A question for believers

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that may be true, my brain might not get it though. im shure i could be totally on fire for jesus if he would just show up and say hi or something to me. none stop jesus talking watchit go

When I was a kid and some of my neighbors got me on christian kicks - I was kind of like that myself. Anymore though, especially after I really stepped back and took a look at the natural state of the world and what we're all really trying to overcome, it was never meant to be as simple or as easy as what organized religion seems to push. Mostly on account of that I just stay away from it all together, I respect other people for pursuing it but its just not for me.

Let me first say that I've read some of your posts and been quite impressed with your intelligence and ablility to articulate your thoughts. They stand out to me because it's like the hallmark of thinking, but something my mind will never achieve. I'm okay with that, but you may not appreciate my thoughts because they probably don't seem like I'm trying seriously enough. But I am. With that, here's the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew (5:1-7:27) in the New International Version (NIV):




I do believe that I'm living this way. I do make mistakes and there's things about me that are hard to change (like talking fast and off the wall and extremely emotional), but I believe that I'm a "work in progress." God is patient, we don't tend to be, and so maybe when people say they are Christians, others want to see dramatic and permanent change. But God didn't even create the universe this way, so why would we be 'poof' changed immediately? I believe that when we ask God into our hearts, His Holy Spirit enters us and begins His work. Initially, it's euphoric, kind of like when you start dating someone you really like, but as the relationship grows, the external euphoria gives way to a more stable, internal warmth. But it's slow, because real change is that way. Did I answer your question?

I think an alien would regard most of us as merely accepting a social distinction and ultimately see religiosity as merely an outpouring of tribal behavior in many cases, and possibly the same of some of atheism and many other groupings. There would be some exceptions such as the hidden atheist or the socially shunned zealot, but with most it would not be regarded.


I take different views on things, and would argue that all human action is done in regards to the absolute. The question really depends on what absolute we revere. I merely see my actions as simply appealing to a framework outside of my own, but I do not see it as necessarily acting as if God did not exist. I see my own behavior as professing against my private beliefs, but then again inconsistency is consistent with my faith.

Not too hard, the issue is one of switching frameworks. The real issue is making sure that I keep true to my actual framework while assuming the false one as if I want to avoid telling somebody something my omissions become small lies too quickly and I tend to love crude humor too much.

Not a lot, I mean, I resent it somewhat as I am more comfortable without it, but then again, I am more comfortable with progress than without a mask and given that I simply view this as a matter of frameworks I am not too bad if I have to wear a mask.

Yes, I appeal to a framework other than the one I have decided to agree with.

I totally feel that way. That's why two of the most important verses in the Bible to me relate to my relationship with God. Matthew 7: 3-5, and Matthew 7:24. Basically, love God above all else, and fix myself before I try to perfect someone else.

You make me feel mixed emotions, when you write like that. It's very sweet of you to say such kind things about me and you make me feel nicer than I should. But at the same time you make me feel very guilty, too, that I might have caused you to feel somehow less about yourself and that thought hurts me and make me sad.

Not really, but I do sincerely appreciate the try here. Your main point, if I gather it, is that I shouldn't expect individuals to suddenly change. But that wasn't what I was asking about. Let me put the question in a different context and maybe you will see what I'm driving towards.

I have a profoundly autistic daughter and she still lives with me, at age 23. She also has grand mal seizures and these have broken out six teeth in one event and broken her forearm, right through both the radius and ulna in another event. All within the last four years, or so.

We are very actively involved locally and have been most of this time. I am fortunate enough that my work allows me some range, here. I see, personally because I attend them, various religious events where we parents and their adult children or young children get together for extended times (from Friday afternoon until the following Sunday afternoon, a few times a year.)

I was raised Catholic, did the white shirt and salt and pepper pants thing in Catholic school, went to catechism on Saturdays, went to Church on Sundays, got beat with a hairbrush by Mother Superior at school, confessed sins, did penances on the rosary, etc. I'm not Catholic today, I'm an atheist, but I'm comfortable with the rituals, they do not bother me, and I can play the game with others when that is the right and comfortable thing to do at the time.

The last case, a Catholic retreat, really worked out for our daughter and us. It was a definite success. But there were many clinically depressed parents I talked with, too. All died-in-the-wool Catholics and active in their churches. Afterwards, over that Sunday night and the following day, I thought about those experiences and the need and the people I met and their children. And I cried. I mean, really. One situation a family with a 12 year old called "Emily" really put the whole thing into focus for me. I liked the girl a lot, she was difficult in some ways -- always getting into things and needing diapers, etc. -- but she was also someone I enjoyed. The father seemed so depressed about his daughter, though, and talked about how he blamed his wife for being too lax with her when he was away at work, etc. I knew the struggles he was going through, because really Athena wasn't much different and knew that both he and his wife were trying their best to deal with the situation but using what tools each had to do that, and that his blame was misplaced for the most part. They just were struggling a lot and their marriage was coming apart at the seams from the stress, which was quite real. It's real in my family too, but we've put it in context and understand what's what. I wanted so much to help them, somehow. And what they needed was just a little help from others. The occasional break, time to go somewhere and have some fun together, to think, etc. Or maybe just a little help around the home.

I called up the person at the Catholic diocese here, the one who works so very hard and puts these on. She was a Catholic nun for a time and I deeply respect her, from years of talking and working with her. She is one of the most generous and caring people you can ever know and she places herself in the center of trying to work on solutions at an upper level within the diocese. She didn't deserve it from me; she's done so much personally and what I said really wasn't about her; but I laid into the Catholic Church, angrily, on Monday after the retreat. I was prepared and used the Catholic scriptural descriptions, citing from the sermon on the mount like a priest might (in fact, afterwards, she said I should probably give my lecture at their Churches), with energy and verve, telling her that there is NO EXCUSE -- none at all -- for people living like this in their own community. If anything, their faith talks about "those who are the least among them;" and "to not to be like the hypocrites who make public their charities;"and "that what they do for their own is no different than the gentiles, if only done for their own" so that it should be done for all and not just Catholics; etc., etc. She and I spoke for hours, that day. I was so angry and where these parents and their children were, yet they were part of a Church almost all of who seem like just hypocrites in their faith to me. It made me angry to see that family and the other families suffering, when so little from the community could make so much of a difference in their lives.

I will be continuing these discussions with others further up the chain of administration in the Catholic Church as well as other churches, too. This doesn't end, to be true. But when I see billions of dollars flowing into capital investments, so little for operation by comparison, and those at the very bottom, the least able to care for themselves, having so little and being literally unable to leave their own homes, it wears on me. Because I know the situation personally. I'm lucky. My wife and I have known each other from before we were even kids and we have a strong family and the ability to cope and look forward to the future that all this brings us towards -- community. But understanding is burnished deeply into my soul with long, personal experience, too. These are _my_ family I see out there, people I know bonded by common experience that few understand well, alone pretty much and without help from those who pretend their religion and little else besides. I love them like my own family, because they are my family in spirit and in common cause. As they go, so go I.

The message of the Sermon on the Mount is quite clear. Matthew puts it, "By their fruits ye shall know them." Yet where are these fruits, those one would expect from a healthy faith and an adherence to the sermon?

Even if the Church did take care of their own brethren, Jesus said that even the hypocrites do that much. That it is how the community treats those outside of it that counts. This was how the early Christian communities worked, in fact. They took in the sick during the plagues in Rome in 150AD and 250AD when everyone else was fleeing. They cared for those who were NOT part of their community, as though they were their very own. They took the Sermon on the Mount, seriously. Not as some bunch of nice words that they give lip service to. It was their way of life.

I see the churches going up all over the place here. I see the huge investments. I read the reports. I see how much goes into providing for the "least among you" and how much goes into resources for the able and capable. Looking over some of my research, the IRS gives 501(c)3 status to churches without their having to even apply for it. It's an a priori assumption, by dint of just being a church. Churches, unlike other 501(c)3 orgs, do not have to file Form 990s with the IRS describing their contributions. There is _no_ requirement for passing along any of that information to the government by churches. Some do and the GAO did some research about the amounts involved extrapolating from the Form 990s they do get and also from other sources. As I mentioned elsewhere, there was some 73 billion US dollars in charitable contributions in 1993 to religious organizations throughout the US. (This was about 66 billion US dollars in 1990. You can check some of these numbers for yourself: http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/ju ... 9929_0.HTM and there are other sites to check more on this.)

It turns out that much of that money is going into church construction and other capital projects around the US, not into operational expenses or "good works." The above link points this up, clearly. This means the money is being pocketed, not used to help those who are "the least among us," as Jesus would have it.

(More, I also did some research on how our own state's ability to control land use changed after Clinton signed the RELIGIOUS LIBERTY PROTECTION ACT in 2000. Turns out that churches now enjoy simply unfettered construction. Our state no longer can require much of any conformance. It is still permitted to require engineering sense, of course, in construction plans. But it can no longer control land use by churches. I assume this is the same circumstance pretty much elsewhere in the US, now. Some Churches literally exist to take advantage of these benefits for property investment purposes to make money -- a disgusting use of the law, I think.)

The below link is _not_ an anti-religious link by any stretch -- it is pro, in fact.

But http://religiousbroadcasting.lib.virgin ... _orgs.html says "Religious broadcasting in the U.S. now exists on a vastly larger scale than in any other nation. In fact, it exists on a scale beyond the recognition of most Americans. Further, religious broadcasting continues to experience a period of sustained growth." Much of the money is going into these kinds of evangelical activities, I think mostly to garner more and more money, and then not applied to help "the least among us" but to feather pockets.

Keep it in mind when you consider what is going on here and the sheer magnitude of it. We are talking about tens of billions and probably into the hundreds of billions of dollars, today. This is BIG BUSINESS, not Christianity as Jesus talked about. The effects are manifest. You would have to keep your head stuck in the ground like an ostrich not to see it playing out.

It's not just the churches. I don't mean to poke only at them. They are just showing the same symptoms as found in the rest of society. The difference is that Christians actually _have_ a core creed, the Sermon on the Mount, which is the very inner most and deepest part of it all and out of which all the rest flows, that speaks to this issue. And instead I see families in need within the churches, let alone outside them, in terrible pain and difficulty. And church goers just "doing their duty" going to church on Sunday or screaming and yelling about how everyone else should live their lives instead of looking at themselves and cleaning their own house, first.

At least secular society has an excuse. They don't have a core philosophy about the meek and poor and a failure here isn't
necessarily hypocrisy. But what excuse, Christians??? I find none. There is no excuse possible. As a group, they are hypocrites. Individuals are not necessarily that way and that x-nun I mentioned above is certainly one of those people I hold in very high esteem as she seriously tries to live the life that Jesus set out. She is one of those people whom I deeply respect. But she is rare.

The hypocrisy just bugs me.

If there are so very many Christians in the US (most are) and so very much money flowing into them each and every year, more than enough to run almost every country in the world, why is there so little done for people I know? More, no politician can even get into office without being a publicly professed Christian. The most powerful country in the world and every politician running it, a Christian. They dominate the place, control it at every level. And for what result?

Do you remember Jesus' comment in Matthew 25?

What is done to the least, is done to God.

Some of the key ideas from Jesus are these:

• Love your enemies
• If struck on one cheek, offer the other
• Give to everyone who begs
• Judge not and you won't be judged
• First remove the 'log' from your own eye
• Go out as lambs among wolves
• Carry no money, bag, or sandals.

These are some of the core values that have existed from the very earliest Christian communities.

Gone. All of them gone, it seems. Or, at least, no more present in believers than in non-believers like me.

Jon

P.S.
I wanted to take the affirming part of your earlier comment and say something about that. I have worked with some real genius scientists in my work (I design and program scientific and commercial instrumentation.) They are like most of us in most ways. But the one thing that separates them, marks them clearly in my mind, is the sheer unstoppable power of their ability to constantly develop highly precise ways of thinking about the world. What makes them stand out are the mental tools they have acquired and the near-perfect precision in their understanding of the scope and boundary of each idea they acquire in mind. They do NOT bandy ideas in a mushy way. Every one of them has hard-won and carefully considered precision to them. They work constantly on improving the precision of older ideas they have and of discovering new, precise ways that they can acquire and use later on. In this way, they _love_ to interact with others who also have precise ideas, because doing so expands their ability to think well.

This is what makes scientific thinking so unnatural for humans, frankly, and why it takes a lot of training to develop well. It's not something anyone is born to. Either you make this a way of life, or it escapes you. Most folks are perfectly capable of eating, sleeping, and doing the usual necessaries involved in living a life without ever pursuing this kind of thing. We don't need to understand how a leaf is built from the exact same set of chemical tracers as a flower bud, but in certain differing proportions, to be able to eat spinach or sunflower seeds. We just do it. We can conflate (mix up and confuse) many different ideas as a piece and it probably won't interfere with your living. For example, the difference in concept between the coercive force called the "power of the state" can be confused with the concept of "governance" into a single idea of "government" without every having to realize that these are two very different facets and not at all the same thing. A government does not necessarily have to include a coercive component to it, though to enforce some things it often must have some means like that. But we all get along without keeping these ideas distinct in mind and just thinking of government as some mixed-up bag of things and never needing to isolate ideas just to get by and vote, etc.

In science, this will kill you. If you muddle along with muddy ideas that are all confusedly mixed up in a mush and do not constantly work to tease important parts away from each other so that you can see them as separate things that combine in ways, then you will never be a good scientist. The training and rigorous practice required to begin to develop your mind so that this becomes more 2nd nature to you and something that is continually in action is not something anyone was ever born with and it is something that hasn't ever come naturally. Our human history makes this abundantly clear to me. Only in small isolated pockets did such things flower, in spurts here and there, and for a time. And most folks never really struggle with this. They just do as they do to get by, live a life. But for a scientist, whose work depends on their ability to work out the details in precise and predictable ways, they cannot survive if they conflate ideas and cannot isolate important factors so that they can creatively imagine new ways of combining them or introducing other factors that might be interesting.

Precision in concept is ever the path of a scientist. And those who are geniuses at this are impressive folks to meet. No, I'm not even close. Been there, met them, and I know I'm not of their caliber. I just have learned to mimic a little bit, by watching and slowly learning from them. But I can barely hold my own for 5 minutes before some of the better folks. They are way ahead of me. But I do have some ability at imagination that has impressed a few of them, so once in a blue moon I get to put forward some new way of seeing things they enjoy and haven't seen before. That feels good, when it happens.

Last edited by jonk on 07 Feb 2008, 11:47 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Now I understand where u r coming from. You’re not talking about biblical Christianity, which individuals—as you pointed out—do practice (and I consider myself one of those individuals).

You’re talking about what I call, ‘the new Christianity.’ The word ‘Christianity’ has been hijacked semantically by the political right. It has taken words and phrases Americans associate with concepts like ‘good’ and ‘moral’ and changed their meanings to achieve its own agenda. ‘Christianity,’ ‘American,’ ‘the clean air act’ (these are words and phrases that now mean something completely opposite.) So, u r right. Churches are not doing what they should be and many people calling themselves Christians really aren't.

From my observation, ‘the new Christianity' is about being accepted by society. People are wary of you (and that becomes a problem when you have kids and want them to have friends) if you don't do what's accepted. Mothers ask me what church I attend, and it worries them when they find out I don't go. So, they usually ask things like, "Would u mind if your daughter came with us to church sometime?" I always tell them, "I'd love that." So, then they feel relieved. That is not Christianity, but it is being a responsible parent and they identify with that so they call themselves Christians. But they are trying to better their relationship to God, by learning from the ‘Christian leaders’ instead of delving into the Word itself. So instead of learning lessons like the Sermon on the Mount, they learn about consumerism (buying religious bumper stickers, designer Bible covers, jewelry and other things from the boutiques inside the church); propaganda (Christian radio stations, how to vote ‘you’re not a Christian if you don’t vote for George Bush’) and other undesirable things. Plus the experts also tell them what is sin and it’s usually not the stuff they are into anyway, so they feel relieved.

The problem now is that the word Christianity is essentially meaningless. So we get this type of miscommunication going. I’m thinking Christianity in is its true meaning, you are too, but the anti-Christ is 'the new Christianity.'



P.S. I'm sorry I made you feel sad Jon. That wasn't my intention. I felt your ‘serious’ meant ‘I was being silly” but you probably meant ‘not joking; being earnest.’ And when u said, “Read it carefully, before answering,” I took it in a condescending way. But, I’m extremely sensitive and impulsive, and I have trouble thinking before answering, so I reacted defensively. My bad. Sorry about that.

Whatever the anti-Christ is doing, it's working very, very well. The core meaning is pretty much unable to heard at all, anymore. I suppose unless someone else here feels willing to make a different case, I'll assume that between us we've settled the situation. Christianity has a serious crisis at hand.

Hehe. I had Becky read your comment and her first reaction is "She's just like me!!" I suppose that's why we were able to patch things up between us so quickly, eh?

Best wishes,
Jon

eh!

i am an new-born-believer; i haven't much experience of believing in god and not talking about it to everybody, but it has already become an issue for me.

I find it very diffficult to transport/convey my own, necessarily subjective, experience of relationship/connection with god into public discussion because i find myself slipping into one of two equally partial positions, of either superiority, that is i have found out something wonderful here, (completely amazing and stunning and out of this world!! but which atttitude i have discovered must somehow be incomplete/dishonest because it stops me contacting god, i think it has to do with the responsibilities which follow it), OR of "inferiority", as someone pathetically grateful for what i then describe as a subjective/cognitive tool to compensate for my various fragilities!

Leaving the particular demands of christianity aside for the moment, because i am only just beginning to have an inkling of where moral standards might come into religious belief, ( and the split between actions and professed beliefs is actually old hat under the heading of hypocrisy) i would say that the dilemma falls into what i had begun to notice a while back when i was in a liberating rage of throwing out brainwashing by a personal development course, ( rather like catwoman throwing out her fluffy animals) which is the obsession that modern society has with reality. Reality is god. Hence consumerism in the churches. "Let's get real here".
Real as virtue. Real as in what can be measured, repeated, examined, proved before everyone.

Wisdom for instance is a subjective quality, impossible to measure. It no longer has standing in our society in consequence.

Last edited by ouinon on 08 Feb 2008, 12:17 pm, edited 6 times in total.

death be not proud. though some have called thee mighty and gratefull thou art not so

I feel the same way about some things. Perfectly normal. Let me give you an example:

Over the long years I've come to have such a deep appreciation for the tapestry of life on Earth. I often just sit out in the wilderness woods (and I don't think there is anything quite like it in Europe -- Oregon is nearly 1/2 reserved as State or Federal wilderness areas and we are talking here about a state that is by itself about 63 million acres in size) and watch the animals. I also have a small farm of my own that includes quite a variety of free ranging animals I keep (mostly flocks of birds including peacocks and peahens, chickens, guinea hens, turkeys, and ducks and geese.) But I've learned deeply within myself and firsthand through observation the simple beauty of the relationships that animals have with each other and the plants and insects. I've been blessed (yes, I can use the term) to also have a form of foxfire (fungal bioluminescence) on my lands and it causes dead branches, under the right circumstances, to glow almost like a wizard's staff at night!

My own earlier history was more enjoying the study of how cells work (microbiology) as well as studying the usual laws in chemstry and in quantum mechanics. But I later worked some time ago with folks in weather research and then still later actually became a reviewer on global climate change. In the process, I began learning more about how various spheres of our Earth interact on a larger scale, as well. Whole new fields of study had been emerging, not just studying systems in isolation such as forest systems, ocean systems, and so on... but now studying the interactions between these systems. How do the liquid water and ice systems interact, or the forest system interact with air or water, etc. And all of this only gave me that much more appreciation for the beautiful and fantastic place we live in and how all of it interrelates in important ways.

That appreciation now extends from the very tiny (for example, from understanding the mechanisms by which smaller roughly 14-carbon peptide chains are brought together in cells for various purposes and how the various atomic bonds operate) to the human scale (animals, plants, insects) to the larger than human scale (earth, air, ice, water, sun systems) and I have to say that sometimes I just sit back in a giddy sense of pure awe as these concepts telescope back and forth in mind. It's sheer beauty beyond anything I can express. I'm not speaking here strictly of some scientific sense gained from the differential equations that express some of these relationships, or from working with various reports I study on global warming and what we learn from that, or from old training in various fields of science, or from the mathematical images also in mind that help bring things into precise perspective. I'm speaking now of a very PURE sense of awe which isn't about the quantities and numbers or our ability to calculate and understand our world in detail. But about just a sense of wonder and the purest kind of personal love I've come to have for it in the process of all that. And a deep sadness that then flows from understanding what we have done to our Earth, with machete gashes hacking slices through this beautiful tapestry as its threads unwind now.

It's such an appreciation, only grown that much deeper by the detailed understanding gained over a lifetime. And my deep love for our planet is something that fills my every single day. It's inspiring to me and yet it also fills me with sadness and anger, too, because of what happens when humans now represent over 99% of the sheer mass of all land based vertebrates on the planet and consuming renewable resources at a rate well more than 20% greater than the replacement rate.

Jon

Last edited by jonk on 08 Feb 2008, 1:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What obsession with reality are you talking about here? I don't see it and I don't accept your assertion.

I don't see anyone here saying that. Perhaps its different in France?

I don't think you've made any case for your premises, at all, nor have you applied any logic I can follow that, even assuming you were right, would lead me towards this conclusion. It just comes out of thin air, from what I can see.

Can you improve upon your argument?

Maybe then I can comment more.

Jon

reply to first post:: yes, but when you refer to your awe in face of natural world, and your experiences of that, most people will not think you've gone seriously off topic or treat you as a child to be humoured, a bit mentally ill, stupid, arrogant, deluded, etc, whereas when i refer to god i am aware of these kinds of reactions, partly because of my having had them myself in the past, and also because in even referring to god "in public" it suggests that something which can only be "known" subjectively might actually have a serious even essential place in discussion.

That something which someone else can not be shown a picture of/be given figures for might still reasonably "require"/deserve their engagement/consideration. Simply because someone else says so. (It's funny that about "parole"; french word for speech. What has happened to speech. That it used to be possible to say" my word is my bond", because language used to be like a cheque, but now it needs backing up by lots more security devices).

Awe in face of the intricacy of the natural world is not the same thing.

Last edited by ouinon on 08 Feb 2008, 2:32 pm, edited 4 times in total.

I had removed a comment in that post which had said, "at the risk of encouraging your superiority response..." I removed it to avoid biasing anything.

I see that the risk was quite real.

Jon

genuine Why do you see my post as expressing increased superiority ?

Because i say your awe is not the same as belief in god? why is it not possible for my remark to be simple observation of different phenomena, rather than superiority reaction? My belief in god does not HAVE to be the same thing as your awe just with fancier name. It is perfectly possible that it is indeed different. Are you saying that they are the same?

Last edited by ouinon on 08 Feb 2008, 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.