Russell
Posts: 1082
Joined: April 2005
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| Quote | | (That's a long non-answer to your question.) |
Yes, it may be.
To try to nudge the discussion in a direction that I can make some sense out of, a little autobiographical digression...
When I was a kid, I took church very seriously. I saw a lot of bad behavior all around me, at every level: nations threatening nuclear annihilation and waging bloody war all over the planet, bigotry and racism practiced with varying levels of government assistance, greed and corruption, infidelity... right down to bullying and disruptive behavior in the classroom. I thought if only these bad actors would take a moment, listen to the wisdom of Jesus and the men of the cloth, they would recognize the folly and shortsightedness of their ways and pull together as a team, realizing that - in the big picture - constructive team effort, not destructive private indulgence, just plain makes more sense. For a brief period, around the age of 13, I thought maybe I would aspire to become a clergyman myself; I thought I could try to bestow on others the inestimable gift of being, thinking, and behaving... like me! (Which I ascribed, of course, to being attentive to the directives of Jesus, a.k.a. the church, a.k.a my church.
Well, that didn't last that long. While I continued to think (still do, to be really honest) that the world would be better off in many ways if more people thought and behaved as I do, I see that as more a question of neurobiology than ethics, morality or religion. And it's much more evident to me now, of course, that in many ways, the world would be less well off if everyone were like me.
Also, from the start, I continuously struggled with the "magic" aspects of religion. I could see how Jesus's helpful hints for harmonious well-being (individually and socially) were all points well taken. But it was continuously emphasized to me that this was all integrally connected with a whole suite of supernatural wonders (like Jesus had no human father, could go head-to-head with The Amazing Kreskin with magic tricks, not only revivified but became immortal, that I myself and other true believers would also be immortal...) None of that ever seemed credible, to the extent that I could even figure out what they even meant by it. And then, of course, there was the whole transsubstantiation thing, where the bread and wine actually become the actual flesh and blood of Jesus! (Really? Yes. Really. Literally? Yes!. Well, not literally literally; but really. Not just metaphorically really, but really really. Just not literally really. Really? Yes! well...). My idea of "prayer" was to try to induce a state of altered consciousness (fasting and sleeplessness were helpful in that regard) to the point where logic and cold rationality loosened their grip, and to will all the incredible stuff to become credible, or, failing that, to will myself to believe that even considering the illogic or impossibility of all these claims was beside the point.
I guess in the end, gradually and at varying levels of consciousness, I just couldn't serve two masters: on the one hand, the world of natural logic where careful attention to how things work and scrupulous attention to matching, as closely as possible, language to reality in communicating observations and deductions about how things work; and, on the other, a comfortable, reassuring, benevolent religion that - as I said earlier - seems to thrive on ambiguity and on never actually being held to account for anything specific.
The one thing about Christianity that I found ultimately separates me from even the "insomesensist" Christians - for whom I have all kinds of respect - is related to my inability to buy the whole supernatural shtick. And I may be in the company of the Bad Guys here - those strange bedfellows Phillip Johnson and Richard Dawkins; Rev. Dr's evangelical fundies and evangelical atheists. I can't conceive of an entity (if an "infinite being" can be called that) that has no working parts, no material existence but has a "will": specific preferences about how things should or should not turn out, and exerts effects on the physical world. (That's my bottom line. People seem to mean different things with terms like "atheist", "nontheist", "agnostic"... Rev. Dr. emphatically denies being an atheist, though he also disclaims belief in gods or supernatural entities by any other name. I say I don't believe in, nor can I conceive of the possibility of, an extracorporeal will. By my definition, that makes me an atheist, but call it what you like). For a while, I tried to go with a Jeffersonian, pantheistic, God is the Universe and the Universe is God sort of creed. But these are really just word games.
So I'm left with this. Every thoughtful person, I think, sees the value of morality, decency, concern for fellow man, and the downside of selfishness, shortsightedness and greed. The religious (as opposed to ethical) aspects of religion seem like a fifth wheel, at best, or at worst a delusion promoted with varying degrees of cynicism and best-intentions: Karl Marx's "opiate of the masses" or Leo Strauss's necessary mythology (not sure if he has a phrase as catchy as Marx's).
So. Aren't you glad you read all that? Hello? Is anyone there? What I'm curious about is: how do thoughtful Christians deal with these questions? Let's just home in on the central one. What does it even mean for a "will" or a "mind" to exist independently of a brain, however broadly defined or analogized. That covers not only the central question of God, but the next obvious question: what, if anything, is meant by "soul"? (Other than synonym for "mind", which - at least among us carbon-based life forms - cannot exist without the support of an actively metabolizing body.)
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Must... not... scratch... mosquito bite.
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) and patently ignorant jerkoffs that so far are limited to one current example (for me, since I'm a pretty tolerant guy, *cough*). 
