More About Brights and Beliefs 2021

 In April of 2007, I posted a brief of review of Daniel Dennett's book, Breaking the Spell, with additional posts on atheism in 2007 and 2008. Professor Dennett's treatment of religion as a phenomenon and his identification of the belief in belief in God as driving many of the faithful makes sense. 

In my view, any examination of one's faith that does not examine the question of whether a God exists at all is simply mental inertia. The other benefit atheism has for religion is their exercise of the Spirit of Prophesy. Group self-criticism used to be regarded as coming from God in the early Christian Church. The modern Church does not so revere it, so atheists are filling that role. 

Secularism also is useful in reminding us that we put Christ in Yule. I usually point this out every year. Ptolemaic astrology estimates that the Magi would have sought Jesus due to his birth chart on April 17, 6 BCE. My review of the book came out on April 17th of that year. Jung would call that synchronicity. 

The Partial Birth Abortion decision, which took a pass at banning abortion, also came out that month. I would call that irony. You can read it all at http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2007/04/ These essays are still available on this blog, as well as in the companion volume The Christian Left Blogs on Faith, Morals and Rights, 2005 to 2013.

This spring, instead of re-releasing the updated companion volumes, I have been watching YouTube videos, including those featuring Dr. Dennett (who, by the way, is a better Christian than most Christians because he is not looking for favors from a god he does not believe in), as well as many on physics who also favor materialism. I have some observations to add to my prior work, so maybe the universe was having me wait to publish until this essay was written.

One such video had Daniel speaking before an audience of fellow non-believers. They share an attitude that religionists are self-delusional and downright anti-social in their belief in Hell and the need to fear god. I can only call their attitude one thing - religious. Religion and spirituality are two different things. The latter is a commitment to living life beyond one's passions and need not imply a creator, although many do (see below). The former is a social group with a common belief in their truth and the falsity of other beliefs. That particular meeting had all the markings of a Revival.

Perhaps there is something that Brights can learn from the Church while they call out our very persistent flaws so that we can learn from them.

With time, I find myself to be more and more of a materialist, including about religion. The soul can only be experienced materially. Neuroscience has made this abundantly clear. There is a 0.1 second break between what are brain does and what we perceive. Likewise, the life energy of a person can be explained as the time between the beginning of epigenesis at gastrulation until it ends when the brain dies and entropy takes over. There is no physical proof of an immortal soul.

In the interim, I have also been studying the faith of my fathers. A friend in a spiritual program pointed out to me that many of my fellow Ashkenazim were converted by Luther at the sword. Luther, like modern day Evangelicals who support the Jewish State, believed that converting the Jews would bring back the period where Christ rules on Earth. They do not see this as a metaphor and are scandalized at the work of Elaine Pagels on revelation, which shows that prophesy is about current, not future day. 

Prophesy is social commentary. This has been true since the times of Amos and Hosea, whose works were actually the first written scriptures. I learned that last bit by viewing videos on Judaism and the origins of scripture. Back to my family, we were again forcibly converted, this time to Catholicism. Until my parents married, they generally married other ethnically Jewish Catholics, so the religion was lost to us.

My search for truth also had me look for the various names of G_d in Judaism. There are many, even in monotheism. Each relate to an aspect of the divinity, including Shekinah, who is the female aspect. In my own personal faith, the divine feminine is the Holy Spirit. Shekinah is a Her, not an It. The misogynists in the Church will not face that fact. It would mess up their male monopoly.

Learning about the names of God puts the doctrine of the Trinity in perspective. The three persons are merely the way God relates to us - or more properly, the way we relate to God. There is really little difference in the basics of the naming of the divine. We have no way of knowing how God actually exists, if They/It exist. We relate to God on our terms, not God's.

The three persons are Being (He who Is - YHWH), Truth (the Word) and Love (the Spirit). These things can exist in materialism. Being is simply the Universe. Truth is our ability to figure the universe (and each other) out with science and Spirit is our animating principle, the desire to love and be loved. Our breath of life. 

This is where scientific determinism comes in. Physics favors a materialistic view of free will - that there is none. Physics works well on the planetary level. We also now understand it on the micro level. There are simply no missing particles in particle physics. All equations are known. While quantum physics still shows some randomness that goes away with measurement, measurement is possible. We can mostly predict human behavior. 

If astrology is looked at as the action of the solar wind on the magnetosphere, which acts on the ionosphere in the same range as alpha rhythms in the brain, a case can made for determinism, as are the effects of biology and past experience on the future. The belief that time exists in a moment that can be looked at in both directions also argues for determinism. The brain, rather than consciousness, controls behavior and responds to stimulus. Knowing the stimulus predicts behavior rather well.

Or does it. Spirituality in the Twelve Step realm is both deterministic and active. The essence of spirit is not a consciousness that creates human agency, but a brain that can think about its thinking - even if it is the brain doing the thinking. While some people's behavior can be absolutely predicted, the ability to go beyond the animal brain and react in ways that are not predicted shows that rationality and free will may still exist. 

Creativity is not so explainable. It arises with languaging, especially in the creation of new language. People who don't create language and concepts have less freedom than those who do. While thought may simply be a response to stimuli or the random firing of neurons as predictable from chaos theory, the ability to analyze that stimulus and put aside biological reactions - such as being anti-racist rather than responding as the animal brain does by fearing the outside - supports some kind of active will. 

It is possible to analyze with personality (and Jungian psychology is a good way to do it) and change behavior. The more one knows about themselves, the more one can change their reactions - with or without help from the outside. Seeking outside help is a hallmark of free will. It engages the behavior of others, with the interaction being even less predictable. 

Time may be one moment, but mankind does not have the ability to observe that moment. This is an attribute of divinity - the going outside of time. Materialism dictates that we are within time, so the future cannot be known by us. There may yet be a plane where C is infinite, which means that movement through space and time is instantaneous. We simply cannot get there in this life.

The preference between the monotheistic religions and materialism is not based on rationality. Existentialism teaches that choice that can be informed by data, but is not determined by it.  Choices are acts of will, not decisions based on analysis. We make choices to believe and not believe and then create logical systems to justify them.

There are a lot of flaws in religion, especially Catholicism. It is misogynistic, authoritarian and superstitious. The people enable the priestly class and all but a few believe more in the belief in God than God Herself (this is the Age of the Spirit, so going with Her is more appropriate than It or Them).

For God to exist, She must be Humble - something that religionists choke on. Essentially, this means that God does not need human worship or moral behavior. Her Love must be unconditional and universal, even for Brights, if She exists at all. In moral terms, a humble god must be responded to with a humanistic. 

The God Meme (or Theodicy) is a change in how we relate to Her, or to the concept of Her. we need not keep the one we inherited. Indeed, all memes change with time and language. My YouTube studies also include the evolution of language. It is constant and every 500 years, it is absolute.

The sexual teachings of Christianity are based on bad scriptural scholarship (bad meaning non-existent). The story of Eden has to do with blame - the knowledge of the evil of others. There was no original offense, it is a built in tendency. The way Jesus dealt with it was to teach universal forgiveness, not universal damnation. Any reference he made to Hell and the Devil was a reference to what he knew in his day, when the Zoroastrian mythology was common knowledge in the region.

Jesus was not an Ubermensch. He would not have had knowledge of any wrongness, being fully human. He was certainly not Asexual. Christian sexual teachings go back to the misogyny common to the Neo-Platonism of the fourth century of the common era. Irony strikes again. During the persecutions, it was the morality of state, which true to form deified its rulers, which put forth the Neo-Platonic ideal. For centuries, martyrs died resisting both the deity of the emperor and his religion. After Constantine, the belief in Christ was turned to a belief in Christ the Roman. A sad irony.

Today, the Eucharist in Adoration, a particularly Roman custom, is a symptom of Magicism. The clerical language around the Sacraments are magic words. Rather than seeking the presence of God in Communion, it has become a power of the priest. Since Clement, the pastor/bishop/patriarch of the Antioch city church first used Communion as a weapon to command loyalty. This was not an original abuse. It evolved. It can be devolved too.

Priestly holiness, it turns out, is based in the undistinguished asexuality of those who remain in the priesthood who are not gay (and if gay priests get married rather than ordained, it will be solely asexual). The tragedy is that many are not out to themselves. If they accepted Gender Theory, they would be healthy and more humble regarding sexual teaching. Those who are also stuck in a childish asexuality are the ones who abuse children and teens (although some gay priests likely get into non-abusive relationships with gay youth). 

The practice of celibacy stunts the sexual health of both gender identities, but only the Aces prey on children. The solution is to out the asexuals and expand the priesthood. Accepting gender theory also lets gay priests mature and have appropriate and open relationships, ending the attraction to youth. That the human institution evolved in this way is not a reason to deny the possible existence of God, it shows the need to reform the priesthood and the Sacraments.

In the first century of the common era, what became the Mass was celebrated as part of Shabbat. It can be again, with public worship retained as well. If the host is seen as a miracle rather than a magic item, the fear that it will be abused goes away. Christ is experienced in reception, not in adoration. I have found no use for the latter devotion. Jesus would have a fit he saw the practice he started devolve into idolatry.

Let me mention the after-life. Studies have shown that those who experience life after death and return have likely gone through a natural process where the brain fires at all once when it ceases function. There can be no memory of an actual afterlife. If one is truly dead, that which remembers is also dead. There is no way to really know what happens after that point.

Again, choosing faith in life after death is a choice, not a logical conclusion (putting aside the experience of those who are mediums - not the paid psychics but people whose brains operate that way). The question of this ability is interesting, as it relates to the discovery of a part of the brain that is sensitive to feelings for a god. There are others who do not have that region.

Is this an evolutionary response to a belief in the belief in God or the ability to respond to Her. It can be seen either way. Like the afterlife, this is a choice.

The key feature of Catholicism is the belief in the Resurrection as historical fact. Doctrine is that the Apostles were just the Twelve. History states that apostles are all the witnesses to the risen Jesus. The bishops have taken over this witness as an official duty, proclaiming the resurrection each Easter and each Mass. 

Can the Church, with all of its flaws, be a reliable witness to this one thing? Writings from the early Pauline letters, dated to that time period, shows that such witness is not out of the question. Still, the same scriptures say that happy are those who believe without seeing. Whether that happiness is eternal or in community may or may not matter. It is a choice.

This brings us to Communion. The cynical proof of God is that people actually experience Christ in the Sacrament, despite, ot because of the Church. Is this experience reality or choice?

Giving sacraments to adults may provide the answer. Brights who were not baptized as a child can give it a whirl, skepticism in hand. If they experience the indwelling of the Spirit, as I have heard the newly baptized relate, then the evidence is valid. 

Evangelicals believe that the Eucharist is commemorative rather than actual and they experience it that way. Give them Catholic or high church Protestant Communion and ask them if they have a different experience. I have experienced that Presence at Mass, as with other Sacraments; also at Presbyterian and Anglican Eucharist. It is more than group dynamics. 

On one occasion, I took an Evangelical friend to Mass (we were on a business trip). His experience was like mine rather than he was used to. I don't consider this priestly magic. It is simply a minor miracle. This validates the cynical proof of God. It is also a replicable experiment.

Just maybe some believers are not so irrational afterall. 

This is not to say that the Church is fine the way it is. I have dedicated my life to bringing it to what it can be. It can be a powerful force for goodness, especially in a cooperative society which goes beyond government. The Spirit of Prophesy bids me to act. I leave the result to a choice to believe. Proceeding without hope would be irrational.