by Charles Kluepfel
2/13/. False Advertising
Sold as one thing, organized religion contains another
Where can I go from here?
Summary
- As children we are told to believe in Jesus because he proved himself to be God by performing miracles. Later in life, after we have already been "brainwashed" into a Christian perspective, we are told that we are "not to look for signs" that Jesus is God, but recognize his holiness in his ideals matching ours. But those ideals, however a particular branch of Christianity interprets them, were based on those poorly attested to miracles in the first place. This is "bait and switch", so that we don't really know why we believe.
- Many stories of the Bible come in two incompatible versions, such as how Jesus is said to have been born in Bethlehem, but was the Nazarene. Matthew says Jesus' family moved from Bethlehem to Nazareth years after his birth. Luke has his family temporarily staying away from Nazareth around the time of his birth. Which is it? Neither.
- Should one be a Christian just to cover ones bases, to take out an insurance policy against going to Hell (a strategy known as Pascal's Wager)? Then one runs into the problem of the multitude of religions all claiming to be the true one--not only the denominations of Christianity, but non-Christian religions, such as Islam, as well.
- What are the arguments presented for Christianity? I present the argument that they cannot be right.
- Does this make Judaism correct, if one is a theist (believer in God)? Judaism carries its own erroneous beliefs, such as the holiness of the Torah (the beginning parts of the Bible).
- Religion is divisive, but churches serve as a social meeting place. What can a non-believer in Christianity do to fill it's social niche?
When a child is being brought up in the Catholic Church, what is used to persuade him or her that the faith being taught is true? Miracle stories of course! Jesus turned the water into wine. He walked on water. He fed multitudes on just a couple of loaves of bread or on one fish. This is despite the fact that the bible says:
Mark 8:12 And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, "Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation."
Yes, when we are older we are taught that the true nature of "our" belief is not dependent on signs, but upon the marvel of the goodness of the Christian philosophy. Aside from what then becomes the irrelevance of the religion for the message (see the chapter, "But What About Morality?"), our seeing of the message of Christian philosophy as being good was inculcated in us by having us believe the miracles took place, and in our childish impressionability, we believed. That was the bait, and Mark 8:12 and other quotes in a similar spirit are the switch. The miracle stories win one over as a credulous child and make the message seem good. The adult is converted to an adult approach to what is now "his" religion, and is it any wonder that the message seems "good"?.
It can come as quite a shock to the person sold on his religion by stories of Jesus feeding multitudes on a few loaves, when the priest says that "maybe it wasn't a miracle, maybe just the offering of bread inspired others in the crowd to share their food." Classic bait and switch!
While the Catholic Church still requires a belief in the virgin birth, other more liberal churches (that is, churches even further removed from fundamentalist literalism) dispense even with this dogma. The fathers of the Catholic Church do not even see in the disagreements between Matthew and Luke, that the story about Bethlehem was made up so that a known Galilean could be made into someone born in Bethlehem to fulfill an Old Testament prophesy.
What are the clues that the Bethlehem story was woven? Luke and Matthew disagree on why the birth took place in Bethlehem: Matthew has the family take up a new residence in Nazareth after the birth narrative in which Bethlehem is taken to be the birthplace in the normal course of events, presumably because the protagonists always lived there in order to avoid a king of Judea, and to fulfill what the evangelist thought to be an Old-Testament prophecy, though even that is flawed, as there is no such prophecy:
Mat 2:22 But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee.
Mat 2:23 There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He will be called a Nazorean."
while Luke has Mary and Joseph live in Nazareth to begin with, as the annunciation takes place there (Luke 1:26), and make a journey to Bethlehem, where the birth takes place, in response to a taxation decree to register in ancestors' towns, a taxation decree that is not recorded in history, according to a registration scheme that would never work (what would a person of mixed ancestry do?):
Luke 2:3 All went to their own towns to be registered.
Luke 2:4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.
To quote Isaac Asimov, in his Guide to the Bible,
The Romans couldn't possibly have conducted so queer a census as that. Why should they want every person present in the town of his ancestors rather than in the town in which he actually dwelt? Why should they want individuals traveling up and down the length of the land, clogging the roads and interfering with the life of the province? It would even have been a military danger, for the Parthians could find no better time to attack than when Roman troops would find it hard to concentrate because of the thick crisscrossing of civilians on their way to register.
Even if the ancestral town were somehow a piece of essential information, would it not be simpler for each person merely to state what that ancestral town was? And even if, for some reason, a person had to travel to that ancestral town, would it not be sufficient for the head of the household or some agent of his to make the trip? Would a wife have to come along? Particularly one that was in the last month of pregnancy?
Even if the ancestral town were somehow a piece of essential information, would it not be simpler for each person merely to state what that ancestral town was? And even if, for some reason, a person had to travel to that ancestral town, would it not be sufficient for the head of the household or some agent of his to make the trip? Would a wife have to come along? Particularly one that was in the last month of pregnancy?
(Some readers will be wont to discount the opinions of an atheist on the matter of the Bible, but that is like discounting the testimony of a witness because the conclusion he or she has drawn from the evidence is the opposite of one's wishes.)
It is to be recalled that in the earliest Gospel, Mark, no mention is made of Bethlehem, and Jesus is merely "of Nazareth."
Matthew has the "holy family" residing in Bethlehem until after Jesus's birth, and then they move to Nazareth, while Luke has the couple from Nazareth temporarily travel to Bethlehem, where Jesus is born, and then return to their Galilean home. Is this a trivial discrepancy? Liberal theologians would say that it does not matter where Jesus was born, just that his message is important. But just as a witness in court who has lied about one thing is suspect in his other statements, so too the Church can be seen as having woven the story to make some Old Testament prophecy be fulfilled. It brought in two character witnesses and it is clear that at least one of them has perjured himself. It is also a part of quaint stories, designed to convince children at a time when their critical abilities are not developed, and thereby have those children for life. Although I believe that the Church is (and was) not as bad-minded, on the whole, as cigarette companies, the analogy does come to mind between the camels that brought the wise men and Joe Camel. Both also rely on peer pressure.
While we are in the canonical infancy narratives, note that both Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38 list genealogies for Jesus, disagreeing with each other even to the point of Joseph's father being listed as being named Jacob or Heli, respectively. To counter this, as well as the absurdity of tracing Jesus's lineage back to David through Joseph, who was not really Jesus's father, some apologists say that Luke's genealogy is that of Mary (although it says Heli was Joseph's father), because in those days women did not count for anything. McKinsey points out the corner this ploy paints the apologist into: Mary's cousin Elisabeth (Luke 1:36) was a daughter of Aaron (Luke 1:5), from the house of Levi. The genealogy given relates David's lineage, not Aaron's. McKinsey also points out that "according to 1 Chron. 22:9-10 the messiah had to be a descendant of Solomon. However, Luke's genealogy, which is alleged to be that of Mary [but this applies even if Luke's genealogy of Jesus is through Joseph], is traced through Solomon's brother, Nathan."
We see that the New Testament has tried, through stories of a birth in Bethlehem, and a couple of genealogies, to claim Jesus as a descendant of David, congruent to a tradition in which the Messiah was to be a descendant of David. But we also find a separate tradition, designed to show that in fact descent from David is not needed, presumably a tradition in which Jesus is not taken as being descended from David:
Mark 12:35 While Jesus was teaching in the temple, he said, "How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David?
Mark 12:36 David himself, by the Holy Spirit, declared, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet."'
Mark 12:37 David himself calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?" And the large crowd was listening to him with delight.
Thus in one way or another, traditions finding their separate ways into the New Testament have tried either to give Jesus Davidic descent, or deny the need for Davidic descent.
The Catholic Church, despite its not being a fundamentalist one, also believes in the existence of the "Holy Innocents," young male children slaughtered by Herod in a vain attempt to eradicate Jesus. History would certainly have recorded such a massive carnage, and it hasn't. To quote Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible:
And yet this dreadful deed of Herod's seems very likely to be apocryphal. It is hard to believe that it ever happened. Not only is the slaughter not mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament, but it is not mentioned in any of the secular histories of the time, either. It is rather remarkable that such a deed would be overlooked when many more far less wicked deeds of Herod were carefully described.
Surely Matthew would not have accepted this tale of the killing of the infants merely because of his eagerness to introduce a not-very-apt quotation.
Perhaps something more is involved. Many heroes of pagan legend survived infancy only after a narrow escape from some king who tried to kill him. This is true of legends concerning Cyrus, who founded the Persian Empire, and Romulus, who founded Rome. Cyrus had a grandfather and Romulus a great-uncle who, in each case, were kings and had divine foreknowledge that the just-born child would someday depose them. Both children were exposed and left to die; both survived. In Jewish legend, Abraham, as an infant, miraculously survived the attempts of evil King Nimrod upon his life. It is not surprising that similar tales might arise concerning Jesus after his death.
Surely Matthew would not have accepted this tale of the killing of the infants merely because of his eagerness to introduce a not-very-apt quotation.
Perhaps something more is involved. Many heroes of pagan legend survived infancy only after a narrow escape from some king who tried to kill him. This is true of legends concerning Cyrus, who founded the Persian Empire, and Romulus, who founded Rome. Cyrus had a grandfather and Romulus a great-uncle who, in each case, were kings and had divine foreknowledge that the just-born child would someday depose them. Both children were exposed and left to die; both survived. In Jewish legend, Abraham, as an infant, miraculously survived the attempts of evil King Nimrod upon his life. It is not surprising that similar tales might arise concerning Jesus after his death.
Asimov failed to mention the Moses story in this history of the idea of martyred innocents, but note:
Exo 1:15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,
Exo 1:16 "When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live."
Exo 1:17 But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.
Exo 1:18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?"
Exo 1:19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them."
Exo 1:20 So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong.
Exo 1:21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.
Exo 1:22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live."
And what happens if we question any of this or a score of similar far-fetched ideas, up to and including the resurrection of Jesus? The Church tells us not to be like that doubting Thomas:
John 20:27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe."
John 20:28 Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"
John 20:29 Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
Who does not want to be blessed? Who can refuse, when he or she is a little kid, dependent on his or her parents? The "proof" that it really happened is that Thomas saw it. How is a little kid going to talk back to his parents and say "but how do I know that Thomas really saw it?" especially after hearing
Eph 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Eph 6:2 "Honor your father and mother"--this is the first commandment with a promise:
Eph 6:3 "so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth."
and repetitions of this through the Old and New Testaments. How many of those who are no longer kids, go back and re-examine the faith learned in youth?
A Multitude of Faiths
From an early age, as we have seen, we are asked to have faith: faith in our religious teachers, faith in Jesus, faith in God, faith in the Bible, faith in the Pope, etc. Thomas is an example of the questioner we are not supposed to be. The seventeenth century philosopher Blaise Pascal even made a betting proposition of faith. He said that if the Catholic Faith is true then it is certainly worthwhile to have believed it as we will gain an eternal reward in heaven. On the other hand, if the faith is misplaced, all we will have wasted is one lifetime. With payoff odds like that, he was willing to take the chance.
However, others of us are not so able to will our beliefs. It reminds me of catechisms that purport to explain to a child what his or her beliefs are, with titles such as "This is Our Faith" or "These Are Our Beliefs." How can someone be told what his beliefs are?
A look about in the real world shows us that there are many more than one faith about in the world. There is Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Shinto, various shades of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, ... . If one is to follow Pascal in his betting proposition, one must place stakes on all these competitors in an attempt to book a winner. By betting on Christianity, one risks going to Muslim Hell.
In America we are accustomed to pluralism and tolerance of many different faiths. We are taught to respect the beliefs of others. But if we respect them, what does it mean for truth? See the chapter "Defending the Church" to see how even denominations of Christianity are at cross purposes. In that chapter, an example of a Christian group is compared and contrasted in its beliefs to the Catholic Church, and also contrasted in some of its beliefs (notably communion wine) to other Protestant denominations.
If one is to have faith, without reason, how can the Pope withhold his assent from the Book of Mormon? How can Christianity in general withhold assent from the Gospels that were rejected by Bishop Irenaeus from the Canon of the Bible? ... In the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is shown growing up as a petulant child, who would strike his playmates dead when they angered him, and strike blind any parent who complained about this.
One hears, even today, of weeping or bleeding icons or statues. Before the current Balkan problems, in the former Yugoslavia, people made pilgrimages to Medjugorje, to see apparitions of the Virgin Mary, bringing back rosary beads they claim have changed from silver to gold. (Skeptics analyzing the beads will say they are now brass, without the silver plate that had once covered them, as handling had removed it.) These of course are Christian icons. But as I am writing this we are hearing reports from all over the world that in Hindu temples, statues of an elephant-shaped God, Lord Ganesha, are actually drinking milk, and the people are reporting this as a great miracle. In America, Hindus reporting such miracles, interviewed by television reporters, are saying that this proves God exists. I thought this statement was a bit more monotheistic than Hindu beliefs would dictate, undoubtedly influenced by the Judeo-Christian culture in this country. Are we to take this "miracle" as evidence of the truth of the Hindu religion?
With the gift of faith one can believe in Islam, Shinto, and Mormonism all at once. If the contradictions within the Bible don't deter belief in the Bible, the contradictions between religions should be surmountable also, shouldn't they? In fact, when I took a course in comparative religion at New York's New School for Social Research, the instructor there, an émigré from the former Soviet Union, did in fact seem to believe in all the religions at once. Perhaps it is a reaction to the enforced atheism in his old land. A line he used was "Are you a Christian?" and if you said yes, he would say that the teachings of other religions were no harder to believe than Christianity's. He also taught a course in modern-day mysticism, such as "channeling." I did not attend when he invited us to stay for the channeling demonstration, but maybe I should have. It would be interesting to see what tricks were performed (although I don't think I could find the trick the way Randi would be able to), as those who went seemed to have been impressed. When I expressed some doubts about the applicability of Yin and Yang to everything, and he asked "Are you a Christian?" and I said, "Not any more," he wrote that off as "Oh, a skeptic." (For those interested, the Yin/Yang "experts" brought in one evening as guest speaker and his interpreter had expounded on one of these - I forget which - being "inner" and the other "outer." The "inner" one was also associated with "cold," and the "outer" with "warm." This contradicted everyday knowledge of the inner earth and the inner body being warm, and outer space being cold, as well as the experience of a warm cabin on a cold winter's day or night. This gave the "expert" a chuckle at how shallowly I was understanding their esoterica).
Reifying the Metaphor
There are indeed all sorts of dualities in the world: up-down, in-out, hot-cold, north-south, love-hate, forward-backward, ... . The Yin/Yang concept attempts to put this into an oxymoronic general concrete form, which leads to contradiction. So also other religions, Christianity being the case in point, attempt to present reality in the form of parables. But in doing so, they make concrete claims of specific truths.
Yes, it is nice to have hope for the future, and everyday life requires that we not dwell upon our ultimate death. This does not mean that we have to accept the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Even atheists who have no belief in an afterlife can be content in knowing that after they are dead, the situation will be no worse than before they were born. While living they can enjoy life as much as possible, and take pleasure in making life a little bit better for their contemporaries and posterity. Isaac Asimov was an exemplary person of this nature. For the person Isaac Asimov, who is now dead, if his atheistic beliefs are correct the situation is no different now from the situation before he was born. For us, his beneficiaries, life is a lot better than if he had not been born, and during his life, the knowledge that this would be the case gave him great pleasure for the time that it lasted. Furthermore, there are other, alternative beliefs, saying that all consciousness is a unit ... that our individual lives are an imaginary impingement on the oneness of all, the illusion being a result of our material-dependent memories. There are all sorts of alternatives to Jesus.
Also it is true that we do not want to live in a "dog-eat-dog" world where everyone is out for himself, and out to seek vengeance for the slightest real or imagined insult. But that does not mean that we should "turn the other cheek" to every real injustice. Many metaphors are an attempt to counterbalance a human tendency to go in an undesirable direction, or rather too far in a particular direction, but this does not mean they should be taken as the "Gospel" truth. The Bible, and Christian tradition, can be studied as one studies the world's other great literature, including Shakespeare, and the other religious traditions of the world. No doubt one will find many nuggets of wisdom if one does not push the beliefs to a literal and all-encompassing dogma.
The presence of some valid moral points in a religion, such as the ideas of the preceding two paragraphs, does not make every teaching of a given religion worthy of belief. For example, we all see divorce as undesirable. But the absolute prohibition on divorce that Jesus dictates would have miserable people left hopeless of seeking a better life. To quote Bertrand Russell in his What I Believe,
Habitual drunkenness, cruelty, insanity, are grounds upon which divorce is necessary for the children's sake quite as much as for the sake of the wife or husband. The peculiar importance attached, at present, to adultery is quite irrational. It is obvious that many forms of misconduct are more fatal to married happiness than an occasional infidelity.
And the fixed morality of a given religion would rule out even trying alternative solutions to the problems posed by monogamy, such as "open marriages," where the partnership in living and bringing up children is not tied to sexual exclusivity.
Why They Are Still Christians
Andrew Greeley, the priest who writes steamy novels as well as statistical and other types of non-fiction about the Catholic Church, says that people still remain Catholics because they like to be Catholics. This is rather circular reasoning. Presumably people do what they do because they like (in one fashion or another) to do it. But why do they like what they like? One gets the impression that Greeley is speaking of the social context, treating the Catholic Church as no more than a club, much as, when we were kids we thought of ourselves as members of the Mickey Mouse Club because we watched that show on television. Today they belong to the Catholic Church because they attend mass. They attend mass "for the sake of the kids," or to socialize, or to "make themselves better persons."
More articulate in the doctrinal area is Hans Küng. While disagreeing with the hierarchy above him in the Catholic Church on doctrinal and disciplinary issues, this bishop, a foremost leader in liberal theology, at least on the Catholic side, has remained in the church. I will now comment on his book Why I Am Still a Christian:
The Morality Argument
On page 21, Küng states the moral point of view:
And there are parents today who observe with perplexity that morality in general has also vanished, along with religion, as Nietzsche predicted. For - as is becoming increasingly clear - it is not so easy to justify any moral values purely rationally, by reason alone, as Sigmund Freud would have liked to do; to prove by reason alone why under any circumstances freedom is supposed to be better than oppression, justice better than self-interest, non-violence better than violence, love better than hate, peace better than war. Or, to put it more forcefully: why, if it is to our advantage and our personal happiness, should we not just as well lie, steal, commit adultery and murder; indeed, why should we be humane or even "fair"?
He is right in saying that reason alone will not give us morality, any more than reason alone will give us anything. Reason alone cannot even give us abstract geometry, let alone morality. A famous postulate in Euclidean geometry is the one that says that there is exactly one line through any point that is parallel to some other given line. We take it as true because it seems "obvious" to us: more to the point, it is something that works in our everyday world. If we wish to cut a sheet of paper as a rectangle 8˝" x 11", we know that there is no choice in the direction of cutting the bottom edge for example, but that we can be assured that there is a way to do it. On the other hand, we know that on the earth's surface, where the nearest thing to a straight line is called a great circle, such as the equator, that no matter what two such geodesics (as they are also called) you may traverse, the two will always meet; that is, there are no parallel straight lines on the earth's surface. If a railroad track went around the earth's equator, each rail would be a lesser circle, and segments of it would not be the shortest paths from one endpoint to the other, such a path requiring a divergence in the middle away from the opposing rail. The difference is slight in the short width of a railroad track, so the assumption of the existence of parallels is a good approximation in treating small areas.
What does this have to do with morality? The parallel postulate is an example of an axiom: something taken as so obvious it does not require proof. The reason that such things exist, is that there must be some starting point. Proofs require previous knowledge, and there is no previous knowledge before your first item of what is then faith.
Küng's argument is a good one, in my opinion, for the distinction between mind (or spirit, soul, ... what you will) and matter. For if all existence is matter - the runnings to and fro of atoms, subatomic particles, waves, ... - how can one judge the superiority of one set of such motions from another? However, experience tells us that certain actions bring pain, and others bring pleasure: concepts alien to a mechanistic view of the universe. Therefore, we posit as beneficial those rules that help us act together for mutual benefit. The need for human good is the axiom needed at the beginning of the logical moral path. To say that religion is good because it fosters such behavior is to acknowledge that such behavior is desirable in the first place. So why bring in the religion to foster it?
Later in the chapter ("Disorientation and Christian Commitment") Küng notes
Everyone - young and old - is trying to work things out for themselves, often quite naively. Some people orientate their lives by the horoscope, others - more scientifically minded - by biological rhythms; some organize everything according to a planned diet, others according to yoga; one person swears by group therapy, another by transcendental meditation, a third by political action. But it is not merely a question of individual values; it is a matter of social values as well. Ethical questions abound: nuclear energy, gene manipulation, test-tube babies, environmental protection, East-West and North-South conflicts; and it is becoming increasingly clear that such questions are exceeding the comprehension and overtaxing the powers of individuals. Today we can do more than ever - but what we should do we simply do not know.
In my chapter on "But What About Morality?" I mention how a religious set of ethics serves the purpose of "giving wisdom to the simple." Perplexities can be bypassed if one starts with a fixed set of rules. Unfortunately Euclidean rules may not apply in a non-Euclidean world. One cannot pass off one's responsibility to think out problems to their consequences by merely referring to some authority or other, be it the Bible or the Pope or any of the "isms" that Küng mentions in the above quote. And certainly belief in the true reality of mythological stories cannot put us in touch with the needs of the real world. To rely on religion, it would be incumbent upon us to test the reality of those stories to see if they really do compel belief. And in fact, they do not.
Küng begins his next chapter by stating that
there can be no civilized society and no state without some system of laws. But no legal system can exist without a sense of justice. And no sense of justice can exist without a moral sense or ethic. And there can be no moral sense or ethic without basic norms, attitudes, and values.
Then, strangely enough, he goes on to say "If (as I have suggested) it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to justify ethics purely rationally, then we cannot recklessly ignore the significance and function of ... religion ... without accepting the consequences," even though he has just justified ethics purely rationally, with the starting axiom of the need for a civilized society, in the preceding paragraph.
Fitting a Liberal Theology to an Illiberal Christ
Later in the chapter ("The Nominally Christian and the Truly Christian") Küng hypothesizes how Jesus would have decreed the Church hierarchy to be on a level with the Pharisees by laying down an intolerable burden by declaring artificial birth control to be mortal sin. That's certainly possible, but then he goes on to claim that he "cannot believe ... that he, who particularly invited failures to his table, would forbid all remarried divorced people ever to approach his table." Maybe not, but the Bible says that Jesus forbade such remarriages, and that in forgiving sinners, he instructed them to "sin no more." If the Bible cannot be trusted in quoting Jesus, and the Church cannot be trusted in its long tradition of forbidding remarriage, then what is left of a Christianity to follow?
Küng states that Jesus would have supported ordination for women because he was "constantly accompanied by women (who provided for his keep)," and his apostles were all married except for Paul. (Of course Paul never met Jesus, but Küng accepts his listing among the apostles.) However the spirit of the Bible is that none of the twelve apostles was in fact a woman. Equal rights for women is not a Christian idea. Jesus's spokesperson, Paul, said
1 Cor 14:35 If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.
1 Tim 2:12 I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.
Of course this contradicts the spirit of Paul's other words:
Gal 3:28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
But then, we all know that the Bible can be used to prove whatever point of view you want, so the contradiction is not unexpected.
When one gets one's morality from an external source, one has to take what one sees personally as the bad, along with the good. A "cafeteria Catholic," selecting what he chooses from the Catholic menu, is not really being guided by the Church; he is only deluding himself to think otherwise. At most, he or she is giving some attention to the Church's teachings but more attention to more modern thought. And my point is that the Church's influence, one point of view among many, is not that beneficial that it warrants considering oneself a Christian.
Küng says he cannot believe
that he [Jesus], who defended the adulteress and sinners, would pass such harsh verdicts in delicate questions requiring discriminating and critical judgement, like pre-marital sex, homosexuality, and abortion.
But the Bible has Jesus condemn fornicators to the fires of Gahenna. Church tradition, which includes the Old Testament and the canonical letters of Paul, condemns homosexuality:
Lev 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
Lev 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.
Rom 1:26 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural,
Rom 1:27 and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
Acknowledging the Multiplicity
Küng gets down to brass tacks in "Why Christian Commitment", where he acknowledges the existence of other religious traditions. He, "despite all [his] criticisms and concerns - ... can nevertheless feel fundamentally positive about a tradition that is significant for [him]; a tradition in which [he] live[s] side by side with so many others, past and present."[the "he" and "him" represent "I" and "me" in the original]. Again, the Andrew Greeley "feel good" logic, similar to how a child of my era liked to belong to the Mickey Mouse Club.
His second point is that he "would not dream of confusing the great Christian tradition with the present structures of the church, nor leaving a definition of true Christian values to its present administrators." But what is the value of redefining away the problems of Christianity. We have seen above that Church objections to homosexuality, women's rights, etc. are not just recent aberrations. Language has meaning in terms of what one understands things to be. If I were to assemble a set of beliefs that is comfortable to me, but not able to be put into accordance with the teachings of any existing church, could I claim to be a member of any church I wished? If I chose to call myself a Scientologist, without any legitimate connection with that church, I'm sure I'd hear from their lawyers. The Catholic Church of course is not like that - nowadays they'd be glad to count anyone among the "faithful" just to keep their numbers up (it was different in the olden days, with a nearly universal following backed up by the burning of heretics). But the incorrect labeling just does violence to the language in terms of what Catholic means. If it means anything, it is allegiance to the Pope, but Küng disagrees with the Pope. Christianity would presumably include the following of all that Jesus is taken to have taught, such as the indissolubility of marriage. Küng would be the Humpty Dumpty who can take such a word to mean whatever he wants it to mean. And however much he would like to change its morals, for whatever reason, the name Christianity certainly brings into play a whole mythology of Jesus's being divine in a sense that the rest of us are not.
Third, and finally, Küng summarizes why he is a Christian as
despite my violent objections to what is called Christian - I find in Christianity a basic orientation on the questions of the great Whence and Whither, Why and Wherefore, of humanity and the world: a basic orientation for my individual and social self. And at the same time I find in these things a spiritual home on which I do not want to turn my back, any more than I want in politics to turn my back on democracy, which in its own way has been, and is, no less misused and abused than Christianity. But admittedly, all this only hints at the decisive factor. I must make myself clearer still.
I don't believe he does ever make himself clearer. He doesn't like to leave his comfortable home in which he was raised. To be uncharitable we can liken his situation to that of captives who succumb to the beliefs of captors who brainwash them. After all, what is there in the outside world for a Bishop to do if he leaves the Church? And certainly his argument can in no way convince someone else to be a Christian, as I for one definitely want to "turn my back" on Christianity (but keep an eye out over my shoulder, as in walking through a bad neighborhood). Democracy asks for faith in the people of today - a faith that does entail some risks, but certainly not the risks entailed in trusting the output of a 2000-year game of telephone, the game in which a story is given to one person, then repeated in a chain, until after about four people the story is unrecognizable.
New Beliefs / Old Beliefs
Küng goes on to describe non-Christians and former Christians who
would believe in such a great Whence and Whither, they would believe in an Absolute or Supreme Being, a Deity, or "God"; that atheism leaves them intellectually and emotionally unsatisfied. But they have little idea of what to do about this "God," scarcely know what or who God is, or what he is like. In this sense, if they are not atheists they are at least agnostics.
Now this does not totally surprise me. I certainly do not want to belittle the God of the philosophers, or the God of a general religiosity, of whom agnostics generally speak. I do not want to declare this God is an idol fabricated by humanity, as some Protestant theology has done for a long time. How could I do so, when I consider Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, Kant and Hegel? For it is still a great thing for a human being to know something about this great Whence and Whither, Why and Wherefore, of humanity and the world; something about the great mystery of reality; and thus to have a certain basic orientation. But I would suggest that it is not very easy to live with this still-hidden mystery, with this abstract God of the philosophers; to know what or who he is, or what he is like. This God is a God without a countenance. He is "the unknown God," the theos agnostos of the Acts of the Apostles, and he thus rightly remains the God of the agnostics. This at any rate is so unless, like the great philosophers of modern times (and also their atheistic opponents) we allow ourselves to be influenced by the Christian idea of God, which is present everywhere, even today.
Now this does not totally surprise me. I certainly do not want to belittle the God of the philosophers, or the God of a general religiosity, of whom agnostics generally speak. I do not want to declare this God is an idol fabricated by humanity, as some Protestant theology has done for a long time. How could I do so, when I consider Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, Kant and Hegel? For it is still a great thing for a human being to know something about this great Whence and Whither, Why and Wherefore, of humanity and the world; something about the great mystery of reality; and thus to have a certain basic orientation. But I would suggest that it is not very easy to live with this still-hidden mystery, with this abstract God of the philosophers; to know what or who he is, or what he is like. This God is a God without a countenance. He is "the unknown God," the theos agnostos of the Acts of the Apostles, and he thus rightly remains the God of the agnostics. This at any rate is so unless, like the great philosophers of modern times (and also their atheistic opponents) we allow ourselves to be influenced by the Christian idea of God, which is present everywhere, even today.
First of all, I thought this was a Jewish idea of God; how does Christ get involved? Any contribution by Jesus is no more than those of the philosophers just mentioned as well as so many others, including Jews and Muslims, just to name some of the more western religions.
We also are again reminded that "it is not very easy to live with this still-hidden mystery." Haven't Christian theologians told us that living right is not easy? Now we find that indeed, refraining from the hubris-filled claim to know the truth is even harder. I can apply this equally to atheists and to Christians, to Madelyn Murray O'Hair and to Pat Robertson.
That a given vision of reality, even atheism, "leaves [one] intellectually and emotionally unsatisfied," is no argument against that belief system. After all, contemplating the Holocaust is emotionally repulsive, but that does not allow us to deny it happened, and as even Küng acknowledges, Christianity is not the only alternative to atheism.
Of course, even those who pretend not to be influenced by Christianity are. We are influenced by all the philosophers and thinkers who have preceded us, but there is no need to consciously try to emulate them, but rather, due to the pervasive nature of Christianity in our culture, we should recognize why we might be biased toward Christian ideas, and guard against agreeing with them without good reason.
Küng later asks
What and who is the God who is to provide my essential values? What is he like? In the light of the Old and New Testament I know an answer to this question. The God of the Judeo-Christian faith does not remain abstract and undetermined, like the God of the philosophers. He is concrete and determined: not hidden, but revealed in the history of the people of Israel and of Jesus Christ. And, unlike the God of the philosophers and scholars - to take up Pascal's contrast - this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ, is not enigmatic, like the Egyptian sphinx, the strangler of passers-by. Nor is this God ambivalent, equivocal, two-faced, like the Roman god Janus, for example. Nor is he capricious, incalculable, like Tyche-Fortuna, who as the goddess of happiness and unhappiness guides the course of the world.
However, the Judeo-Christian God was ambivalent enough to require the advice of Moses:
Exo 32:11 But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
Exo 32:12 Why should the Egyptians say, 'It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.
Exo 32:13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, 'I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"
Exo 32:14 And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
The Good Lord also repented after wiping out most of humanity in the flood, and promised never to do it again, and stayed Abraham's hand after first ordering Isaac's sacrifice. Of course the liberal Dr. Küng must look upon these stories as metaphors, but still, metaphors of what? The spirit is one of ambivalence.
Küng's implication is that the God of the philosophers cannot provide values. However, that God provided mankind with a mind capable of understanding the implications of his actions, an ability to empathize with his fellow humans, an understanding of the interdependency and reciprocal relations among people. A special visitation by a unique emissary of God is not needed to see these things. Furthermore, how is one to determine the credentials of such an emissary? Was Abraham sure that the voice who had convinced him to proceed to sacrifice Isaac was that of God? How? A modern-day zealot who puts her baby in the oven to purge the devil out of him is perceived as deranged. Devil believers might posit the devil as the instigator rather than God. Liberal theologians are so close to the theology that they do not see that the credential for the true God that they themselves require, is agreement with the human-perceived ethics which are precisely the same as those endorsed by the God of the philosophers. So where does divine revelation need to come in?
Küng's arguments are echoed by the liberal Protestant theologian, Harvey Cox, in the November, 1995, Atlantic Monthly. In an article which finds Pat Robertson's Regent College not so bad after all, he states that
values are rooted in narrative; so the historical religious traditions, including Christianity and Judaism, along with secular philosophies of life, will have to be studied as viable life options. Without roots, disembodied "values" become mere preferences and eventually dissolve into the ether.
Well, human values depend on preferences. What else is there? In most circumstances most people prefer to live than to die. In some grievous circumstances, some prefer to die than to live. Some prefer sex partners of the same sex, while others prefer the opposite. What is wrong with allowing the individual his or her preferences, so long as he or she is not interfering with others? In any case, I don't think that these preferences will dissolve into the ether. While Cox graciously allows secular philosophies to present their side, I fail to see the need for anyone to invent a narrative in order to obtain his or her rights.
Logic
Along Küng's way, he dispenses with the law of excluded middle:
the fact that God is fundamentally neither personal nor a-personal depends upon the incomparable nature of God. He is in fact both at the same time, and might therefore properly be called "superpersonal."
While counting the angels dancing on the head of a pin went out ages ago, verbal quibbling seems to have stayed around. Küng also seems to want to have Paul's ability to be "all things to all people," a good way to gain converts, but a poor way to seek truth.
In a later chapter, Küng reiterates that he gets his "essential Christian values from Jesus of Nazareth, who is a historical figure and not a myth, and who is for that very reason the Christ who is authoritative in all things for Christians of all times." One would assume then that Küng admits to the indissolubility of marriage in all circumstances and that it is beyond human power to change that. But I don't think that's the case.
Küng enthuses over the God who prefers the Prodigal Son to the one who stayed home. While such behavior is a natural human trait, to be happy over the ending of a period of loss and to show preference for one person over another, one would expect better of an infinite God whose love for one still leaves infinite room for love of all others - there are enough fatted calves to go around to everyone. And who am I to judge God's credentials? ... No less qualified than Küng.
Why Should We Be Christians?
The Knights of Columbus has a Catholic Information Service, which publishes a series of booklets about Catholic beliefs. One of them, Faith - And Common Sense says that "when J. Edgar Hoover advocated a return to religion as an antidote for crime, many agreed with him. But many of those agreeing don't go to church themselves. Many, it seems, regard religion as necessary to the other fellow." Are the Knights of Columbus suggesting that those who don't go are criminals? ... or are more likely to be criminals? But certainly those agreeing with the statement are in fact not likely to be criminals, regardless of whether they themselves go to church. The association between going to church and being law-abiding is a debatable point, but its acceptance need not commit the crime hater to church-going himself. It again argues the point of faith approached as necessary for morality, which it is not - see "But What About Morality."
The "Philosophical" Build-Up
Not wanting to leave any stone unturned in the search for ways to convince us of the truth of Catholic dogma, the booklet from the Knights of Columbus presents what on the surface appears to be a philosophical argument, but at each step, a new begging of the question appears; we are asked to accept each new statement without their saying how it follows from the previous; the "argument" goes:
We depend on God for our very existence. We have a duty to adore Him. We must recognize we are "offenders against the law of God" and "come to Him with bent head and sorrowing heart for having offended Him." "These are the duties of religion - adoration, thanksgiving, subjection and penitence. We cannot avoid them; they are imposed by our very nature." "Religion consists not only of a whole series of truths which we must accept, but a number of duties which we must perform," including worship, not only in one's heart but in public where people live their lives. That's why the true church is necessary. [?] "Men searching on their own for philosophic and religious truth are constantly confused. Religion has the benefit of divine revelation and can provide the individual with suitable spiritual aids founded not upon faulty and uncertain human opinion, but upon the authority of God Himself."
There the Catholics turn the scandalous disagreements into an "argument" which is really wishful thinking. Oh, how wonderful if all the various sects could be forgotten, and God would present pure truth on a silver platter. The Knights of Columbus will say that this is just what the Catholic Church provides. Of course, this is because they say so.
Organized religion is needed as our teacher in such matters. Who will instruct us in our obligations to God and to society if we do not depend upon the Church, which has been divinely instituted for this very purpose?
I hate to tell you, but we do have to depend on ourselves. Like it or not, the vast tradition of the Church is human tradition, with elements drawn from not only pre-Christian Judaism, but also Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, Greek philosophy, and who-knows-how-many other traditions. Some of the elements are good, and some are bad, as noted above in our responses to Father Küng. The tradition itself is not our guide, and anyone who loves the tradition enough (such as Küng) to want to stay in it, must be the one to guide the interpretation, as a "cafeteria Catholic," rather than the other way around.
The booklet goes on to say how people who are monetarily successful and who have achieved fame, might still be unhappy. This is not big news - it is the psychologically sound basis for the title of Rabbi Kushner's When Everything You Ever Wanted Isn't Enough - needless to say, not a work of the Catholic Church. The Knights, however, provide the solution: "Genuine happiness will be found only in the practice of religion," and they definitely tell you which one. I guess these people will not take Isaac Asimov at his word that he was truly happy - just to take one example of a happy, rich, famous atheist. Lesser known atheists, I am sure, can be happy too, without all that burdensome wealth.
"If there is to be any real basis for law and order, any incentive to universal human virtue, there must be a motive more compelling than man-made laws. Religion alone provides this." I must again point out the example of Isaac Asimov, whose only wish was to make the world a better place for humankind, particularly through the spread of scientific knowledge. He was productive, and happy in the services he performed to mankind. And he was an atheist.
Miracle Stories - Again
Despite Mark 8:12, the Knights of Columbus booklet attempts to prove Christ Was God in the chapter with that name by quoting a Bible story of Jesus curing a blind man on the Sabbath day.
No man ever taught as this man. The wisdom of the sages of the earth is as nothing compared to His. He worked miracles. The Gospels describe more than forty of them in detail, and mention many more in general. He cured such things as leprosy, paralysis, hemorrhage, deafness, blindness, dropsy and fever. He changed water into wine, silenced tempests, walked upon water, and multiplied bread and fish a thousandfold. He brought three dead people back to life: the son of the widow of Naim, the daughter of Jairus, and Lazarus.
These were not sleight-of-hand tricks, "Faith-healing" of people who only thought they were sick [how the author knows this I do not know], or natural cures. They were done in the open upon people who were known to be incurably sick. Consider the story told by John (John 9) of the man born blind. He had spent his adult life begging at the gate of the Temple. The Lord cured him by sending him to the Pool of Siloe to wash. He went and washed and saw.
The adversaries of Christ were not fools, but well-educated men. They could not admit a miracle from His hands any more than the modern critics can. They investigated. First, they implied that a switch had been made between a blind man and one with sight who resembled him. But the people who knew the beggar identified him.
It was intimated that medicine had been used to work the cure. "What did he do to thee? How did he open thine eyes?" they demanded (John 9:26). The blind man could only reply that the Lord had anointed his eyes with clay and sent him to wash in the Pool of Siloe. Blocked in this way the Jews cast doubt on whether the man had been blind at all. But his parents testified he had been blind from birth.
When all this examination failed, the Jews tried to break down the man's story by bluff. They pointed out that the cure was done on a Sabbath. God must be responsible for miracles, but God would not violate the Sabbath rest by working a miracle. To this bit of tortured theology the blind man opposed the facts, "Not from the beginning of the world has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing," he said (John 9:32-23 [sic]).
The adversaries of Christ were not fools, but well-educated men. They could not admit a miracle from His hands any more than the modern critics can. They investigated. First, they implied that a switch had been made between a blind man and one with sight who resembled him. But the people who knew the beggar identified him.
It was intimated that medicine had been used to work the cure. "What did he do to thee? How did he open thine eyes?" they demanded (John 9:26). The blind man could only reply that the Lord had anointed his eyes with clay and sent him to wash in the Pool of Siloe. Blocked in this way the Jews cast doubt on whether the man had been blind at all. But his parents testified he had been blind from birth.
When all this examination failed, the Jews tried to break down the man's story by bluff. They pointed out that the cure was done on a Sabbath. God must be responsible for miracles, but God would not violate the Sabbath rest by working a miracle. To this bit of tortured theology the blind man opposed the facts, "Not from the beginning of the world has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing," he said (John 9:32-23 [sic]).
So, now, the advocates of the Church, wishing to have it both ways, point toward a belief based upon signs - signs attested to by ancient writings of those who were already believers, and would do or say anything to make others believe.
The booklet goes on to say Jesus's resurrection was the greatest miracle and again begs the question:
It has been claimed that Christ was not dead, that He did not re-appear, that Christianity was founded on a fraud [self deception, mass hysteria, wishful thinking, pious storytelling such as that about Santa Claus, and dozens of other non-fraudulent happenstances come to mind, actually]. This has satisfied no one, and the doubters then have tried denying that there ever was the slightest degree of truth in the resurrection story. They claim it was all made up much later on, but this is also contradicted by historically provable facts.
What historically provable facts? I don't know of any, and the booklet does not go on to explain. This statement is a mystery to me. The question begging continues:
The tomb of Christ still stands empty. It must be filled either with God or with the greatest mystery the world has ever known. The facts are that Christ was God. He arose. If the facts of His life are true - and they undoubtedly are - then His teaching must be accepted as truth also.
In fact, Jesus and his disciples could convince no more than a tiny fraction of the Jews of his own time of the truth of the above. Jesus, whose mission was to the Jews, as exemplified in:
Mat 15:24 He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
and
Mat 10:23 When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
had to be preached to the Gentiles to find believers - people far removed from the land where this presumably happened. And, by the way, the Son of Man hasn't come back yet despite the whole world's having heard of Jesus, including all the towns of Israel (see the chapter "Where Is He?").
Faith or Proof?
The attempt to pass off faith (otherwise known as begging the question) as reason continues in the booklet's section on Christ's Authority:
To the Jews who questioned His authority to teach, Christ said, "I tell you and you do not believe. The works that I do in the name of my Father, these bear witness concerning me [more signs, which we are told are not given]" (John 10:25). And again, "If I do not perform the works of my Father, do not believe me. But if I do perform them, and if you are not willing to believe me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in me and I in the Father" (John 10:37-38).
As Nicodemus, a learned Jew, put it, "Rabbi, we know that thou hast come a teacher from God, for no one can work these signs that thou workest unless God be with him" (John 3:2).
At the Last Supper Christ once more reminded His Apostles, "Do you believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? Otherwise believe because of the works themselves" (John 14:11-12). Only God can give the power to work a miracle [didn't the devil offer to do miracles when he tempted Jesus? ... wasn't the talking serpent in the Garden of Eden a devilish miracle?]. He does not give that power to those that teach falsehood [did not Pharaoh's magicians replicate the miracles of Moses?].
These are not theories, vague generalities, myths, pretty stories. These are facts, hard, precise facts which will not be explained away [here is the question-begging]. They are the basis for the reasonableness of faith.
Christ often appealed for faith. The doctrines which He taught were often acceptable on no other basis. He gave no proof that He was in the Father and the Father in Him. He gave no proof that the bread He gave was His flesh for the life of the world. He said these things. That was the only proof. They were to be taken on faith. But faith is most reasonable since the facts prove conclusively that He was from God. [sic]
At the Last Supper Christ once more reminded His Apostles, "Do you believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? Otherwise believe because of the works themselves" (John 14:11-12). Only God can give the power to work a miracle [didn't the devil offer to do miracles when he tempted Jesus? ... wasn't the talking serpent in the Garden of Eden a devilish miracle?]. He does not give that power to those that teach falsehood [did not Pharaoh's magicians replicate the miracles of Moses?].
These are not theories, vague generalities, myths, pretty stories. These are facts, hard, precise facts which will not be explained away [here is the question-begging]. They are the basis for the reasonableness of faith.
Christ often appealed for faith. The doctrines which He taught were often acceptable on no other basis. He gave no proof that He was in the Father and the Father in Him. He gave no proof that the bread He gave was His flesh for the life of the world. He said these things. That was the only proof. They were to be taken on faith. But faith is most reasonable since the facts prove conclusively that He was from God. [sic]
Can you figure out what this last paragraph of double-talk means? There are no facts to prove in any way that Jesus was from God. A person's word is not proof. If we follow the paragraph from beginning to end, it seems to say that lack of proof is proof.
The True Church
The booklet then goes on to describe how Jesus gave his disciples authority on earth, particularly Peter, the Rock upon whom he would build his Church, and how the Popes are the rightful successors of Peter, and therefore representatives of Jesus. This is the "Apostolic" part of the signs of the true Church: It is one, holy, catholic and Apostolic.
The Church is One in the sense that all Catholics worldwide accept the Pope. All are obligated to attend mass weekly. There is but one set of rites. [But what about Eastern Rites, and native religions that are mixed into the catholic ritual? And any groups that protest strongly enough, such as Lutherans, the Orthodox, ..., are just driven out of the church, thereby defining away the disunity problem as not being one in the Catholic Church.]
It is holy. Not only are people given consolation, but people are forgiven their sins. [How this is to be recognized by an outsider is not explained. Of course if we really thought that real sins were being forgiven by the church, and only by the church, we would agree.]
The Church is catholic, or world-wide. [But are not other religions found in all nations. Can one not find Buddhists even in all the western countries, for example?]
And who made these the signs of the true Church? The Church itself of course. That's handy. It sounds like these signs were made at about the time that the Church was fortunate enough to obtain the conversion of Emperor Constantine, who made it the legal church throughout the Roman Empire. The vicissitudes of history cast centuries into the grip of the Catholic (and Christian) church(es).
I will point out more arguments in later chapters - "Friends Helpful Caring" and "Defending the Church." We'll see a modern-day analog of Jesus's 2000-year old message in "Elvis."
Aside: An Amusing Anecdote
I have heard it said, from those who still believe in Jesus, that those who don't believe still find enough magic in Jesus's name to invoke it when something goes wrong, and one is upset or angry. But this is the same sort of "magic" that is also expressed in exclaiming the word for feces. I doubt that the Christian observer would want to press this analogy.
Is Judaism the Answer?
A naive approach (posited by my under-10-year-old-at-the-time daughter) is that a person who believes in God (see the chapter "What Am I?") but does not believe in Jesus must be a Jew. A less naive approach would still ask if Judaism might be a good place for such a person. In fact, toward the latter part of my days within organized religion, I gave consideration to Judaism, and the concept of "Messianic Judaism," a sort of permanently being a Jew for Jesus, considering that Jesus was in fact a Jew.
One of the first considerations is that there is no great holiness in avoiding shellfish, or in being circumcised, or in learning Hebrew. Also, one wonders about the peculiarity of becoming a Jew for a person who likens Zionism to, for example, what the west did to the native Americans living on our continent before the white man arrived. The Israeli state, formed in 1948, and preceded by years of Jewish immigration into Palestine under British colonial rule, displaced many Arabs unjustly. It is understood that the horrors of the Holocaust left many with a desire to find a homeland, but as in all situations where groups are set against groups, there is no easy answer, and I cannot see that passing off one's own problems on to another group is the moral solution. Palestine had been Arab for hundreds of years. I cannot say how long possession of an area gives one the right to be there, but the Diaspora of the Jews certainly preceded anyone's lifetime in 1948, and reclaiming Israel would be similar to the native Americans now demanding return of all their lands, from people not yet born when the original taking took place. If we go back far enough in Palestine, we could start looking for Philistines and Amalekites as the rightful owners.
However, there are deeper objections to joining this group.
At a couple of services that I attended at the local reform Jewish temple, a notable feature of the ceremony is respectful bowing toward the enshrined Torah scroll at the front of the congregation. The Torah is more than respected - I would hesitate to say "worshipped," as that is reserved for God, but "respected" is too light a word. Possibly "venerated" is the choice word, the same one that refers to the Catholic feeling toward saints. And what is the Torah? It is the first five books of the Bible, from Genesis through Deuteronomy.
This venerable scroll includes such choice quotes as:
Num 31:17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him.
Num 31:18 But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves.
Lev 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.
Deu 21:18 If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him,
Deu 21:19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place.
Deu 21:20 They shall say to the elders of his town, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard."
Deu 21:21 Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid.
It has the story of Lot's wife being turned to a pillar of salt for merely looking back on her home town on the way to what would have been her forced exile. When Lot and his two daughters take shelter in a cave, and the daughters despair of meeting any other men, they get their father drunk, and make themselves pregnant by him:
Gen 19:30 Now Lot went up out of Zoar and settled in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar; so he lived in a cave with his two daughters.
Gen 19:31 And the firstborn said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the world.
Gen 19:32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father."
Gen 19:33 So they made their father drink wine that night; and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she rose.
Gen 19:34 On the next day, the firstborn said to the younger, "Look, I lay last night with my father; let us make him drink wine tonight also; then you go in and lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father."
Gen 19:35 So they made their father drink wine that night also; and the younger rose, and lay with him; and he did not know when she lay down or when she rose.
Gen 19:36 Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.
Gen 19:37 The firstborn bore a son, and named him Moab; he is the ancestor of the Moabites to this day.
Gen 19:38 The younger also bore a son and named him Ben-ammi; he is the ancestor of the Ammonites to this day.
Even physically, one wonders how the daughters managed to induce an erection in their father who was in a drunken stupor.
This is the father that, out of hospitality, had offered to send these virgin daughters out to satisfy a lustful mob of Sodomites when that mob actually sought to ravish his two house guests who were strangers in the town:
Gen 19:8 Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof."
Even aside from the biblical atrocities, if one believes that there is a divine spark in each person, then revering some human being is less sacrilegious than davening toward a book or scroll.
I would recommend Dennis McKinsey's Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy for a more full set of Biblical atrocities, including those of the Old Testament, which includes the Torah as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. I would not, however, recommend lending it to a believing friend in hopes of winning him over to skepticism. Just as the Bible believer will go out of his way to interpret a biblical passage in the most favorable light, so McKinsey interprets each passage in the least favorable light. While, of course the most egregious biblical contradictions are covered, and McKinsey's Encyclopedia is a treasure trove for all of them, small nits are also picked, allowing the Bible believer to set up some of the skeptical views as straw men. It would have been better if the weaker arguments against the bible had been left out; strength in this case is not in the number of arguments.
Judaism, a national religion of ancient Judea, has never sought converts. Its requirement for circumcision can be an impediment in cultures where this is not ordinarily practiced. The Kosher laws were enacted to set Jews apart from their neighbors: where other tribes boiled goats in goat's milk, the Jews forbade having meat and milk at the same meal, distinguishing themselves from the others. In accordance with
Exo 22:25 If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not exact interest from them.
an Orthodox Jew will not take interest from a fellow Jew, but there is no such prohibition on receiving interest from Gentiles. All are means of preserving differences between peoples, rather than seeking a commonality of all people.
For ethics, see my chapter "But What About Morality?"; but the rules of Judaism, other than the ones that pertain to an ethics (a treatment of the other as one would be treated oneself) that could be derived by reasoning from human needs, are merely rules that separate one set of people from another; that again keep people away from people, circumcised from uncircumcised, kosher from non-kosher, Christians from Jews from Muslims from Hindus, and on and on and on... .
Other Religions
One could exhaust a lifetime seeking just the right religion. But why should we spend that time? It is absurd to seek a group that will tell us what it is we believe. We were given a mind so that we can see what life is like ourselves, and form our own beliefs. This is what Prince Siddartha did, as did Abraham, Jesus, Paul, and Sheila (see "What Am I?"). Of course all investigation is beneficial; we can always learn new things by reading, not just religious tracts, but all sorts of literature and non-fiction; just don't expect to find the exact right answers for you all in one spot. We need to be, not cafeteria Catholics, but cafeteria philosophers, judging all ideas on their merits.
1 Th 5:20 Do not despise the words of prophets,
1 Th 5:21 but test everything; hold fast to what is good;
This is excellent advice: a rose among thorns; a pearl amidst swill, which is precisely what it tells us to seek.
Practical Advice
My agnostic friend, a "lapsed Catholic," wondered aloud what she would do if, say, her husband died, and she needed the type of camaraderie available in a church type social setting, while maintaining an intellectual integrity concerning matters of faith. I could only suggest that perhaps the Unitarian/Universalist system would be the appropriate place to fill such a need. Secular humanists have seen that there is a need among non-believers in some such social forms, but the Unitarians actually have such a form. The meetings are reminiscent of childhood faiths, but the congregation requires no specific beliefs of its members. Readings are from various mythologies, including the Bible. The pastor of the specific Unitarian church that I tried did not believe in prayer, for example, but the dead were thought about, and other church functions were attended to.
The social aspect of church is described in Joanne H. Meehl's The Recovering Catholic, and as mentioned, can be handled by other churches than the Catholic. Meehl's chapter "Making Peace with the Catholic Church" also mentions some aspects that are thought to be the strong points of the Catholic Church in particular: "Drama, Ritual, 'Smells and Bells'." I could be facetious and say, come to New York's Broadway, it has them all. Rather than that, I will only say that I have found the awe and ritual in contemplating the Universe. ... In particular, contemplating the majestic motions of the sun, moon, and planets, and the solar system in the galaxy, and the galaxy in the universe. I have built clocks incorporating the annual motion of the sun, the monthly period of the moon, the 18.61-year cycle of motion of the moon's orbit against the ecliptic and its 9-year perigee cycle. The contemplation can be focused: in the development of computer programs that predict eclipses - Yes, computer programming can have its spiritually-uplifting aspect, when it is applied to something that, for one's self, is spiritually uplifting.
And of course, once one has predicted eclipses, what could be better than visiting the path of a total solar eclipse? When the moon passes directly between an earthbound observer and the sun, nature provides one of its most awe-inspiring spectacles. The glowing pearly white tracery of the plumes and filaments of the sun's corona becomes visible against the deep blue darkened sky, framing the sharp black face of the shielding moon. Nature provides a lesser spectacle when the fully lit moon passes into the earth's ruddy shadow in the couple of hours of a lunar eclipse, also fitting in the marvelous celestial mechanical framework that I find a joy to program into a computer. Also, total solar eclipses, which occur about once a year, have lately prompted eclipse cruises to visit the random (yes, a predictable pseudorandomness) places on earth where they appear ... cruises that become floating churches of a sort, filled with fellow eclipse chasers, with a camaraderie that might even exceed that in your local Catholic Church. Of course the events are less frequent than Sunday masses, but they are more frequent than papal visits to Giant Stadium, and put you in closer touch with God.
For someone like myself who feels awe at the universe, a pilgrimage to visit Stonehenge puts us in touch with the real-life human beings who also felt an awe at the universe, 4000 years ago (see Gerald Hawkins's Stonehenge Decoded). I know I am not alone here - although I have not read M. Scott Peck's In Search of Stones, I see from reviews that the spiritual leader of The Road Less Traveled feels the same spirituality.
I'll admit that some folks need more immediate connection with people who are less than 4000 years old. Again, there are always those eclipse cruises, and the Unitarian Universalist church.
John Lennon
In the following few chapters we will focus on Church beliefs and what is wrong with them, detailing my conviction that leaving the church is the intellectually and morally proper thing to do. Later we will have a chapter on the mythological Elvis Presley, suffering savior, typed upon Jesus, an example of present-day myth-building, but now let us recall the words of the real John Lennon in Imagine, words that I could not understand when I was still involved with organized religion, which is the sense of "religion" I believe applies in the following:
Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for,
and no religion too.
Imagine all the people,
living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us,
and the world will be as one.
