I Re-took the Belief-O-Matic Quiz

I was not a little surprised that Reform Judaism got the top spot. My impression of Reform Jews is that they're a bunch of pantheist hip wannabes, and there is absolutely no room in my beliefs for pantheism. Maybe I just unfairly perceived them. Anyway, I coveted Jewishness when I was a kid, so maybe it isn't so outlandish that both Reform and Orthodox Judaism got the top spots. I was not surprised by Sikhism, Islam, and Liberal Quakerism being high on the list, and in fact I've been very interested in all three (but for conversion purposes, I was only interested in Liberal Quakerism). Baha'i does not merit a comment from me.

My scores are below. If you want to take the quiz to see what your best religious fit is, it's right here.

The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its
less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However,
even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith,
or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of
how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith
appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

1. Reform Judaism (100%)
2. Orthodox Judaism (87%)
3. Sikhism (86%)
4. Baha'i Faith (84%)
5. Islam (84%)
6. Liberal Quakers (81%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (74%)
8. Jainism (72%)
9. Unitarian Universalism (71%)
10. Orthodox Quaker (63%)
11. Mahayana Buddhism (60%)
12. Hinduism (58%)
13. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (54%)
14. Theravada Buddhism (54%)
15. Seventh Day Adventist (51%)
16. New Thought (51%)
17. Neo-Pagan (50%)
18. Scientology (49%)
19. Jehovah's Witness (47%)
20. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (47%)
21. New Age (46%)
22. Secular Humanism (42%)
23. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (41%)
24. Eastern Orthodox (39%)
25. Roman Catholic (39%)
26. Taoism (36%)
27. Nontheist (32%)

A Normal Atheist's Reaction to Christian Atheism

This man's puzzlement with the label Christian Atheism are some of the reasons I decline to call myself a Christian Atheist.

More on the Rich Young Man

One of the New Testaments sitting around in my house has a "Harmony of the Gospels" in the back of it, showing which parts of Jesus' life are talked about where. I should have known it before, but I just realized this afternoon that two events Unitarians use to argue against the supposed deity of Christ, which are the Baptism of Jesus and the story of the rich young man, are in all three of the Synoptic Gospels but nowhere in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John does have a whole lot of stuff that isn't in the Synoptic Gospels, like the preface about the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among men, the parable about the bread of life, and all those verses that seem to fit so neatly into an Evangelical perspective. It should be no wonder that when I went door-to-door soul winning when I was younger, all the verses that I referenced that weren't in the Romans Road were in John.

In the story of the rich young man, Jesus tells the young man (in 3 different gospels!) "Why do call me good? There is none good, but God." Implying, to the simple reader, that Jesus is saying that he isn't God. When I told my dad about this story not being in John, though, my dad *corrected* me and said that Jesus nowhere here claims to not be God, that he isn't telling the man to not call him good, and that he therefore is actually claiming to be God. I personally don't see how that fits into the story. If a man asks another guy why he's calling him good and then says that only God is good, the implication that he himself is God isn't the first thing you think of. And you typically wouldn't have any need to think of it, unless of course you already believe that Jesus is God and you have to somehow try to reconcile it with these three passages of the Bible which suggest that Jesus is in fact a mere human.

John is a very different kind of book from the other three gospels. I personally think it has a completely different agenda than the other gospels. And the interpretations people give to the three Synoptic Gospels to make them adhere to the rest of the New Testament are just as aggressive as the claims within these gospels about fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament.

The Rich Young Ruler

There is a Christian story about a rich young man who came to Jesus and asked what he can do to get eternal life, and then went away very sad because the answer he got sounded too hard for him to do - to sell everything he had and give the proceeds to the poor. This story is told three times throughout the New Testament - Matthew 19:16-30, Mark 10:17-31, and Luke 18:18-30. Many Evangelical Protestants, including the fundamental Baptists among whom I was raised, interpret this story to accord with their almost antinomian Free Grace soteriology. "What Jesus means here," they say, "is that no one is or can ever be good enough to go to heaven by their own works. Jesus is actually saying that no one can or should even try do anything to get to heaven, besides asking God for salvation and trusting Him."

Granted, there are many parts of the Bible that are flat out ambigous, and that need to be given a nuanced interprettation. Besides those ambiguous passages, other parts of the Bible need to be given a meaning that isn't the obvious one, if they are to accord with other parts of the Bible (or with the overall agenda that's attributed to them). And I think the story of the Rich Young Ruler is an example of the latter one of these.

The standard Evangelical interpretation of this story simply doesn't work. Or at least, it doesn't work nearly as well as a salvation-through-works reading. When a man approaches the Son of God and asks what he can do to get eternal life, you'd think that - if the Son of God is all he's cracked up to be - the words that then come from Jesus' mouth would shed some light on how someone can get eternal life. And the words that Jesus says next are "You know the commandments - don't commit adultery, don't murder, don't steal, don't perjure, and honor your parents." The most obvious meaning here is that the answer to this man's question about what he should do to get eternal life is that he should keep the Ten Commandments. If Jesus had meant something other than that, then maybe he would have said something other than that.

When the man says that he already does keep the commandments, Jesus tells him that there's one thing that he lacks - he has to sell everything he has and give all the proceeds to the poor, and follow him. It doesn't look like Jesus is adding these on as things you have to do as well as keeping the commandments. It looks like he's saying that these things are part and parcel of keeping the commandments. In the context of an imperialist government where being rich implies being well connected to someone who makes their living aggressing against others, it's understandable that someone would associate wealthiness with theft. This condition isn't entirely absent from our own society, since many people today make their living through government largesse.

But even if we don't read "sell all you have and give to the poor" as part of the Ten Commandments, it very clearly looks like it is part of what Jesus describes as a means to salvation. I don't think this is mere hyperbole. True, Jesus does concede that with men this is impossible - but then he says "but with God all things are possible." What thing is he talking about that is impossible with men but possible with God? Maybe the tasks he just prescribed for a rich man to get eternal life - selling everything and giving all to the poor.

If Jesus were speaking merely in hyperbole, as the Evangelicals wish he were, then why pick on the rich people? Why does the rich man go to hell and poor Lazarus go to heaven? Why does Jesus say that it's harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle? If Jesus were merely talking about all of mankind's total depravity, then maybe he would have said "any man". But he refers specifically to *rich* men, and probably because he is specifically pointing out attachment to wealth as an impediment to salvation.

All Evangelicals (and Christians, for that matter) believe that God's intervention is a necessary ingredient to salvation. Jesus' paying the penalty for all of everyone's sins so that a free ride to heaven can be given to anyone who asks for it, is one predominant way for Evangelicals to view it. Another is that God handpicked everyone who He decided to fit into the category of "Not Going to Hell." This passage about the rich young man clearly does give God a role in salvation, but it's very different from the role given to Him by the above two views.

The most straightforward reading of this passage shows that God helps people get saved, but not by dying for them and giving them a free ride. There is a means to salvation, which is very clearly given as keeping the commandments, giving everything to the poor, and following Jesus. This means is recognized as being very hard, next to impossible, or flat-out impossible for humans to do; but it is also recognized as possible with God's help.

Those Evangelicals who give the Bible a fairer reading than what the Free Gracers do, believe in something called "Lordship Salvation". They believe that good works necessarily result from getting saved, and that anyone who is truly saved will start doing good works as a result of it. But this view doesn't accord with these passages about the rich young man, where Jesus describes works as a means to salvation, not as a mere result of it.

Though I was raised a Baptist, my beliefs have changed to the point that there is no practical use to even calling myself a Christian. So I can't describe anything I wrote here as being what I actually believe. I might believe this if I still were a Christian. If I were to take this reading of these passages seriously, I would have to downplay or radically reinterpret other passages of the Bible. And that's okay. I don't think every bit of a text is necessarily compatible with every other bit of it - especially of a piece as composite as the Christian Bible.

More on the Ebionites

In a recent post of mine I wondered whether the Ebionites disappeared. Didn't have to worry about that, though, since after a good while of clicking around I was able to find some of the users I was looking for, and also find other users who would fit the description of an Ebionite. I have not found anyone who openly identifies as Ebionite. What I had to do to find people to classify as Ebionite was look for people who identify themselves as followers of YHWH and Yeshua AND who condemn Paul.

The impression that I get from this loose group I have overviewed is that contemporary non-trinitarian Judaic Christianity (they don't call themselves Christian, but I have to use that word anyway) is basically foaming-at-the-mouth evangelical fundamentalism minus Paul's epistles. Whether these users should be classified in the same group as the operators of this website, who openly do identify as Ebionite, can be a matter of debate. Ebionite.org doesn't place a whole lot of emphasis on the end times, while these users do. Maybe the owners of ebionite.org do believe in the end times, and share beliefs about the New World Order and what not, but just decline to advertise it on the website. I should note that the "original" Ebionites probably did have apocalyptic beliefs.

If I were to classify these users' political beliefs, I would call them paleoconservatives of the Alex Jones variety (though I actually don't know where these users stand on Zionism, which paleoconservatives typically virulently oppose). This isn't because they themselves identify as paleoconservatives; I just notice that there's a whole lot of overlap between them and paleoconservatives, especially beliefs about all the world's major political institutions being dominated by a very small group of economic elites, beliefs about apocalyptic political and economic turbulence occuring in the very near future, efforts to prepare for such turbulence, conspiracy theories, and hidden knowledge.

The following is a short list of Youtube users who I would call Ebionite or Ebionite-isch. This isn't all of them; there are definitely more. Maybe many more. And there might be many Ebionites who are quite differnt from these users.

http://www.youtube.com/user/LiveForGodsKingdom Ebionite End-Timer, survivalist, and bi-polar patient who stopped taking his meds during his conversion.

http://www.youtube.com/user/kalamata777

http://www.youtube.com/user/WitnessOfYHWH

http://www.youtube.com/user/wayisnarrow Also an End-Timer.

http://www.youtube.com/user/HisWordsAreTruth

http://www.youtube.com/user/YoelBenYsryael Also anti-NWO

http://www.youtube.com/user/bendixen12 Ebionite worship music

http://www.youtube.com/user/fyrstikken I have no idea if this is an actual Ebionite, but he/she does deny Paul.

Also of interest:
http://www.youtube.com/user/yshuaknesset http://www.congregationisrael.net/ Like the Nation of Islam, but Ebionite-isch

Have the Ebionites vanished from Youtube?

I have a link that would lead to the youtube channel of a real life authentic Ebionite - if that account weren't deleted. I was very disappointed to find out that this channel is no more. This user was in the middle of a thriving youtube community of Ebionites, and there were scores of friends and subscribers on his page who identified as non-Christian, Jewish revivalist followers of Yeshua. These weren't your typical seekers attracted by gnosticism, nature-olatry, and vegetarianism (though most of these guys probable were vegetarian). These were all out bearded guys who recite Torah in Hebrew and read reconstructions of the Gospel of the Ebionites. This one user wrote that he celebrates the High Holy Days based on a lunar calendar, rather than the modern solar calendar, because the lunar calendar is more Biblical. He would post videos of himself sitting on his balcony waiting for the sun to set and for Shabbat to begin. He would post videos in which he would claim that Paul was a Hellenizing pagan who led people away from the teachings of Yashua and introduced such idolotrous ideas as the divinity of Christ and salvation through his death.

One of his friends posted a video on his own channel describing what it was like for him to go shopping while wearing a kippah, and encouraging the viewer to try wearing one too. Another guy posted videos about how that the followers of Yeshua are called to be different, that it is worldly to publicly present oneself in clothes that highlite the contours of the body, and thus that shirts should be baggy and untucked, and that the necktie is an article of vanity and a symbol of bourgeois bondage (he called it a noose).

Now that that channel I looked for is gone, I'm having a very hard time finding youtube videos about the Evyonut that are posted by actual Ebionites. Maybe the Ebionite circle is well tucked away, and it just takes a lot more clicking around to find them again. But as of now I can't find them and I am disappointed.

If they have truly vanished from Youtube, then all Ebionite self-definition that I could see occurs through a couple websites that haven't had a new post in a couple years. I may have seen the life and death of a religion in my lifetime.

The Evyonut may classify as an internet religion. Thanks to instant and long-distance ways of communicating - like the internet - people can share whole packages of belief and practice with each other without ever meeting face-to-face.

I used to think that libertarianism and the factions that support Ron Paul were internet religions. That idea was supported by the sobering difference between Ron Paul's sweeping successes in online polls and what happend in the polling booths. The RonPaulians kept winning online because that's the planet they live on. But there is evidence (though yes, it is online evidence) that small-government anti-war folk congregate in real life too.

If a movement were more than an internet religion, then within its online presence there would probably be documentation of groups meeting face-to-face - videos of people celebrating a holiday together, or reading scripture or praying together, or something like that. There are videos online of libertarian and RonPaulian lectures, meetings, and demonstrations. I have not seen a single video of more than one Ebionite in the same room together.

I use "more than an internet religion" reluctantly, because it sounds a bit paternalist in that it implies that internet religion is an inferior way of "doing church". But let's be frank here. If 99% of your interpersonal religious interaction with others who share your beliefs occurs online, then your fellowship is in a very real way relegated to cyberspace. This is a substantial problem for most religions, because religiosity (especially that based on the Hebrew Bible) is very much about day-to-day interactions with others. There is an approved mode of living, which regards many more aspects of you life than your online social media, and which can hardly occur without the cooperation and support of like-minded others. If everyone you know who shares your beliefs lives so far away that you only see them in online videos, then you will have a hard time following the approved mode of living. If your religious identity is to survive as an online religion, then your approved mode of living must be reduced to an atomoton religiosity.

The approved mode of living is so much more than reading this book or that book. It's about how to interact with your neighbors, your employees, and your supervisors; it's about who and when to fuck; it's about what to eat and how to grow or raise it; it's about what to wear and how you'll get it.

Now, since many aspects of the day-to-day Evyonut were borrowed from Orthodox Judaism, it is possible that an Ebionite can live in near-complete conformity with his approved mode of living if he (yes, he) lives around Orthodox Jews. So maybe the Ebionites weren't total atomotons. But then, maybe they were all absorbed into Judaism.

I can only speculate about what happened to the Ebionites. Maybe they still do exist, and I just haven't re-found them yet. Maybe they're meeting together in houses and reading Torah and the prophets, and Matthew and James, and I just haven't seen videos of it yet. Maybe I'm the one who's constraining things to online videos - maybe I should be more willing to go find them with my body. I'd be a lousy sociologist of religion if all the sources I relied on were youtube videos and Wikipedia articles.

I should be confident. I doubt a whole religion can go cold within a matter of months - especially one whose adherents are so spread out. I'll probably find a video of theirs in time. But let this be the lesson for now - if you want to start your own religion, having a number of fellow-believers live in proximity with each other might be nice.

(For the record, I am not an Ebionite. My interest in the Ebionites is purely "academic". I'm intrigued by obscure and reconstructionary religions and other weird things, and Ebionism is obscure, reconstructionary, and weird, and so I like reading about it, just as I like reading about Atenism, Satanism, Jainism, and Anarcho-Nationalism.)

C.C., and R.C. Sprowl Jr.

In his latest comment in the conversation I quote in my previous post, C.C. gave a link to this blog, where the author writes that Romans 13 commands obedience not just to government as it ought to be, but to government as it is. "That means governments whose authority is on shaky grounds, as well as governments whose activity is on shaky grounds, if they are the ones in power, are to be submitted to, unless or until they command us to do what God clearly forbids, or forbid us to do what God clearly commands."

What God clearly commands, as C.C. pointed out, is to give up to the government however much money it demands no matter what that government is going to spend it on.

This link doesn't really address the issue I raised, which is that there cannot be a moral duty to fund something that would be immoral to commit.

A few times I've heard people call Christianity a slave religion, and this is one of those areas where I think that name is more than appropriate.

A Facebook Comments Conversation on the Census, God, Tax Resistance, etc.

[as a status update] J.R.B.: Does anyone know if you actually have to fill out the Census (i.e., did you or someone you know get in trouble for not filling it out in 2000)?

[after a couple comments about fines] C.C.: Yes (I Peter 2:13).

X: Constitutionally, they are only allowed to ask you how many are in your household. But the law means nothing to lawless men.

They're training people to go to households that don't respond to all of the questions to ask them in person. They've sent a letter to our church requesting the use of the building to train these "enumerators." If they don't get the answers they want, they'll starting issuing the fines mentioned above. I'm not sure how efficient the process will be (like how many people will actually get visits and/or fines), but that's what the threats are this time around.

Me: I don't know if 1 Peter 2:13 applies to the coerced surrender of information.

I actually applied to work in the Census. I took the application test, which could have been aced by an 8th grader, and then decided that working in a project that empowers a government with information on its citizens would violate my convictions. The job would have been exactly as X describes. I don't know what was going through my head, I was already an anarchist by then. I guess unemployment + student debt does things to people. There are a few things worse than unemployment, and working in the Census would be one of them.

C.C.: Isaiah, considering the context of I Peter (i.e., the apostle is writing to people who have been driven from their homes by a violently hostile government), I think we can fairly say that if they were called to submit to that government, it goes without question that we can answer some inane questions on a form.

I don't believe all of the questions asked are constitutional, so on a civic level I'm appalled by the current census; however, as a Christian, I'm not sinning by answering questions the government has no business asking, so I have no business resisting those whom God has placed over me (cf. Romans 13:1-6).

J.R.B.: I, honestly, don't know what I'm going to do with my form right now. I'll probably just completely fill it out, and turn it in. Not so much in a Romans 13 way; just in a 'I don't want to get hassled way.' I'm pretty sure God likes civil disobedience at times, but I don't think the Census is where I'm going to make my stand. It's just not that important to me.

Me: C.C., that was a good point you raised about the context, which is why I wonder why passages like these were put in the Bible in the first place.

I think the point you were trying to make by bringing up the 1 Peter verse wasn't so much that we're *not* sinning by anwering questions the government has no business asking, but that we *are* sinning *against God* by refusing to answer those questions. That looks like an uncomfortable position for freedom-loving Christians to take, since (a) it conflates morality with obedience, and (b) it draws no line in the sand to show where we may and should stop obeying.

If Romans 13:1-6 and 1 Peter 2:13 mean we have a God-given duty to answer some inane questions on a form, then they also mean we have a God-given duty to pay for abortions, since the Federal government subsidizes those with our tax dollars, and we are to render tribute to whom tribute is due.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something...

C.C.: Isaiah, I think that even though all of the Bible was written in a certain context that almost always differs from our own, we can still fairly and confidently draw out principles that apply to us. That's why even though we're certainly in a better situation than the people to whom Peter and Paul wrote, it's not unfair or inaccurate to look at the heart of what they're saying and apply it to ourselves. I think we really can look at the very different situation in which the apostles and the early church found themselves and still learn a lot from it.

You do understand what I'm saying about I Peter, but I'm not sure I understand your objections. As to the first one, of course there is a close relationship between the concepts of morality and obedience for Christians; I'm not sure why anybody would want to obey something they consider immoral. If obedience is the commanded "default" reaction of Christians to their government (which I believe these passages assert), then obedience is the moral requirement. Secondly, other passages in the Bible do give us examples where it is the moral imperative to "obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). However, these are certainly the exception to the rule.

Again, looking to the contexts of the passages shows that disobedience is wrong in this case. Romans 13 specifically points out that Christians are required to pay taxes (v. 6), and that was to a government which was actively persecuting and murdering Christians. The tax money they were compelled to pay went toward paying for crosses and keeping wild animals, but they were still compelled to pay them. As detestable as abortion is, it doesn't trump the policies which the early church faced, and they still had to pay.

Me: So if I interpreted those verses correctly, and I think you're saying I did, they mean that Christians have a God-given duty to give money to someone who they know for sure will spend that money on things that are flat out immoral.

C.L.: Depends on the context. If those irresponsible and immoral people are the civil government, and that money is in the form of taxes, yes, that's what I'm saying.

I don't think the Bible forbids civil disobedience in every instance. The fact that our government is a form of democracy means that we as a people have the ability to overthrow the government simply by voting bad leaders out. As I've already pointed out, the government which makes demands of Christians that would be sinful to keep (e.g., worshiping other gods, not gathering together to worship, not praying, not evangelizing, not teaching their children the faith) must not be obeyed in those instance because obedience to the government would be disobedience to God.
At the same time, disobedience and disrespect for the civil authorities (including those appointed by the chief of state) in non-essential matters (e.g., taxes and censuses) are disobedience and disrespect for the God who sovereignly placed them in their position (again, cf. Romans 13:1-7, I Peter 2:13-25). Peter makes it clear that the heart of this command is for Christians to do the right thing (here, showing honor and respect) even if it is to our detriment, just as Christ "did the right[eous] thing" by taking on and paying the debt for sinners who did not and could never deserve it. In fact, he explicitly says that the oppressed Christians of his day were to "honor the emperor" (I Peter 2:17) who was actively trying to wipe every one of them out. As terribly as the authorities may use our tax money, we do not sin by "pay[ing] to all what is owed them" (Romans 13:7).

Me: I don't see how a government mandate to fund murder is much less repugnant than a government mandate to burn incense in front of a statue.

I should be clear that I'm not so much saying that we sin when we pay our taxes as I am saying this: that the payment for an unwarranted abortion is a payment for murder, that informed payment for murder is participation in it, that an enforced mandate to pay for an unwarranted abortion is coercion to participate in murder, that no lover of life would pretend that we have some *moral* obligation to participate in murder, and that the only obligation we have to participate is duty "only for wrath," and not "for conscience sake". Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying it's all your fault if someone forced you to do it or pay for it. But I am saying that it's totally incoherrent to say that it's wrong to do it and then say that we have a God-given duty to pay for it. If it's a sin to do it, then there can't be a moral duty to pay for it.

So no, refusing to pay up to someone who you know is going to spend your money on murder is not disrespectful. I also don't see what's so disrespectful about refusing to answer a list of intrusive questions.

I might update this post if C.C. responds to my last comment, but judging on the way these things go, I think this conversation is pretty much - shall we say - completed.

Non-Theistic Religions aren't necessarily Atheist Religions

A theistic religion is a religion that gives center stage to something or someone we can call "God". The stage might be the role of Creator or Sustainer or Most Intimate Chum (or it might be all of those) but whatever the role is, it's the most important one. And God, however you define it, is going to occupy that role.

A non-theistic religion is a religion that does not give center stage to anyone we can call "God". This doesn't mean, though, that the believers reject belief in God and all gods. It just means that non-physical beings don't take center stage.

Let's look at a list of non-theistic religions. There's Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, Confucianism, a few others that I won't list here, and others that I don't remember. Followers of each of the four that I list have accepted the existence of at least ghosts. Both Buddhism and Jainism accept the existence of pretty much all Hindu gods.

If you go to the Jain temple in Milpitas, you'll see a shrine to Dhurga and a couple other Hindu gods. This isn't a belief in a symbolic god; it's belief in actual beings who watch over earthly affairs and intervene to protect the temples and the people who worship in them. Jains wouldn't reject the existence of Jesus or God, either. They just think, as do many Buddhists, that every single soul is subject to Samsara - that is, being reborn and treated according to how ethical you act. The Jewish God has yet to die, and when He does, he will be reborn into a position that reflects how justly he ruled as God. He may have to live hundreds, or thousands, or millions more times before he can attain moksha.

The ones who get most of the adoration in a Jain temple are a set of 24 ancient religious leaders who attained moksha and now do absolutely nothing but sit blissfully and peacefully (that's what you do in Nirvana). Worshipping them is more like honoring someone for adhering to a very strict ethical path, than worshipping any kind of God or god - you don't get favors from or have any personal relationship with these ones. We can say that it's really the path itself that's being worshipped. Center stage, then, isn't really occupied by anyone.

But though no God or gods take center stage in Jainism, Jainism can't be called atheist according to today's meaning of the word. Atheists, as understood today, reject all supra-empirical reality - if you can't prove it, they don't believe it. Jains and most Buddhists, though, believe in supraempirical reality.

For one thing, Jains believe that the souls of their 24 Tirthankaras are sitting peacefully in Nirvana. That is just as much a belief in the "superantural" (I don't like using that word) as the belief that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father. (Buddhists don't believe that Buddha exists, because if he is Buddha then he attained Nirvana, and Buddha himself defined Nirvana as the annihilation of the self.)

Also, Jains (and most Buddhists too) believe that each one of us who isn't going to attain moksha in this life is going to be reborn in a future life. This is just as supra-empirical as the belief that those who are saved go to heaven after they die. There's no way we can possibly prove that any one of us was someone else in a past life. And so, an atheist would reject belief in reincarnation for the same reason he would reject belief in heaven and hell.

To be a properly atheist religion, the belief system can't have any room for any thing whose existence can't be proven. God, Nirvana, Karma (as understood by Jains, which is as heavy dust particles that cling to your soul when you sin and literally weigh you down so that you're reborn as a lower life form), and rebirth all have to go out the window for the religion to be an atheist religion.

Three religions immediately come to mind when I think of atheist religions: Objectivism, LaVeyan Satanism (which can be described as Objectivism with robes and candles), and Marxism. All three of these reject God and all supernatural phenomena. Each one of them is a religion because each one of them is dogmatic - they're just not dogmatic about God (or rather, they're dogmatic about him not existing).

There are other atheist religions. There's atheist Judaism and atheist Christianity, and if it hasn't already come about, sooner or later there's going to be atheist Islam. There used to be an all-out atheist school of Hinduism called Carvaka, and from what I see there's at least one person today who identifies with that school. If there are others who share their Hindu and atheist beliefs with that blogger, then Carvaka is risen from the dead.

An answer to

this very good question.



This phrase got cut off at the end: "...clothing my uniqueness in an air of religiosity."

More on God and Morality

Many of the arguments I see about whether we need God revolve around the issues of God's existence and Creation. The question to ask, though, isn't whether we would be here without God, but whether we could be moral without God. That is in fact what drives theists - they're trying to defend the obligations they live by and want everyone else to live by.

Most theists would give at least one of two answers to the question of God's role in morality. One of the answers is that God actually determines what's right and wrong. I've already written a good bit about this, but I'll say here that this view precludes the whole idea of moral principle. If right and wrong depend completely on what God says, if - as Luther and Calvin wrote - things that are right wouldn't be right without the will of God, and things that are wrong wouldn't be wrong without the will of God, then morality depends on somebody's will and not on immutable moral principles. To say that morality is merely relative to God's will is to embrace moral relativism, which is no morality at all.

The other answer is that our imperfect human minds cannot know what is right without God pointing us in the right direction. Even if morality can exist without God, they say, our human minds always have the capacity to make an error, and everything that passes through a human mind is bound to be distorted. According to this answer, God's direction is supposed to insure us against inevitable human error. But can God's direction insure us against inevitable human error?

Even if God himself were to descend in a physical form and open the gold box of all morality and let each one of us see all morality with our own eyes, we're still seeing it with imperfect human eyes and processing it with imperfect human minds. Information would still be handled by humans, and so would still be subject to inevitable human error.

Let's leave the hypothetical now, and talk about what fundamentalists and many evangelicals actually believe. The Bible is supposed to be the word of God, and all that humans need for their present condition is to read the Bible and follow it. Or, that's what they say, until you ask them about things like slavery. Not a single Bible verse condemns slavery, and yet most every Jew and Christian considers slavery a sin.

Christians haven't always condemned it, though. Conservative Christians in America in the mid-19th century thought that since no Bible verse condemns slavery and since the Bible actually seems to condone it, slavery isn't a sin. The issue was so big that it split denominations. The Methodists split in 1844, the Baptists split in 1845 (that's why there are Southern Baptists), and the Presbyterians split in 1857. The disagreement was over how to interpret the Bible. The liberal Yankees couldn't find Biblical passages to condemn slavery, and, from the perspective of Southern conservatives, were relying on something other than the Bible for moral guidance.

Frankly, any time you use a Biblical passage to condemn slavery you're really reading the condemnation into it. Your own ideas and the norms you were raised with act like a lense to filter out the Bible verses that bother you, highlight the Bible verses you emphatically agree with, and give certain verses the meaning you want them to have. Whenever you read the Bible, you're introducing to your understanding of it various ideas that are not contained in the Bible itself.

Just look at how many disagreements fundamentalists have with each other over what the Bible really means. If all or at least most fundamentalists are saved and if they read the same word of God and listen to the same Holy Spirit, then apparently being saved and reading the Bible and listening to the Holy Spirit aren't enough to know for sure what God wants. If God is telling us all the same thing (and he would be fooling somebody if he isn't), then why do we disagree over what he's trying to tell us? The reason must be that on at least one issue each of us has a hard time telling what's coming from God and what isn't. Even though the Holy Spirit dwells in each saved Christian, the Christian still has an imperfect human mind that can be deceived by imperfect human reasoning. The indwelling of the Spirit cannot insure the Christian against his own mind.

There is a third answer to the question of God's role in morality, but I've only read it and I can't remember anyone seriously saying it to me in person. This is the idea that without God human beings would be so depraved that they wouldn't even want to be good or have any moral opinion. My interaction with unbelievers would suggest otherwise. And what about unbelievers who passionately share moral positions with conservative Christians, like the pro-life atheists and agnostics? These people seem to have a Christian morality but without God. Now, many Christians believe that God can and does work in and through unbelievers (no one would get saved if God doesn't). If God really does, then maybe obeying someone you believe to be God isn't necessary for a moral life. Of course, saying that God secretly guides unbelievers to be good is still attributing our morality to God's direction, and I addressed that in the previous 6 paragraphs.

The claim that we need God for morality seems dubious. That is, if we think of God as a person. If we think of God merely as The Good, then by definition it's impossible to be good without God. Or, as Roderick Long wrote, "The only intelligible conception of God is one that identifies God with logic and morality, or what contemporary philosophers call 'the space of reasons', which is what I think the Gospel of John was hinting at in speaking of the Logos as what is 'with' God and is what God is."

But now, by logic and morality, do we mean the human practice of doing logic and moral theory, or do we mean the abstract "forms" of logic and morality themselves? Because if we mean a human effort, then we're talking about something fallible, and if we mean the abstract forms, then we're talking about something that still requires fallible human effort to know.

I think Long uses "logic and morality" to mean the abstract "forms" of logic and morality themselves. If that's the case, then he's talking about God as something that still requires fallible human effort to know, and it seems this idea of God has the same problem that I mentioned above - that it doesn't ensure us against inevitable human error. But insurance against human error is a God criterion that the conventional theists came forward with; it's not a God criterion that Long uses, or that I use. And so, the fact of inevitable human error despite God is a problem for conventional theists, not for Long. All that Long is doing is trying to help the theist coherently say "Yes, you need God to be moral". If you define God as morality itself, as Long does, then the sentence makes sense: "Yes, you need morality to be moral."

Bisectuality

An article that the Sword of the Lord borrowed from the Institute on Religion and Democracy caught my eye: "The apparent rejection of a controversial candidate for bishop in the Episcopal Church could be a historic move...Kevin Thew Forrester has not received the necessary consent of the majority of the diocesan standing committees...

"...Forrester first drew attention for his Zen Buddhist 'lay' ordination, earning him the moniker of the 'Buddhist Bishop.' Further investigation of his practices revealed unilateral editing of the Book of Common Prayer's baptismal rite and the inserting of a verse from the Koran into a church service as the Word of God."

What's the Qur'an verse that Forrester stuck in? According to these folks, the verse was: "Those who fulfill Allah's pact, and break not the covenant, and those who join what Allah has commanded to be joined, and fear their Lord, and dread the evil reckoning". Since "Allah" is just the literal Arabic word (al ilah) for "The God", you could stick "God" or "The Lord" wherever the passage says "Allah" and you'll get something that sounds like it came straight out of the Bible.

We can infer that Forrerster has a non-fundamentalist view of the "Word of God". He finds religious inspiration in all sorts of places, and judges a passage not by what book it came from but by what it says. Forrester is one of those people who treats non-Christian religious texts the same way they treat the Bible - pick this passage and that passage, interpret this one way and that another, and pretend the rest isn't there until someone presses you to acknowledge that it actually is, and then brush it off as being for another people in another time. Of course, fundamentalists treat the Bible the same exact way, but I've already written about that.

These Episcopalians concede that Buddhist meditation doesn't necessarily conflict with Christianity, but they question whether a bi-sect-ual Bishop can "guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church". I don't know the answer to that question, and I'm not the one to give it. That answer should be given by the diocesan standing committees, and apparently they gave it.

"...The last candidate rejected on purely theological grounds was James de Koven, denied consent as bishop of Illinois in 1875."

Like Forrester, James deKoven was elected bishop, but not given consent by the committees. He was a leader of the "Anglo-Catholic" movement, and his ritualist stance was too controversial. He had it easy, though - being denied an episcopate wasn't the worst penalty some men received for not being Protestant enough.

"Smells and Bells" were pretty much banned in the Anglican Episcopal Church by Parliament's passage of the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874. Five priests did time in prison after being prosecuted under this law. They weren't imprisoned for breaking this law, though. They were imprisoned for "contempt of court". Since they rejected the authority of the new law, they rejected the authority of the new court it formed, and so they didn't show up to their court dates.

Fundamentalists vs. the Emerging Church

In the June 12 issue of the Sword of the Lord Newspaper, David Cloud published his heated warning about the newest hottest heresy. "The emerging church is a magnet for those who have rejected the old-fashioned New Testament faith and who despise traditional Bible-believing churches, dogmatic biblical preaching and biblical 'judgmentalism' in regard to lifestyle choices."

Cloud portrays the emerging church as being lax, not just about morals, but also and especially about the source or basis of morals. He gives the example of Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, who felt like he had to either "reduce enormous theological absurdities [i.e., Garden of Eden, universal Flood] into children's stories or ignore them" if he wanted to embrace Christianity. "In other words, he wanted to pick and choose what parts of the Bible he would believe. He despised dogmatic Bible preaching and hated it when preachers 'said we had to follow Jesus,' because 'sometimes they would make Him sound angry'".

Cloud also mentions the infamous Brian McLaren. McLaren's book, A New Kind of Christian, "recounts the man's journey from a fairly solid faith in the Bible as the absolute standard for truth in which doctrine is either right or wrong, scriptural or unscriptural, to a pliable, philosophical position in which 'faith is more about a way of life than a system of belief, where being authentically good is more important than being doctrinally right'".

To top it all off, Cloud gives a quote from David Foster's A Renegade's Guide to God: "We won't be 'told' what to do or 'commanded' how to believe". Cloud seems so aghast at this proclamation, you'd think it was the first time any self-proclaimed Christian insisted on forming and following his own interpretation of the Bible.

Cloud closes by revealing McLaren's conspiracy to "infiltrate biblicist churches from without through 'resources' such as books, videos and websites" that offer emerging church perspectives. "It is more imperative than ever that pastors train their people to discern the error of these heresies and that they exhort them to avoid the writings of false teachers." But no matter how diligently his advice is followed, Cloud might find it ineffective.

Young evangelicals don't need influence "from without" to be drawn to a "shopping cart" religiosity. Movements like the emerging church are just natural byproducts of Christian fundamentalism. The moral absolutism and rigorous dedication to consistency that fundamentalists pound into their children's heads give birth to that thorny distraction I call "a screaming conscience". Young fundamentalists who actually start reading and thinking about the Bible can't help but notice a violent conflict between the Bible and conventional morality. If killing babies is wrong, they reason, then it's always wrong. If they want to keep this moral absolutism they were raised in then they have to take the scissors to the "Word of God". To not would be to succumb to relativism. Don't blame the sandal-wearing yuppies who take coffee-stained volumes of "St. Jacques" Derrida to cafe Bible studies. It was the fundamentalist church where the kids learned to criticize Catholic superstition, and where they learned that stealing is always wrong even if your mother's starving. And it's the fundamentalist church where they'll turn critical thought and moral absolutism onto fundamentalism.

Cloud's advice to teach congregations to recognize and reject emerging church heresies might actually push young people out of the fundamentalist churches and into the emerging church camp. Young people would need to know the proper doctrine to contrast the heresies against. But if you want someone to accept fundamentalism, the LAST thing you wanna do is teach them what fundamentalism actually is.

A youth pastor was giving his youth group an overview of the Bible, and he was covering the story of Achan, when one girl murmered "Why the kids?" The youth pastor shook his head, and with his eyebrows raised and his eyes half-closed said "Well there's sin, and sin has consequences, and Achan sinned, and this was the consequence of his sin," as if the outcome of wrongdoing is just by default of being the outcome of wrongdoing. How many kids would want to stay in a fundamentalist church after hearing THAT kind of explanation? When pastors teach their churches how they should read the Bible, how they should think about God, and just how irrelevant their own intuitions are, some people will get the idea that the church they're in isn't where they want to be.

The emerging church is the way Christians in my generation rub their eyes, shake their heads, and say "Wait, wait, WHAT?!" Given the typical fundamentalist response (which is to call them heretical, backslidden, or hell-bound), Christian seekers can choose one of two things: they can find a body where they're encouraged to draw up, share, and piece together their own ideas of "the Divine", or they can forget God alltogether. The less creative they were programmed to be, the more likely they are to choose the second option. Of course, the second option isn't all that likely, because Christian spirituality is all about being creative.

Jonah and the Animals

This past Saturday I was standing with some friends on a sidewalk in front of a McDonald's, doing our part in the latest pro-chicken campaign, and chatting with one of the ladies in our group. She noted that so many people use the Bible as an excuse for the violence they condone and commit, and lamented that since she isn't a Christian she doesn't know how to use the Bible to respond to them. "Well there are some parts of the Bible that show animals as deserving consideration," I said. I then told her the story of Jonah, and highlighted the ending, where God says something like "Shouldn't I spare Ninevah, where there are more than 120,000 who can't tell between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle?" My point was that in this story God refused to burn up a city out of consideration for the many young children and the animals, and that this shows that God values animals as rights-possessing beings.

Of course, Jonah doesn't exactly work. God didn't spare Ninevah for the sake of the children and animals, he spared it because the whole city bowed down and repented. And if God actually valued children and animals as rights-possessing beings, he wouldn't have threatened to burn the city in the first place.

Just about the whole Old Testament, really, is a compilation of nationalist diatribes defending the Noachide Hegemony -- the hierarchy of God over mankind, of some men over others, and of mankind over animals. The thing is festered with twisted ownership notions. God repeatedly asserts his supposed right to dispose of human beings as if they were broken pots to be thrown away. God's chosen race is given license, and even duty, to exterminate several nations. And though the injunction to not eat any limbs torn from a live animal can imply a prohibition against abusing animals, the very fact that the Bible forbids eating live meat means that it sanctions eating some kinds of dead meat. You don't have to be an expert on Biblical Judaism to know that the Bible sacralizes animal slaughter and describes ritual killing as the payment of a debt. According to the Bible a calf is to be treated well. But the calf doesn't belong to himself; he belongs ultimately to God, to whom his owner owes a steep debt which can only be paid by sawing through the calf's neck while some bearded guy in a white robe and miter chants some things in a gluttural tongue.

The New Testament, too, is replete with twisted ownership notions, and should be read in the same way any man of conscience would read the Old Testament. Grace and love aren't the dominant themes of the New Testament. The dominant theme is Vicarious Atonement, which is an extension of the tribalist idea that one being can be seized and killed to pay for someone else's misdeeds.

If we are to embrace the most purified individualism (and we have the inherent duty to), then we must recognize that individual sovereignty does not depend on one's mental or physical capacities or stage of development, or on the convenience of others. The Bible doesn't mention this standard, and it doesn't come anywhere close to mentioning it. So give up hope trying to use "God's Word" as a tool of persuasion. You can't use it to defend the rights of animals, or children, or even human adults.

The Historical Messiah

The following blurb was written a Saturday evening some time ago, when my Sunday School class was going through a lesson plan based on a book by a famous preacher.
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I’m supposed to be answering questions in the workbook for Sunday School, and I couldn’t help but think of the way this bunch of believers (and religious believers in general) think about religion. A couple weeks ago we were going through Biblical evidence for Christ’s resurrection (if the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of a perfect God, then all the evidence that we need is in the Bible itself – that is, all evidence within the Bible is sufficient proof) and towards the end the teacher’s wife added “And none of the other religions can claim this. Mohammed died. They admit it. Buddha died. All the founders of all the other religions died…” She apparently said this to illustrate that since the other religions don’t venerate a historic Messianic figure who rose from the dead, they don’t offer a way to conquer death, and so are inferior to Christianity, which does tell of a historic Messianic figure who rose from the dead and therefore does offer a way to conquer death. I found this remark to be very telling, since it showed how people judge others’ viewpoints – through the standards woven into their own views. Of course, EVERYBODY – not just religious believers – does this. I judge other belief systems according to standards woven into the Esaian religion (the pro-life, animal rights, anti-God, anti-state religion of Isaiah Sage). But the above example demands my attention.

The standard that my Sunday School teacher’s wife uses to judge religions was one which is woven into and quite unique to Christianity – the historical Messiah. This is not the Mythical Messiah that you find in mystery religions of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, where the birth, death, and resurrection of a God-made-man happened in a mythical world which is understood to have no historical parallel with our own and which functions as an allegory for some greater spiritual truth. It is not the Annual Messiah that you find in Earth-centered religions and spiritualities where God-died-and-reborn is little more than a sacralized expression of the sanctity of material existence and a celebration of the Earth’s cycles. This is the sincere belief in a man who actually existed, who really was born on earth on a particular date, who died on a particular date, and who literally rose again three days later. This is the sincere belief in a man whose life you are supposed to be able to plot out on both a map and a calendar. This is the type of Messiah you know can conquer death for you because he actually did conquer his own death when he rose from the grave some time in the spring of A.D. 30-something. Few other religions revolve around the life, death and resurrection of a messiah who existed in linear, human history. And so, naturally, very few religions besides Christianity would meet the standards that Christianity lays down.

Despite and because of this uniqueness, I should give props to Christianity. It assures the believer by pointing to what it identifies as an actual, historical instance of death loosing its sting. It is also the only religion that has managed to be taken seriously while doing it.