Tag Archives: christian

Nice, Nice, Very Nice

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I have been thinking about the idea that religious people are somehow nicer or more compassionate than non-religious people. This seems to be a prevailing concept in our culture, especially among Christians. But is it true?

This website, which is by a Christian, points out that according to a large variety of measurements of morality, ethics, compassion, etc., Christians fare no better than non-Christians.

In my own life, I have experienced the “not-niceness” of Christian religion. Being a fundamentalist, Evangelical Christian kind of made me an asshole. There were several things about this mindset that did not sit well with my personality at all:

  • As a Christian I was taught that the world was divided into two groups of people: Folks like me who have been saved by the blood of Jesus, and are therefore going to heaven, and other folks who are lost, and are therefore going to Hell.
  • I was also taught that there is one Revealed Truth of the heart of God: The Holy Bible. Other so-called religious books were works of the devil.
  • Even where the Christian teachings were moral, I always complied with a reluctant heart, out of obligation and fear. Thus, I was not very loving and giving, oddly

Now that I am in what I call a “post-Christian” state, I seem to be nicer. At least that is what the folks around me (notably my wife) tell me. One thing I have noticed, especially with respect to my wife, is that my attitude about her dramatically shifted after I let go of the sin thing. Prior to that point, I loved my wife dearly, and wanted to be married to her. But there was something galling about the religious obligation. It was almost like I was doing something that I should do, according to the religious traditions, and that took some of the joy out of doing it.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to be with my wife, and I want her to be with me. But now I basically woo her continuously. I don’t assume that she will stay with me out of religious obligation. It’s a moment-by-moment thing. I actually want her to choose to be with me, continuously. The only way to achieve that is to truly love her, out of my heart, not out of duty. Thus, letting go of the idea of religious duty gave me something more in that very important relationship.

The first two points, though, caused me to have great hubris. When I was a Christian, I was utterly convinced of my own righteousness, and the correctness of my position. I had no doubt at all about that! And that made me completely obnoxious to many people, especially non-Christians. I looked down upon these poor lost souls. I prayed for them, but only in a hope that they would become like me. It never occurred to me that I might have something to learn from them.

Since I let go of religion, I have been having a lot more interesting relationships with random perfect strangers. I seem to be able to relate better. Since I am now equally convinced that I know absolutely nothing, I am more teachable.

Not saying I have arrived here, but I seem to be on the right track.

Virgin Birth

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I am fully aware that authoring this post makes me a heretic, as that term is defined by many Christians. Whatever.

In order to be a Christian, I had to believe, as a matter of faith, that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. You see, if Jesus wasn’t born of a virgin, then he couldn’t be God. That would mean that he could not die on the cross for our sins, come back from the dead, and so forth.

Thus, the Evangelical Christian religion hinges entirely on this one question:

Was Jesus Christ born of a virgin?

For any practicing Christian, the answer to that question must be a resounding: Yes! Otherwise, if there is doubt, then the entire belief system collapses. That was certainly the case with me.

So, the question becomes:

What evidence do I have that Jesus was born of a virgin?

In my mind that evidence is wanting.  I have seriously studied the scriptures, as you can tell if you read this blog. For me to doubt the virgin birth does not take very much at all. I only really need to doubt one thing: The conversation between Mary and the Holy Spirit in Luke 1:26-38 (NIV), which reads:

26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”

38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

Now, it is pretty obvious that there are some serious problems here. First of all, the only witness to this entire conversation was Mary. Second, the account was only written down around 70 years after the actual events at the earliest. Thus, Mary, Joseph, and everyone else involved in the events were all dead. The (supposed) added credibility of having Elizabeth (Mary’s relative, possibly an aunt) witness to the divine incarnation is evaporated once I understand that Elizabeth (who was older than Mary) was dead and gone before all of this got written down.

My father told me what he considered his “great heresy”. It went basically like this:

There was a nice Jewish girl named Mary. She was desperately and hopelessly in love with this young Jewish man. They lived in a small town called Nazareth in an ancient time. Because they both lived within a rigid, terrifying cruel religious culture, they knew their relationship was doomed: Mary had been given by her father in an arranged marriage to an older man named Joseph. Mary and the young man both knew if they consummated their love, that they could be stoned. If Mary became pregnant that would be the ultimate catastrophe. Yet the temptation proved to be too great for them. In an awkward compromise, the young man only penetrated Mary very gently and very shallowly, to avoid breaking the hymen. Nonetheless, he transmitted his seed, and Mary conceived.

When Mary became pregnant, they were both terrified. They came up with an insane plan: Mary would insist that she was a virgin! Thus, the conception must be divine! Knowing that her only other choice was either death or a life of terrible hardship, Mary agreed.

The plan worked beyond her wildest imagination! The priest examined Mary and declared her a virgin. Everyone acknowledged the miracle.  Joseph even agreed to support Mary and her son without having relations with her. Mary took the secret with her to her grave. Not even her own son knew the truth.

There is a rule of logic know as Occam’s Razor. This rule states that, when faced with two explanations for an event, choose the one which is simpler, and requires the fewest assumptions. In order to believe Mary’s account, we must assume:

  • God, the creator of the universe, the pre-existent, single cause of everything, craves an intimate and personal relationship with me, and is capable of monitoring my every action, including my own thoughts.
  • God has a very strong opinion about the way in which I should live my life, and has codified those preferences in the old testament law contained in the bible.
  • God will punish the slightest infraction of that law with an eternity in a place of torment.
  • Although I had no active participation in the event, I am nonetheless damned to eternal torment due to the original sin by my ancestors, Adam and Eve.
  • God decided in order to satisfy his own wrath to horribly torture and kill his own son (also divine).
  • If I believe all of that with no doubt, I will no longer be damned. Instead, I will go to a wonderful place when I die.

Six assumptions in other words. In order to believe my father’s account, I only need to believe this:

  • A teenage girl who was angry about an arranged marriage had sex with a random guy and lied about it.

Not sure about you, but I’m going with the simpler explanation.

More later.

Avi

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I met a man in Israel in 2001. (Yes, I did actually travel to Israel in 2001, leaving very shortly after the air traffic restrictions were lifted following the events of September 11, 2001.) This man’s name was Avi. He had a profound and enduring impact on my life, although I only got to be with him for a few hours.

When I met Avi, he was 94 years old. He lived in the area around Jerusalem. He made hummus for a living. He had the perfect setup: He owned a well, a plot of chickpeas, a grove of olive trees, an orchard of lemon trees, a patch of garlic, a patch of sesame, and a large block of salt. (The salt, which he purchased, was the only part of the final product that Avi did not produce himself.)

I was taken to see Avi by my tour guide. He thought Avi was really an amazing fellow, and he was right.

When I met Avi, he was up a ladder in his olive grove. Remember that Avi was 94? Yeah. That’s amazing. I asked Avi why he was harvesting olives around 30 feet in the air at the age of 94. He replied: “Someone’s got to do it, and there’s no one but me.” (Technically, this was not true. Avi was surrounded by family. His sons, grandsons, and great grandsons were there with him on the hummus farm. But he never let anyone touch his olive trees except himself. They were over 2,000 years old, and they were his pets.

Avi was a Palestinian Christian. Whether by virtue of his being a Christian, or some other means that I could never figure out, Avi survived the expulsion of the Palestinians from the area known at the time as Palestine by the Brits in 1947 – 48. He remembered it though. Very, very well. He did not like to talk about it very much. He called it the Palestinian Holocaust.

Anyway, Avi practiced a traditional form of Christianity similar to Catholicism. Given the language and communication difficulties, I never really figured out the exact type of orthodox, traditional Christian that Avi was, but I quickly learned that Avi’s Christianity was very different from mine. He had a much more interesting and nuanced view of the bible than I did at the time, for example. He was intimately familiar with many other ancient texts, especially those of the early Christian writers (whom he regarded with equal reverence as the works of the New Testament).

The most interesting thing to me about Avi was his attitude about work and money. He got up at 4 a.m. every day except Sunday, and worked generally for about 5 hours until 9 a.m. During that period, Avi did everything that he needed to do to produce his daily quota of hummus. And hummus it was! Avi’s hummus was a work of art: Literally so delicious that it made you weep. And talk about demand! The folks who had been buying Avi’s hummus had been doing so for generations, and no one else was allowed to access this treasure!

As an American, I quickly saw the potential. Wow! You have a great product! You have tremendous brand recognition. The path is obvious. Buy more land! Plant more olive trees, chickpeas, sesame, lemons and garlic. Make more hummus. Make more money!

To which Avi replied: I don’t want to make more money. I make enough money. And I am done by 9 a.m. every day. The rest of the day is mine.

I will never forget that moment. My American capitalist pretensions collapsed in a heartbeat. I saw immediately that Avi’s way of life was better than mine in every way: He was happier, more at peace and less stressed out. Simply because he had let go of greed. He did not want more than he had. He had enough for today, and for him, that was enough.

Avi had an interesting approach to investment and savings as well. He did not try to save money, olive oil, or anything else. If he had more than enough of anything he needed, he gave it away to his friends and neighbors. For Avi, this was a form of savings. Why? Because if Avi needed anything, he could go to his friends and neighbors and they would share whatever they had with him.

With our individualistic American self-reliance mentality, this form of collectivism is inconceivable. It’s all on me. I have no neighbor who will share with me. I envy Avi that, as well as the other aspects of his full, rich life.

More later.

Shroud

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OK, I know, I know. You are saying “Here goes.” You saw the title and have now identified me as one of those people, the weirdos who always talk about the Shroud.

I hope to disappoint you. I am not a typical Shroud believer. Far from it. However, as I related in my previous post, my Christian friend Ray has thrown down the proverbial gauntlet, and I must now justify what I believe, or die trying. And, you see, Ray knows me very well. He knows that I have studied the issue of the Shroud deeply. So far, I have read a lot of books on the Shroud of Turin, as well as watched some video. All of this material falls into three categories:

  • The rapidly Christian stuff, which is by and large useless and full of junk science. And example of this is The Shroud of Turin by Bob and Penny Lord. These books and videos are written from an entirely Christian perspective, and thus approach the Shroud from a position of faith. This is actually not helpful at all. The Shroud creates huge challenges to traditional Christian faith, as we will see later in this blog, and this approach entirely hides those insights.
  • Some New Age stuff which is actually not too bad; at least it is grounded in science. It is pretty weird though. My favorite example is The Truth About the Shroud of Turin: Solving the Mystery by Robert K. Wilcox. Wilcox is a bit, well, odd, but his conclusions are not manifestly wrong, indirect though his path may be.
  • The rapidly anti-Christian stuff which attempts to either debunk the Shroud, or blame the entire Christian religion on it. An example of this claptrap would be The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection by Thomas de Wesselow. Wesselow theorizes that the entire Christian movement occurred as a result of the viewing of the Shroud by various folks, including St. Paul, of course! The fly in the ointment is the Shroud itself: Wesselow attempts to dismiss it as a vaporgraph, which is quite frankly physically impossible. I will not bore you with the physics, but suffice it to say, I am certainly not convinced by Wesselow here.

After wading through a bit of this soft of thing, I have come to some conclusions about the Shroud.

First of all, the Shroud is either the genuine burial cloth of the historical figure we refer to as Jesus Christ, or there was more than one person crucified in almost (but not quite) precisely the manner described in the Gospels, and that person was crucified in the early 1st century in Jerusalem. The likelihood of more than one person being crucified in exactly this manner, especially considering the unusual circumstances surrounding these events, is highly remote. Therefore, I believe that I can state with reasonable confidence that the Shroud of Turin is in fact the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Certainly, this is what I believe, and I have given the matter a lot of thought and study.

The Shroud is a many layered thing, with various images on it, but the most important part of the Shroud problem for our present discussion is the negative holographic image which is present on both the face up and face down portions of the Shroud. The following image has them placed conveniently side-by-side:

Full_length_negatives_of_the_shroud_of_Turin

There are several problems with the existence of this image. We cannot create this image even today with any technology we presently possess. It is too fine an image. It consists of an almost single-molecule thick layer of darker colored fibers in the linen cloth out of which the Shroud was made. Although it was made in the 1st century (the stupid 1988 carbon 14 dating has been completely debunked at this point), it contains a negative photographic image. That makes this the earliest photographic image in human history, so far as we know, and it was created approximately 1,800 years before the invention of photography.

And not only does it have a negative image, but that image contains holographic data, making the likelihood of a natural explanation even more unlikely.

Many highly competent and revered scientists have looked at the Shroud, but most have now stopped trying. It is considered a career killer. The Shroud simply cannot be explained by rational means.

Thus, my final conclusion: I don’t know what went on in that tomb, but it must have been some seriously gnarly stuff, that’s for sure! And that’s basically what I know. Apparently, Jesus was very important somehow, at least to the extent that an extremely inscrutable event surrounded His death.

In my next post, I will deal with the notion in Ray’s email that the evidence of the Shroud (which largely corroborates the Gospel accounts, with a few notable exceptions) means that we should give the New Testament a special break with respect to the Word of God thing. More later.

Demented

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My Christian friend Ray and I have been having an interesting debate on the nature of early Christian attitudes on sexuality and women. I maintain, based upon my reading of Karen Armstrong, largely, that in the area of sexuality the early Christians, especially of the Latin persuasion, were, well, deranged is the word I think I used. I also might have said contemptible. Stuff like that.

Ray bristled a bit, so I thought I would see if I could justify my proposition in this blog post. So here goes.

My first contention would be that early Christians did not need to display a consistently contemptible attitude concerning sexuality and women in order to be considered deranged. It is sufficient if they display misogynistic, bigoted and  unbalanced attitudes a sufficiently large percentage of the time. Consider the example of Hitler. No one would seriously maintain that Hitler was not deranged. However, I have read many accounts of folks who interacted with Hitler and found him utterly charming. This included folks who had every reason to hate Hitler, but when they were in his presence, they frequently found him agreeable to be with. Odd, but true.

The fact is: Most of the time Hitler was fine. But not always. A sufficiently large percentage of the time he was a monster.

So it goes with things like sexuality. It is a private matter after all. Much of the time, attitudes which are expressed may be very appropriate. But once in a while, truer colors will emerge. Let’s look at a few of the quotes from the early Christians concerning sexuality.

In fact, let’s start with the New Testament. Here are a few of my favorite verses concerning sexuality:

  • Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 1 Corinthians 7:1
  • I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. 1 Corinthians 7:8
  • …and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake … Matthew 19:12

That last one is really sweet. Origen of Alexandria, an early Christian father, famously castrated himself because he believed that he was guaranteed entrance into the kingdom of heaven if he denied himself sexual temptation. (Apparently, this was a fairly common practice among the early Christians, so much so that the Council of Nicea in 325 declared that a man who had castrated himself was barred from the priesthood.) Later, Origen was a huge influence on Augustine, who was the most important person in Christian theology (especially in the Latin side) concerning sin, sexuality, and women.

OK, then let’s look at Augustine. He actually maintained that one should keep what he called “sexual continence” in marriage. In other words, the marital partners are not supposed to have sex at all, but should deny themselves sex for spiritual purposes. This one I find actually dangerous. I have encountered many relationships in which one or the other of the partners did not wish to have sex with their partner any longer, but still wished to stay married and receive financial support, and such. This sort of theology provides ample religious “cover” for that partner to weasel out of sleeping with their wife or husband. (I have actually been in this position myself, and surprisingly, I was the one denying sex to my partner, not vice versa. More on this later.) For Augustine, though, sexuality was sin, pure and simple. He became celibate the moment he became a Christian.

Tertullian, a bit later than Augustine, said the following concerning sexuality and women:

Do you not realise that Eve is you? The curse God pronounced on your sex weighs still on the world. Guilty, you must bear its hardships. You are the devil’s gateway, you desecrated the fatal tree, you first betrayed the law of God, you who softened up with your cajoling words the man against whom the devil could not prevail by force. The image of God, the man Adam, you broke him, it was child’s play to you. You deserved death, and it was the son of God who had to die.

That last one is rather depressingly typical, so I will not include too many more. Here is one from St. John Chrystostom:

What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature painted with fair colours!

And then we get to Jerome, whose attitudes on women were so over the top, it is not even necessary to quote him. (Although that can be fun as well.) Some of his attitudes are enough:

  • Jerome regarded women who wore cosmetics as “poultices of lust”.
  • Women were gateways to the devil, the sting of the scorpion, and the way of evil.

I am not sure if it is necessary to continue, but I will throw in one more from Pope Gregory I:

Sexual pleasure can never be without sin.

And there it is. The identification of sexuality and sexual pleasure, and most especially in early Christianity heterosexual sexuality, as sin. And this is very relevant for me, as I am aggressively and stubbornly heterosexual. (Technically, I believe that I have a new sexual orientation I call a “one woman man”. More on this later.)

I will simply not survive or thrive in a movement which regards heterosexual activity, even in marriage, as sinful. Sorry, guys, not going for that.

More later.

Inspired

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In my last post, I stated the following seemingly preposterous proposition:

The collection of ancient documents commonly referred to as the bible (actually a combination of ancient Jewish documents commonly referred to among Christians as the Old Testament plus early Christian documents referred to as the New Testament) is merely a work of human culture, and not the “Word of God” in any sense.

 So there it is. I am now officially a (or is it “an”?) heretic. Great. Because, of course, this statement would have undoubtedly led to a gruesome and violent death in many parts of Western Europe and even what is now the US during significant parts of history. I hope to at least satisfy you as my readers as to why I am willing to take this position and perhaps consider adopting it yourselves.
Let’s start with a basic assumption: The burden is on religion to prove the veracity, divine authority, or such thing for their particular brand of “The Truth”. And herein lies the core issue: Each religion (at least the more aggressive western religions, as we will see) claims to have a monopoly on “The Truth”. I call this the Claim of Exclusivity, and this is fundamental to Christianity’s current claim that the bible is the “Word of God”. And the stakes are very high. We must always remember that each western religion (especially Christianity and Islam) has a claim of divine condemnation as well: If you do not accept their particular brand of religion (and often that can be quite specific), you will surely rot in Hell, at least according to what the adherents of the religion believe.
And they seem like such nice people in general. I have mentioned my fried Ray previously, and he and I had an amusing interchange regarding Christianity’s assertion that the bible (which I will stubbornly refuse to capitalize in this blog) is the “Word of God”. Once I challenged this assumption for Ray, he proceeded to try to justify it. Basically, Ray’s arguments for the authority of scripture look like this:
  • Folks who believe that the bible is the “Word of God” are happier in general than people who do not.
  • These folks are also generally nicer than other folks, although sometimes they can be naughty.
  • Thus, the concept of the bible being the “Word of God” has been good for people generally.

Forgive me, but I had to point out to Ray the obvious fallacy (which you undoubtedly see already). I will do so again here: It is exactly like believing in Santa Claus. Why do parents so stubbornly refuse to tell their offspring the truth about Santa Claus? Simple. They want to continue to manipulate their children so that they will obey. Santa provides great leverage. Even if the child is in on the deal, Santa still works. The child knows that Santa is a fake, but why “out” dear old Santa? The child gets such great stuff, after all. As for the parent, he or she probably knows that the child (who is not stupid after all) has calculated the speed required for Santa to visit each and every home on planet Earth in a single day, and has realized that it significantly exceeds the speed of light. Thus, Santa would have to be divine to accomplish this feat. For this reason, for many years, I have thought of Santa as the Christian patron saint of capitalism. More on Santa and the whole Christmas thing later.

Religion (assuming Ray’s explanation to be the most correct one for believing religious tenets), can thus simply be thought of in this way: It is, well, exactly like Santa. We believe in Jesus (or Buddha, or Mohammed, or whatever), because we need a reason to live a better life. I love the definition of religion from Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Paraphrasing, Vonnegut invents a character named Bokonon who recognizes the need to create a new religion. Because of the great suffering of his people, he creates a set of comforting lies he calls foma. Basically a foma is a harmless lie which, if you believe it, will give you hope and cause you to live a better life.

Early in my Christian period, I had a friend (who later attacked me by the way) who was kind of sketchy. Joe, the leader of the Christian commune at which I was living, had a habit of adopting derelicts (one of whom he had live with me for a while). Mike was an ex-con with a very pretty but very pregnant young wife. Mike liked weed and other drugs though, and had trouble settling down with his wife. Mike once told me the following very revealing thing about himself:

Even if it’s not true (referring to our particular brand of Protestant Charismatic Christianity), we are better off. We live a better life by believing. I am here, with my wife. I am not doing drugs or alcohol. I am taking care of my kids. You see that, right? We are better off even if it’s all lies.

What I did not learn until later was that Mike had converted in jail, and had received probation because of this. He was also physically abusing that pretty young wife. But as long as he would remain in the religious community, he had a way of remaining at large (provided that he did not do drugs or alcohol, attended regular meetings, and so forth.)

This what I call The Payoff: Each religion provides a benefit for believing. In the case of Christianity this has historically taken the form of a tight (often secret) community, with all that that entails. There is no doubt that religion has provided a powerful set of networks which have been a central way of grooming leaders within our culture.

Back to the core issue of this blog: Whether the bible is the “Word of God”. The central tenet of modern Evangelical Fundamentalist Protestant Christianity (yes I will be this specific in this blog) is that the bible was effectively faxed from heaven in its current form. Thus, the bible is literally a word for word speaking from the Mind of God. I have actually argued this point with various Christians (some of whom were, admittedly, very conservative) and have been told by them that the King James translators were guided by the Hand of God. (No kidding.) Thus, the King James translation of the bible (and no other translation) contains the correct and true reading of God’s Word. (If you were born in a country that does not speak English, I guess you are out of luck.)

And, of course, every single detail in the bible is literally true and correct in every way. You can argue with these folks all you like: Trust me, I used to be one of them. I certainly was not capable at that time of admitting the possibility that I might be wrong. This is the central marker of religion: An extreme reluctance to admit the possibility that what you have been indoctrinated to believe might not be true.

And therein lies the thing that I want to ask for from my friends, and those who are kindred souls (I hope you are out there): I will certainly admit that I could be wrong. Please be kind enough to return the favor. I will not take kindly to a Christian soul telling me that I am going to Hell (although that may not stop you). I like to think that I am as spiritual a man as anyone I have known. Certainly, I work at it pretty hard. Thus, I will not accept the concept from any religion that their brand of “The Truth” is the only path to God.

Like I told my son tonight: I do not want my Christian friend to stop being Christian any more than I want my Hindu friend to stop being Hindu. All I am asking for is that all of my religious friends admit that they could be wrong. I will surely do the same. I would submit, though, that it is physically impossible to admit that your religion might be wrong, while asserting that your religion’s particular book is the “Word of God”.

It may even be impossible to believe the “foma”, the comfortable religious lies, while admitting they could be wrong. It would defeat the purpose of making you a true believer, if the possibility existed that the religion could be wrong. Thus, I may effectively be asking for the end of religion. I am not sure that would be a bad thing, although you may disagree. Certainly, for me, I will no longer believe the convenient lies. I choose to seek what I call the Non-Cultural Truth. Assuming that religion is culture, then there is a possibility for a core of Truth underlying all religions. Many have sought this. I may be on a vain quest, but it is certainly one which I relish. Join me there, please.

Welcome

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I have a good friend, Ray who is worried about me. Seems that I have fallen away from my Christian faith, and Ray is my Christian friend who is continuing to pray and stand for me to be reunited with the faith I once believed.

I wish I could say I had a great deal of hope here, but as you will see if you keep reading, I suspect I am beyond hope from folks like Ray. And I actually think that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Although you should be the judge.

At any rate, welcome to my new blog, Scars Upon the Earth. The idea behind this blog is to discuss the following questions:

  • Did Jesus save me from my sins? (Personally, I tend to doubt that these days.) I have a bit of trouble with the concept of sin, as you will see.
  • Is the Bible the inspired Word of God or simply a work of human culture? (I have looked at this a lot. More later.)
  • Is religion absolute, or is it also a form of culture? In other words, is God’s plan for marriage an arrangement in which one man and one woman live together and are monogamous? This one is quite interesting.

The essence of my blog is the exploration of the forbidden topics: Is God real? Is he / she personal? Does he / she hear my prayers? What evidence do we have for the existence of a personal God? I have spent a great deal of time reflecting and studying these issues, and I hope you benefit from these thoughts. If you have any comments and push back (I sincerely hope so!), then let me know and the discussion will begin.