Love of God, neighbour and self are all interwoven.  I’ve been thinking lately about confession, which – like love – occurs in relationship.  Protestants often are quick to give reasons why they don’t confess to a priest like Catholics.  “Through Christ, . . . → Read More: the (w)hole in our confession]]>

Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind & strength
Love your neighbour as you…
Love your self.

Love of God, neighbour and self are all interwoven.  I’ve been thinking lately about confession, which – like love – occurs in relationship.  Protestants often are quick to give reasons why they don’t confess to a priest like Catholics.  “Through Christ, we can confess [but do we!?] directly to God…”  Fair enough.  But one thing about confession to a priest is that at least they are confessing horizontally as well as vertically.

I may be wrong, but I suspect that Protestants are not that great at horizontal confession.  When we do it, we often only confess the really easy-to-confess stuff.  “Oh, I just have to be honest with you… I’ve allowed myself to get too busy this week.”  In the ModWest, being busy is a virtue, for crying out loud – that’s hardly confession…  Rarely do we [OK... I!!] have a) the courage, and b) the quality of relationship to confess the darkest, deepest, hardest-to-confess stuff.

My theory is that our vertical confession is at least complimented (and, at most, completed!?) by our horizontal confession.  I reckon it can be all too easy to create a ‘god’ that suits our (vertical) confessional needs; that responds to our confession with just the perfect amount and flavour of gentleness, assurance, anger, frustration or whatever makes us feel better – which is too often the reason for doing it anyway…

Confession, like love, is meant to be so holistically real that it touches all of our person – our emotions (heart), our identity (soul), our thoughts (mind) and our actions (strength).  May we be truly honest, real and vulnerable in our confession – vertically to God, horizontally to our close, trusted friends, and even internally to ourselves!!

Confess to the Lord, with all your heart, soul, mind & strength
Confess to your neighbour as you…
Confess to yourself.

“the goddess is dancing”

The car probably belongs to an adherent of one kind or other of ‘new-age’ spirituality.  But I caught myself and stopped short of easy dismissal-ism.  I asked myself, “Hey, cannot a Christian in a sense say the same thing?”

After all, the Bible does include feminine . . . → Read More: dancing goddess]]> I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read:

“the goddess is dancing”

The car probably belongs to an adherent of one kind or other of ‘new-age’ spirituality.  But I caught myself and stopped short of easy dismissal-ism.  I asked myself, “Hey, cannot a Christian in a sense say the same thing?”

After all, the Bible does include feminine descriptions of God:

• God is like a birthing mother in Job 38:29, Deut. 32:18
• Israel ‘nurses’ at God’s breasts in Isaiah 66:12-13
• God is compared to a mother in Hosea 11:4 & Psalm 131:2
• Jesus speaks of wanting to protect Jerusalem as a mother hen covers her young in Luke 13:34

And… the Bible also includes pictures of a celebrating (& thus dancing) God:

• “He happily rejoices over you, renews you with his love, and celebrates (“dances” in some translations?) over you with shouts of joy.” – Zeph. 3:17b
• “And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, So your God will rejoice over you.” – Isaiah 62:5b
• Jesus, God-with-us, went to – and if he was Jewish, he danced at – weddings (and likened the Kingdom of God to them) – John 2:2 & Matthew 22:2

So maybe the bumper-sticker is more biblical than most Christians (and new-agers!) realise?

I’d want to affirm that ‘doing’ (as well as . . . → Read More: sex & identity]]> The ‘proper’ basis for the personal identity of any given human is a hard thing to derive… if you’re limited to the tools of, say, science.  Science wonderfully (and tragically in the case of murder, hate, discrimination, etc.) describes what humans ‘do’ (human doings), but not what/who humans ‘are’ (human beings).

I’d want to affirm that ‘doing’ (as well as ‘knowing’ and ‘feeling’) is a necessary component of what a human ‘being’ is, but not the whole composition.  Any identity based on only feelings, actions and intelligence alone is incomplete and leaves out something.

The most unchallenged (and to me, baffling) kind of identity I know of, is ‘sexual’ identity (hetero, homo, pan, omni, etc.).  I once moderated an inter-faith discussion about ‘tolerance’ in which a person (who acknowledged their sexual identity) stated their wish not to merely be ‘tolerated’, but to be accepted for who he was.  A few thoughts:

• Sexual desire seems to be quite malleable/impermanent or otherwise inappropriate for identity.  Whilst some attempts at therapeutic (including – yes – electric shock ‘therapy’!) ‘adjustment’ of sexual desire are contrived at best (and abusive at worst), it remains true that (as the old adage says) “the greatest sex organ is the mind”, which (neuro-plasticity confirming what we already knew from experience) can undergo remarkable change.
• Most (all?) have more than one sexual desire.  Both nature and nurture (genes/’memes’ if you like) combine to give us not a single sexual desire for ‘this’ sexual experience, but a range/variety of sexual desires, so identifying as ‘x’ (i.e. homo/hetero) fails to account for the other desires present (i.e. – Kinsey’s hyper-controversial research would seem to indicate that few if any people occupy only one precise ‘point’ on the ‘orientation scale’).  Perhaps this relates to some opting for the less-defined ‘bi’-sexual, or ‘pan’/'omni’-sexual identities.
• Sexual desire (particularly desire for sexual encounter with another human) is not always met.  For a variety of reasons (including physical disability, repulsion by other, unwillingness to force the other person, cultural/traditional/ideological pressures), many people go through life and manage not to have sex with another person.  Of particular concern here is the confused/contradictory influences present in many/most cultures presenting sex as something ‘everyone’ does.  Leaving those who are not (or not yet) sexually active being/feeling less than normal.  Is a fire-fighter who never fights fires really a fire-fighter?  Who wants to be normal in principle? [updated thought at bottom of post]

Where, then, is a ‘safe’ or ‘responsible’ place in which to find our identity?  Especially in a world where everything (desires, opportunities, bodily function, etc.) seems impermanent?

The Judaeo-Christian tradition answers: in relationships.  Even a non-theistic psychotherapist or counsellor could reasonably say the same: in our relationship to ‘others’ (albeit without including the supreme ‘Other’).

It seems to me, as a Christian, there are two broad categories of relationships (Creator/creation), which break down into three (Creator, human creation, non-human creation), which admit of a fourth distinction as well: Creator, other humans, self, non-human creation (or God, others, self, world).  Some thoughts:

• Creator.  Even the most tentative of theistic understandings realise the fundamental identity-forming dependence upon the Source of all being/existence.
• Others.  Other humans are like mirrors.  The opinions and influence of others shape our self-understanding.  We don’t truly know who we are apart from the ‘other’.  Our identity is formed in relationship to our brothers, sons, daughters, partners, granddaughters, aunts and husbands.
• Self.  Indeed, personal identity wouldn’t be ‘personal’ (and thus not ‘identity’) if we didn’t distinguish between ‘other’ and ‘self’.  We are unique and particular, not an identity-less component of some all-encompassing mass-consciousness.
• World.  We have an identity-forming awareness of our affect on our environment.  We can utterly wreck the place, or we can beautify and enhance it.  We are care-takers, janitors, renovators, zookeepers and stewards of the world we inhabit.

[updated thought: Not only is it true that our sexual (erotic, that is) desires are not unfailingly met, but it's also true and relevant that our deepest and truest desire is for intimacy, and this is a desire that must be met.  Whatever the gender or physiology of any given two persons, they are created for inter-personal - and thus genuinely/truly 'sexual' - intimacy.  It seems to me that, last I checked, same-sexed persons lack the physiology to engage in coitus/intercourse/'sex', and thus (physiologically speaking) cannot have a 'sexual' relationship - but they can still be genuinely intimate, as any two good friends would be.  And this is not only 'acceptable', but what all humans want and need.]

The phrase ‘by chance’ refers to an event/result happening without compulsion or determination – we say the situation/result ‘did not have to be that way’.

The phrase ‘of necessity’ refers to an event/result happening according to compulsion or law – we say the situation/result ‘had . . . → Read More: had to be chance?]]> chance & necessity | random & planned | chaos & order | freedom & determinism

The phrase ‘by chance’ refers to an event/result happening without compulsion or determination – we say the situation/result ‘did not have to be that way’.

The phrase ‘of necessity’ refers to an event/result happening according to compulsion or law – we say the situation/result ‘had to be that way’.

So.  The universe or ‘the world’ or ‘things’ or ‘stuff’… Chance or necessity?

Interestingly, both answers can be used to argue for some form of theism.

Leaving the question of a rather large number of ‘multiverses’ to the side for the moment (it’s interesting to reflect on whether or not this actually affects the ‘chance’ issue – I’m not convinced it does); if we “did not have to” exist in the way that we do, and are merely the result of ‘luck’ or ‘chance’ or ‘accident’ (in terms of cosmological, material causes and phenomena), then this can quite easily be said to point to a Creator who, as it were, was not surprised by the draw to the ‘lottery’ that is this creation.  An omniscient architect of the great ‘lottery’, who knows the mechanics of the machinery so well that the result is known before it plays out.  The odds, we say, are simply too small for it not to have been a plan.

And also, if we “had to” exist in the way that we do, being the result of sheer unflinching physical necessity (i.e. ‘it was just a matter of time until we got here’), and attribute our existence to the brute, unchangeable laws of nature, then this too can be said to point to a Creator who, as it were, is the Legislator behind the “Laws of Nature”, who builds the desired result into the building blocks of Creation.  Everything is predestined and determined, and (to quote atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett) “of course you have free will – you have no choice about that”.

…namely that there is indeed an uncreated ‘thing’ which cannot be questioned, caused, created, ‘got behind’, etc.

The . . . → Read More: uncreated thing]]> Those who hold that all things (the universe/multiverse/whatever) began to exist and were created (by an ultimate Creator or First/bottom Cause), and those who hold that all things (the universe/multiverse/whatever) ‘have always existed in some form/state’ agree on (at least) one point…

…namely that there is indeed an uncreated ‘thing’ which cannot be questioned, caused, created, ‘got behind’, etc.

The former call this uncreated ‘thing’ God – and the latter call it Nature.

The essays are comprised answers to ‘big questions’ from a variety of perspectives – theist, atheist and agnostic.  They make for interesting reading whatever your beliefs are.

Two of the ‘big questions‘ essays were of particular interest to . . . → Read More: ‘big question’ essays]]> Cheers to Bryson for directing me to an essay, which I discovered was one over several over at The John Templeton Foundation.

The essays are comprised answers to ‘big questions’ from a variety of perspectives – theist, atheist and agnostic.  They make for interesting reading whatever your beliefs are.

Two of the ‘big questions‘ essays were of particular interest to me: “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?” and “Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?“.

Some other bits which may be of interest to some readers include:

• “Does Evolution Explain Human Nature?“
• Debates between contributers to the Science/Belief essay (Christopher Hitchens v. Ken Miller; Jerome Groopman v. Michael Shermer; and Steven Pinker v. William D. Phillips).
• A Brief interview with (physicist/cosmologist) Paul Davies concerning multiverse theory
• assorted video content (look for it)

…for a friendly, respectful, engaging and thoroughly enjoyable conversation about life, god, the universe, morality and all the rest.

At the site related to the book, there are summaries of the (as the site says) “six improved arguments for atheism”.

Now, I’m terribly sorry, but if these are ‘improved’ arguments for atheism, then . . . → Read More: illogical atheism]]> Ken Perrott recently drew attention to a new book called The Six Ways of Atheism: New Logical Disproofs of the Existence of God by Geoffrey Berg.

At the site related to the book, there are summaries of the (as the site says) “six improved arguments for atheism”.

Now, I’m terribly sorry, but if these are ‘improved’ arguments for atheism, then it would be embarrassing to see the ‘unimproved’ ones!   I’ve only taken an intro to philosophy class, and have never taken any classes in logic, etc., but these are poorly stated arguments, which would no doubt be embarrassing to proper atheist philosophers.

I’ve done a quick response in PDF format: 6 atheist arguments – quick response.  Enjoy.

(p.s. – I can give some time to responses to this, but I’m entering another busy semester, so don’t have time for too much.  Yes, I’m aware that these were ‘summaries’ and that the book would ‘unpack’ them further, but I still say they are poorly stated as is.)