Secular humanism, metaphysical naturalism and atheism are Myths too!
All rational thought occurs through the medium of language, in one form or another. All language is metaphor. So, all dogma and doctrine, all religion and philosophy, is metaphorical in nature. Metaphorical expressions of truth systems are Myths in the Joseph Campbell sense if they have survived in the human collective psyche for a very long time. If they have indeed survived, they reflect deep and fundamental facts about humanity and her needs or desires. These facts must be respected. To ignore them or to diss them is to diss essential truth itself.
There is no such thing as atheism. If truth is your God, the logical extreme to which it is put, reductio ad absurdum, is that Truth is a kind of substance, an ultimate universal essence. This quintessence is responsible for all that we perceive as being real, whether it is really so, whether we admit to existential rationales or whether we wish on ourselves some kind of scientism. Truth is God.
Being responsible, as a sort of ground of all being, this Truth may just as well be regarded as a theistic Being. So what, if it is a Myth? Joseph Campbell extolls the power of Myth. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and all the others compose their own Myths. So, Quod est demonstandum, Mythologies cannot be ignored.
The Myth of Theistic God will always be with us. The challenge is not to debunk this God, it is to channel Him into useful rivers and canals that aid human survival. This is what humans do: we constrain God. We try to bind Him. Even when we try to deny His existence, we merely confirm Him. There are no atheists.
Humanity should survive. This is the first principle of scientific evolutionary morality and a rational sociobiological ethic. All other pronouncements of how we should believe or what we should do derive from this assumption. Whether it is true is not the point. Some might think that Homo sapiens is a cancer in the body of the whole Earth. It should be cut out and destroyed.
But, if we believe this, we also believe that a cancer will eventually destroy itself by destroying its host. So, we should support it, nurture it, respect it and GROW it. It will collapse and die that much more quickly!
Too bad that the host will die as well.
The Queen is dead! Long live the Queen!
Vive!
Sing to the tune "If I were Free":
IF I WERE FREE (AGAIN)
(chorus)
If I were free
To blow your mind,
I'd fry the world
And all Mankind
In boiling oil
Bubbling asphalt too,
To make a vast
And gruesome stew.
(verse 1)
This weary world
Is full of swill!
And of its rot
I've had my fill!
The time has come
For terror's day,
'Cause horror wins
and Terror pays!
(verse 2)
If you should see
That mushroom cloud
Rising above
A French fried crowd,
Don't try to run,
Just kneel and pray.
You shall have seen
Our very last day!
et cetera
As one of our most cherished Myths, Christianity has its uses. It is a very effective channel wherein we constrain God and make Him conform to our will. It is an antidote for Terror. It is an emolient for Horror. It may yet save us from ourselves!
I do not know whether fundamentalist and orthodox Christians are truly becoming Green these days of Gore. But, if one has a sense of any value in the traditions of Jesus and the Myth of Christ she might consent to a course of action that may help to break down further the rusty bulkheads and crumbling walls between Christians for the sake of humanity herself. It is not the Bible, Christian dogma nor doctrines of Faith that are the enemy. It is ministers, priests, pastors, bishops and popes! The Satanic architects of our hellish divisions glibly preach to us every Sunday morning. They write puffy essays on popular personal websites, too!
If you feel this is true, you may indeed be a New Christian Rabbi. You are one who is literate in some of the matters of Christian Faith, you have become a scholar of sorts. And, you have not been diced, chopped and crammed into myriad pink, green, yellow and blue little boxes by any type of university professor on the hillside in some stuffy, formal, ticky-tacky establishment divinity school. And, you certainly are not ordained! Still, it is your wisdom, your concern, your learning and your intelligence that qualify you as a RABBI.
Run with it!
See my website at http://hometown.aol.com/nuchristianrabbi/
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Are You A New Christian Rabbi?
ARE YOU DEAD YET?
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6 comments:
Good post.
This comment is in regard to a couple of documentaries that aired on Sunday morning, Dec. 14, on the Science Channel. They were about nanotyrranosaurus and a giant plesiosaur. The closest regular program, I think, is called Planet Earth. SC should really add a general "documentary" category to their program ID choices.
I think that the script writers for the featured scientists or the directors of these programs should be sure that they frequently refer to fossils that are found as "fossils" and not so often as "bones".
They are not bones, as any conversation with a paleontologist would confirm. But, these scientists frequently misuse the term themselves. This gives "permission" to Christian fundamentalism religionists to call them "bones" too.
Then, they use this misnomer to advance their antiscience agenda which gives no credit to the goodwill and high integrity of scientists as ligitimate seekers after truth. By calling fossils "bones", Christian radical religionists seek to prove that Natural Selection is a lie and that belief in evolution is heresy.
Extreme Fundamentalists regard scientists as satanic bearers of false witness. If SC has a high regard for science, the channel must be more careful when they use certain terms like "bones" when discussing hot-button issues like natural selection or even the evolution of the universe.
Of course, maybe SC is right to simply ignore the pathology of extreme Christian reliogionism. Anyone who would be interested in this type of programmng would be aware of the distinction between "bone" and "fossil" anyway. But, why give anti intellectual elements more ammunition? See my Google "Blogger" blog "Neocosmology".
The term "neochristianity" is not a new one. But what I mean by the term is orthodox Christianity enlightened by modern science, common sense and logic.
I attest that it is unnecessary to dump any dogma or doctrine in order to update Christianity to modern standards. All that need be done is to recognize the "Power of Myth", The essential meaning of "quantum science" and the basic message of "Teilhard de Chardin".
Teilhard said that natural selection cannot be dismissed and the Roman Catholic Church recently has agreed. If evolution is real, then it continues to this day. Mankind is still evolving.
Already, the modern consequences of human evolution are seen in our intellectual and cultural advancements that have created the global zone of human knowledge and awareness that he termed the "noosphere". The noosphere is itself evolving as science progresses. The trajectory of this evolutionary path, Teilhard says, leads straight to a more accurate and complete concept of God. in other words, natural selection points to God, Stephen J Gould and Richard Dawkins notwithstanding.
It does so not because of any dictum of science, but because Humans are the only arbiters of what "should" be. We are the only responsible beings on this planet.
So, if we say that God exists because we feel that He "should" exist, then He does exist. I call this "Christian Existentialism".
Classic philosophical existentialism states that things may as well really be exactly as they seem. Christian Existentialism states that things may as well actually be exactly as we think they should. (This statement serves as an entry portal to an instance of a philosophy of scientific morality and ethics, by the way.)
Quantum science holds that ideas, concepts or perceptions that are held to be liguistically contradictory by any standard, even by mathematical criteria, can be simultaneously true. This is so even for the logical positivist.
A physical entity can be both a wave and a particle at the same time. A photon can be in two places at once. It is only a matter of what purpose is served by considering it one way or another that determines how a question must be viewed or an answer must be interpreted.
Not only can nature subtend apparently contradictory principles, the human mind can do the same. We can think that God can exist or not. Or both points of the dichotomy may be held to be true simultaneously.
So, it is legitimate to believe in God, if one wishes. It is no use trying to deny God. And, the existence of God is hardwired into our brains. See the book "Why God Won't Go Away", a recent popular science work that details how pleasure and satisfaction from worship, prayer and meditation are ingrained in the structure of our brains.
This phenomenon is another indication of how evolution's trajectory apparently leads us to the concept of God or of some kind of Supreme State of Existence or Ground of All Being.
Most of the controversy surrounding religious sects and denominations revolves around nothing more than the semantics of rigid doctrine and static dogma. People should view words as being dynamic, flexible and plastic.
God's WORD is not the same as ours, for sure. Our languages are all based on metaphor, even Scripture. Metaphor is the statement that a word or definition is the thing when it is obviously not. We use metaphor for emphasis or to make a point. We also use it all the time when we use words to represent ideas. But, in high school, we have all been taught that the word is NOT the thing. That is, metaphor is dangerous and analogy is misleading.
When we attempt to define God with words, we must always fail. In this sense, God does not exist because no one can adequately explain who or what God is. For God to exist in our hearts and minds, we must not try to bind Him with words or to define Him by means of dogma and doctrine.
There are no sectarian chains or shackles for the use of believers with real understanding.
God must remain
GOD UNBOUND.
Please see references to this new book title at my website http://hometown.aol.com/nuchristianrabbi/
By the way, see my blogs on Blogger.com called NEOCOSMOS and GOD UNBOUND.
Also NEOCOSMOS may be listed as NEOCOSMOLOGY. I have a photography blog called LONETREE PICTURES too.
...and a blog called NEOCRISTIANITY.
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