…these last two days. I know why, but I’m reticent to admit it. I’ve spent the last several days reading Pagel’s “The Gnostic Gospels,” and I’m struck by the many ways people interpreted Christ and Christianity, and that many willingly went to painful deaths for their beliefs. I keep thinking about my own convictions, or more correctly lack of them. What if I’m right? What if I’m wrong? Stupid, I know…but we’re all victims of our socialization, and I was socialized as a Christian. But I’m also educated to be a critical thinker. It’s like two master programmers trying to hack and corrupt each other’s software. In the end I can only fall back on acceptance and confession of what I am, a thinking individual in conflict, looking at a future that will be shorter than my past.
I, too, was socialized to be a Christian AND a well-educated person by my Mother. Not being educated herself, she never suspected that these modes of life might conflict, as they did for me from early on. Moreover the conflict was extremely painful, really excruciating, and it took most of my life to get past it by choosing a naturalistic-scientific worldview over a supernaturalistic-religious one. One of the problems I have with some of the most prominent atheists is their repeated refrain that religious beliefs are simply NOT TRUE. Well of course they aren’t true—their adaptive function for humans is precisely and inextricably linked to misrepresentation in the service of the ego’s craving for validation—not at the level of the family, or of the community, or of humankind but at the Cosmic level through God’s providence and solicitude. The perversity of the unanalyzed ego is its willingness to subvert the whole of science to its craving for a significance it can acquire only through mythology—a grand narrative plus a moral code. Yet even when one sees through the blandishments of religion, its appeal may be impossible to relinquish.
Sorry for the delay in replying here. I’ve been distracted and hadn’t found this, But in reply, the core of your reply (and if my post) is found in the irony of your last line: “…even when one sees through the blandishments of religion, it’s appeal may be impossible to relinquish.”
A recent Facebook exchange with my cousin that exemplifies ego perversity:
Joloyce Weise: Hi Michael, how are you on this beautiful day? I haven’t heard from you in awhile, hope all is well. I found this post by a friend on Facebook , who is an inspiration to me. He lives and works in Moscow….When I read this, for some reason, thought of you. Here is the post:
High summer and just as always the sky over Moscow brightens so very early and grows dark hardly at all.
What is it about the Solstice which excites the pagan heart?
Something moves the Druid toward ritual celebration.
The atheist at the other pole refuses to credit God.
He comforts himself by words which describe but do not explain.
We ride a sphere weighing 1000 trillion tons which somehow remains suspended perpetually in three movements.
One movement we call orbit which creates the years.
Why should the movement curve, circle back round and not continue on in space?
Then there is rotation which defines our nights and days.
Then there is the tilt which grants the seasons.
We approach the extremity of the tilt fully assured that the movement will reverse itself and head back again.
One word which can’t explain is ‘gravity’ .
Though it offers one confident substitute for ‘Providence’.
And why, while we’re on the topic , should the Sun stay suspended?
It takes a furious concentration of fantasy to deny something so obvious.
That conceit leaves me sad in our secular age.
“…He made the stars also.”
Genesis 1:16
Michael Weise: This is essentially an anti-science rant. Science offers real explanations of natural phenomena. Invoking God as an “explanation” may give you a warm and fuzzy feeling of validation but it explains nothing. You cannot create the desktop computer from theology but you can from science. Using a computer to call into question the scientific basis of computers is not surprising. Religious people are habituated to this sort of benighted devotion..
Joloyce Weise: Sorry it didn’t minister to you.