Quote from Sean Carroll’s article in the upcoming Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Physics:
It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute answer to why it exists. I argue that any attempt to account for the existence of something rather than nothing must ultimately bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or explanation.
Carroll goes on to say:
As you can see, my basic tack hasn’t changed: this kind of question might be the kind of thing that doesn’t have a sensible answer. In our everyday lives, it makes sense to ask “why” this or that event occurs, but such questions have answers only because they are embedded in a larger explanatory context. In particular, because the world of our everyday experience is an emergent approximation with an extremely strong arrow of time, such that we can safely associate “causes” with subsequent “effects.” The universe, considered as all of reality (i.e. let’s include the multiverse, if any), isn’t like that. The right question to ask isn’t “Why did this happen?”, but “Could this have happened in accordance with the laws of physics?” As far as the universe and our current knowledge of the laws of physics is concerned, the answer is a resounding “Yes.” The demand for something more — a reason why the universe exists at all — is a relic piece of metaphysical baggage we would be better off to discard.
This perspective gets pushback from two different sides. On the one hand we have theists, who believe that they can answer why the universe exists, and the answer is God. As we all know, this raises the question of why God exists; but aha, say the theists, that’s different, because God necessarily exists, unlike the universe which could plausibly have not. The problem with that is that nothing exists necessarily, so the move is pretty obviously a cheat. I didn’t have a lot of room in the paper to discuss this in detail (in what after all was meant as a contribution to a volume on the philosophy of physics, not the philosophy of religion), but the basic idea is there. Whether or not you want to invoke God, you will be left with certain features of reality that have to be explained by “and that’s just the way it is.” (Theism could possibly offer a better account of the nature of reality than naturalism — that’s a different question — but it doesn’t let you wiggle out of positing some brute facts about what exists.)
This is the fifty-third installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.
We’ve visited other Creationist attractions — each has its own unique charm — but none match the scale and sophistication of Kentucky’s Ark Encounter. Regardless of your religious beliefs (and in spite of a biblically proportioned admission and parking fee [$40 per ticket plus $10 parking]) the Ark is an attraction that should be visited — if only because it’s unlikely that you’ll ever visit anything else like it.
Built at a reported cost of $91 million, opened to the public in July 2016, the Ark is the brainchild of Answers in Genesis, the same group that opened the Creation Museum in 2007. Billed as “The Largest Timber-Frame Structure in the World” and “a modern engineering marvel,” the Ark contains 3.3 million board-feet of lumber and weighs more than two thousand tons. Answers in Genesis CEO Ken Ham claims that it was built to scriptural specs, 510 feet long and as tall as a seven-story building — an exact replica of Noah’s enormous wooden boat.
The purpose of the Ark, according to Ham, is to fuel the faith of his fellow Bible literalists and to reach people who would otherwise avoid a Creationist attraction. Co-founder Mike Zovath has stressed the Ark’s broad appeal, saying that he hopes it becomes a bucket-list roadside wonder, “like seeing the biggest ball of twine.”
The Ark itself is dimly lit, a windowless wooden labyrinth whose brown interior is enlivened with over 100 bays of colorful, professionally-designed exhibits. As you walk up a ramp into the Ark’s belly you’re greeted by the recorded sounds of a thunderstorm and caged animals. There are no live animals on this Ark, only lifelike replicas, including a surprising number of juvenile dinosaurs. These creatures are a big part of the appeal of Ark Encounter, especially for children. The attraction could have simplified its narrative by wiping out the dinosaurs in the Flood, but then it wouldn’t have had any dinosaurs for visitors to see. Answers in Genesis speculates that the dinosaurs’ later extinction — after all the trouble taken to save them — was not a miscalculation by God, but because Noah’s descendants ate them.
Ark Encounter features a number of exhibits showcasing the wickedness that made God decide to drown everyone on the planet (The “Help Me Understand” display explains that God created humankind, so He’s within His rights to kill everybody whenever He wants to). These detailed glimpses of the sinful pre-Flood world are the most memorable part of the attraction. One miniature diorama shows people murdered in an arena by a human giant and a toothy dinosaur with gilded horns. Another elaborate tableau depicts babies being delivered into the belly furnace of a golden snake god.
Poster-size illustrations with titles such as “Abuse of Creation” and “Descent into Darkness” show poor, defenseless dinosaurs being senselessly slaughtered by depraved humans, and crowds of smug, shirtless revelers with tattoos and tambourines — time-honored visual shorthand for every parent’s nightmare of party debauchery.
If you’re wondering how you missed the part in the Bible that chronicled the age of dinosaurs as gladiators… you didn’t. A sign explains that Ark Encounter had to invent these details because the Bible doesn’t mention any of them. Nevertheless, visitors are assured, the pre-Flood world “was thoroughly infested with violence, idolatry, and every imaginable form of immorality.”
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An attraction so invested in its own feasibility can tolerate no perceived insults. This is stressed in the “Fairy Tale Ark” exhibit, which attacks children’s books (most of them Christian) for practicing the “7 D’s of Deception,” including “Discrediting the Truth” and “Deceptively Cute.” Ark Encounter makes clear that there’s nothing cuddly about the Earth’s greatest premeditated mass slaughter, although there is one bright spot. Answers in Genesis CEO Ken Ham has said that his Ark, despite appearances, is not built to float, because God promised He would never flood the Earth again.
Just when I think I have heard EVERYTHING, a Christian fanatic will send me an email such as the one that follows. According to the letter writer, contrary to what we know to be true about rape, pedophilia, and sexual assault, most perpetrators are actually angry ovulating females. Let that sink in for a moment. You see, ladies, it is men who are being harassed and molested, not women. It is men who must constantly be aware of their surroundings lest a woman jump out of the bushes and rape them. Birth control, according to the letter writer, has turned women into predatory animals who seek to sexually dominate men.
I suspect the letter writer is a Roman Catholic. What better way to deflect attention from the Catholic church’s sex scandal than to suggest that most sex crimes are perpetrated by women, not men. Countless children and teenagers have been sexually abused by Catholic priests, yet, according to the letter writer, the REAL scandal is sexual abuse at the hands of birth-control-using women.
Here’s an excerpt from the letter writer’s three-thousand-word tome:
(To Eliminate Majority of Rape Just Ban Birth control)
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (the statistical agency of the injustice department) states: “Approximately 95% of all youth reporting staff sexual misconduct said they had been victimized by female staff. In 2008, 42% of staff in state juvenile facilities were female.”
This disproves the idea that women are more likely to molest children just because they are around them more often and have more access. No. The statistical data shows that even when the pagan women have less access to children and are less than half of the staff in juvenile prisons they end up committing a staggering 95% of child rapes. So shocking is this statistic that journalist Laura Burke of the Texas Observer out of curiosity decided to contact the justice bureau of her home state of Texas concerning the figures of female victimization of youth, since she knows that ‘nationally’ 42% of staff in child prisons are females, and that in Texas 50% of juvenile hall staff employees are females (in the Texas Youth Commission, which is the biggest chain of child prisons in Texas and dominates almost 100% of youth prisons there); now this is what she said in regard to her inquiry: “The justice bureau will not release percentage breakdowns of sexual offenses by female employees in Texas, or at individual facilities. The bureau cites confidentiality as the reason.”
Birth control creates the female pagan child predator epidemic. Women who use it are such beasts of impurity that they are driven to murder in the 1st degree in an act of ultimate betrayal the children they conceive. This vicious act utterly permanently destroys their maternal (and feminine) instincts. Contraception murders already conceived children. It prevents them from attaching themselves to the womb after conception when they travel to that place. It would also seem there are tons of female sodomites (no doubt themselves child killers) in action too, because 14% of juvenile hall youth are females and this figure in general has not changed since 1997 and yet 95% of all minors reporting child molestation say female staff did it. So statistically this means male staff are less likely to molest girls than their female staff counterparts, despite constituting over half of the staff in juvenile prisons. This tells us that it’s very much possible the majority of the female pedophiles in juvenile hall are sodomites and that the remainder who are not sodomites are nonetheless guilty of child murder (and that being a murderess of children is what drove sodomite women to be sodomite in the first place). It’s scientifically undeniable, birth control turns women into pedophiles. Young males in detention are being sexually assaulted more so by female guards and caretakers than females in detention by male guards. Female staffers are more likely to committ [sic] sexual assault and rape inmates than male staffers.
Female staff committ [sic] more forcible sexual assualt [sic] than male staff; indeed females committ [sic] 86% of it according to the 2012 BJS report of staff indecent misconduct in juvenile hall. Here is a situation in which women in complete power have no hesitation using it to hurt children. It shows that when presented with the opportunity women will rape and this should raise concerns not only about female staff in juvenile prisons, but women in general because women have much greater access to children than men. This means that people should suspect all contracepting [sic] women of being child rapists or potential child rapists and at the very least, as pedophiles. I repeat; women who use birth control are either active child predators, a developing child molester, or a child molester in training. Statistics do away with the ridiculous notion that sexual violence is always or mostly male-on-female assaults.
The epidemic of woman predators molesting school children is so bad that even CBS News has a well-updated special section on their website dedicated to showing the profile photos of teacher female molesters and briefly mentioning the details of their child molestations.
According to Richard Nixon’s Commission on Obscenity for every female prostitute there are 9 underage male prostitutes. Birth control turns women into pedophiles. An extensive study in Canada found that high rates of homeless children are being molested. Staggeringly, 3/4 of the molestations of boys were done by adult women.Arguably, pagan female child killers (among whom are many woman sodomites) are more intense in their child lust than male sodomites.
With prescience Giuseppe Cardinal Siri (His Holiness Pope Gregory XVII) wrote on June 12th, 1960 the epistle “Notification Concerning Men’s Dress worn By Women”. Logically outlining the evil effects of women wearing pants, he said it leads to “the rising of the primary instincts” which “push forward to uncontrolled acts.” For such a change of clothing “helps to diminish the vital defenses of the sense of shame” or “obstructs that sense” and “when this sense of shame is absent because of some obstacle or impediment, then the relations between men and women degrade to pure sensuality devoid of all mutual respect and esteem.” He also says: “Experience teaches us that when the woman is de-feminized, then defenses are undermined and weakness increases.” He added: “What can these women give their children when they have worn trousers for so long that their self-esteem is determined more by their competition with men than by their function as women?”
Indeed, the feminism heresy (of which contraception and wearing men’s clothing is a part) turns women into pedophiles. The statistics robustly go on. Apart from raping boys, pagan women harlots also love raping men, gang raping men, kidnapping and raping them; especially if the male victim is a handicap or blind or immobile or non-verbal or unconcious [sic] or sedated or restrained.
These swine love to abuse the role of “care giver.” 12 years ago one careerist pedophile with the usual indiscretion, candor of snobbery and mockery, said: “Had an incident the other day, a pt. had a tight foreskin. First i couldn’t get the thing to go back, THEN couldn’t get it to go back over!! What didn’t help matters is that there wasn’t much to take hold of. Plus 5 sets of eyeballs watching.” Indeed, one only need peruse the blogs owned by nurses (which will not be named here because they are awful and moreover frequently criticized by doctor blogs and websites and a few nurse blogs as unprofessional and incredibly damaging to the profession) to discover their unladylike strange appetites; their supercilious ribaldry and shocking amount of inappropriate comments they make regarding the physique of boy patients, their belittling comments; detraction, their disturbingly fanatic attraction to minors, their fascination with personal areas of the body, their frank admissions of how they love it when they do “physicals” on boys, how they love to undress them and digitally penetrate the male part of boys with a catheter while the person is drugged under sedation (and in most cases then removing it prior to the child awaking, who never find out that they were undressed and lost their virginity) and this undoubtedly would constitute rape (this also happens to male adult patients). They also constantly love to gloat and bask in their status of total impunity and predation, the wide culture of acceptance of these deviancies, and how co-workers with ogling eyes watch and even participate in it. Any place of care of the vulnerable has always been a magnet for these types of perverts, who take pleasure in the degradation, hurt and humiliation of their victims. Indeed 6 female Minnesota teens at a nursing home raped their elderly patients. I mean, high school girls unleashed their devastating desires on the elderly, presumably after taking birth control.
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SHOCKER: MORE MEN ARE VICTIMS OF RAPE THAN WOMEN
“More men are raped in the US than women, figures on prison assaults reveal: “More men are raped in the U.S. than woman, according to figures that include sexual abuse in prisons. In 2008, it was estimated 216,000 inmates were sexually assaulted while serving time, according to the Department of Justice figures. That is compared to 90,479 rape cases outside of prison.”
Sexual misconduct is not an uncommon complaint to state boards of nursing. 38 to 52 percent of nurses report knowledge of colleagues who have had sexual misconduct with patients. The NCSBN reports that in some states sexual activity with a consenting adult patient is considered a criminal offense (since it is statutory rape for a person in a position of trust to use it for lewd activity).
According to individual state boards of nursing disciplinary records; the ratio of female nurses committing boundary violations as compared to male nurses is 26/1. That is for every male nurse that has sex with his patient, 26 female nurses have done so as well.
CONTRACEPTING FEMALE PAGAN (HARLOTS) CAN BE MORE VIOLENT THAN MEN
Contracepting female [sic] are just as violent, if not more violent than their male counterparts: “It has often been claimed that the reason CTS studies have found as many women as men to be physically aggressive is because women are defending themselves against attack. A number of studies have addressed this issue and found that when asked, more women than men report initiating the attack.” According to CDC study: “Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases.”
USA FLAG INSPIRES FEMALES TO BE CHILD MOLESTERS
Another factor driving female pedophilia is venerating the anti-Christian USA flag whose tricolor represents the condemned rebellious masonic slogan “liberty, equality, fraternity” under which millions of Christians were murdered (it represents man against God and the overthrow of Christian order and Monarchy which uphold inequality). This purges all their moral sensibilities, drives them to lust and therefore birth control and child molestation. After speaking to a rebellious foul-mouthed heretic in the South who audaciously pretends to be Catholic, I should point out in regard to the tricolor, that anti-Christian France and the USA republic are masonic creations. Both colonial and French freemasons [sic] collaborated in fomenting the revolution in America (1775-1783) and France (1789-1799); so the significance of the tricolor ‘red, white, and blue’ as representing the heresy ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ remains. When adopted and used by masons, it carries a particular meaning; in the same way that the rainbow though given to mankind by God as a sign of peace and promise that he would never destroy the world again with a flood; when that symbol is used by secular religion it takes on a whole different meaning, namely, the total repudiation of Marriage and the family, which is the lifelong union of man and the woman. When the Cross is used by Christianity it signifies Christ but when used by American religion especially on gravesites [sic] of the USA missionaries (I.e soldiers) it represents the condemned doctrine of ‘universal salvation.’ When Christians use the upside down Cross on the Feast of St. Peter it represents his upsidedown [sic] crucifixion martyrdom, but when used outside that context it represents Satanism. The more pagan woman tries to conform to the women of Christianity (the only authentic standard of womanhood) the better; for pagan women would not generally be harlots and murderesses of innocent children in the 1st place.
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I think I can now safely say that women really are to blame for EVERYTHING! Pity us men. It is unsafe for us to even leave our homes with female sexual predators prowling about seeking to drop their pants and ride every man in America. Men must demand action be taken by law enforcement to protect them from angry, ovulating, birth-control-popping, child-molesting, rapist females.
Or we can safely assume that the writer of the aforementioned screed is bat-shit crazy, a Roman Catholic loon who hates women. What say ye, female readers? Has the letter writer exposed the truth about women — that it is women, not men, who commit most sexual crimes? Please share your angry, hormone-driven, birth-controlled thoughts in the comment section.
This is the fifty-second installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.
Some things happen for “reasons” and some don’t,
and you don’t get to demand
that this or that thing must have a reason.
Some things just are.
Claims to the contrary are merely assertions,
and we are as free to ignore them
as you are to assert them.
I recently received a rare polite email from an Evangelical Christian. After sharing his testimony, the letter writer asked me three questions. Rather than privately responding to his questions, I decided to answer them in a post. I hope his questions and my answers will be helpful to the readers of this blog. Please leave your pithy ruminations in the comment section.
Looking back, would you say you truly believed, repented, and tried to live a sanctified life in sincerity?
The short answer is yes. From the age of fifteen through age of fifty, I devoted my life to following the teachings of the Bible. Believing that the Bible was the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God, I daily attempted, by and through the grace of God, to put its words into practice. I wasn’t a perfect Christian, but the bent of my life, as John MacArthur says, was towards righteousness. As a pastor, I devoted my life to studying and preaching the Bible, leading people to saving faith in Jesus Christ, and helping Christians put into practice in their lives the teachings of the Bible.
As a follower of Jesus, I came into contact with scores of Christians — as friends, colleagues, and congregants. Not one person ever said that they doubted that I was a Christian. To the person, they believed that I was a saved, sanctified, sold-out child of God. My life as a committed Christian is beyond dispute. That some Evangelicals can’t square my present life with my past is not my concern. I know this: I once was saved and, to use the vernacular of Christianity, now I am lost. Jesus was once my God, Lord, and Savior. Today, he is a fading memory, a mere mortal who lived and died and now lies buried in some nondescript Middle Eastern grave. For further information about my life, please read the posts found on the WHY page.
Is there ever a conviction (currently) that the bible might be true?
True in what way? Factual or historical? Sure. Some of the events mentioned in the Bible are historical, and some of the people actually lived. That said, much of the Bible is myth; at best, stories written by humans meant to explain their understanding of the world. I suspect what you are really asking here is whether I ever have thoughts that the Bible might be supernatural words given to inspired writers by the Christian God. The answer to THAT question is no. I’m an atheist, so I don’t believe in the existence of gods — including the Christian God, so the Bible, by default, cannot be of supernatural origin.
While I still find some of Christ’s teachings — say the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, and parts of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes inspiring, I view most of the Bible as ancient — oft contradictory — teachings and myths that are largely irrelevant to moderns in the twenty-first century. The Evangelical notion that the Bible — due to its inspired and inerrant nature — is different from all the other books ever written is laughable and cannot be intellectually sustained. Inerrancy is a doctrine built upon hubris, arrogance, and deliberate ignorance. There are too many textual errors and contradictions in the Bible for it to be considered in any way inerrant. Agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman’s books nail shut the coffin of inerrancy. Some “might” be able to maintain their Christian faith after reading Ehrman’s books, but it is impossible for anyone who has read his books and honestly wrestled with the data to maintain that the Bible is inerrant.
We just had that “great American eclipse” come by, and I was in awe that the sun and the moon are in our perception the same size (a mathematical anomaly even to the staunchest evolutionist), which makes me see God as the Creator. Can you attribute the complexity of our universe to mere chance?
I am not sure why you would think our perception of the size of the moon in relation to the sun speaks in any way to the existence of the Evangelical God. Why must there be some higher meaning?
The word “complexity” often means something different to Evangelicals from what it means to unbelievers. You, of course, see your version of God in this complexity. Let me ask you this, if the complexity of the universe requires a Creator, and God himself is a complex being, who, then, created God? You might argue that God exists outside of time and space, but there is no evidence for this claim. Such a belief requires faith, and faith is, by definition, beyond or contrary to reason. If God does indeed exist outside of space and time, and Jesus is God, what are we to make of the Bible verses that suggest that Jesus, in space and time, became the son of God?
For the sake of argument, suppose I agree with your premise that the universe with all its wonders suggests that there is a Creator. How could I determine that it was your version of the Christian God who is this Creator? Why is it any more likely that this Creator is your God, than it is any of the other Gods humans have worshiped in the past or presently worship? I can look at a starry night sky and easily understand how someone might conclude that some sort of deistic being created the universe. What is the bridge, however, that gets us from there being A GOD to that God being the Evangelical God? I see no rational argument for it being any more likely that this Creator is the Christian God. This Creator could just as easily be Vishnu, Mbombo, Nanabozho, El, Pango, or an advanced race of aliens who created our “reality” as some sort of video game. Again, this brings us back to faith. You believe what you do by faith. Faith is impervious to reason and rational inquiry, as Hebrews 11 makes clear. I have backed countless Evangelicals into the corner with my challenges of their beliefs (especially about the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible), only to have them run to the safety of the house of faith. Once faith is invoked, no further discussion can take place. It is only when Evangelical Christians begin to doubt the veracity and authority of their foundation — the Bible — that faith can be overcome. It is no surprise, then, that Evangelical preachers lie about the nature of the Biblical text. They know if congregants begin to doubt that the Bible is what their pastors say it is, down comes the house of cards. Once Evangelicals dare to consider that they might be wrong and that what they have been taught their entire lives might be false, then, and only then, can they take an honest, open, follow-the-evidence-wherever-it-leads look at the Biblical text and the claims of Christianity. Most often, such intellectual pursuits lead to liberal Christianity or, as in my case, atheism. My recommendation, then, for readers is not to take that step if they are not ready to question their faith in earnest.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Lawrence Krauss, 63, is an American-Canadian theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and director of its Origins Project. In the video that follows, Krauss answers questions about science, the scientific method, and the origins of the Universe. Enjoy!
This is the fifty-first installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.
Bob is a regular reader of The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser. I found his sermon to be quite insightful, so I asked him if I could post it here. Bob graciously said, yes.
INTRODUCTION
Today I will be speaking about a form of theology called Religious Naturalism. Naturalism is understood very expansively—all our perceptions, language, and values, along with all inventions and mental constructions, plus human relationships. That is, naturalism is not only a tree, but also the poet and her poem about a tree, and the desk made from the tree, the quantum theoretical understandings of the subatomic particles of the tree, and the decay, disease and death of the tree. Religion is understood as a magnificent human invention within nature, embracing all our experiences of wonder and miracle, gratitude and compassion, joy and forgiveness, and the human ability to corrupt, pervert and destroy even human’s finest accomplishments. Naturalism believes there are no substantiated reasons to view as real anything independent of the natural order, including deities. However, naturalism understands religion to be a humanly-created mental and physical part of existence that, clustered along with language and music, make up the lavish outpouring of human creativity.
For our reading today, I am using selections from Albert Einstein. Einstein had much to say about religion both in strongly denying he was a believer and also in strongly opposing the dogmatism of the non-believer:
… I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. … It is always misleading to use anthropomorphic concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world—as far as we can grasp it, and that is all.
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.
What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos.
Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source . . . They are creatures who can’t hear the music of the spheres.
To a friend who asked if the rumor were true that Einstein had converted, Einstein wrote:
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Next is a quote that I will repeat at the end of this sermon since it seems to incorporate the underlying dimension of Religious Naturalism.
The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the source of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
It’s been a long time since I was an active, full-time, settled minister in a church, and I have lost touch with the individual stories of those who join liberal churches these days. Of course, there never was a cookie-cutter experience for all. Still, back when I was so involved, I found three types of experiences dominant:
First, there were those who found religion (usually Christianity, since Christianity is the main religion of culture in these parts) ineffective in helping in a time of extremity; for example, no promised easing of unceasing pain through prayer or Bible reading.
Another group came out of churches where there had been some financial or sexual misdeeds by a leader in the church. Disgust sent them looking.
But, by far, the largest group of new members came from individuals who just found their religious beliefs crashing when they bumped up against rational and scientific understandings of the world.
What is rational about a virgin conceiving by a divine spirit, about a dead person returning to life and, then, rising to heaven? And where is heaven anyway, when, in looking up, one can only see sky—sky almost back to the Big Bang, according to the Ultra Deep Field probing of the Hubble telescope? And if God is in heaven (as Jesus states in the Lord’s Prayer) and there is no heaven, only sky, then it is reasonable to assume that there is no God that can call heaven home. When confronted with the edifice of science and reason, many religious beliefs simply crack, crumble, and come tumbling down.
One thing I did notice though, was that, from whatever unwanted baggage people escaped, they were either uninterested in or unable to assemble a new belief system. They lived with denial, often tinged with regret, disgust or anger. For those who were, or are currently, in that situation, Religious Naturalism has the ability to delightfully bind two aspects of life—science and religion—that often get separated.
You have no doubt heard the comment made by last century’s humorist and actor Robert Benchley: “There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who divide everybody into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.” Religious Naturalism is a ‘non-divider.’ It favors connections among people and ideas, both/ands rather than either/ors. In other words, Religious Naturalism has a very high tolerance for ambiguity.
One sharp religious divide is found in those who believe in God and those who do not believe in God—theists and atheists to use official theological terms. Being a non-divider myself, I have never found the argument between God-believers and God-deniers enticing enough to spend time on the debate. As a consequence, I gladly moved into a theology where my atheism and my theism cohabit, although, to be perfectly honest, when I state my position to both well-dug-in theists and atheists, raised eyebrows along with looks of disapproval-to-incomprehension are the return I get. In fact, I hesitate to use the words theist and atheist because the words immediately classify, catalog and pigeon-hole.
One cannot live in this society and not be aware of the dogmatism inherent in the ‘Jesus is the only way’ crowd. It fills churches, publications and the airways. What is less obvious, but just as real, is the dogmatism in atheists, a reality to which Einstein, more than once, points. Dogmatism is dogmatism, under whatever label, and dogmatism is persona non grata in Religious Naturalism. Religious Naturalism acts as a prophylactic against the dogmatisms of doubt as well as the dogmatisms of credulity.
Now, people can be dogmatic if they want to be, that is their choice. However, it is when they clothe their certainties, either in the piety of belief or in the reductive certainty of science, that I find myself ready to move on. So, Religious Naturalism is welcome space to avoid the dogmatisms.
When I mention this aspect of my Religious Naturalism, my credibility with scientific atheists plummets, and theists, although at first pleased, are appalled when I explain myself. Still I persist.
I find another drawback in both believers and unbelievers’ positions in the way they flatten life. They suck out the wonder in the rich tapestry of beauty, love and delight, often reducing truth to that which is dogmatically correct or scientifically verifiable. They can’t, as Einstein put it, “hear the music of the spheres.” Again, Religious Naturalism allows one’s senses, mind and imagination to be immersed in delight.
Let me now piece together Religious Naturalism, a religion containing both no God and God. I will briefly develop this thought in two areas.
First, in our natural world, our observation of the wonders/miracles all around encourages us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Second, coming to terms with the religious language we humans inherited, and now so-easily reject, can offer new ways of understanding and talking about our world.
PART ONE: Our Awesome Natural World
Religious Naturalism, viewing total reality in the natural world of which we are a part, encourages a particular way of looking at the world—finding the wonder and the miracles all around. In other words, if what we have is only this world, let’s delightfully make the most of it.
Today when you get into your car to return home, you will turn the key in the ignition and 180 horses will leap up ready to carry you swiftly, safely and comfortably to your destination, and the tires are so good you will not be carrying a tire repair kit, as we all once did. Wondrous!
Or, when home, you will turn on the light-switch and marvelous technology will wire you all the way back to extraction from the earth of coal and gas. Awesome!
Or, you will look up in the sky at sunset and find yourself transported by the beauty of the sun’s rays reflected on the clouds. Stunning!
Or, on reflection, you may find astonishment by the realization that family and friends put up with you and love you year after year, even at times when you know you were not all that lovable. Incredible!
Or, you may go to the symphony this afternoon and be stunned by the miraculous array of sixty professional musicians, each of whom is highly trained and each of whom has a different conviction about how the music of a particular piece ought to be played. Yet, each submits her-or-himself to the directions of a conductor—and you hear beautiful music rather than cacophony. Magnificent!
Religious Naturalism is religious in that, in one’s experiences, all the feelings associated with religion are generated this world—wonder and miracle, gratitude and compassion, joy and forgiveness. A way of labeling this is to use the humanly-created word ‘God,’ or better, C∞D. No person has written more pointedly of this aspect of Religious Naturalism than the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her poem Aurora Leigh:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries
Now, attentiveness can be found in each one of the world’s religions. In the Buddhist tradition, as you may know, it is called mindfulness—although I am reluctant to simply borrow that word from that tradition, knowing that mindfulness is differently understood from the way we use it in our culture. Still, being attentive to the world around and within is a key to living rather than a kind of sleepwalking through what is mistakenly perceived as ordinary days.
There is the story of a strung-out mid-careerist who futilely tried all the advertised offerings available for healing and decides as a final effort to visit the fabled guru in the mountains. After an arduous week-long journey the supplicant arrives, sits before the guru, and locks in eye-to-eye silence, for an irritatingly long time before the guru says, “Attention.” Again there is total silence. In that silence, increasing irritation scurries around the supplicant’s mind. About to give up and leave, the guru then says: “Attention, Attention,” and again goes silent. Now anger bubbles up that the person has been played for such a fool, and the suppliant rises to leave, but the raised hand of the guru stops him: “Attention. Attention. Attention.” The man stops in his rising, pauses, slowly sits, and in silence begins his return to the humanity he had lost.
Religious Naturalism does offer us a way to be aware of, as the writer D.H. Lawrence put it, ‘the wonder that bubbles into our souls,’ or, as Einstein stated, it allows us to listen to “the music of the spheres.” Religious Naturalism pushes us to see the wonder, the miraculous, the extraordinary in the ordinary world of our living.
PART TWO: Inherited Religious Language—Virgin Birth
A second area in which Religious Naturalism brings a gift is our ability to join scientific understandings and religious convictions by shedding our dismissive response to the twisted language we have from the past, anchoring some in teeth-clenching disgust.
Now, we have all learned that a lot of bad health habits and anti-social behavior stem from past childhood trauma — verbal, emotional, sexual, physical or a combination of these. Paralleling those is the vinegary religion many learned in their childhood churches. Dealing with the religious language that rolls around in our minds is important for our current religious health, and Religious Naturalism can provide help. Two such expressions that hang around in minds and in our society and continue to cause problems are ‘Virgin Birth’ and ‘Resurrection.’
With no supernatural, only the natural, we realize that all religious language, like virgin birth or resurrection, did not drop out of the sky. They, like all words, were created by humans, and are attached to human, non-supernatural experiences. And, they are words that were already in use in the culture prior to Jesus’ life, prior to the rise of Christianity. That does not mean the words are unimportant—after all, they contain human wisdom refined over the centuries, and they continue to provide inspiration and motivation for hundreds of millions. However, the literature shows that the ancients did not have the problem with virgin birth and resurrection that we seem to have, and it is not because they were more prone to superstition than we are today.
Of course, people in ancient days knew how babies came about, but still virgin birth posed no problem—because, in ancient days, virgin birth, primarily, was related to genius, not to conception.
In the ancient world there were two other very prominent humans who were held to be miraculously born besides Jesus: Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. What do those three humans—Alexander, Caesar and Jesus—have in common? They were individuals of such inner strength and outer power that people could not come up with a human explanation for such greatness. (We seem to have the same problem of explanation today; we don’t know how to explain the origin of genius.) The Virgin Birth of Jesus was a way of talking about the baffling, the perplexing, the mystifying, the unexplainable, the inexplicable genius of a rare individual, Jesus of Nazareth—a peasant from the backwaters of the Roman Empire who, unlike Alexander or Caesar, never led an army or ruled an empire, but who roamed the countryside for one-to-three years and was brutally killed as a criminal. Yet, he was a person whose after-death presence in people’s minds and lives continued to motivate people to reach out in compassion to the stranger and even to one’s enemy. The power of Empire could not shake off the growing influence of this individual.
If the words ‘Virgin Birth’ were used today, in the same way as they were in ancient days, we could say that Mozart was virgin born (what was the source of that incredible musical talent?), Einstein was virgin born (how could his mind roam over the entire universe in such counter-intuitive ways), and Martin Luther King, Jr., was virgin born (how could a young, newly-minted preacher in, of all places, Montgomery, Alabama, shift the focus of a whole nation?). Now, we don’t say virgin birth about these individuals, because that is not the way we use that metaphor today; however, like the ancients, we continue to stand in awe and incomprehension of the source of genius—but lack a descriptive word.
If today I said that I know a very important person who has an ego as big as an elephant, everyone would know of whom I am speaking; however, no one here would rise and run over to the nearby zoo to measure the size of an elephant. In the first century world, virgin birth was used the same way as the use of the image of an elephant. ‘Virgin Birth’ is a metaphor that was rooted in divinity because the reference to divinity was the only way to explain human genius.
Personally, I do not verbally use ‘Virgin Birth,’ but I sometimes keep the concept behind the words in mind, to remind myself of the unique and miraculous quality of each human life.
PART TWO: Inherited Religious Language—Resurrection
A second problematic religious expression is the word ‘resurrection,’ pointing to the physical coming to life of Jesus’ dead body. Once again, humans created this word; it did not drop out of the sky, and, it referred to a this-worldly human experience. Once again, it was in use in the ancient world before Christians came along.
Justin Martyr, c. 100-165, a Christian theologian who lived a hundred years after Jesus and Paul, argued: “when we say … Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propose nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you consider sons of Zeus.” (1 Apology. 21)
My understanding of resurrection has been greatly influenced by the German New Testament scholar Rudolph Bultmann, 1884-1976. He placed the resurrection in a context of a ‘natural’ non-supernatural understanding. Jesus lived, Jesus died, and Jesus rose again in the hearts and minds of his followers.
This insight leads me down two paths of understanding. First, there is the frequency of resurrections in our corporate life.
Today and the rest of this week, just down the road from Houston, in Memphis, Tennessee, there is a resurrection celebration taking place. It is called ‘Elvis Week’ at Graceland. Annually, some 40,000 people from all over the world drop in for a remembrance on the death of Elvis Presley. This week an additional 20,000 or so are expected because this year is the 40th anniversary of Elvis’ death. The planned activities are reminiscent of an Easter celebration in a Christian church:
Lots and lots of Elvis’ music will be played and performed (as is the music of J.S. Bach in churches).
Stories of Elvis will be told and retold, most of which have been told repeatedly before (akin to the retelling of scripture).
On Tuesday night, a Candlelight Vigil will take place at the front gate of Graceland. With candles lit, the gates will open and the faithful will walk the path to Elvis’ burial site for veneration and then walk out (he lives).
Since the word ‘resurrection’ was formulated and used within our natural world, the word can also be used for a number of events of significant remembrance: our national holidays remembering those who died in this country’s wars, and the extraordinary life and too early death of Martin Luther King, Jr., remembered in February, being just two.
There is a second path to which Bultmann’s understanding of resurrection leads me. It becomes a way of talking about renewed human life—the lives that we lead following one or more of the multiple deaths we experience in this world. Let me note some of them:
individuals who have been physically and sexually abused—in childhood or as adults—men as well as women
those to whom the word cancer has been spoken
the reality for one whose child has died
the end of a marriage, the termination of a job, or the end of a dream
when self-loathing follows our disloyalty to a friend
the times we betray our own values, shortcut our own ethics or cut corners with our own consciences
I truly believe that each of us, deep down, is wounded by other people, by organizations, or by ourselves, and, I believe, we carry with us those wounds and the subsequent deaths we endure throughout our lives. The truth of this is in how quickly we can be ‘rubber-banded’ back into the emotions of earlier experiences when those remembered moments wash over us.
Yet, here we are today. We have risen from bed and placed one foot in front of the other in an affirmation of life. We are resurrected people. Resurrection is not about dead bodies coming to life or a future hope. ‘Resurrection’ is the word the ancients gave to life-affirmation in the face of our multiple deaths. Following such deaths, we move on and become centers of energy for the human future. How do we talk about such affirmation of life in the midst of death? We have the word ‘resurrection.’
As a minister I am the repository of people’s stories—stories of joy, but also stories of pain and grief, hurt and betrayal, dashed dreams and violated ideals. These stories leave me, at times, with great anger over the hurt done to people. Yet, that has never led me to become despondent or cynical. In asking why, I think it is because I stand in awe, in absolute amazement, at the way people pick up the pieces of their lives and move on, at the way they rebuild their shattered selves and, more often than I would believe possible, at the way they then reach out and become healers of others who have similar suffering. How can I feel depressed when I experience the amazing tenacity of the human spirit to embrace pain and death and to affirm life?
PART THREE: Unexplained, Non-rational and Exotic Experiences
A third area in which Religious Naturalism brings a gift is our ability to encompass the many things that happen in our world that defy easy explanation or any explanation at all. Experiences that are not common for everyone, or are differently nuanced for different people can make normal scientific or rational understanding tenuous-to-impossible. Thus, it is easy to dismiss them.
On the other hand, for believers such events can be an automatic sign of divine action at work. Religious literature and private testimonials are replete with events attributed to God’s will.
For the Religious Naturalist neither interpretation is satisfactory. Attributing an event to the supernatural is untenable, leading to automatic dismissal by scientists and rationalists. Yet, for individuals so impacted, such experiences are objectively real and often life-changing. If Religious Naturalism accepts nature (as broadly described early in this sermon) as reality, then the unexplained, the non-rational, the exotic, and the ecstatic of experiences need to find a place. There are enough unusual experiences had by rational people that they need consideration. I now mention three examples.
The first experience I want to cite is the religious conversion story of Louis Zamperini, found in both the book and the movie titled Unbroken and that of John Newton and William Wilberforce. Unbroken was one of the longest-running New York Times bestsellers of all time, spending more than four years on the Times list.
In boyhood, Louis Zamperini had been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that carried him to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In 1943, as a plane’s bombardier, he crashed in the Pacific Ocean and pulled himself aboard a lifeboat. Zamperini spent almost seven weeks (47 days) in 1943 adrift on a raft, a speck of suffering in the vast sun-drenched Pacific. He was finally captured by the Japanese and placed in a series of POW camps. There he was savagely tormented and beaten by one Japanese officer. He endured. After the war, he married and lived a dissolute life of alcoholism and adultery, using both to stave off nightmares and flashbacks. At the behest of his wife he went to a Billy Graham revival in Los Angeles. There he was converted, gave up the dissolute life and, then, incredibly, following the words of Jesus, he went to Japan to forgive the soldier(s) that had so tormented him.
It is an incredible story, although my preference would have been for his conversion not to have taken place at a Billy Graham revival. That revival, that conversion radically changed his life. I cannot simply explain away or dismiss his conversion though psychological analysis, as I would have at an earlier point in my life, nor can I attribute a divine action to his conversion, as I never would have at an earlier time of my life. I am faced with the question of how to incorporate his human experience into my Religious Naturalist theology, his real conversion and his desire to meet and forgive his captors. If one is a Religious Naturalist, then one has to take seriously human experience, even when it does not fit into the neat boxes of believability that our rational minds create for ourselves.
I again reach into history for the story of John Newton, the son of the captain of an English slave ship who followed his father into that occupation. By his own accounting, he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Africans on the passage to the Americas. However, in the middle of life, Newton experienced a religious conversion (and wrote the hymn, Amazing Grace). He devoted the balance of his life to the abolition movement. His life intersected with that of William Wilberforce, whom he, at several critical junctures, provided with the encouragement and inspiration to continue the fight for abolition in Parliament. Wilberforce, himself, experienced a religious conversion in his mid-20’s. During his nearly three decades in Parliament, he is best remembered as the person most responsible for the slave trade being outlawed in the British Empire in 1807 (which proved to be the beginning of the end for legalized slavery throughout the world).
I am not a believer in a supernatural power causing conversions. Yet, I marvel at the power of such conversions to shape individual lives and, then, at how some of those lives have a profound effect on society. And, I find the quick dismissals of the testimonies of those who have such experiences by the rationalists and scientists too dogmatic. There is a difference between one’s experience and one’s interpretation of the experience.
Let me raise one final human experience that tests both easy rational dismissal and easy supernatural explanation—Near Death Experiences (NDE). An early report of a NDE came from Plato, in the “Republic.” Plato recounts the story of Er, a soldier who awoke after being dead for 12 days, sharing his account of the journey to the afterlife. Based on a real event or not, today such experiences are the object of numerous studies, including The Immortality Project, a $5.1 million research project funded by the John Templeton Foundation. What follows is the report of a woman who had a NDE this summer.
I was asked, ‘Do you want to continue this life, or die?’ I thought, ‘What’s death?’ The Light began to show me. I knew without a doubt that death was not an ending, but a wonderful opening to my real life. I would be more knowledgeable and live in unconditional completeness and love. I remember feeling almost unworthy of such an indescribable, unconditional love. I was in awe of how much love was enveloping me.
Now, I don’t believe Near Death Experiences are proof of anything supernatural. I am an ‘atheist’ in accepting people’s divine explanations of their experiences, yet I cannot totally dismiss NDEs out of hand, since they are real experiences of real people, and a great number of people. If I had to guess, I would say the NDE’s are the product of evolution, being the way our bodies face extinction. Yet … and yet, over the years I have had conversations with too many intelligent and rational individuals who have spoken of Near Death Experiences, not kooks creating something out of whole cloth. Some have quite significantly changed their lives because of the experience. How can I not take that seriously, even if I don’t always take people’s interpretations literally?
I also refuse to do a slight of hand and sneak divinity in by making the world God (pantheism), or proposing that God is in everything (panentheism), or by stating a derivation that God is in each human being.
One scholar, sociologist Peter Burger, came up with the intriguing phrase “signals of transcendence.” He says there are human experiences that point to, but do not prove, a transcendent element in our universe. He writes about what he calls ‘signals of transcendence” in modern society – little flashes in our lives which seem to point to a transcendent reality but which does not assure one that such a reality exists.
He takes one such signal to be a mother’s love for her child, and the words ‘everything is alright’ – he thinks this is a signal to a cosmic order where everything really is alright. ‘The parental role is not based on a loving lie. On the contrary, it is a witness to the ultimate truth of man’s situation in reality. In that case, it is perfectly possible to analyze religion as a cosmic projection of the child’s experience of the protective order of parental love. What is projected is, however, itself a reflection, an imitation, of ultimate reality.’
Living in the in-between, both-and world of seeing wonder but not automatically attributing that wonder to the supernatural is a place for the Religious Naturalist.
Such experiences are not a proof of other-worldly claims, but they are a reminder that we live in a universe that is far more puzzling and unpredictable than our rational and scientific approach can comprehend. Such unpredictability can easily be found by standing on the shifting sands of reality while reading quantum physics.
As a Religious Naturalist, I take all human experience seriously, including the unexplained, the non-rational, and the exotic. Not everything, of course, but I listen carefully to the experiences that people relate and invest with conviction and transformation. Still, some line needs to be drawn between the bizarre, outlandish and wacky and the unusual—a line that defies definition. There is not time enough to list all the frauds surrounding us like a field of poison ivy.
Living in the world of the ordinary, we can find Miracles of the non-supernatural kind are all around us.
A FINAL WORD
Religious Naturalism combines naturalism—a worldview in which all our perceptions, language, and values are this-worldly, not other-worldly—and religion, our this-world experiences of wonder and miracle, gratitude and compassion, joy and, I would add, resurrection.
We have been oblivious to the freshness of each day, the wonder of everyday miracles, surprises in the wrappings of the ordinary. The conventional understanding of miracle is something that runs contrary to the rules of ordinary life. Religious Naturalism calls for a refocusing on the ordinary, day-to-day aspects and events of the world as the nurturance for life.
Virgin Birth and Resurrection are a part of our ordinary lives and are seen in the people who populate our lives. To to ordinary I would add the non-supernatural, but tantalizing, ‘Unexplained, Non-rational and Exotic Experiences’ that so many rational folk in this world claim to have.
I began with readings from Einstein. I do not know whether or not he would be comfortable with the field of Religious Naturalism. I do know that his words contain an embracing of both theism and atheism. Einstein in his words wraps science and religion together in the experience of wonder.
The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the source of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
