Jim Wallis on the new christianity

Jim Wallis (wikipedia), a non-right-wing intelligent evangelical christian (no joke), was on the Daily Show (video) talking about how (his) religion needs to refocus on the environment, peace (Darfur) and ethics.  Refreshing. From the Friendly Atheist.

jason bourne’s ethics

I just finished re-watching the third and conclusive episode of the Jason Bourne films last night. I was struck at the end by the ethical/religious positions the film takes.

In 2007, in Hollywood, fundamental Christian ethics still rules: Despite what we learn about all the evil that Jason Bourne had done during his career at the C.I.A. and despite the fact that we learn that he knowingly agreed to it, we forgive him because he repented.

It should however be noted that the repentance and forgiveness work very well without either a concept of sin or of god, let alone of someone dying on a cross. In this case a fundamental religious concept is very well translated into secular language. Habermas would be proud.

why religion is indispensable (transforming people)

UPDATE 2008/1/10: Dave rightly points out in the comments that this post was VERY BAD and i apologize for that. I’ve now cut down the argument to what i had unknowingly already pointed to in my note (*), namely that tradition and a community are very good tools to effect radical moral change in a given individual. It is now patently obvious to me that the tradition and community need not be religious. Original, edited post follows.

Only religion can transform a person completely, because to do so requires both thanks to a deep tradition able to inform that transformation and also a strong community to effect and nurture it.

Religious transformation is a reshaping of someone’s moral, psychological and behavioral self that is both complete and permanent. It produces a new person, someone whose identity has been re-established and fundamentally improved.

Of course, there have been many great people who had little if anything to do with religion. But i would argue that though they were perhaps geniuses who contributed greatly to humanity, they had not been themselves transformed. To produce a Mother Theresa*, a Gandhi, or a Jesus and a Gautama Buddha requires religion and a lot of it. Furthermore, to produce those people able to help others strive towards this complete transformation also requires a strong religion tradition and community. The following text, taken from the last paragraph of Thich Nhat Hanh‘s book The Heart Of The Buddha’s Teaching, derives its power precisely because it is so thoroughly informed by a specific religious tradition and because its authors in completely immersed in a buddhist community:

The heart of the Buddha has been touched by our being wonderfully together. Please practice as an individual, a family, a city, a nation, and a worldwide community. Please take good care of the happiness of everyone around you. Enjoy your breathing, your smiling, your shining the light of mindfulness on each thing you do. Please practice transformation at the base through deep looking and deep touching. The teachings of the Buddha on transformation and healing are very deep. They are not theoretical. They can be practiced every day. Please practice them and realize them. Have courage. I am confident that you can do it.

And to successfully put such suggestions into practice also requires immersing oneself in this religious tradition and belonging to its community. Without that your good-will would quickly wane, i should think.

*I know that Mother Theresa didn’t believe in God, but my argument never refers to god, only to tradition and community.

manga bibles!

there are a whole bunch of manga bibles out there! Amazon doesn’t have any “Search Inside” ones, but here is a YouTube ad:

Somehow this seems horribly wrong, but so inevitable. I guess it was predestined to happen…

On the defects of current religions

What are some of the major defects of current religions?

Ossified metaphysics. In Christianity, for example, we have a trinity, a god-man, sin, creation ex nihilo, all of which are non-negotiable elements, which cannot be jettisoned or replaced no matter how unfit they have become to describe our current world (surprisingly enough it is perhaps only creation ex nihilo that still makes sense – in a quantum sort of way). If religions are to remain relevant and not require ever further sacrifices of the intellect, then they must regain some of their initial flexibility and start reworking from the ground up the entirety of their so-called worldviews.

Individual salvation. Be it Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism or Islam (this doesn’t apply to Judaism), all of these religions preach salvation, but they preach it first and foremost to the individual. You can be saved/save your soul without having to worry about anyone else, let alone your surrounding ecosystem. This is probably what killed the dinosaurs. And it is certainly not helping to prevent our new species’ impending doom.

Disregard for the body/world. Most major religions are “soul-religions” in the sense that what ultimately matters is not our current bodies, but some immaterial self that will survive beyond whatever happens to your body and this universe. This doesn’t mean all religious people are either too fat or overly emaciated; but it does probably contribute to a certain je-m’en-foutisme (i-don’t-careism), wether or not we go all the way to blowing our bodies, or the world, up.

Future Salvation. This is the counterpart to the “soulishness” of current religions and is just as damaging to our current health.

Exclusiveness. Though Buddhism often claims to embrace all other religions, it does so exclusively on its own terms. Christianity and Islam are notorious us-versus-them religions, with the belligerent consequences we know too well. Of course, this is in great part due to an ossified metaphysics.

Impractical. Religions just don’t seem able to help us solve our current problems. They were probably pretty good at solving whatever was wrong back when they sprung up, three to five half-centuries ago, but as far as current wars, pollutions, poverties and other bad stuff go, they have nothing to offer.

Ossified institutions. Who isn’t bored to death in church? What are monks still doing running around? Why can they still not marry? What is the deal with that big black thing in mecca?

Politically passive. Finally, the current crop of old, grey-haired, mostly decrepit religions is remarkably … inactive. Of course, telling people they need only worry about the future of their souls doesn’t help. But at least they could do a bit more than preach and set up a few orphanages. Today doesn’t need personal, but rather global, institutional salvation.

silly religious news (why oh why can’t we have better religions?)

Chikumbutso Mponda of Ntchisi is behind bars after he fell down from a magic plane on his way to his home village.Mponda was Thursday sentenced to five years imprisonment with hard labour without option by Mponela Magistrate Court for practising witchcraft.

aside from questions about wether or not he was properly screened by magical TSA officers for magical liquids, i’d like one of those planes, witchcraft laws or no. link.

in other news, pope dismantles vatican observatory:

Science is to make way for diplomacy at the Pope’s summer residence, with the dismantling of the astronomical observatory that has been part of Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, for more than 75 years. The Pope needs more room to receive diplomats so the telescopes have to go.

The eviction of the astronomers and their instruments, reported by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, and their removal to a disused convent a mile away, marks the end of a period of intimacy between popes and priest-astronomers that has lasted well over a century.

Father Jose G Funes, the present director of the observatory, known as the Specola Vaticana, insisted that there was no sinister significance in the move. “It is not a downgrading of science in the Vatican,” he said.

Note that Benedict hasn’t gotten rid of the astronomers, only moved them, though with him also re-emphasising the latin mass, you wonder where he is heading…

tony blair goes catholic!

In an attempt not to be forgotten by the media, Tony Blair, the erstwhile top guy in Britain, disses the Queen’s church and sides with the German pope (What Would Churchill Do?).

I would be interested to know exactly why Mr. Blair switched. What the Catholic church usually has going for it is its tradition (it goes all the way back to the beginning, a religious topos if there ever was one). In (updated) theological parlance: catholic ecclesiology pwnz teh protestant version.

Mr Blair was received into full communion with the Catholic Church by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, during Mass in the chapel at Archbishop’s House, Westminster, on Friday.

Mr Blair, formerly a member of the Church of England, has been receiving doctrinal and spiritual preparation from Mgr Mark O’Toole, the Cardinal’s private secretary.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said: ‘I am very glad to welcome Tony Blair into the Catholic Church. For a long time he has been a regular worshipper at Mass with his family and in recent months he has been following a programme of formation to prepare for his reception into full communion. My prayers are with him, his wife and family at this joyful moment in their journey of faith together.’

Have yourself a pagan little christmas

According to Yahoo News early Christmas aficionados called upon the PR abilities of pagan roman sites (actually THE roman site par excellence, ie where Romulus and Remus got nursed by a wolf (for current wolf nursing news see here)) to spread the word about Dec. 25th.

ROME – The church where the tradition of celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 may have begun was built near a pagan shrine as part of an effort to spread Christianity, a leading Italian scholar says.
Italian archaeologists last month unveiled an underground grotto that they believe ancient Romans revered as the place where a wolf nursed Rome’s legendary founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus.

A few feet from the grotto, or “Lupercale,” the Emperor Constantine built the Basilica of St. Anastasia, where some believe Christmas was first celebrated on Dec. 25.

thx ed.

McDonald’s River of Gods (AI)

As noted in my previous post, Ian McDonald’s book River of Gods deals with a number of religious topics. One is that of the intersection, and in fact concurrence of Artificial Intelligence and Divinity. This is nothing new in Science Fiction, but McDonald gives the topos a special and particularly interesting treatment.

In the book humans have developed AIs (he calls them aeais, which gives them further numinous character) that so far surpass humans that they are for all intents and purposes gods. The only difference is that they are so different in nature from human beings (being without bodies and being able to copy themselves at will) that they can hardly understand them.  Of course, humans get scared of their creations, outlaw them and hunt them down. So much for the plot.

What is most interesting from a religious (as opposed to IT) perspective is that the concept of a “god” can be so easily shifted onto what is in the end a computer program. And this says much more, i think, about our idea of a god than it does about AI. A god is (at least for McDonald, but he is obviously using widely held views) whatever is much bigger and stronger than we are, regardless if we created it ourselves or not. (Note that this is not the christian definition of a god as whatever we worship/serve.)

So what does this mean about the future of our concept of a god? I think we can learn from McDonald that a god is not actually what we might think it is. We might sooner than later want to call “god” some things that we might never have imagined – i.e. we might need to go from looking for something that fits our idea of a god (the standard proofs of gods existence do this) to calling a god something that fits our idea of what one is like. In the first case god is nothing new (he was there all along waiting for us to find him); in the second case, he might well be brand-spanking new.

A second thought about these AI gods is that they fit much better into a polytheistic worldview than a theistic one. In effect McDonald sees the future as polytheistic. Granted, his new god are not as transcendent as the old ones used to be, but a polytheistic world always is monist anyhow (the gods are part of the world, not external to it). River of Gods offers us a bunch of more or less mortal, very un-human gods that neither create worlds nor mess around with humans (overly much). But the concept of a god remains very useful though much modified, and in that at least i presume McDonald is right on the (future’s) money.

Four Horsemen on religion, atheism and everything else

On September 30 2007 an unmoderated 2-hour discussion took place between Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens.

The very best quote is from Daniel Dennett: “Sophisticated theology is like stamp collecting. It’s a very specialized thing and very few people do it.” (24:48)

I’d like to go through the first hour’s worth and point out a few problems with these gentlemens’ arguments. I don’t disagree mostly with their conclusions, but i certainly take exception to how they get there. For all the brain power around that table, none of them seem to understand what religion is. They define it epistemologically, from the point of view of knowledge – i.e. from the point of view of science. Religion is bad science, it is believing nonsense, holding true unverified facts. This is, of course, miles away from how religious people understand what they are doing. Until the atheists stop defining religion however they well please, they will simply be talking right past their intended audiences. And that is a shame.

Dennett: “the religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity.” (00:47)

Dennett: “There’s no polite way to say to somebody: Do you realize you’ve just wasted your life? Do you realize that you’ve just devoted all your efforts and all your goods to the glorification of something that is just a myth?” (5:55)

This last comment shows that Dennett does not at all understand what religion is about. Whether or not all the details of Christianity are historically true is not a matter of great concern to most christians. Religion is not about verifiable statements, but about getting through life. Religious statements are good religious statements if they work, not if scientists can prove them true. Even if it turns out that the God of Abraham does not exists, a christian will not have wasted her life. Because he belief will have given structure to her life, will have provided her with friends, a community, reassurance, hope, love. Arriving at such things is never a waste, no matter how shaky and temporary the road you’ve taken to get to them.

It is true that many but certainly nowhere close to all religious people do themselves believe that they’re scriptures must be scientifically right for their religion to be at all valid and will therefore fight for creationism and literal interpretations of fabulously impossible passages. What a sophisticated atheist must realize though is that these people are mixing up their religion with science because they cannot distinguish between the function of science (to produce mostly useable knowledge)  and the function of religion (to live life well). The proof that these fundamentalists are mixed up (and that religion is not itself at fault) is that they do not understand what science is. They are willing to force their religious beliefs upon science in such a way as to turn science into religion (or at least an existential matter). Thus they prove that what is important to them as religious people is actually the impact of their beliefs upon their lives and not the truth of them.

Fundamentalists have mistakenly believed those who claim that religion is about truth as scientists define that term. And they have accordingly tried to defend religion against science, thinking both were on the same playing field. This assumption that religion is a type of science, which Dennett is here reiterating, completely misrepresents religion and is in part responsible for religion’s bellicoseness.

Hitchens suggests around 12:00 that what we need to do is separate between the numinous and the supernatural. This is actually a very interesting and worthwhile idea. Of course, he wants to say that the numinous is perfectly ok and that the supernatural is just plain false.  This is, of course, a matter of definition. The only caveat is that the numinous is just as religious a phenomenon as the supernatural. Getting rid of the latter will not dispose of religion, though it might fix some of its current problems.

Dennett: “I dont think many of them ever let themselves contemplate the question – which scientists ask themselves all the time – What if i’m wrong?” Hitchens disagrees and suggests that many religious people are in a “permanent crisis of faith” (15:00)

Hitchens is, of course, right. Dennett is again comparing religion to science with dubious results: the “What if i’m wrong?” question means something very different in the mouth of a research chemist as in the mouth of a clergyman. The first simply has to tweak her experimental apparatus or her equations. The latter has to reinvent his entire existence. You have to admit that the former question is substantially easier. A question of equivalent difficulty for a chemist as the above is for the religious would be: “What if i should have become a doctor? Should i drop everything and go back to med school?”

Around 27:00 these great minds show how limited their view of religion is. It basically is confined to believing silly things on faith. They’ve obviously not been to a church service in Tübingen, Germany! No one here believes much of anything in the bible is to be taken on face value. For that matter, theologians have been interpreting the unbelievable and irreligious portions of the Christian scripture since the first centuries of the christian era:

Dawkins: “They [bishops and vicars] do preach about what adam and eve did as though they did exist.”
Dennett: “Can you imagine any one of these preachers saying when such a topic is introduced: Um, this is a sort of theoretical fiction; it’s not true but it’s a very fine metaphor.’ No!”
Dawkins: “They kind of after the fact imply that that is what they expect you to know” Dennett: “But they would never announce it.”
Harris: “… These moderates don’t admit how they’ve come to be moderates. What does moderation consist of? It consists of having lost faith in all of these propositions or half of them because of the hammerblows of science…”

Harris’ last comment is of course what Charles Taylor’s 800 pages of A Secular Age was bent on disproving. Science doesn’t disprove religion, at best it forces religion to reinvent and review itself (which is a very good idea, and something religion desperately needs to do as soon as possible). A moderate is not a half-baked cookie. A moderate is a more flexible, self-reflexive religious person.

The fundamental problem with these four horse’s attempts is that they do not offer a substitute, an ersatz for religion. The very fact that they do not realize that they need to do so if they are to convince anyone. Simply put: these atheists do not realize that atheism is a sub-set of religion, that they do have a religion (perhaps a much more viable and simpler one), a (non-dogmatic and changing) metaphysical view of the world, sets of moral practices, general ways of getting through life. If only they’d tell us how they do it!

From the Friendly Atheist.

Here are the MP3s: Hour 1 and Hour 2.

And here are the links to Google Video: Hour 1 and Hour 2.