in those same letters if he knew they would be read 2,000 years into the future?<br /><br />Gone is the God of anger and wrath who takes vengeance on an uncaring world, to be replaced by a people of anger and wrath who take vengeance on each other in the name of an uncaring God. Gone is the promise of Heaven and eternal life and the hope that makes life endurable; to be replaced with the rice paper eschatology of scrupulous avoidance and the careful manipulation of mimetic desire as we wend our torturous way to an earthly heaven. In fact, seen in this light, Girardian theory poses the threat of becoming a kind of Christian McCarthyism. I can see it being used as a litmus for interpreting, defining and adjuticating every suspicion about human nature. It runs the risk of becoming like a Möbius strip, twisted and tied at both ends, and feeding on itself in a hermetic ritual. The measuring process becomes a kind of Heisenburg quantum entanglement on the anthropological level. There is no point of observational distance and imagined immunity and knowledge if you live in a community with other human beings. Trying to reduce every function of human existence to a theory, no matter how prescient and elegant it may be, does not render life solvable in any meaningful way or remove the observer from participation. All these tools for examining life becomes just another method for collapsing the wave function, without bringing us closer to anything that could be called the truth. Diagnosis is not cure.<br /><br />I don't know if the gentleman from Avignon believes in a personal resurrection or not, although I know he's a Christian. I'm certainly not trying to misrepresent him in any way. These are my own insights based on what I've read both by him and about him. I'm sorry to say that his anthropological ideas shed very little light on my personal struggles with faith, and I think they would have by now if they were going to. I don't mean for that in any way to be a distraction from your own odyssey or anyone else's here.<br /><br />How do I wrestle God and Jesus from the clutches of the Bible? For me, belief in God is my way of saying I bow in reverence before the mystery of the universe. A universe that it is not "solvable" or "reasonable" in any terms that will finally result in our comprehending it in some meaningful and satisfying way as though it were a destination that we had finally reached. It is a mystery, because like God, we cannot touch it. But as a Christian, I believe that God can touch us, and by so doing confer on all our questions and doubts the reasonable expectation of some meaning in the silence that reaches the restless din of our own souls and proclaims by the power of love that we are not alone. All I have to do is look into the eyes of people who love me to be assured of that.<br /><br />I'll close with words which I think would be great if anyone ever does a cryogenic commercial for Nobel Laureate sperm donors: "Many are called, but few are frozen".<br /><br />All my best DanUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05050917778880724522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-54844319876982590342009-09-18T09:11:34.939-07:002009-09-18T09:11:34.939-07:00Hi Dan,
Thank you for your comments, I really app...Hi Dan,<br /><br />Thank you for your comments, I really appreciate your response.<br /><br />I'm sure many people will have a different synthesis for this, but if you don't mind, I'd like to start with my own ham fisted analogy from Stanley Kubrick's film, 2001, A Space Odyssey: In the famous Dawn of Man sequence an ape overcomes his fear and touches the monolith, which has suddenly appeared during the night, a sentinel planted by some unseen and vast intelligence. There is a sense of numinous awe in the film, as the mysterious black basaltic slab appears over and over again throughout the movie. This is the divine agency of the film. The burning bush. The ape in the initial scene then turns bones into tools. He learns how to use his new "tool" as a murder weapon against a rival tribe of apes, and although that was not the intention of the caretakers who imparted the knowledge, the rival apes at the business end of a jagged thigh bone may have thought differently. <br /><br /> A Klaxon is sounded, as the sentinel telegraphs its message to the stars signaling the changed status of the apes. From that point on, the monolith patiently stands as a silent beacon, through aeons of time, in different locations, awaiting the next visitation in the distant future when it will impart a new chapter of knowledge further along the evolutionary path as the unseen caretakers surveil our progress from behind the scenes. The tree in Genesis as well as the cross at Calvary and the Monolith in Space Odyssey are essentially the same: preparations for participation in a grand mystery. But the agency behind that mystery remains unseen, or seen only through a glass darkly, which is the central tension both of the film and of our lives. Each discovery emboldens us to go another step further on our personal and collective odyssey.<br /><br />As we attempt to move away from our own violent beginnings, we find ourselves returning to them over and over again, which I also suspect was not the intention of our benefactors (if we have any) but the beacon trip wire in anthropological history that signals the next step. In Girardian terms, when the distinctions and boundaries that define culture begin to collapse, the most painful dilemma in that deconstruction is the undermining of the primitive sacred with its cohering mythology of fear and divine justice. The ape overcomes his fear; we do too. There is an initial sense of relief as the last vestiges of that fear become sufficiently muted to thwart its continuance, and then a subsequent despair as increasingly violent and chaotic challenges to its eroding sense of authenticity are accelerated proportionate to the lack of any discernible resistance from it. People are both pleased that an angry, wrath-laden deity does not exist, but sufficiently enraged at the same time to act as surrogates for the vengeance they believe it would unleash if only it could see what we are doing to ourselves. <br /><br />If there is an apocalyptic process or some kind of evolutionary momentum at work, it seems, if I understand it at all, that we are at this stage: We have dispensed with an angry God by creating a scenario in which he would seem to be welcomed; and dismissed the possibility of a loving one who could be perceived as audacious or apathetic enough to conspire in the revelation of his love through such a painful, violent and lengthy process. A process in which he gives us such apparently complete control over the ultimate, and by no means, optimistically assured, outcome. In other words, it's a long way from bone tools to Europa and Jupiter. Whether Hal chooses to close the pod bay doors on us is anyone's guess. <br />(continued)Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05050917778880724522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-73467941795977129922009-09-18T08:41:26.415-07:002009-09-18T08:41:26.415-07:00This particular thread has probably digressed enou...This particular thread has probably digressed enough. But I've been thinking about all the hell-talk on here. I hate the idea of hell and judgment as much as anybody. But is it possible that it's not a "violent" God threatening us with "eternal" "punishment", but a loving God telling us hard truths out of love? If you love someone, and they are heading for trouble, you warn them. I can't really accept lakes of fire. But I believe there has to be some kind of "karmic finale." For strip the idea of hell completely away, and what is left?<br />A world in which all behavior, good or bad, leads to the same result; a world in which nothing truly is at stake; a world with no drama. <br /><br />But the idea of hell that terrifies believers and is rejected as nonsense by nonbelievers can be seen in another, more fully developed way: as gift.<br />God gives us a gift through hell. He is saying to us: “Your words matter. Your actions matter. YOU matter. And your words, actions, your very self, will always matter. You are not inconsequential; you are important. If the possibility of judgment didn’t exist, it would mean I pay you no mind. It would mean that I do not care what you do, how you act, how you treat each other. It would mean that I will not defend any principle or any person, no matter how egregiously and flagrantly violated they have been.”<br /><br />Hell is God’s compliment to us. He is saying, “I respect your decisions. I give them weight. I honor your life, just as you have lived it. I respect your power—it is true power, and I see it truly. I do not engage in pretend-games regarding your very being. I see you as eternally valuable. If this eternal value could never be warped, if I took no notice of this warping, it would truly mean I do not love you, for I would eternally disregard you in that case. Eternal disregard is not my way. I do not live a lie. I do not pretend.”<br /><br />It's just a thought.Dan Floriohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01431746528134190577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-54448785778612928672009-09-18T08:12:22.377-07:002009-09-18T08:12:22.377-07:00Dean and Norma: You may enjoy this passionate essa...Dean and Norma: You may enjoy <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/17" rel="nofollow">this</a> passionate essay about the current mess in Washington.Doughlas Remyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18421275276424774845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-75840737003151768642009-09-17T17:28:32.571-07:002009-09-17T17:28:32.571-07:00OK, here is the metaphor about eternal suffering t...OK, here is the metaphor about eternal suffering that I promised earlier. But first, if you haven’t already done this, you must spend a few moments recalling the pain of your most recent tummy-ache or tooth-ache. If that doesn’t do it for you, then recall a severe burn or other injury.<br /><br />So, while you’re doing that, I’ll just preview this metaphor by saying that it is a spatial metaphor about time. It takes a temporal concept (eternity) and transposes it into the spatial dimension so that we can visualize it. And then, if you <i>really</i> use your imagination, you might be able to fill that space with the memory of your pain. This will help you with the concept of eternal suffering, which, as we have seen, is a very difficult concept.<br /><br />Ready? Now, imagine you are standing in a desert at the top of a high dune. You can see for miles around you, and all you see is more dunes under a canopy of sunlit sky. <br /><br />You pick up a grain of sand and look at it closely. This grain of sand represents the span of your life on earth. Then imagine your tummy-ache that lasts your entire lifetime and that has you constantly throwing up. Think of the nausea, the chills, and the convulsions.<br /><br />Put the grain of sand back. Try to remember where you put it.<br /><br />To grasp the concept of eternal suffering from your tummy-ache, you have to now imagine counting all the other grains of sand that exist, everywhere. Each of them is the equivalent of a new lifetime filled with pain.<br /><br />Look around you and try to estimate the number of grains of sand you see. We’ll call that number “N.” For the moment, try to think of N as eternity, and try to imagine having your tummy-ache for that long. <br /><br />But N isn’t eternity yet. You have to visualize more grains of sand. The ones that you see are only on the surface, and that the little section of desert you’re standing in is only a small part of the entire desert. Do the numbers, and don’t forget to factor in the pain.<br /><br />And there are even more grains of sand elsewhere, in other deserts, on beaches, on the floor of the oceans, and on other planets in our solar system. We have to add these to the total. And don’t forget the pain.<br /><br />But that’s still not all the grains of sand. Scientists estimate there are <i>hundreds of billions</i> of galaxies in the universe, each with its suns and its planets. Add in all those grains of sand that are on these planets and do the total. Imagine how many digits the number might have. Don’t forget the pain. In fact, magnify the pain. Imagine something more horrific, like burning. Endless burning.<br /><br />Now, quickly! Force your attention back to the grain of sand that you held in your hand and that you replaced on the ground. Can you find it? Again, it represents the span of your life, a life filled with pain. A life in which you did something that displeased...God. <br /><br />That’s it. <i>Metaforo finito. Grazie, signore e signori. </i> You can do this meditation again at home or when you’re at the beach. And now, before you leave, please consider these two questions:<br /><br />Why would an omni-benevolent and omnipotent creator punish anyone for that long for any reason whatsoever?<br /><br />Why would anyone worship such an unforgiving and wrathful deity? <br /><br />If you’re so inclined, you can have fun drawing out all kinds of other interesting questions and conclusions. <br /><br />It’s amazing to me that theologians speak so glibly of eternal damnation, as if hell were just some cardboard cut-out in a medieval mystery play and the audience were illiterate peasants.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01421765568250220183noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-87867323420792677152009-09-17T16:05:36.062-07:002009-09-17T16:05:36.062-07:00Dean quotes Jeremiah 3:12: I am merciful, saith th...Dean quotes Jeremiah 3:12: <i>I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever.</i><br /><br />and Jeremiah 17:4: <i>Ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn for ever.</i><br /><br />Norma Bruns writes, <i>If we think of God as eternal and immutable, then the Bible is obviously not a reliable source [of knowledge about Him] because it contradicts itself.</i> (And, I might add, if God changes through time and can even do so between chapters 3 and 17, that is a very quick change indeed.)<br /><br />There, you see, Mr. O’Malley, you have quoted an unreliable source. Avery Cardinal Dulles is unreliable because he quotes the Bible, which is unreliable because it contradicts itself in the two verses that Dean quotes. <br /><br />Granted, I have quoted both Dean and Norma Bruns. They may not be reliable.<br /><br />But Wikipedia is reliable, mostly.Doughlas Remyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18421275276424774845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-48651077450205840682009-09-17T13:37:23.449-07:002009-09-17T13:37:23.449-07:00At last to Dean (sorry for the delay).
Your two ...At last to Dean (sorry for the delay). <br /><br />Your two quotations from Jeremiah (“...I will not keep anger for ever,” and “...mine anger...shall burn for ever”) bring to mind the discussion between Mr. Remy and Mr. O’Malley about the reliability of sources. In these two short verses, God blatantly contradicts himself concerning his own nature. So my question is, “Is the Bible a reliable source of information about God?” In quoting the Bible, are we quoting an unreliable source?<br /><br />If we think of God as eternal and immutable, then the Bible is obviously not a reliable source because it contradicts itself. If God’s nature, or “character,” changes through time, then the Bible may be a reliable source. And God’s nature does appear to change through time. Bigtime. <br /><br />Jack Miles, one of the keynote speakers at the COV&R conference a couple of years ago, wrote “God: A Biography.” My brother, who teaches philosophy and is not given to hyperbole, recommended it as one of the best books he had ever read. Having now read it myself, I can heartily recommend it as well. Miles sees God as a literary character who, like most literary characters, develops during the course of the action. The book's chapter titles tell the story: Creator, Destroyer, Creator/Destroyer, Friend of the Family, Liberator, Lawgiver, Liege, Conqueror, Father, Arbiter, Executioner, Holy One, Wife [Yes, wife!], Counselor, Guarantor, Fiend, Sleeper, Bystander, Recluse, Puzzle, Absence, Ancient of Days, Scroll, Perpetual Round.<br /><br />As I said earlier, I have been an atheist nearly all my life, so I don’t spend any time at all puzzling over God’s true nature. But I read books like the one by Jack Miles because I am fascinated that so many other people do puzzle over such matters, and because I am interested in anthropology, which by necessity includes a study of religion. My interest in the Bible was rekindled through reading Girard’s “Things Hidden...” It was through Girard that I came to understand what an amazing anthropological resource the Bible was and is. <br /><br />Emil Durkheim said that God is the community, and I believe this to be a foundational insight. God expresses the community’s values at any given moment, and as the community changes, so does God. In this view, God is a projection, and monotheism was a way of stopping the proliferation of projections and building consensus about community values and goals. Of course, this understanding of “God” has to be protected by a taboo (the “totem” taboo). To even suggest that God is a projection is a violation of the taboo (i.e., blasphemy). For the projection to function as it should, everyone has to be on board. No one must question God’s existence. Else, there is danger that the “spell” will be broken.<br /><br />So I would agree with Louis Black (whose video I viewed earlier): “What God? Where?” And I am also inspired by Meister Eckhart’s view that “Our idea of God is the last obstacle on the path to knowing God.” But I would just add that the “God” one finally knows after getting past all those “ideas” of God bears no relation whatsoever to the God of the Bible, so why even call him/her/it by that name? By the time we attain such a knowledge, haven’t we left Judeo-Christianity behind altogether? J-C, after all, is just a succession of “ideas” about God.<br /><br />I like what Dan Florio wrote. I’ve read Gil’s book and Girard’s major works, and I agree that there is in the Bible an unfolding revelation about violence. I don’t agree, however, that Christ consistently stands as the non-violent one. Mr. O’Malley (or his source, Avery Cardinal Dulles) has just highlighted some of the violent sayings of Jesus for us (about damnation). And there’s plenty to be said about the apocalyptic visions toward the end of the NT, as well as St. Paul’s references to hellfire. So I think Dan is correct in pointing out that there is a process under way, but I don’t see that it is completed.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01421765568250220183noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33424426.post-67793190425556943902009-09-17T10:13:27.242-07:002009-09-17T10:13:27.242-07:00Thanks, Mr. O’Malley, for the information about Ch...Thanks, Mr. O’Malley, for the information about Christian eschatology, and thanks also to Dean for his excellent bio of God, to which I will return shortly. But first, re: Mr. O’Malley’s comments:<br /><br />The article by Avery Cardinal Dulles is useful in understanding the “constant” Catholic teaching about who goes to hell (i.e., “the damned,” and “everyone who dies in a state of mortal sin”) and approximately how many that is (probably the majority of humankind). And we discover that hell is a place of “eternal punishments.” The notion that the damned will be restored in the <i>apokatastasis</i> was a minority view held by Greek Orthodox fathers. Some 20th century theologians, you report, believe that all human beings may or do attain salvation (eventually). Jacques Maritain contemplates the possibility of some relief for those suffering in hell.<br /><br />All this confirms for me that Catholic theology includes a place of eternal damnation where most humans probably end up and from which, if they learn to love God, they may be delivered. But that last part seems to be a minority view. <br /><br />In your second comment on this subject, you say that hell fire is an iconographic metaphor about distress at separation from God, and that the base for the metaphor was an actual place, a burning garbage dump in the valley of Hinnom outside of Jerusalem. <br /><br />But we are still talking about “literary metaphors,” as you point out in your reference to Tolkien. <br /><br />Does this mean that hell is not an actual place but only a state of emotional or psychological distress endured by those who are separated from God?<br /><br />If it is an actual place and the sufferings of the damned are physical, then where is this place, and what is the nature of the sufferings? Or does only God know the answer to these questions?<br /><br />As you may remember from earlier exchanges, I am an atheist. I ceased believing in God less than ten years after I stopped believing in Santa Claus, and I am now in retirement. So I have spent many decades (I won’t say how many) “separated from God,” as Christians like to tell me. I have had a mostly happy life with the usual ups and downs. No DUIs, no felonies. I haven’t experienced the “coreless emptiness” that you described. Does this mean I am not a very “deep” person? <br /><br />You reflect the view of Catholic theologians that “we can only find fulfillment and happiness for our lives in relationships with others by emulating the communal love with the Trinity.” This just makes me scratch my head. I have experienced lots of fulfillment in life, and there are so many wonderful people in the world who have no experience of the Trinity. The Asian countries are full of them. Are they going to hell? At what point will they begin to experience the distress of separation from God?<br /><br />Christian eschatology developed during centuries when Christians had very little or no contact with people outside of Europe and the Middle East. Could it be that a new global perspective is needed? Otherwise, what to do with all those Asians?<br /><br />Later, I’ll share with you a useful metaphor for eternity—one that helps us “visualize” how long it is and what eternal suffering might mean. Meanwhile, just try to remember how you felt the last time you had a toothache or an upset stomach.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01421765568250220183noreply@blogger.com