Civility and civilisation

Recently there has been a mini-debate among atheists about whether their critique of religion should remain "civil" (i.e. polite).

Clearly they have never read the words of the Book of Proverbs about the most effective way of upsetting someone being to be nice to them. (“If your enemy is hungry give him bread to eat, And if he is thirsty give him water to drink, for so you will heap coals of fire on his head.” (Prov. 25:21,22))

Personally I find that I can offer trenchant criticism of the bits of Christianity that I dislike (penal substitution theology, homophobia, and the idea that other religions are wrong) without offending my Christian friends or making remarks that imply they are all stupid or malignant. Occasionally I get it wrong, and have upset moderate Christians by not being specific enough in my criticism, but for the most part, many Christians agree with my criticisms, or at least find them interesting.

Bigoted and extreme Christians like the odious and repellent Stephen Green do find my criticisms offensive - but he, and his nasty bigoted organisation, have put themselves beyond the pale of civilised discourse anyway. I really felt pleased that my views were deeply offensive to Stephen Green.

I do think that criticism is more effective, and more likely to be listened to, when it is backed up with reason and evidence, describes the situation accurately, and does not include ad hominem attacks. A lot of recent atheist attacks on religion have failed on one or more of these criteria. And conversely, a lot of recent Christian attacks on secularism and equality have dismally failed on one or more of these criteria.

Also, civilisation is founded on being civil. We don't settle arguments by barbaric means such as trial by ordeal, burning at the stake, and torture any more. Instead, the best means of demolishing your opponent's arguments are the well-placed witticism, the cogent argument, and sometimes, just ignoring them as irrelevant. If you really want to upset someone, just ignore them. As Oscar Wilde said, "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

The woman caught in adultery

Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery, by Guercino, 1621 (Dulwich Picture Gallery).

Apparently Prof Richard Dawkins likes the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery.

[Richard Dawkins] made the broad and uncontroversial point that the Bible includes passages both laudable and vile. As an example of the former and a great teaching he thought most people in the room would immediately get behind, he gave the Gospel injunction, ‘he that is without sin, cast the first stone’.

Alex Gabriel is a bit baffled by this:

Of course literal stonings are undesirable, and of course reacting to transgressions overharshly is worth discouraging. But the point of what Jesus says is, he is without sin. Not being subject to paternally transmitted original sin, Jesus is the only completely sinless human being and was (to commandeer a phrase) born that way. This is what gives him moral authority, as the son of God, over the woman; it’s why only he gets to absolve her sins. When he tells the crowd, ‘You are not without sin’, he is telling them they don’t get to judge her.

Here's the story from the English Standard Version:

8 ¹ but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. ²  Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. ³ The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst ⁴ they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. ⁵ Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” ⁶ This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. ⁷ And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” ⁸ And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. ⁹ But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. ¹⁰ Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” ¹¹ She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”]]

Now, we could view Jesus entirely as a fictional or mythological character presented by the gospel authors - there is good reason to think that he acquired several legends from other mythological characters, in much the same way as King Arthur and Robin Hood did. Certainly the virgin birth story is as old as the hills, and was told about several Middle Eastern vegetation gods (Attis, Adonis, etc). The same goes for the story of the resurrection.

Or we could view him as a real person who has been at least partially misrepresentedby the gospel authors.

The mainstream Christian view is of course that he was the Son of God, in which context Alex's interpretation may well be correct.

Whether we view him entirely as a fictional character or as a real person at least partly misrepresented by the gospel authors, there are two questions we could ask here:

• What does Jesus mean by "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” and "Neither do I condemn you"?
• What does the gospel author think he meant?

Alex argues that Jesus chooses not to condemn the woman because he believes that he has the authority to forgive her because he is without sin, because he is the son of God. Now, the Gospel of John comes from a different Christian tradition than the other three gospels; it is a gospel of signs and wonders, highly symbolic and allegorical, and constantly emphasising the author's belief that Jesus was the Messiah.  But remember, in Hebrew tradition, 'messiah' (anointed one of God) and 'son of God' meant two different things. The gods of other nations were sometimes referred to as the sons of God, and so was Satan (see the Book of Job); and Jesus never referred to himself as the Son of God, only as the Son of Man (which means something like "everyman" or "average bloke").  Not all early Christians believed that Jesus was part of the Godhead ("very God of very God" as Orthodox Christian liturgy puts it). Some were Adoptionists (they believed that God adopted Jesus as his son when he was baptised in the River Jordan); others were Arians, who believed that Jesus was conceived by the union of God and Mary, but that he had not co-existed with God from the beginning of time). There was a bewildering variety of opinions on this, some of which still survive: the Monotheletes, the Monophysites, Diaphysites, and all manner of variations. So the author of the gospel may not have thought that Jesus was part of the Godhead, though he or she did think that he was the Messiah and the Son of God - the doctrine of the Trinity was not finally settled till the Council of Nicaea in 352 CE, and the doctrine of Christ's nature was not settled till the Council of Chalcedony in 451 CE.


Why do I care about this if I think Jesus may well have been a fictional character? Because I like the story, and I think it's important to be able to interpret stories in a poetic and flexible way, but not to infer the author's intentions from later interpretations.



So here is my interpretation of the story.


Jesus comes (as a rabbi among other rabbis) to the temple. He is teaching the people (as a popular rabbi would) when the woman taken in adultery is brought to him. The punishment for her "crime" is a horrible, slow and painful death. Jesus points out that the people who want to kill her for it are also guilty of some misdemeanour or other. The story is silent on whether Jesus thinks he himself is without sin - perhaps the reader is meant to infer that, but it is not explicitly stated. The point of the story is that we should show mercy and not excessively punish people for their bad behaviour, because we have also behaved badly. It's about showing empathy to others.

When Jesus says "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” and "Neither do I condemn you", I do not think that he's claiming to be without sin himself - that is a later doctrinal position.


OK, so elsewhere Jesus is reported as having said "Therefore be ye merciful, even as your Father in heaven is merciful" and "Judge not, that ye be not judged". But as far as I can recall, Jesus never arrogates to himself the right to judge. This power is attributed to him later by the Book of Acts and the Book of Revelations.


In fact, Jesus repeatedly extends sonship of God to humans generally. He says "I have said, ye are gods" and refers to God the Father as the father of everyone, not just his own father. So I don't think that Alex's interpretation is justified either by the text, or by the state of Christian theology when the text was written. It may well be the view of later theologians, but that is another issue.


So I think Richard Dawkins is right to like the story. He likes it because it's about being reasonable and empathic, tempering justice with mercy, and taking all factors into consideration, and not being judgmental and self-righteous.

What do you think the story means?

Review: Religion for Atheists

Religion for Atheists (like Alain de Botton's other books) is fluently and entertainingly written. The arguments are cogent and well made. I didn't agree with everything in the book, but it certainly put out some interesting ideas.

One thing that surprised me was that, unlike some of his other books (such as The Consolations of Philosophy), it did not reference many other writers or efforts in this field, although it generously acknowledged the efforts of Auguste Comte to invent a universal religion in the 19th century. The acknowledgements at the end did mention Richard Holloway, Daniel Dennett, Mark Vernon and so on. I was a bit surprised there was no mention of Karen Armstrong, since she has done much to move the debate on from whether religions are literally true to whether they are of value.

Perhaps a supplementary work could survey the history of religion for atheists, liberal religion, creedless religion, the development of humanism, pantheism, naturalism and so on.

The basic premise of the book is that many of the areas of endeavour for religions - encouraging us to be more compassionate, build communities, connect with nature, and spend time reflecting and meditating - have been badly secularised, and in some cases not secularised at all.

Where, asks de Botton, are the temples of values such as compassion, community and love? Where are the secular places where we can be reminded that we are not alone in our suffering, and thereby be cathartically relieved of it?

The book also points out the techniques by which religions inculcate values into their practitioners: by having special days and special rituals to enshrine these values in our hearts, and by repeating these festivals on a regular basis, and allowing us to share our responses to suffering, beauty and love in a communal setting.

Actually, many of these techniques have been continued in liberal religions which welcome atheists without trying to change their mind about being atheists, such as Buddhism, Paganism, and Unitarianism. But Western practitioners of these religions - which may have thrown the baby out with the bath water in some aspects of their religious life - would do well to read Religion for Atheists to see what we have omitted. One obvious thing is the use of images, which many Unitarian chapels do not have.

The bit I was not sure I agreed with was the idea that institutions are a good thing. In many ways they are, and it would be great if lone thinkers like Nietzsche could have been accommodated somewhere where they could get on with thinking and writing, and not have to worry where the next meal was coming from - but perhaps Nietzsche's thought would have been very different if he had been a tenured professor. Institutions can be stultifying, produce conformity and complacency, and persecute minorities.

I do agree that the most boring question you can ask of a religion is whether it is true. Taking the story literally, whether you decide that it’s true or false, kills the multiple meanings that can be teased out of the story. It also ignores the many other great stories which follow the same mythological pattern: Isis and Osiris, Orpheus and Eurydice, Inanna and Dumuzi. The endless arguments about whether miracles can really happen, whether the earth was created, and whether God was really a man in Palestine, are boring to people who want to move on from the question of whether the story is literally true, to whether it will help us to live well.

The section on Auguste Comte's universal religion was very interesting. I suspect that his religion failed for several reasons; the fact that it was the idea of one person; but also the fact that it did not grow and emerge organically. Religions are like languages - they evolve and grow in their particular cultural and historical context. Esperanto failed as a universal language because it was not wedded to a culture and did not grow organically. Latin succeeded in remaining the lingua franca in Europe for several centuries after it ceased to be the language of Rome because people wanted to buy into the values of Romanitas and perpetuate the order and culture of the Roman Empire. The religions that will emerge from the wreckage of traditional religious belief in the West will be ones that builds on the traditions of the past, not a newly-invented one. Alain de Botton may well be hailed as a prophet in this newly emergent religion, but I doubt that he will be regarded as its founder - and I'm sure he wouldn't want to be.

As Richard Holloway pointed out in his review, I suspect the people who will like this book will be atheists and agnostics who are already involved in liberal religious organisations like the Sea of Faith, Unitarianism, pantheism, Paganism, Buddhism and so on. I certainly recommend it, and hope that it will start a more thoughtful conversation about where religion comes from, where it is now, and where it is going.

Airbrushing the Bible

In a post entitled Reinterpreting Deuteronomy with Sophisticated Theology, Russell Blackford critiques some theologians' attempts to airbrush out the rather clear instruction to go and massacre the Hittites.

I think the problem here is actually the attempt (whether by Christians or atheists) to interpret the Bible as a unified text.

Actually the Bible is a collection of different books compiled over several centuries from books written by authors with very different political and social agendas. Some books have been shown to have been rewritten versions of earlier texts, as the accounts in them are clearly conflicting.

Karen Armstrong has pointed out in her book about the writing of the Bible that the author known as the Deuteronomist was very interested in smiting and genocide, whereas other authors (such as Amos) are much more liberal. In addition, some Tanakh authors anthropomorphise God, and some make him/her/it much more abstract.

Add to that the many layers of Jewish editing and rewriting, and the attempts by Christian theologians to create some sort of unified theology out of all this, and to retrospectively try to make Tanakh texts predict the coming of Christ, and you have a huge mess.

I think it's a complete waste of time trying to rehabilitate texts like this. It's a much better idea to disentangle the bits of the Bible from each other and view them as separate pieces of writing produced by people with very different ideas of God. Biblical criticism has been doing this very successfully using increasingly sophisticated methods of textual analysis since the late nineteenth century.

It's also a complete waste of time trying to deduce anything about God (who doesn't exist anyway) from these texts. Though you can deduce a lot about the author of Deuteronomy.

I do think that the allegorical method of interpretation favoured by many theologians has some uses though - not in the way that Russell Blackford is critiquing, but in order to prevent people from thinking that it's alright to massacre people you don't like.

However, the historical deconstruction of the text is probably more useful. Perhaps the two approaches can be used alongside each other.

I like the comments of MH on Russell Blackford's post; MH also advocates historical exegesis of the texts.

God Collar

I am currently reading God Collar by Marcus Brigstocke. It's brilliant, hilarious, witty and heartfelt. I laughed out loud at several bits, especially the one about the turgidity of school assemblies, and the bit about the desire to fart in church and mix up the shoes in the foyer of mosques. I also agreed wholeheartedly with his views on The God Delusion.

The main premise of God Collar is that the author experiences a "God-shaped hole" but can't manage to actually believe in God (especially not the smitey "Old Testament" God), which is quite understandable - I can't manage to believe in a supernatural creator deity, especially not the smitey variety. I can manage a sort of mystical energy (but not a person) or maybe it's just an experience, like love - in which case, should we even call it God?

I was quite surprised at the degree to which the book focusses on the vengeful deity depicted in the early books of the "Old Testament", especially as the author acknowledges Karen Armstrong in the introduction, and Karen Armstrong has done much to bring biblical criticism to the non-specialist, and to point out how you get a different picture of God from different authors of the Bible.

The author wishes that there was a religion where his atheism would be respected, and that the religion was just about being nice to people. He quite likes Jesus but cannot see why Jesus' death is supposed to save anyone. He would like to have a religion that is compatible with reason and science, where the wonder of the universe as discovered by science is appreciated. He would also like a religion that does not consider all the other religions to be doing it wrong. And he would like a religion that doesn't persecute women and gays.

Well several such religions exist. There's Unitarianism (welcoming towards atheists and humanists since at least the 1920s, ordaining women since 1904, respecting other religions since it began in the 16th century, and welcoming LGBT people since 1970).

Alternatively, if you don't like Christian symbolism served with your religious smörgåsbord, try Paganism (LGBT-friendly, has priestesses and goddesses; respects other religions; though Pagans are less inclusive towards atheism).

And if you don't like singing, try the Quakers.

Or if you like meditation, try Buddhism (most Buddhists are non-theist).

None of these religions mind if you're an atheist, and they won't try to change your mind about it. They also acknowledge the validity of other religions, are welcoming towards women and gay people, politically left-leaning and environmentally friendly.

Brain & religion

In response to these statistics about OK Cupid users, I decided to analyse my OK Cupid profile for reading grade level.

I am pleased to announce that my score was 10th grade (higher than all the atheists on OK Cupid, serious or otherwise). I suspect that, as Pharyngula warns, some other factor may be affecting these statistics, but anyway, I feel vindicated.

Here are the results:

Number of characters (without spaces) : 4,253.00
Number of words : 873.00
Number of sentences : 52.00
Average number of characters per word : 4.87
Average number of syllables per word : 1.64
Average number of words per sentence: 16.79

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading

Gunning Fog index : 12.08

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text :

Coleman Liau index : 11.11
Flesh Kincaid Grade level : 10.27
ARI (Automated Readability Index) : 9.91
SMOG : 11.73
Flesch Reading Ease : 51.31

redefining irony

The Jehovah's Witnesses redefine irony (Pharyngula - PZ Myers)

A new group of atheists has arisen in society. Called the new atheists, they are not content to keep their views to themselves.

That's right. The door-knockin', rabidly proselytizing cult is rebuking atheists for not keeping their views to themselves.

Wow, that really does redefine irony. I mean, you know, I have had quite a lot of atheists try to convince me that my participation in religion is deluded and strange, despite my constant explanations that my spiritual views and practices are consistent with reason and science, that I regard most theology as mythology and metaphor, and I'm only interested in practices that enhance my life. Also I have frequently pointed out to the atheists in question that religion is about practices and values, not beliefs (the idea that it is primarily about beliefs was introduced by Christian fundamentalists in the late 19th century, though sadly this attitude has spread to other groups).

But none of these atheists were complete strangers who were knocking on my door and trying to sell me irreligion. Though that might be quite fun - some of my best anecdotes involve the things that I and my friends have said to Jehovah's Witnesses and other doorstep evangelists. Let's face it, doorstep-evangelist-baiting is a national sport.

As I have said elsewhere, though, evangelism and proselytising are completely counter-productive and wrong. Interfaith dialogue is good; it's also good to communicate what your religion is about, so that other people can understand it, and join if (and only if) they feel the same way. And that goes for atheism too.

The thing that really annoys me about JWs is their rampant homophobia and the fact that they drag their kids around with them on their door-to-door evangelism.

The last time some JWs called at my house, I happened to have a copy of The Inquirer (Unitarian magazine) in my hand, so I brandished it at them when they tried to give me The Watchtower.

For the benefit of people who are unable to distinguish between different kinds of religion, may I refer you to my blogposts on liberal religion and non-theism? (for educational information only, of course).

I'm a non-theist

... or, why I don't call myself an atheist even though I am one.

• Atheists are pretty strident about how much they dislike religion. And they have a pretty narrow definition of what religion is (usually, "belief in the supernatural"). I find religion fascinating and frequently inspiring (that is the liberal and mystical varieties of religion)
• I consider myself a spiritual person - in other words, I get feelings of peace and joy from feeling connected to nature and other people, and I get those feelings in places where people have practised religion (possibly because of the beautiful architecture)
• I like doing spiritual practices in the company of other people with similar values. That's what I call religion
• There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, atheists
• I am open-minded as well as sceptical
• I am not a reductionist, and certainly not a logical positivist
• I like Paul Tillich's definition of God as the Ground of All Being
• I pray (into the Void, the Silence, the darkness, the Tao) and meditate, and find this to be a helpful spiritual practice
• I love stories and symbolism and mythology and Jungian archetypes
• I think fundamentalist atheists are just as bad as religious fundamentalists
• The main difference between me and a liberal theist is that they think God is a person and I don't. Otherwise our conclusions about the world are pretty similar.

Will atheism supplant religion?

According to a blog at Psychology Today, atheism will replace religion because it provides a better explanation of how the world works. This is based on a Frazerian/Tylorian assumption that the primary function of religion is to explain how the world works.

I would argue that the primary function of religion is to provide a community of shared meaning, values and practice. Belief is secondary to these functions. Of course fundamentalists' explanations of how the world works (both morally and physically) are way off reality as evidenced by scientific research, personal experience, and any sense of spirituality.

The article suggests:

The reasons that churches lose ground in developed countries can be summarized in market terms. First, with better science, and with government safety nets, and smaller families, there is less fear and uncertainty in people's daily lives and hence less of a market for religion. At the same time many alternative products are being offered, such as psychotropic medicines and electronic entertainment that have fewer strings attached and that do not require slavish conformity to unscientific beliefs.

Not all religions require "slavish adherence to unscientific beliefs". The liberal and mystical tendency in religion has been questioning dogma for centuries. In the West, this questioning has resulted in four great liberal traditions: the Society of Friends (aka Quakers), the Unitarians, liberal Judaism, and the Pagan revival (which includes various traditions). None of these traditions requires adherence to a creed or even belief in God(s). They are about exploring the meaning of life (drawing on both secular and sacred sources of inspiration) among a community of shared values. In Islam, the mystical tradition of Sufism fulfils a similar role; and Buddhism, Sikhism and Hinduism are similarly diverse and include liberal perspectives. Please do some research before dismissing all religion as irrational and dogmatic.

The second aspect of this argument, that religion is about providing reassurance in an uncertain world, depends on what is meant by reassurance. Liberal religion provides the reassurance of having a community of shared values and interests, but it does not provide reassurance on the subject of life after death. Liberal religion is about enjoying being alive now, not about a future existence which is very uncertain.

Mythology and religion

New Scientist: The imperfect universe: Goodbye, theory of everything

But are we really getting any closer? Do we dare ask whether the search is fundamentally misguided? Could belief in a physical theory that unifies the secrets of the material world - a "hidden code" of nature - be the scientific equivalent of the religious belief in oneness held by the billions who go to churches, mosques and synagogues every day?

Even before what we now call physics existed, ancient Greek philosophers pondered whether the diversity of nature could radiate from a single source, a primal substance. Thales, regarded by Aristotle as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition, proposed that everything was made of water, a substance he believed represented nature's dynamic essence. Later, Pythagoras and his followers believed that nature was a mathematical puzzle, constructed through ratios and patterns that combine integers, and that geometry was the key to deciphering it.

The idea of mathematics as a fundamental gateway to nature's secrets re-emerged during the late Renaissance. Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton made it clear that the mathematical description of nature succeeds only through the painstaking application of the scientific method, where hypotheses are tested by experiments and observations and then accepted or rejected. Physics became the science of the "how", leaving the "why" for philosophy and religion. When Newton was asked why matter attracts matter with a strength that weakens with the square of the distance, he answered that he "feigned no hypotheses"; it was enough to provide a quantitative description of the phenomenon.

That, however, is only half the story. To Newton, God was the supreme mathematician and the mathematical laws of nature were Creation's blueprint. As science advanced, the notion that god interfered explicitly with natural phenomena faded away, but not the idea that nature's hidden code lay in an all-encompassing mathematical theory. Einstein's "God" was far removed from Newton's, as he famously said: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists." His search for a unified field theory was very much a search for the essence of this natural god.

I agree that many of the assumptions made by physics and other sciences are hangovers from religious discourse. For example, the idea that the universe has laws seems to be a hangover from the idea of a Lawgiver (i.e. God).

But the passage quoted above runs together some very different theological concepts. The "oneness" allegedly espoused by "the billions who go to churches, mosques and synagogues" is very different depending on which of those billions you ask. Many members of the Abrahamic traditions believe that God is the ground of all being and not literally a person.  Christians are usually Trinitarians (that's a very different idea of "oneness", and interpretations of the Trinity vary wildly, even among people who are supposed to subscribe to the same doctrine on it). And neither Muslims nor Jews nor Unitarians believe in the Trinity. 

The idea of the single source of all existence is a neoPlatonic concept, again very different from Abrahamic ideas of God, both then and now. And Spinoza was a pantheist (though the article does point out that his idea of God was different from that of Newton).

The tweet alerting readers to the posting of the article said:

The quest for a "theory of everything" is driven by the same urges as religion - so we should stop http://bit.ly/ckZJX1

... implying that if religion does it, it must be wrong for scientists to do it (or am I being paranoid?)

My response was:

please don't lump all religion together - not all practitioners of religion believe literally in their mythology

followed by this:

do you have any scientific evidence for the urges that drive what you refer to as "religion"? #SoBoredOfLiteralMindedPeople

Anyway, the article is really interesting, and the author seems to know a bit more about theology than the sort of people who usually write these things; and I appreciate that it's difficult to be subtle in a tweet. But I'm fed up with the way some scientific commentators persist in lumping all practitioners of religion in one box, marked IRRATIONAL, DO NOT OPEN.

Also available on my Tumblr blog.

The Bible: take it or leave it?

I have just been followed on Twitter by an atheist whose slogan is "The Bible... Believe ALL of it, or, Believe NONE of it!"

That is such a simplistic attitude that I nearly didn't respond, thinking it was scarcely worth it. However, I had one of those xkcd moments... so here goes.

The Bible is a book (or better, a collection of books) with different authors, all of whom seem to have had very different ideas about God, and what God wants. The earlier books of the Bible have YHWH demanding blood smeared on the horns of his altar; then the prophets bemoan the hard-heartedness of Israel and their inability to just be nice to people for a change (see Amos 5:24 for example). The theology expressed by Jesus is quite different from that of Paul, which is different again from James and Peter. (I think that's why I found it so very confusing when I tried, a very long time ago, to take it at face value.) All this is well-documented by liberal biblical criticism.

If you don't want to take liberal biblical criticism as your source, try Richard Dawkins, who says we should regard the Bible as a work of literature. Quite right - it is a work of literature, and has just as many insights into human nature as any other pre-modern work of literature.

Obviously (if you read other things I have written on this blog), I do not literally believe the cosmological accounts given in the Bible. They are metaphors, just as Pagan creation myths are metaphors. I also don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus, but I do think his mythology is a version of the stories of other Middle-Eastern dying-and-resurrecting vegetation gods, and if you read it as mythology, it is a good account of the archetypal experiences of the human psyche (the death of the ego and resurrection of the greater self, as outlined in the Hero Journey).

The method I use for interpreting the Bible is to compare it with the wisdom texts of other spiritual traditions. If you read what Jesus and other prophets said in the light of what the Buddha said, or what Lao Tsu said, it makes a lot more sense. Personally I find it easier to read the Buddha and Lao-Tsu, because I don't have to filter out the noise of conservative interpretations of Jesus' thoughts that I was brought up with. But this doesn't mean that the Bible is worthless. It means that if you're going to read it, you should read it carefully to see if its ethical guidance resonates with your own experience. And if it doesn't (as in some of the very dodgy statements in the Pentateuch), then reject it. It's not a supernaturally inspired book, it's a document of the spiritual journeys of a bunch of people, and should be read as such.

As the Buddha said,

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."

I wonder if this is what Jesus meant when he said "He who has ears to hear, let him hear". If so, I wish he had been a bit less cryptic!

Hooray for Philip Pullman

I was talking to some fellow Unitarians on Sunday and we all said how much we are looking forward to reading Philip Pullman's new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, as the ideas in it sound very Unitarian. We also remarked that the Unitarian concept of God is far closer to Dust than to the Authority, since many Unitarians are pantheists or panentheists who believe that the Divine is immanent in the world.

Unitarians have been in existence as a denomination since the 1500s in Poland (they were driven out of Poland for their heretical views), the 1600s in Transylvania, and the late 1700s in Britain, and throughout that time have asserted that Jesus was just a man. He may have been special and inspired, but he was just a man.

Unitarians and others in the 19th century learned much from the new Biblical criticism coming from Germany in the 19th century, and realised that the Bible is a palimpsest of different voices and editors. Nowadays atheists and humanists and agnostics are welcome to be members of the Unitarian movement.

Pagans also love Philip Pullman for his positive portrayal of witches, and the wonderful idea of daemons, which are rather like the concept of totem animals which is popular with many Pagans.

So it was with some dismay that I just heard that fundamentalist Christians have been issuing death threats to Philip Pullman because they don't like his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Stupid, ignorant, narrow-minded, bigoted fools. It is fairly obvious to anyone who has read the Bible with an open mind that the Jesus of the gospels and the Christ promoted by Paul are very different. Christ is a mystical entity whose body is the church (and who should never have been conflated with Jesus). Many liberal Christians say that Christ is an archetype within the psyche (or words to that effect).

In any case, even if you think Christ is the supreme ruler of the universe, issuing death threats is not the way to convince non-believers that your faith is worthwhile - quite the opposite. And if Christ really was the supreme being, I daresay he could look after himself. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord"; "Judge not, that ye be not judged." (Goodness me, haven't these people actually read the Bible?)

I am very much looking forward to reading Philip Pullman's new book, and hope that these evil people do not carry out their threats. I am sure that all decent people will be praying for his safety and protection.

Good and bad theology

According to Stevencarrwork, a commenter on the amusing article by PZ Myers, The Courtier's Reply over at Richard Dawkins' website:

There are no facts to decide what is good theology and what is bad theology.

Good theology is what you can sell to the believers.

Bad theology is what does not sell.

Actually this is wrong. Yes, OK, so according to atheists there is no objective reality which theology describes (and as a non-theist myself, I am inclined to agree). But some theology is definitely far more harmful than other theology, and some theology can be beneficial.

For instance, the kind of theology that says that God dislikes LGBT people is obviously harmful; whereas the kind of theology that says God is Nature and Nature is God, or that God is Love and Love is God (and not a person) is harmless, and probably beneficial as it encourages ecological awareness; and the kind of theology that encourages people to be nice to everyone because "we are all made in the image of God" is surely beneficial. Also the kind of theology that says we don't know if God exists or what She wants (e.g. Godless Morality by Richard Holloway) seems like a good thing to me, as it encourages people to be more humble and tolerant of others' beliefs.

Theology can be tested empirically by its effects on people's lives. Bad theology will make people unhappy and cause harm; good theology will make people happy and altruistic.

NB in my book, good theology includes old-style atheism (i.e. the kind that was more tolerant of other views), agnosticism, naturalism, pantheism, panentheism, deism, universalism, unitarianism, a lot of mysticism, and the interfaith movement. Most of these theologies recognise that mythology is a metaphor for the process of living, and is best enjoyed in the mode of fairy-tale. They also show respect for other philosophies and religions.

Where do ethics come from?

The idea that religion is the only source of ethics is based on the idea that "God" (and I don't believe in him/her/it) dispenses laws or moral codes for humans to obey, and rewards those who obey and punishes those who disobey.

Anyone who does a good thing because they expect a reward for it from (or avoids a bad thing because they expect to be punished by) some cosmic lawgiver is clearly immoral. In Matthew 6, Yeshua is reported as talking about getting rewards in heaven for doing good on earth (or at least, that is the way that the passage is often interpreted). Eeeeeuuuuuwwwwwww!!!! Wrong wrong wrong.

I do what I believe to be right and good (the pursuit of justice and the comforting of the afflicted and oppressed, donating to charity, participating in campaigns for social & environmental justice) because I believe it to be right and good, and I hope that it will increase the sum of happiness, not because I expect a pat on the head from a non-existent person in the sky.

OK so I get satisfaction from seeing people looking & feeling better after I have helped them - but the amount of effort involved probably outweighs the reward. And OK so I also get satisfaction from doing what is good and right, cos it makes me feel as though I am making a difference, and it makes me feel better about myself, but I don't see why I shouldn't. Self-esteem is good, isn't it?

And anyway, empirical evidence in the form of numerous morally upright atheists (though not all atheists), and millions of bigoted religionists (though not all religionists), make it obvious that the sort of religions that have prescriptive moral codes are not a good place to get your ethics from. The sort of religion that is inclusive and tolerant and rational would be a better place to get your values from, but you should still check them against your own conscience, reason and experience.

There's an excellent book by Richard Holloway called Godless Morality which explains exactly why God being the source of moral commandments can't possibly work even if you actually believe in God (which Holloway doesn't, though he says he isn't exactly an atheist or an agnostic either). The reason is this: because we cannot be sure what "God" wants, or even if s/he exists, we cannot claim in our moral pronouncements to speak for God. If two people both claim to be doing what God wants, but do exactly the opposite, how do we decide between them? By using ordinary evidence, reason and compassion to decide.

I tend to use the word ethics to mean a set of best practices that have evolved or emerged from a group ethos (though that is not the etymology of ethics), and I use the word morals to mean a set of practices imposed by a moral code. In this sense, ethics are clearly more pragmatic and flexible and humane, whereas moral codes, because they are usually arbitrary and invented, are usually cruel and inhumane.

Ethics and altruism are clearly evolved characteristics — but that doesn't make them any less beautiful, especially as we usually have a choice about whether to do the ethical or altruistic thing. It's amazing and wonderful that both people and animals will help the injured and dying, often at considerable cost or risk to themselves — and people often help others who are clearly not genetically related to them, including other species.

Stand up, stand up for Dawkins

Dawkins sets up kids camp to groom atheists - The Reason Project
Richard Dawkins launches children's summer camp for atheists - The Telegraph
Dawkins sets up kids’ camp to groom atheists - The Times
Atheist camp will not brainwash children - The Times

I’m all for reason and the freedom to believe or not believe whatever you like, but from what I have read so far, this camp is just a not-very-subtle form of indoctrination. Liberal religion is not about belief, it’s about values. The insistence on belief in a set of unbelievable concepts is a Christian weirdness; other religions are more about values and practice and culture. I think it’s a pity that the debate has polarised to this extent.

Admittedly if it was a choice between sending my kids to Dawkins’ camp or sending them to the scary Jesus camp, I’d choose Dawkins’ camp every time. Fortunately that is not the case and there is a huge spectrum for people to choose from. (I don’t have any kids though.)

But the point is, kids should not be indoctrinated into anything, whether it's atheism or religion. They should be given the tools and concepts to decide for themselves when they're old enough.

Unitarians, Pagans, Wiccans, and other liberal religious types don’t believe in indoctrinating children, but giving them the tools and concepts to choose their own spiritual path (or not, as the case may be).

Many atheists seem incapable of understanding the difference between liberal religion (which is about values and spirituality and community) and the rest.

I tried to look at Richard Dawkins' website to see what his take on the whole thing is, as he has apparently said that the Times article was biased and gave the wrong impression, but I can't get into his website at the moment due to a connection error.

UPDATE: I have now managed to find Richard Dawkins' letter, in which he says he abhors the indoctrination of children. However, giving them a biased view that all religion is about having daft beliefs, and that reason is the ultimate arbiter of everything, is a form of indoctrination.

De-baptism

The UK National Secular Society has produced a de-baptism certificate for atheists - however it's not really suitable for Pagans or other liberal religious traditions, as it denounces "superstition" (under which heading they would probably include Pagan beliefs).

I ________ having been subjected to the Rite of Christian Baptism in infancy (before reaching an age of consent), hereby publicly revoke any implications of that Rite and renounce the Church that carried it out. In the name of human reason, I reject all its Creeds and all other such superstition in particular, the perfidious belief that any baby needs to be cleansed by Baptism of alleged ORIGINAL SIN, and the evil power of supposed demons. I wish to be excluded henceforth from enhanced claims of church membership numbers based on past baptismal statistics used, for example, for the purpose of securing legislative privilege.

The main reason for doing this, as far as I can see, is that the number of bishops in the House of Lords is based on the number of adherents to the Church of England, and that number is apparently based on the number of people baptised in a Church of England church.

So here's my suggested wording for Pagans and Unitarians:

I ________ having been subjected to the rite of Christian baptism in infancy (before reaching an age of consent), hereby publicly revoke any implications of that Rite and renounce the Church that carried it out. By all that I hold sacred, I reject all its Creeds, in particular, the erroneous belief that any baby needs to be cleansed by baptism of alleged original sin. I wish to be excluded henceforth from enhanced claims of church membership numbers based on past baptismal statistics used, for example, for the purpose of securing legislative privilege.

Bus slogan generator

Make your own bus slogan!

There probably isn't room for my suggestion.

(Hat-tip to Steve Hayes)

agnostic bus

I donated five pounds to the Atheist Bus campaign on the grounds that I am irritated by all the evangelical Christian propaganda on public transport. A Christian friend of mine also donated on the grounds that the advert would promote discussion. Well, it certainly has, but perhaps not quite the sort of thing he had in mind.

Here's my suggestion: "There may or may not be a Divine Being or Beings, and they're probably just the anthropomorphic interfaces of vast cosmic processes, but anyway, they're on their own spiritual journey and their goals may or may not coincide with yours. They certainly can't be bothered to arrange for you to fry for all eternity on a hot griddle, so you can stop all that worrying."

But perhaps the above is not as snappy as the Atheist Bus.

Liz Williams suggests:

GOD: SHE'S NOT JUST AN OLD BLOKE WITH A BEARD, YOU KNOW!

Another suggestion from KH:

"Zeus is going to kick your pussy God's ass and then shag your women!"

Maybe we could just have a poster on the side of buses that reads: "Paganism: the religion where enjoying yourself is SACRED." Except that we don't believe in evangelising.

(Also available in Judaism, where it's a sin to refuse a pleasure, apparently, and it's requirement to make love on the Sabbath eve; and Unitarianism, which celebrates being alive.)

All this talk of buses reminds me of the short story by E M Forster, The Celestial Omnibus, which you can hear read aloud at the Library of Babel.

The title-story is a whimsical piece of fantasy which again uses a child as the means to unmask unimaginative adult pragmatism. “The Celestial Omnibus” starts with a young boy who is perplexed by the sign-post in his Surbiton street that says “To Heaven” and points to a cul-de-sac. Running up the blank alley one evening he encounters an omnibus which takes him up to a paradise where he meets all the characters from fiction and mythology that his parents and their friends talk about but do not really believe in.

~ Literary Encyclopedia

a little light reading

Four interesting projects....

• Badger's Bible Project, in which an atheist reads and comments on the Bible
• Peter on Genesis, in which a Quaker Pagan reads Genesis and Exodus
  
• Blogging the Bible, in which David Plotz, who is Jewish, finds out what's really in there
• Bill Darlison, a Unitarian minister, also reads the Bible (for the 14th time)
  

Badger says:

So the Lord said, “I will destroy Man whom I have created from the face of the Earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry I have made them.” - Genesis 6:7

So, God gets pissed at Man and decides not only to kill every single person on the planet (even the newborn babies who are, one would think, blameless), but he also decides to off all the animals. Well, except fish, I would guess. They were probably quite pleased!

Anyhow, flood happens. God has a grand ole time going along undoing everything he did. Is it just me, or does he strike you as a frustrated gamer, always reloading Sims from a save point, after having done horrible things to his Sims?

Actually the Flood was caused by Ishtar when she was suffering from PMT. See Tablet 11 of The Epic of Gilgamesh. I am also mystified as to why anyone would worship a being who is described as sending plagues and floods on innocent people. Anyway, it’s all a metaphor…

Peter says:

The Bible was written by writers, and I’ve long felt that much of what those writers wanted to say has been lost, crushed, twisted, and sometimes outright perverted by later so-called “Bible based” traditions. All religious sentiments aside, as a fellow writer I feel it is my calling and my sacred duty to read through the text, not for comfort or for inspiration or for edification, but simply to hear what it is they were trying to say.

David says:

This is not a story they taught me at Temple Sinai's Hebrew School in 1980: The founding fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel lie, breach a contract, encourage pagans to convert to Judaism only in order to incapacitate them for slaughter, murder some innocents and enslave others, pillage and profiteer, and then justify it all with an appeal to their sister's defiled honor.

Bill says:

I am not against the Bible. I am just against the idea that this book – or any other book, including the Koran or the Book of Mormon or whatever – is a special revelation from God. It is probably the most irrational, dangerous and divisive idea that currently infects the human psyche. And, as Art Lester said to me last month, ‘The book-believers are the ones who will destroy the world.’ Sadly, Art might just be right. And it is our duty to challenge the book-believers, by fostering a new kind of religious consciousness with the contrary message that knowledge and wisdom are the result of human thought, human experience, reflection, reason, scientific endeavour. They do not drop down from heaven fully formed, nor are they are not the preserve of one nation or one religion or one period in history. And they are certainly not to be found in one book. To suggest that they are is to turn works of literature into loaded guns.

Bill is the author of The Gospel and the Zodiac, which puts forward the idea that the Jesus mythos was originally an initiatory mystery based on the symbolism of the Zodiac. Neat idea.

If I was going to do a Bible-blogging project, I'd start with something as near to the original as I could get: the Hebrew Tanakh in English. Alternatively, I would blog about a book that I might enjoy reading, like the Tao Te Ching or the T’ai Hsüan Ching.

Religion, privacy and democracy

A guest post from Shlomoh Sherman (and very good it is too):

Religion, privacy, and democracy
By Shlomoh Sherman
May 8, 2008

Several disquieting stories have come to my attention recently; they all concern academia. I found out a long time ago that academia is about the worst set of professions that you can get into. It attracts the worst types, and the decent ones who find their way into the professions usually wind up getting eaten by the sociopathic sharks.

Several friends of mine who are teachers have found themselves being harassed and forced to resign for no other reason than that the administrator took a personal dislike to them. There is the story of a young female teacher who went on a vacation to a resort where the parents of one of her students also were vacationing that year. The parents noticed that the teacher was wearing a bikini and a belly button ring. Upon her return to work, she was notified that she was fired for wearing a bikini and belly button ring on her vacation, something which the school administrators felt was unbecoming behavior for their staff.

There is also the story of a teacher and her husband who recently appeared on the HOWARD STERN SHOW. Someone at the school must be a Stern listener because several days later she was fired for appearing on the Stern Show. By the way, in case you are wondering, neither she nor her husband did anything on the show that could be considered improper behavior.

You would think that Americans, or anyone for that matter, are entitled to their privacy. Don't we claim privacy as our "God given" right? For the moment, we can forget that God does not give us ANY rights; He gives us rules, or so they say. But He especially does not give us the right to privacy! We HAVE no privacy in front of God. He watches our every move like some celestial Peeping Tom. He spies on us. He snoops. He sticks His enormous nose into our [private] business. Well, if snooping is good enough for the Overseer in the sky, it's good enough for His worshippers. And don't His clerics tell us that it is good to confess? What is it that we need to confess? What I do in private is none of your business. But is that so? The fact is that "privacy" is a relatively new concept. It did not exist in the pre-modern world. Both in the ancient world and the medieval world, the idea of the "private individual" was unthinkable. The individual person was only thought of as a member of a group, - either a family, a church, a community, a town. No person was ALLOWED to be an isolate. There was no such thing as individual responsibility except to the group to which one belonged. There were even societies in our primitive past in which an individual's crime was seen as the crime of his group. If someone killed a person belonging to another family, for example, he and his entire family might be put to death.

Although we like to think that we live in a modern society, especially in America, the fact is that most Americans have carried the pre-modern past into the present. The pre-modern past existing in the present always seems to express itself in religious communities, especially in those communities which are known as Biblical communities, namely Jews and Christians. But these communities and their beliefs and standards have a major impact on the national community as a whole. In this century so far, the impact has been greater than the impact of the secular humanist community - because the majority of Americans identify themselves as "Christian", and it is from their ranks that many of our elected officials come to office. It is from their ranks that many of our lawmakers get into power. It is then that America finds itself at the mercy of the pre-modern mindset.

Our social and empirical scientists have discovered a lot during the past 200 years. Much of what they have learned has benefited society in no small measure. And yet, in this unhappy century, their gains and achievements are being minimized by the INTRUSIVE mentality of those who wish to return us to an earlier, unhappier time. The pre-modern mentality seeks to undo the work of the creators of democracy.
In a democracy, we are supposed to have a right both to our privacy and to our opinions. Neither of these rights was given to us by God. They were given to us by Adams, Jefferson, Washington, and their comrades, men who were able to see the oppressiveness of communities where there was a lack of rights, communities in which mindless, illogical, mean-spirited rules deprived individuals of privacy and freedom.
The men who made our country wanted us to live in a place where you and I are ENTITLED to think for ourselves. Hence they created a nation free of gods and clerics, so they believed.

However if you look at the philosophical state of our country today, you can see the betrayal of the Founders' dream. The overwhelming majority of Americans actually believe that the United States is, or should be, run as a theocracy. They may not use that word but it comes down to the same thing. Example: It is constitutionally illegal to require a "religion" test to anyone seeking political office. Yet the case de facto, if not de jure, is that anyone declaring him/herself an agnostic, atheist, secularist, or humanist will not be elected to public office in most places, and certainly not to the high federal offices such as president. The whole issue of personal belief ought to be a private affair. If I run for office, what I believe or disbelieve is none of your business, and I ought to be allowed my so-called "god-given" right to privacy in matters of personal conviction. However, because the majority of my fellow Americans are addicted to the premises of the so-called "great monotheistic religions", I have to put up with the public's scrutiny, or to be blunt, snooping into my head. Amazingly, even the Press sees nothing wrong with this. In most of Europe and the civilized modern Western world, this invasion of privacy would be an outrage!

It's bad enough that the average citizen has this attitude. It's worse when our lawmakers have it. Several years ago, in a town in Texas, the police broke into the home of a homosexual, without a warrant, and arrested him and the other man with whom he was having sex, on the charge of sodomy.

The idea that there are even laws on our books against certain sexual acts committed by consenting adults in the PRIVACY of their own homes is bad enough. What's worse is that the laws of states such as Texas allow the breaking into your home and mine to actually arrest and try citizens who are not harming anyone or causing any trouble.

Our religious culture causes people to be wrapped up and emotionally involved in the private pleasure of their neighbors. It's absolutely Orwellian. Our century betrays the fact that we have never quite gotten away from the Puritanism of the days of Salem. Four hundred years ago, people in Salem were not allowed to think for themselves. Their private thoughts and acts were unquestionably public domain. Many in this century feel they ought still be public domain. More and more, our country is intruding into our private lives and diminishing what privacy we think should be ours.

I can understand, in the age of terrorism against the West, that cameras are now everywhere. I can even understand the government tapping telephones in order to catch criminals. I understand that after 9/11, I have to give up some of YOUR civil rights so that I will be safer. What I don't understand is that the majority of Americans sanction ideas that are similar to those of the Taliban. I understand that in certain countries there is government scrutiny into every aspect of life. But this is America, not Afghanistan. Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness are our promises. Dude, where is my Liberty? I know that I don't have the liberty to steal from you. But at least, give me the liberty to express my beliefs and live my life as I see fit so long as I don't hurt anyone.

Don't fire me from my job just because I wear a belly button ring on my vacation, or appear on a radio show that you don't happen to like or whose philosophy is not about mom's apple pie or Jesus' benevolence.

Democracy, as understood by any intelligent, philosophically minded American, implies a degree of privacy. Yet an amazing percentage of Americans who
consider themselves the MOST American, believe that they and their government have the right to impose their standards of belief on you and thereby deprive you of what you think and do in private, and that belief is motivated by pre-modern ideas of group guilt and group snooping, behaviors condoned and approved of by a deity. What I don't get is how these people reconcile their inappropriate moralistic behavior and attitudes with their belief in the democracy of America.

I've thought about this for many decades and I have come to some conclusions. Americans who claim to believe that America is great because of its freedom and democracy and yet, at the same time, say that they believe that our American society ought to be forcefully run by Biblical imperatives, are hypocrites, knowingly or not. Religion, especially Biblical religion, expressed as Christianity and Judaism, is incompatible with real democracy.

Biblical religion militates against free expression. It opposes what we think and do in private, mainly because it opposes our private pleasures. It posits that people are sinful by nature and that they are "born in sin". Anyone born in sin is a slave, not a free person, and he who is born in sin does not deserve freedom or pleasure; at least he should be closely watched! If need be, what little freedom and privacy he has left should be taken away from him.

Believing Christians and Jews who say they are for democracy are hypocrites. Jews are somewhat less hypocritical than Christians. Fundamentalist Jews will tell you that the TORAH is a fascistic document. Some ultra-Orthodox individual actually once used that expression with me. As far as I am concerned, if you are less of a hypocrite than someone else, you are still a hypocrite. And in my book, religious hypocrites are the worst kind because they believe themselves to be morally superior to me.

I confess, I do have my faults. But among them are not the desire to snoop on someone else's bedroom activities, nor the desire to prevent people most in need of condoms from having access to them, nor the desire to tell a female how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy, nor the desire to have Harry Potter removed from the public library, nor the desire to engage in the prevention of scientific and medical research which might benefit mankind, nor the desire to tell you how to live your life philosophically, nor the desire to kill diversity of opinion in my country.
What is the supreme proof that fundamentalist Biblical religion is antithetical to our democracy? The answer is the belief in the Messiah. One cannot call himself a Christian if he does not believe in the coming of the Christ, nor can one call himself an Orthodox Jew if he denies that God will one day raise up a Messiah for the People of Israel.

About 16 years ago, when the Internet was still new, I participated in an Internet discussion group on Religion. A Christian lady wrote to me and said that she understood what would happen when Christ came back: "[He] shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." What an incredibly wonderful vision. What the lady wanted to know is what do Jews believe will happen when the Jewish messiah comes at last. Unfortunately I do not have the original response that I sent her. But I can repeat the basic answer I gave to her.

I said: "Regarding the messiah that our religion has taught us, when he comes, a new age will be initiated on earth. Israel will be gathered to the Promised Land and the third Temple will be rebuilt. Nations will not go to war any longer since all people will love their neighbors as they love themselves. Whatever sinful nature man may possess, that is, his YETSER HARA, will be subdued. There will be no crime, no sickness, no hunger, and no poverty. All people will speak and think with one accord. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea." What an incredibly wonderful vision. However, I do not believe that there is any such thing as a free lunch, not even in messianic times.

Here is the side of the coin that the wonderful folks who wrote the Bible left out.
When the Messiah shows up [either the Jewish or the Christian One], the first thing to go will be the Constitution of the United States which "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution." The document which came into being as a result of the shedding of American blood will be shredded. Remember, this is the document which ensures that people can come to this country if and when their own countries deny them freedom of religion or freedom of conscience. It guarantees them the right to privacy which the Bible somehow overlooked. It gives them the right to wear a belly button ring and to appear on the Howard Stern Show unmolested.

But remember one important thing. The Messiah is a king; he is the ultimate king. He is the king of kings. As such, he requires no constitution to govern. He IS the constitution. The articles of his divine constitution are WHATEVER HE SAYS, and you had better "observe to do according to the Divine Law; turn not from it to the right hand or to the left hand". So we won't need no STEENKING Constitution. In your home, you will not have the privacy to be on YOUR Internet, watch YOUR videos, read YOUR books, practice YOUR sex, and think YOUR thoughts. He is the Messiah; they will be HIS Internet, video, book, sex, thoughts. If he says that Howard Stern and belly button rings are out, they are out, no matter what YOU think. In fact, don't think! The Messiah will do your thinking for you. All you'll have to do is live your life as though you were on Aldous Huxley's dream-inducing drug, Soma. Only it will be called Dwelling in the Presence of the Lord, or some such meaningless phrase. Enjoy! To paraphrase Henny Youngman, "Take my MESHIACH, please!" I'll take my freedom and privacy, and whatever pleasure I enjoy that hurts no one.

Here's the rub. Americans fought and died long ago in order to get rid of a king, in order that WE would not have to live under the tyranny of a king.

Paul, the prophet of the Christians, told his followers to be good little servants and follow the DICTATES of the king. And the king often dictated that his followers be food for lions. When his followers became kings themselves, they made those who thought for themselves food for flames.

Like any sensible person, I too want what a messiah is supposed to bring. I want to see an end to war, and end to crime, to sickness, to want. But I am not willing to sell my soul for those things. I believe we can be our own messiah. If we wish to end war then we will have to heavily persuade those who fly airplanes into buildings to stop doing it. If we wish to end crime, we will have to get to the point where we can weed out the sociopaths among us. If we wish to end sickness, we will have to allow our scientists to proceed with work that can lead to "miracle" cures. And lastly, if we truly want to put an end to want, we will need to stop being greedy, and those of us who own over 90 percent of the wealth and resources will need to start loving their neighbors with fewer resources, and allow them at least the basic necessities of life.

Once we stop worrying about what others are thinking and doing in private; once we allow other people liberty and the pursuit of their own vision of happiness, we won't have to worry about them intruding on our liberty and happiness. In order to do that, we will have to subordinate allegiance to kings and clerics, towards working for the greatest good for ourselves. Before the modern era, many nations existed which believed they were "under God". They were no more under any deity than our nation is. Any nation which professes itself better than other nations because it is more under God, expresses the height of arrogance "for after all these things do the Gentiles seek".

Some may find comfort in their churches. That is their business and their constitutionally given right. But they will not find ultimate answers for our problems in the pews. Thomas Paine, a great American patriot, once said, "My mind is my own church." We should follow his sound example.

POSTSCRIPT:

"A notable event was the recent emergence from the non-theistic closet of a public official, Congressman Pete Stark of Fremont, California, announced that he did not believe in a supreme being. Will other public officials do likewise?
It will be fascinating to see if Dawkins can make significant inroads on the American religious scene. Recently, there has been an outpouring of books by prominent authors aggressively challenging the dominant role of religion in American life. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Richard Joyce, Lee Silver, Victor Stenger, and Christopher Hitchens. Is change in the air?"

From A DARWINIAN VIEW OF A HOSTILE ATHEIST
By Irwin Tessman
Skeptical Inquirer Magazine
January - February, 2008