To some, science seems like “the new Authority”, the new self-sustaining system perpetuated by clergy named “scientists” and to be dogmatically obeyed by the rest of us in the pews. (Heh. Not even church is like that, assuming you choose a nice progressive community.) The problem is “science” is pigeonholed into something it isn’t, and this is helped by the fact that it has such a handy pre-existing label. Develop a pigeonholed understanding of the label, then the job is done!

So instead of saying “I care too much about science”, I’m going to talk about… “I care too much about understanding reality/creation as best I can”, “I’m too interested in the evidence about the past that surrounds us”, or something similar.

And so my quest for maximizing understandability continues down the road of ever-increasing verbosity. *sigh*.

By decree, we decided on Bones, Rocks and Stars by Chris Turney. I propose we start with this book on 13 July. Hopefully I’m not busy referring to myself in the plural.

It is a thin little book, 180 pages, but I’ll still carve it up into little bits: about 30 pages per blog post, which is two chapters, spread over six blog posts. What time frame this will be, I’m not sure. (Spread over six weeks?) It is my intention to write an intro blog post giving a brief overview of the contents of each section, then we can have discussions in the comments.

If I choose to write “independent” posts about the things we learned, I will do so after we’ve had our discussion. The purpose of such posts would be to have something to point other people to: future visitors of the blog that have not read the book. Such posts should provide a brief overview of the important bits to get people up to speed, but for more in-depth details, they would probably refer to either the book, or to our discussion, or to other useful material we identify. Rewriting the book would be silly. This “distillation into an overview” will certainly be a struggle, maybe our discussion can help hack out the important details.

13 July is a Monday. I’m open to shifting it to another day: would you prefer the end of the week? Publish on Friday mornings? We don’t need to rush the discussion… Whatever we decide in the comment thread below, the next post will be with the expectation that participants have read the introduction and the first two chapters: “The ever-changing calendar” and “A hero in a dark age”.

I’m taking two weeks’ vacation before then. The book will go with me, for the plane, the airport, or other idle moments. Thus, the “deadline” we choose really shouldn’t be making any whooshing sounds on my side…

Humans are selfish and egocentric. I call this characteristic a “sin”, in the sense of “missing the (divine) mark”.

Lo-and-behold, our sinful nature is such, that it often even becomes the core of our religion. “Getting saved.” What does that mean? It can mean different things to different people — some meanings are beautiful, some meanings are ugly. For many, “being saved” effectively means “I believe I’m going to heaven after I die”. Their most important drive or focus in their religion is then to achieve that state, selfishly getting what they want, for their own benefit. It becomes the biggest purpose of their religious/spiritual life, and once they feel they’ve achieved that goal, they are satisfied.

…when there are so many other things that is so much more important to our community and the world around us, so many more important things to be concerned about.

Contemporary Conservative Christianity is all too often like that, selfish and ego-centric. Sinful. Concerns about the afterlife is not a divine concern. From what I understand, the ancients (of Hebrew Bible fame) had a more communal understanding of what salvation was about: it was more about the tribe, as a whole, as a community, and less about the selfish individual. Salvation for the tribe: divine.

This is just a quickie. My post on what I call “the divine” is coming soon. On top of that, I will (eventually) try to explain my understanding of “sin” and “salvation”.

In this series, I will sketch out my views, not seek some balanced “there are many perspectives, for example, such-and-such”. When I do touch on other views in this series, it will be for the purpose of explaining how it fits into my view.

I’ll try to keep posts short and to the point, after all, details can be explored in conversations in the comments. I’m not going to rush it, it will probably take months. But I’ll try to put out my first post within the next seven days. It will be on the divine.

Below are the strategies I could think of. Note that while Genesis (by names in various languages) forms part of many of the Abrahamic religions’ sacred texts, I am coming from a Christian angle, addressing primarily the Young-Earth Creationist strains.

Hypothesis: Satan Deceives!

Many that subscribe to a strong deity-dualism (namely God and Satan as two supernatural entities duking it out) consider lies as “belonging to Satan”. (Traditions with a more poetic understanding could say the same thing, but without a conscious entity actively bringing about deception, and a non-literal appreciation of the “poetry” in Genesis, will not have a problem anyway.)

So what is the problem with this hypothesis? The evidence contradicting the young earth view is everywhere. It is in the fossil record, in the cosmic background radiation, in our understanding of globular clusters and nuclear physics, in the speed of light, and the distances between galaxies… If all of creation is deceptive in that regard, and all deception is the work of Satan, this seems to indicate Satan is the creator. That would be in direct contradiction to the primary message of Genesis 1, the affirmation of Israel’s God as creator, author of fossils and stars. That is the primary message according to both literal and poetical readings.

(Scholarship indicates [citation needed] Genesis 1 was probably written during Israel’s exile in Babylon. During such times, when a tribe was defeated by another, the tribe’s identity, religion, faith in their deity, typically suffers. In that context, Genesis 1 is a defiant call to maintain tribal unity, religious identity, faith, through radical monotheism.)

Hypothesis: (a) the fossils are just there to Test Ya Faith! *or* (b) fossils et al provide an interesting back story

(a) Um, what’s with this hypothesis? Doesn’t this make God a liar, another thing that is explicitly contradictory with Christian theology? (Who can provide a reference to the verse that says God cannot lie?)

(b) Also known as “Last-Thursdayism”, there is nothing logically inconsistent with believing the world was created as-is last Thursday. The question, though, is why, if the universe has this interesting and consistent 14 billion year back story, should it be treated any differently to something that really is 14 billion years old? If you were created last Thursday with all your memories intact, does that really make any difference to your life, which you would live as though you are many years old?

The Wikipedia page on this, the Omphalos hypothesis, has some very interesting insights. I love controversial Rabbi Natan Slifkin’s response:

God essentially created two conflicting accounts of Creation: one in nature, and one in the Torah. How can it be determined which is the real story, and which is the fake designed to mislead us? One could equally propose that it is nature which presents the real story, and that the Torah was devised by God to test us with a fake history! One has to be able to rely on God’s truthfulness if religion is to function. Or, to put it another way—if God went to enormous lengths to convince us that the world is billions of years old, who are we to disagree?

Strategy: “there is no evidence of an old-earth!”

I’m not calling this one a hypothesis. This is a strategy, a choice for ignorance. For many stuck in conflict, this is actually the strategy I’d propose! If your religion is important to you, if you find real value in your religion, what difference does it make how old the earth is? Could you not choose ignorance, explicitly? Accept that you don’t know, and don’t care, and aren’t interested in discussing it? This may be a controversial statement for me to make, amongst my scientist friends, but there is of course an important side-effect I’m also aiming for: leave the debates and arguments to those that study these things.

Not that many strongly-convicted evangelicals would take me up on that offer, since they often perceive science as a threat to their belief system and detrimental to their evangelising. Of course, there is an opposite argument using the same rationale. Quoting the church father, St Augustine, whose theology laid foundations used by most Christians today, explained it as follows:

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.

– De Genesi ad literam 1:19–20, Chapt. 19 [AD 408]

(Taken from Wikipedia, here’s another translation.)

The much uglier version of the “choosing ignorance” path, in my opinion, is where the ignorance is outsourced to authority figures (like Adam blaming Eve for the apple ). This is the business model on which creationist organisations and websites like Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International (now creation.com, used to be creationontheweb.com) operate: they use “claims of authority” to win the trust of those with a strong authoritarian style of deciding what to believe. Deferring to authority lets you “escape” responsibility… Is it that much harder to simply say “I don’t know” and leave it be?

Alternatively, take the non-literal stance on Genesis 1-11

This makes most sense to me. (Naturally, I don’t read Genesis literally, that much should be clear. ) Of course, if the only thing that keeps you “believing” is the lack of acceptance of evolutionary theory, you will starting on a path to de-conversion. (Is it worthwhile to believe in a God that only exists on condition that evolution is impossible? Is that your God?) However, don’t let the Christian fundies or the atheists fool you, de-conversion is most certainly not your only choice!

You could read up on Theistic evolution. You could buy e.g. The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth, a book by evangelicals, maybe after reading the wonderful review on Exploring Our Matrix. Or you could go for some free ebooks by an online evangelical community — (1-4, 5).

Have an interesting conversation!

And feel free to ask! If you need some help or conversations to help you embrace more science in your worldview, I have a couple more references up my sleeve which I’ll customise to your needs as best I can, there are more “theistic evolutionists” hanging out here, and there’s my little network of friends, pastors and theologians that I could consult for advice on your behalf. We also have humanists, with varying amounts of secularity, if you find yourself or your worldview drowning in all the new info and need to chat to some people to help you find something to hold onto while the dust settles. (Dust and water, mixing my metaphors here? )

(There’s even one or two “Real Live PhD Scientists” that occasionally take part in discussions, to the detriment of their research!… because they also have a passion for education, for sharing knowledge. Of course, that doesn’t make them the authority figures to be obeyed, it just makes them the knowledgeable bunch that know what’s cutting: within their fields of study, they’re experts on the evidence and the tentative conclusions drawn from that evidence, by the process known as science…)

Additionally, I (we) will be starting our first attempt at a thinktoomuch.net book club in July. I (we) will be reading (and blogging and commenting on) Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened — this is much thinner than “The Bible, Rocks and Time”, but sticks to science and doesn’t cover Christian theological concerns.

‘n “Internet-vriend” van my wat dikwels bietjie godsdiens-joernalisme doen, het die Mighty Men konferensie gaan bywoon. Sy artikel verskyn in die Rapport: ‘n Magtige dreuning. Dit is ‘n heel rustige artikel, veel meer interessant (vir my) is die soort reaksies wat dit blykbaar ontlok. Hier is een van die “highlights”, maar gaan loer gerus vir meer gebalanseerde en/of rustige opmerkings:

Magtige Dreuning, 26/04/2009, Gerrie Lombaard
Johannes de Villiers ek hoop nie jy is vir die artikel betaal nie as jy ‘n vryskut joernalis is nie. Jy kan ook nie ‘n permanente pos beklee nie. ek gaan my nie verwerdig om kommentaar op jou patetiese, eenogige artikel te lewer nie. Jy kan nie ‘n Afrikaanse De Villiers wees nie want ek het familie wat dit is. Moet asb nie weer MMC toe kom nie jy het nie jou werk gedoen nie!!!!!!!. JY IS ‘N PATEET VAN ‘N SUID AFRIKANER. GAAN SKRYF JOU STROOI IN N. ZEELAND WAAR JY EN SOORTGELYKE PATETE HOORT!!!!!!!1

Ek wonder selfs of hierdie soort opmerking “genuine” is? (Ek meen, kan dit nie dalk satiere wees nie? Of het die “Afrikaanse Internet” nog nie daardie punt bereik nie?)

Die artikel het in my ervaring nie veel verbasend of skokkend bevat nie (is ek ook ‘n “pateet van ‘n Suid Afrikaner” dan? ) — miskien omdat die kern-gedagtes in die artikel nie iets nuuts is nie: soos ek dit het, is dit maar net ‘n goeie samevatting van die dinamika van sulke sametrekkings of bewegings, soos hulle gesien word in meer akademies-ingestelde kringe? (Op grond van gesprekke wat ek al gehad het met ‘n klein aantal mense, so my opinie is nie noodwendig goed verteenwoordigend nie.) Dis dalk waar die waarde van sulke soort artikels lê: die sterk reaksie wat vir sommiges uit die veld slaan, wat buitestaanders aanmoedig om weer oor die berig te dink om te probeer verstaan wat daarvan so ontstellend is. Daardie opmerkings, die passie waarmee die bywoners reageer en “verdedig”, voeg mos ‘n hele nuwe dimensie by die berig?

Idees vir gesprek

Is iemand lus om ‘n gesprek aan die gang te kry, bietjie kommentaar te lewer?

Is dit beter / “meer moreel” om die skrywer van daardie opmerking se naam daar te los (om hom krediet te gee vir die opmerking), of beter om dit te verwyder (aangesien ek hier daardie opmerking nie juis in ‘n baie goeie lig sien nie)?

Wat maak julle van die hele storie? Hoe laat daardie berig jou voel? En wat laat dit jou dink omtrent “die ander kant”? (LW: in terme van positiewe pogings om mekaar te verstaan en goed te kommunikeer, nie in terme van afbrekende negatiwiteit nie.)

• As jy ‘n gretige bywoner van sulke konferensies is, wat presies is die ding in Johannes se artikel wat mense ontstel? Voel jy sy artikel maak wel sin, maar gee net een kant van die prentjie, of dink jy hy het dit heeltemal verkeerd en praat slegs nonsens?
• As jy ‘n mede-”buitestaander” is, wat dink jy van die artikel, en wat dink jy van die reaksie? Kan jy begryp wat so ontstellend is, vir sommiges, omtrent daardie berig? Wat dink jy van my paragrafie hier bo, omtrent buitestaanders? Beskryf dit enigsins jou gevoel/reaksie, of is dit iets wat ek nou bloot uit my duim gesuig het?

Mees belangrik: kan julle kyk of julle gesprek kan voer met meegevoel, verstaan? Behandel die gesprek (indien daar enige gesprek plaasvind) asof dit om ‘n etenstafel is, wat beide jou familie en jou beste vriende insluit, en jou beste vriend sit “aan die ander kant van die tafel”. Is dit moontlik? ‘n Vriendelike gesprek omtrent sulke verskille? Ek hou nie van die soort “ons-en-hulle” ding wat plaasvind nie. Dis daardie soort reaksie wat soos ‘n “cult” voorkom.

En as daar nie gesprek plaasvind nie, of al vind daar wel plaas: voel asseblief vry om my Afrikaans te “critique”, ek kry nie genoeg oefening nie. Wys my foute uit! Stel verbeterings voor!

[TED Talk - Jonathan Haidt]

Ben-Jammin also shared two links that are related to this video. For those that prefer text (hello bandwidth starved South Africa, amongst others):

Edge: MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION: A Talk with Jonathan Haidt

and then a more scholarly paper, in pdf format (which was written in MS Word, how immoral! ):

When morality opposes justice:
Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize

I have not read the first link, other than scanning over it to let my eye catch a snippet where Haidt even dares to take on The Philosopher Himself , and I haven’t read the scholarly paper either — the TED talk was sufficient for encouraging the writing this post, and could be sufficient for sparking some discussion on whether the threat of hell is of use to humanity. Other discussions related to the material are also more than welcome.

Ikon’s Easter Sunday gathering gave me goose bumps.

You will need some time if you want to work your way through it, you have to listen to four audio clips, and maybe prime yourself by first experiencing U2’s “Until the End of the World” linked to (it worked for me) — the description on that YouTube clip contains the lyrics, so you can follow and think about it. Basically, I’d say you need to click on each link, in order, except maybe the very first and the very last. And you’ll need to have an ear adequately tuned to the Irish accent.

So who might benefit from this? Any Christian, all Christians, I’d say. Especially those that might feel a bit challenged by this. Of course. If you want to maintain a simple black-and-white prejudiced bigotry (yay tautology) towards Judas, don’t bother. However, if you want to think a bit more, exercise your humanity, follow in Jesus’ footsteps, that kind of thing… pondering and musing over the character that was Judas, is certainly a worthwhile exercise.

Furthermore, this isn’t an intellectual endeavour, it is an experiential one. Wait for a time when you’re not stressed, when you’re not in a hurry. Find a time in which you can sit down and let your emotions flow, like with a good movie. You’d want to have the opportunity to feel Judas, not just see the arguments. A chance to feel the goosebumps, to get a lump in your throat.

If you want the full experience that is.

Back to the who: non-Christians too! If you have something of a spiritual side, an emotional side, if you are interested in exploring the truths of humanity that can be illuminated by narratives that are nearly two millenia old, you could also find value in this. Some background understanding of the story is useful, and lets you get more out of it, but it is not even necessary.

Memocidal anti-theists might prefer to go isolate themselves in some corner somewhere. But atheists with an anthropological curiosity should also be able to take part.

Without much further ado (having had too much ado already), a post on Peter Rollins’ blog: Ikon: Judas

Now the conversational challenge: have a good conversation about this. If you went through the experience. Share your thoughts in a friendly way. Encourage interesting discussions around it. Encourage reflection. Secularists, try to find secular equivalents to the questions asked. Christians, how has this changed how you view Judas, or yourself? Which comments/answers by the Ikon community did you like, which shocked you, which challenged you? Everyone, what other questions should I have asked here? Be positive, be creative, even when being critical!

It was never my intention to not write a blog post this Easter weekend, but I have “procrastinated” up to the point where I have to say “well, I haven’t gone back to work yet, it is still Easter weekend for me”. My plans changed a couple of times, as better ideas came along. In the end, I found the best elsewhere, and will just point there.

Last week Thursday (iirc) I had a brief chat (IM) with a colleague/mentor that is of Jewish heritage. And had myself reminded “Easter” is not the current narrative of everyone in my circle. Passover. Commemorating the return from exile in Egypt. This is, according to my understanding, the primal narrative of Israel. (Primal in all three meanings of the word.) a narrative that shapes lives. I spent some time pondering that this weekend, but know I lack any experience of the Jewish tradition and what meaning and impact it would carry for me, had that been the tradition I was born into.

Friday night I saw Gran Torino. Following the movie, I let my thoughts drift, as inspired by the movie. Of course, they were already drifting before the movie even finished. (It caused the first change of plans: I want to write a bit about the movie… That post remains in the pipeline, but it has a prerequisite that you first see the movie. Now you get some more time to do so. ) But yes, following the movie, we had some drinks at the Outback Lodge. One member in our group has a Catholic heritage, and went to church that morning. I decided my church sermon for the weekend was the movie, it had more impact than many a church service. Then the conversation drifted in the direction of homoeopathy, “holistic”/”alternative” medicine, and the anti-vaccination movement. Simultaneously entertaining, uncomfortable, and thought provoking. Today, or yesterday, can’t remember, I did some more research on Gardasil, the vaccination against HPV-caused cervical cancer. More on that later.

Saturday, I joined a colleague and some friends for a “braai/picnic”. No, it wasn’t a braai, it was part Swiss, part Russian. During that picnic, conversation drifted in a way that had me sharing a bit about one of my “hobbies” (that which I keep myself busy with when I’m not working). I did not mention this blog, but this blog flows out of that hobby. Saturday night became a late night, I joined friends from the previous night’s movie, to go check out something of the Zurich nightlife. And had my jacket stolen. (And another in our group was also a victim of jacket-theft.)

Sunday I went for a cycle, having not really slept enough. But it was great, a relaxed bike ride from home, over to the Griefensee, around, and back. About 48km. I learned a number of valuable things, and a number of more mundane things. I learned the many different meanings the word “Schmuck” can have (I was cycling with someone who knows enough German and Yiddish).

This Monday evening, I finally came across the inspiration that would provide the meat to this post. I let myself be moved by a “multimedia account” of Ikon’s Easter “sermon” — Ikon is the community in which Peter Rollins finds himself. Being a Jesus- It aims to experience Easter through the perspective of Judas. You, me, everyone, as Judas. When you speculatively place yourself in another’s shoes, your understanding of them really does get fleshed out. More on that in a second post — it’s been a long time since I published two posts in one day. (I’m aiming for before & after midnight though.)

Last Thursday night I had another “down”. Those nice times when you suffer some death-from-the-inside. I have become thankful for those times though, because I know I survive them, walk on resurrected the next day, with new focus on and drive towards that which I feel is important. To me. A couple of months ago it was quite a bit more grim, it used to take longer. The ability to bounce back within a day is a blessing, it takes the sting out of the downs. It truly is in those moments of grappling that real clarity is found. (Despite the vagueness of that clarity. ) From there, I went and had a most exxcellent weekend.

Moving on, some actions, related to the weekend as a whole, not to Thursday night in particular:

Death to the No Notes List

This feels like another brave step for me. A necessary one, that will probably again have much impact internally, while looking like hardly a breeze on the outside.

In life, we play many roles. We get to choose what roles we play. Clint Eastwood got to choose, in a more literal sense. In a fictional sense, his character in the movie chose a role. But we also have roles.

Sometimes it is best that roles don’t bleed into one another. You don’t want to see Forrest Gump bleed into Captain John H. Miller in Saving Private Ryan. And your private life should ideally not influence your professional one.

What is the No Notes list? It is more than just a list, it represents an attitude. So I’ve now been in Switzerland for 7 or 8 months, depending on how you count. Upon moving here, starting a new job, my first job, I had a rather weird mix-up of that role-separation going on.

I had decided to “keep things separate”, one symptom of which was that I created a “No Notes” list on Facebook. This was to avoid advertising this blog to friends I added to that list, since this blog represents a side of me I didn’t want to show to everyone I had “just met”. For two reasons. One, I didn’t want to be misunderstood. (Judas, misunderstood? Still, he played the role he had to play. “Had”, which meaning? “The role he had”? Or “Did what he must”? Both?) Two, I’ve experienced the challenge of writing for a diverse audience. It can be gruelling, because for different audiences, you would choose a different writing style. And now I’m adding yet another audience.

But Two is in a way just an externalised rationalisation of One: “I’m a chicken”. I enjoy writing for a diverse audience, and I often revel in not being clearly understood. The greater point here is not for me to be understood, whereby I’m placing myself on a pedestal that is a blog, saying “See? This is me, the world deserves to understand me! Watch! Make me feel special!” The point is to encourage people to think, explore, learn, be challenged, build bridges, seek peace in diversity. For that, I really don’t need to be understood. So the only thing holding me back is “pride”. Not wanting to be badly misunderstood. (Lacking the faith of Judas? One interpretation. See the next post.)

And besides, we each need only really need to be understood by a small group of people, and I’m very fortunate to have already found such a group of friends that understand me, even if we don’t all have contact very often, even if we’re very far apart. I still am, like any blogger really, a schmuck with a podium on which I prance. A vain, egotistical, self-absorbed narcissist. Who minds not using a tonne of tautology. And I should go to lengths to avoid excessive navel gazing, and return the favour others have shown me: to seek to understand them, for who they are. Enough with the navel gazing. Let’s move on. (And I should give myself some credit, this paragraph does exaggerate, in order to highlight.)

Role separation… There is role separation, and then there is role separation. Living a lie is extremely unhealthy. I’ve experienced this already, I know this. My first experience at explicitly outing myself, as a “secular humanist” at the time, in 2007, was extremely scary, and extremely liberating. And the world just continued turning. And views continued drifting, and I was able to approach things from the other side, from where they all started to make so much more sense. But I digress again.

The point: I emerged a healthier, more “holistic” person. Fragmenting myself yet again is downright stupid. And doesn’t accomplish role separation anyway, that kind of fragmentation could even be the cause of one aspect bleeding into the other, in a detrimental way. Embracing things together, I seek a healthy balance.

Additionally, 8 months in, I’m much more settled into my new role, I understand it a lot better now. With that better defined, the feeling of “this needs more explicit separation” is undermined.

Another interesting tidbit: the path I started with the “No Notes” list lead to the removal of a couple of links as well, since links also advertise my blog. (Duh!) I’ll restore those links, and probably return to my previous level of random organic search traffic. Joy. I have a love-hate relationship with that traffic. See “Commenting Policy” below.

Community

Recently I re-tuned my Facebook and Google Reader. The aim: to be able to more regularly read the things I want to read. (Mostly: tuning “home pages” to show feeds I’m interested in.) Thereby: more attention towards the people I care most about, and the blog feeds I find most value in, the most challenging and “mind expanding” , given my context.

Just over a week ago, I read Not that it’s a competition, but… - and got all woozy about cool communities again. Are there any communities like that here, in Switzerland? In Europe? I would so love to check something like that out! Or something like Ikon? Some other emergent guys in Europe? Switzerland? Curious, I’ll have to search. I’d enjoy getting involved in either.

Alternatively, I may remain the nomad, the anthropologist, investigating things from a slight distance. There are a number of traditions I’d love to check out, experience, but it would depend on whether they’re open to… um… “tourists” like me. I will continue chatting with people, aiming to experience their tradition from their perspectives, understanding what it means to them.

And of course, challenging things in some sensible fashion, extending invitations to think more broadly, when I find something that seems harmful. Like anti-vaccination attitudes. (Nothing to do with religion in the specific-sense here, though in the broad-sense, sure.)

Commenting Policy

And, of course, my little community here. I’ve not forgotten you all, even if my posting frequency has suffered. And mengelmoes, my software-in-the-pipeline to solve all my “commenting policy” and community building concerns, remains… uh, well… in the pipeline. More efficiency to my use of free time. More dedication and focus. We’ll get there.

The point, as always, is to try to give everyone a voice, while finding a way to “gently encourage” them to use it in the most useful way possible. Reward the valuable and useful. Not like this guy, bob, who commented on Don’t Consider Christian Fundamentalism “Violent”, of all posts:

You guys are stupid as hell. God isn’t real. America needs to become more like Europe. We need to be free from the shackles of religion and move on as a race.

Who on earth was he talking to, anyway? He had no idea how many in that discussion were really religious or Christian, who were skeptics, humanists… or Americans for that matter (one?)… And there most certainly weren’t any stupid people commenting on that post. Except, of course, maybe by bob’s bizarre definition of stupid and smart.

I left his comment in the moderation queue. The ideal: any comment should be able to see the light of day. In some way anyway. (Consider the “-1″ score on the Slashdot moderation system, for example.) Furthermore, people need to be encouraged to learn how to express their sentiments without being a schmuck about it. You know, get smart, learn how to have an intelligent discussion. (They need to stop taking cues from the likes of Bill Maher, who seems to think humiliation, and apparently lies, is a good way of communicating ideas?)

The way you say things often carries more weight than that which you are trying to say.

He’s touring… a brief search on Facebook shows he’s also visiting Cape Town and KwaZulu-Natal. (Here’s a Facebook event for Stellenbosch.)

I now believe the tradition to be very much about grappling with scripture and the tradition, not about finding all the correct black-and-white answers. When it comes to human culture, there aren’t any final correct answers, there’s only the grappling and interactions and relationships through which lifestance “truths” are able to touch the heart… (Please see Reduce or Wrestle — Peter Rollins.)

Back to the fundie perspective, “I have the Truth, the True Fundamentals at least, and I know… because I know”.

The belief is that the truth or value of everything seen in life should be tested according to “the Word of God”… which many a fundie believes to be identically equal to The Bible, the Whole Bible, and Nothing But the Bible. Yes, I’m being a tad hyperbolic here, bear with me as I continue doing so: the point is, to them, the Bible doesn’t contain letters written by Paul, or a culture’s valuable narratives written down after decades of oral propagation, or poems by poets grappling with life, or creation mythologies from ancient tribes from the Near East, it contains the Word of God, and nothing but the Word of God.

Fair enough.

Yes, you hear me right, I just said “fair enough”, because I don’t want to talk about that right now. I’ll try to illuminate something about the fundie approach through use of my own experiences in the second post. In this post I’m talking about

Interpretation

It is impossible to read something without interpreting it. Language is like that.

The original author of a piece of text had something in mind, something they wanted to communicate. They then convert this into the symbolic representation that we call “language”. This conversion is done according to the words (symbols) as defined in the author’s culture. Now the reader has a go at the text. The symbols are read from the text, and then converted into meaning by the mind of the reader. What each symbol, word, concept, idea means, to the reader, is defined in the reader’s culture. A reader can either take from the text whatever their interpretation of it is, much like some post-modern art works being more about what the observer observes and interprets than what the artist had in mind.

Alternatively, the reader/scholar can attempt a thorough exegesis of the work in an attempt to understand the intentions of the author. With no direct access to the author’s mind, getting this as accurate as possible requires in-depth knowledge of the author’s culture and symbolism. This is of course much harder work than a reader simply using their own symbolism, definitions and concepts.

For more on all of this, see Hermeneutics on Wikipedia. If the idea of “moral relativity” scares you… language is in exactly the same situation, meaning being culturally dependent, changing over time and space.

Implications for being “right” about scripture

Traditional Jewish exegesis differs markedly from the Christian tradition. In fact, just within Christianity there is already very significant diversity in how scripture is understood.

A quick aside: did I just say the diversity is of a significant quantity, or did I say there is significance in the kinds of diversity found? A silly little example, but I often write things like this with awareness of multiple interpretations. Thus, my intentions are not to be perfectly and absolutely understood by all (that’s impossible anyway), I’m often intentionally leaving various interpretations of my writing open to my readers. (And they could always ask if they want to know what I really meant.)

How much tougher is it to understand the author’s intentions when the writing took place in Hebrew and Greek thousands of years ago, was translated, sometimes numerous times (which requires another round of interpretation and re-”symbolising” into a new language), and is now read from within a radically different culture? If it is that hard to know what I wrote, today, in our culture, in English, how much tougher is it to read and correctly understand scripture? Is it even possible?

Now tell me, in particular, what makes a Christian’s approach to exegesis of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) more “correct”, more “true”, than that of a Jew, practising within a tradition much more closely related to the culture the scripture lived in over the centuries? “We have discovered a fuller truth as revealed by Jesus and the New Testament” is no answer to that question, because as I mentioned, there’s great diversity within the Christian tradition as well, with some having an exegetical approach that draws much more on the approaches of the Jewish tradition.

Even if you want to argue the “Jews had it wrong in the Old Testament, the new revelation of the New Testament puts it all right”, you’re first going to have to understand how they interpreted it to be able to understand what they had “wrong”! This has implications for things as “fundamental” as the meaning of an offering or sacrifice in Judaism (which can influence the meaning ascribed to the crucifixion*), and the meaning of a question like “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10v17, here’s RLP’s dramatisation).

* I’m referring to interesting insights I learned from The Last Week by Borg and Crossan, a book I can’t recommend highly enough for those intent on following the Christian way.

So… how non-religious are the Scandinavians really? tzhau passed me a link via delicious: Beliefs - Scandanavian Nonbelievers, Which Is Not to Say Atheists - NYTimes.com

An interesting and illuminating article, it seems unnecessary to log in to view it now, but will likely be necessary later, this being NYTimes.com and all. Even in the latter case, I’d say it is still worth a read! (Accounts are free, they just cost you a bit of effort, and a little bit less privacy while browsing their articles.)

I can also try asking around for some statistically inadequate but nevertheless useful opinions from one or two Scandinavians to see how they experience their countries, to corroborate (or deny) the picture sketched by this article. More useful might be some overview/study of the path Scandinavian countries followed to get to where they are, but I’m too lazy for that, and you can deduce some likely scenarios from what is already provided by the article.

the essence,
not that we find the right answer, but that we
wrestle with the tradition
fight with it
love it
are transformed by it…

Suggested alternative reading: God’s owners — talking about the same kind of thing, but with a very different style, from a very different perspective.

BACK TO YOUR MAKER

Valued Visitor,

It is 2009, Darwin Year. Exactly a hundred and fifty years ago, scientist Charles Darwin published his seminal book “On the Origin of Species“, wherein he introduced the theory that the evolution of species is driven by natural selection. Darwin’s evolution theory departed from the then-reigning belief that God created the earth, with all her species, in six days. Consequently, even many Christians no longer believe the Biblical Creation story. However, one man from Urk [Ed: The Netherlands], Kees van Helden, together with a number of creationist organisations, want to blow new life into the Creation story.

This month about 6 million homes in The Netherlands received a one-sided [biased] pamphlet “Evolution or Creation” from the Actie Comité Schepping [literally: Action Committee Creation?] in their mailboxes. According to van Helden and his supporters [colleagues? friends? ilk?] Creationism deserves, in 2009, a serious place in Dutch society. These blogs are protesting against this 250,000 euro costing pamphlet-campaign.

This pamphlet is unwelcome in our homes, since we can think for ourselves just fine. In addition, we find it highly objectionable that a religious opinion is forced beyond our front doors. Our plan is thus: Send the pamphlet back to its creators [makers]! Let the religious fanatics know that they must stop with pushing their indoctrination into our homes.

On this site you can find an accompanying material to send with the pamphlet, written by the columnist Luuk Koelman. You’re welcome to modify the letter as you like, so that you can add your own message.
Show your support for this action by signing. If you have a website, place a banner that links to this site and let us know.

The wording of that site feels a bit more aggressive than I typically aim for in my blog posts these days. This post’s purpose is informational in nature, sharing some of the conflict also happening in Europe; the above is a (translated) quote. The friend that informed me of this, also provided a link to an annotated pamphlet (in Dutch) [pdf... Linux/Gnome users: the annotations don't seem to work in evince 2.22.2]

Bear in mind: 6 million homes is effectively all homes in The Netherlands, which has a population of ~16.5 million people. And I hear this is a relatively uncommon occurrence, the fundies there aren’t usually as in-your-face, and the “rationalists” don’t typically respond to provocation. But won’t it be fun if the person sending out the flyers/pamphlets were to receive even just… <thumb suck> five thousand returned copies? I’d love to see a photo of that!