Rebane's Ruminations

What is Faith?

So, what is faith?  “Faith is believing in something you know isn’t true. — Tom Robbins, author.  Think about it: If the “something” you believe in is actually provably true, you wouldn’t need faith.”  So writes Tom Durkin in the 14apr22 Union.  From this I can’t really tell if here we have the misguided quoting the more misguided.  Robbins is clearly off the rails.  Belief in a tenet (proposition) is the assessment of its verity which can measurably vary from 0 (certainly FALSE) to 1 (certainly TRUE), where either extreme will reject falsifiability (i.e. new evidence) in the mind of the believer.

Robbins definition is cognitively impossible (i.e. insane).  However, in our daily round we all operate heavily on the basis of faith, since many/most(?) of the things in our knowledge base we hold to be true are really based on the fidelity of the intermediaries who brought that knowledge to us.  By experience or experiment we have confirmed a fairly small share of our knowledge base.  Technology today allows us to reason correctly in such unreliable environments through the use of belief networks, whether applied formally or informally.  Beliefs between 0 and 1 are falsifiable by the incorporation of new evidence.  So, in the correct common usage of ‘faith’, we understand it to consist of beliefs which cannot be falsified.

And as we conclude this reflection, we must always remember that beliefs are subjective, and therefore vary in their measure of verity from person to person (depending on the series of belief networks they have solved in traveling their particular world line).  What to one individual may be compelling evidence to support/reject a tenet, may not be at all acceptable to another.  Thus endeth the epistle for today.

He is Risen!

George Rebane

Hearing that strong assertion, the Christian answers joyfully, ‘He is risen indeed!’

For us, Christmas is the promise, and Easter its fulfillment.  The summation of all Christianity is Christ’s covenant in the promised transcendence of Man, all concentrated into one simple declaration – ‘He is risen!’  Without this, our faith is a fraud; with it, Christianity promises Man to become an unending part of God’s love of all Creation.

This is RR's annual message celebrating Easter.

Christmas - 2020

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.  Matthew 1:23

George Rebane

Last year I wrote - Another tumultuous year is ending with celebrations for peace and joy.  The Rebanes count themselves among the diminishing number of American Christians who still wish their family and friends, and RR readers of all persuasions a season of remembrance and reflection on what has been bestowed on this third planet, circling a modest star, making its way with billions of similar stars in a galaxy that populates this universe with uncounted trillions of other such galaxies.  Christmas still reminds many of us that we are among the blessed in our seeming insignificance.

2020 has given new meaning to ‘tumultuous year’ which now ends with a foreboding not seen during my lifetime.  So, more sincerely than ever, Jo Ann and I wish everyone a season of remembrance and reflection of what we once were and how we may regain the blessed parts of our country's past.

He is Risen!

George Rebane

Hearing that strong assertion, the Christian answers joyfully, ‘He is risen indeed!’

For us, Christmas is the promise, and Easter its fulfillment.  The summation of all Christianity is Christ’s covenant in the promised transcendence of Man, all concentrated into one simple declaration – ‘He is risen!’  Without this, our faith is a fraud; with it, Christianity promises Man to become an unending part of God’s love of all Creation.

(And for the humanist skeptics among us with a cosmological perspective, consider that many/most(?) world class scientists believe in some form of a higher intelligence which subsumes the universe we see.  Christians see this as their 'aseity of God', and for others - Steven Hawking, to Elon Musk - this is the belief that our universe is not the ‘base level’ of a computed and/or computable universe.  Consider what such an ontology portends. More here, here, and here.)

Never Forget (updated)

We must never forget that 9/11 was NOT a natural disaster.

[update] This morning I am sickened and saddened at our national observances of the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks and their reports in the lamestream media.  Examining the public remarks of leaders like President Obama and reports by Associated Press et al, they come across as a memorial to victims of a large hurricane, powerful earthquake, or a highly infectious and deadly epidemic.  But there are millions of us who do remember that 9/11 was not a Hurricane Katrina or an outbreak of ebola, it was an attack on the west by highly organized, trained, and dedicated Islamic terrorists.  And moreover, it was not an one-off assault on our civilization, but one of an already ongoing series of worldwide attacks that have since continued as Islam’s jihad against the west has grown and spread worldwide.

Viewing the terror attacks as part and parcel of the organized warfare conducted by ISIS, Al Qaeda, Taliban, … in concert with the Muslim migrations and non-assimilating colonization of Europe, one would expect that in the observance of this memorial our leaders and media would dispense with what most charitably can be called political correctness.  When Germany’s National Socialists launched the Holocaust and Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to secure its Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere our leaders had no problem naming our enemies and rallying the country to defend western civilization.  That is not the case today, even though our enemy by all measures comes from a much larger and virile cohort of dedicated, self-sacrificing fanatics imbued with an unshakeable belief that they are doing the will of their god and will be eternally rewarded for their undeniable faith as they so willingly give their lives.

Agnosticism vs Atheism

George Rebane

[The is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 17 June 2015.]

Our secular humanist brethren misconstrue Darwin as having claimed and conclusively demonstrated that the cosmos was uncreated, and that life arose by chance from the primordial muck.  In fact, Darwin made neither claim, but did present compelling evidence that once life came about, it then began transforming to adapt to its environment through evolution.  Today evolutionary progress of the species has been accepted by all except the most fundamentalist believers in the several faiths.

Secular humanists of all stripes arose in the latter half of the 19th century, and by the mid-20th popular champions of ‘God is dead’ were penning eagerly read volumes claiming to demonstrate how science explained everything, including no need for creation and God.  All that was still required was the Big Bang.  Among those who arose to lead this movement of science-glorifying people to atheism, are Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins – the latter of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The God Delusion fame.  Being a declared atheist was supposed signal to society that you were an intellectual, an independent thinker, and above all cool.

He is Risen!

Happy Easter from our family to you and yours.

George and Jo Ann

Indiana practices religious freedom (updated 3apr15)

George Rebane

Indiana’s new law providing for the practice of religious freedom is not really a new law at all, but joined at the hip with bipartisan legislation – Religious Freedom Restoration Act - passed in 1993 and signed by President Clinton.  That law clarified and underlined the Constitution’s provision for not letting government define religious preferences and practices.  Indiana’s legislation abets what 19 other states already have on their books.

But for me the real question is the freedom to practice what you believe and what is taught by your faith.  The Constitution guarantees such freedoms as long as they do not deny others the practice of their equally guaranteed freedoms.  And most certainly Indiana’s law will not prevent its LGTB contingent from doing their thing that includes getting supportive services from numerous suppliers who are ready, willing, and able.

God in Science in God

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  John 1:3

George Rebane

‘Tis the season to talk of God.  The debate about the existence of God or Intelligent Designer or Universal Intelligence or … (henceforth ‘God’) continues to grow as we discover more about our universe, or as some would have it, creation.

Celebrated physicist Richard Feynman said, “I do not believe that science can disprove the existence of God; I think that is impossible.  And if it is impossible, is not a belief in science and in a God -- an ordinary God of religion -- a consistent possibility? … Yes, it is consistent.”  He went on to say, “…many scientists do believe in both science and God, in a perfectly consistent way.  But this consistency, although possible, is not easy to attain...”

Since Feynman made this statement some years back, a lot more has been learned about how our universe is constructed.  This has caused more and more scientists to apply Occam’s razor and conclude that the most likely explanation for the existence of what we observe and measure is that there is a God, that what is, came to be through intelligent design.  Almost all scientists are Bayesians in how they treat uncertainty, the consistency of their belief in the existence of God is then taken as any other proposition they may consider.  In this case the existence of God in their mind has a very high probability (say, 0.999), but it is not a certainty and still makes a provision for future evidence to start diminishing that probability.  In other words, God, like descriptions of the rest of his creation, is accepted within the reasoning powers that have evolved within the sapient critters that populate his universe.

In the January 2015 Scientific American is a feature article discussing the statistical likelihood of myriads of exoplanets which may be even more suitable for life as we know it (i.e. carbon based with lots of complex molecules having hydrogen and oxygen in them).  Best current estimates number these planets to be around 100 billion just in our Milky Way galaxy.  In our visible universe there are up to 200 billion galaxies (they are still counting), and, of course, then there is the part of the universe that is already invisible to us.  These are the galaxies so far away that the intervening space itself is expanding faster than the speed of light, making it so that light from the invisible galaxies will never reach us – i.e. we will never see them, and they will no longer see us.  Put it all together, and there are a lot of potential homes where intelligent civilizations will come to be, are, and may have already passed into oblivion or onto paths of glory unknown to our meager peabrains.

In a 25dec14 piece ‘Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God’, Eric Metaxas discusses the unbelievably extreme precision with which tens of natural constants/parameters have been fashioned that make life on earth (and potentially elsewhere) possible.  The slightest variation in any of them would create universes to deny our existence.  Astronomer Fred Hoyle (of Big Bang fame) said, “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

We can go on quoting science luminaries drawing similar conclusions until the cows come home.  Let me throw out one or two more, first by one of the current greats in theoretical physics, Paul Davies.  He said, “the appearance of design is overwhelming.”  Oxford mathematician and philosopher of science John Lennox agrees, “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”  (more here)

Opposing them is the diminishing crowd of secular humanist scientists whose mantra is that ‘it’s turtles all the way down!’  These investigators may have their scientist credentials called into question because they don’t follow evidence and infer from what their data reveals.  Instead, they start with the firm yet unscientific belief that the debate is over, that ‘There is no God’, and then spend their lives looking for the next turtle upon which all the other turtles can be balanced (until the top one on whose back rests earth).  They never seem to understand that such a quest doesn’t even lead in the direction of the proof they seek.  (Today, from their ranks come also the climateers who fiercely mangle climate data records and run dodgy computer models to support their political funding benefactors in trumpeting the whys and wherefores of undeniable man-made global warming.)

The existence of God beckons to answer Princeton physicist John Wheeler’s last quest, ‘Why Existence?’ – a profound journey beyond the limits of science.

To recap Feynman, “So the question changes a little bit from ‘Is there a God?’ to ‘How sure is it that there is a God?’ This very subtle change is a great stroke and represents a parting of the ways between science and religion. … I do not believe that science can disprove the existence of God; I think that is impossible.  And if it is impossible, is not a belief in science and in a God -- an ordinary God of religion -- a consistent possibility?  Yes it is consistent.”

Silence of the Lambs (updated 14sep14)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 30 August 2014.]

It is now twelve years since WSJ Asia bureau chief Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded by Muslim terrorists.  Since then countless thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims have been murdered by Muslims in the name of their ‘religion of peace’.  A couple of weeks ago we were reminded by journalist James Foley’s gruesome execution that nothing has changed.  He was killed by the new emergent Islamic State or ISIS that seeks to re-establish an Islamic caliphate in the Mideast, and eventually raise its flag over the White House.

Thoughts on Evil

George Rebane

It is clear to many, perhaps most, that evil abounds in the world today.  Yet the concepts of evil are varied to the point that among their extremes there may be no agreement at all on what constitutes evil.  I admit to being on or near a semantic extreme myself.  In any case, given all the worldwide killing and corruption, I would like to put down some thoughts about how I judge that something or someone should be labeled evil.  In doing so I don’t seek agreement, but a reasoned critique would be welcome.

Having a clear thought about what is and is not evil is important, because we tend to react differently when we confront what we judge to be evil as opposed to, say, ignorant, misguided, arising from a different yet acceptable perspective, or a purely random happening.  We don’t want to ignore evil, knowing evil gnaws on us, especially if we consider it our duty to oppose or eliminate it.  And it does so even if it’s not our duty but that we see the opportunity and have the means to diminish it.  Also, we feel good if we have successfully struck a blow against evil.  Most religious traditions exhort us to deal with evil through scriptural prescriptions that range from turning away to facing it head on and doing some things much more proactive.

1. For me evil involves an agent/agency of evil that is sapient or at least sentient – sapient in the sense of being wise or knowing its role in promulgating the evil act, and sentient in being conscious of oneself but not necessarily aware of one’s role.

2. Evil must have a target or a victim that is at least sentient enough to be capable of suffering the effects of evil.  The target may or not be intended by the agent to suffer the consequences of evil.  The target need not perceive the identity of the agent(s) of evil.

3. Evil must cause its target unjust suffering and/or pain.  The injustice of evil must also be apparent to and communicable by those who witness evil or hear its report.  Most importantly, absent the notion of justice, the idea of evil has no meaning.

4. Ultimately evil is in the eye of the sentient and sapient target and/or the witness to it.  Universal evil is a rarity among humans.

5. An agent of evil need not believe that the consequent he causes or catalyzes is in his own eyes evil.  Here we understand that agents of evil come in many flavors and functions.  Agents are also those who perceive the evil, have the ability to prevent the evil impacting its target, and yet let the evil proceed unimpeded.  And abetting agents do not instigate the evil but merely support its progress.

6. With or without noble motives an agent can enable evil through ignorance.  Therefore enduring ignorance that enables and/or inflicts unjust pain is evil.

Resisting evil, even unto its destruction, is perceived as being just, responsible, dutiful, and/or noble.  Therefore it is easier to marshal a cohort to fight something that can be ascribed and accepted as being evil, because evil usually evokes a strong emotional response in people.  For that reason evil is often invoked by demogauges seeking popular support for a political or commercial agenda.  In such cases the desired supporters are also made to believe that they are the targets of the posited evil.

In this light we see that evil abounds and more so as the world becomes tightly connected.  Daily we are made aware of purposely or carelessly inflicted pain which we are told is unjust.  In contrast, without such widespread evil, good works and acts of altruism would not be celebrated.  Evil has also been the classical progenitor of religions whose adherents’ most beseeching prayer to their god(s) is ‘deliver us from evil.’

Yet in spite of experienced evil or feeling helpless in its affront, we also continue to teach the stoic and character-building palliative best captured in the Chinese proverb, ‘Pain makes a man think, thinking makes a man wise, and wisdom makes life bearable’ - which we apply to both just and unjust pain.

HE IS RISEN!

George Rebane

As Christmas is the promise, Easter is the fulfillment.  Oblivion vanquished, rejoice!

Shoring up Obama’s religion

George Rebane

Time again to put some nasty gossip to rest about the President and his religion.  I received an email from a correspondent citing a 29dec13 piece in the NYT about how “Mr. Obama’s faith is a more complicated, more private, and perhaps … a more inclusive affair.”  Well, we know that it’s a faith that has omitted a number of traditional Christian observances in our capital, and doesn’t include much church attendance given the experience he had with the Rev Wright.

But my correspondent did point out that our president may be even more distant from his fervently claimed Christianity than he thinks.  The NYT reports, “He has turned to his faith during difficult times, and is comfortable invoking Scripture; his speeches and remarks are peppered with the phrase “I am my brother’s keeper,” echoing the Old Testament phrase.”

My correspondent thinks that perhaps the President should recheck his echoes a bit more carefully.   For example, like the true socialist he is, Mr Obama instinctively reversed the biblical question Cain asks in Genesis – ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ – into the more correct collectivist version.   (You’d think that this would have been caught by the crack journalists at the nation’s leading liberal voice.)

In any case, it is good that the President thinks enough of the public’s apprehension about his religion to have his minions publish this clarification in the west’s answer to Pravda.

Emmanuel has come!

Let us celebrate the joy of His coming.

Atheists need chaplains too (updated 28jul13)

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 26 July 2013.]

New levels of social justice are being sought in our military.  The very same people who militate for separating church and state in all corners of public life are now demanding to have their fair share of padres in the armed services.  Actually, in the military men of God are called chaplains, and now (seatbelts please) atheists are demanding that the military provide them the comfort of a compassionate chaplain who shares their religion. (more here)

Did I say religion?  Yes, atheism is a religion because it satisfies the requirements of a distinct faith in the structure, organization, and origin of the cosmos and everything in it.  Let’s not confuse the atheist with the agnostic.  An agnostic is a person whose belief system is moot about the existence or absence of God, Creator, Universal Intelligence, or whatever you want to call it.  An agnostic believes that God’s existence is either unknown, or more strongly, that it is unknowable.  (more here)

This is a distinct difference from the atheists, who sometimes also call themselves humanists, and who believe strongly that there is no God.  They have had their case made by notables like physicist Stephen Hawking and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.  Their philosophy is the ‘turtles all the way down’ theory of cosmology.  Mankind will just keep discovering ever more esoteric layers of scientific knowledge, each of which underpins all the previous layers of our understanding.  Research without end, Amen.

But unfortunately, atheists can claim no science to back up their professions of God’s absence.  You see, science is a biped, it advances only on the principles of falsifiability and Occam’s razor.  The latter resolves questions between two competing theories which explain all the known observations and data, and then selects the simplest of the two for further exploration.  Falsifiability is the bedrock principle of science.  Every proposed theory of science must be such that it can describe tests or realworld experiments, which if it fails, would cause it to be discarded as a description of truth about our universe.

He is Risen!

As Christmas is the promise, Easter is the fulfillment.  Oblivion vanquished, rejoice!

The New Pope and Christianity’s Challenge

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 15 March 2013.]

Cardinal of Argentina and Jesuit, Jorge Bergoglio, was elected Pope last Wednesday, the first from the Western Hemisphere to hold the Holy Office of Catholicism.  He chose to be known as Pope Francis (the First), a name that fits his reputation and humble demeanor.  His major tasks will be to straighten out the Vatican bureaucracy, also known as the Roman Curia, the standing of the Catholic priesthood, and halt the decline of Christianity in Europe and North America.

While the proportion of the world’s Christians has remained fairly constant over the last century, its center of gravity has overwhelmingly shifted from the north to south.  The Pew Research Forum on Religion and Public Life reports –

“This apparent stability, however, masks a momentous shift. Although Europe and the Americas still are home to a majority of the world’s Christians (63%), that share is much lower than it was in 1910 (93%). And the proportion of Europeans and Americans who are Christian has dropped from 95% in 1910 to 76% in 2010 in Europe as a whole, and from 96% to 86% in the Americas as a whole.”

And even these statistics mask the actual declines in people who regularly attend church or even confess to believing in God.  Protestant Northern Europe has become a Christian wasteland, and in North America secular humanism is making great strides in attracting both young and old away from the faith of their fathers.

Today in America the state is actively and selectively proscribing Christianity and purging its presence from public life.  The ruling progressive mentality is dominant and has prescribed that we be sensitive to all religions in our midst save Christianity.  When the perceived sensibilities of people of other faiths are somehow disrespected, there is an uproar in the media with America’s secular humanists lending their weight to restore those aggrieved.  The only exception is the sound of crickets when a Christian or Christianity is disparaged or mocked.

Today Christians in America are a mobile bunch with over 50% having changed their religious affiliation at least once.  And the churn continues as the overall numbers decline.  To me that reflects an attitude that shopping religions is rapidly becoming the norm because people more and more are dissatisfied with what they learn or don’t learn during their encounter with this or that denomination.

As a Protestant Christian, I have seen that branch of the faith change markedly over my lifetime.  Churches no longer feel that their theology, with its message of salvation and how to live, is sufficient to contain the faithful.  Something different is required today if the pews are to be filled on Sunday.  The overwhelming solution has been to adopt a new ‘contemporary’ style of service that concentrates on entertainment and expunges the wonders of Christian cosmology and theology from its sermons.  ‘Sunday school light’ is the new liturgy in which a progressive ‘liberation theology’ focuses on current social issues during many Protestant and Catholic worship services.

The consequence is that altars have become rock band stages, the sacraments have been silenced, and an all-inclusive Christianity is the order of the day.  The parishioner soon asks himself ‘is that all that there is?’, if so, then let’s go find a place that has a better band, cooler songs, and more skits to entertain us.  If the church seeks first to be a social services club washed of irrelevant theology, then finding the best club is the order of the day.  The Pew Forum describes it as “a very competitive religious marketplace.”  And today that marketplace is more and more filled with Comfort Christians who cannot conceive of contending for what used to be their faith.

On an even bigger scale, respected scientists tell us (here) that the world is rapidly becoming an arena of clashing civilizations, each of which hew to one of the world’s great religious traditions.  It is into that arena that the humble and evangelical Pope Francis now takes the Throne of St Peter as the de facto leader of Christians of all hues.

My name is Rebane, and I expand on this and related themes on georgerebane.com where the linked transcript of this commentary is posted, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However these views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Christmas 2012

George Rebane

[This message was first posted on Christmas Eve 2009.]

The two main events in the Christian calendar are celebrations of the Promise and the Fulfillment.  Christmas calls on us to reflect on the Promise delivered - the arrival of Emmanuel, God with us, that made real what had long been promised.  By His appearance among us, the Promise of the good news and a new covenant of salvation between Man and God became an historical event.  He had come.

As Christians, we take great joy in the remembrance of that little noticed event two thousand years ago, an event that would alter the course of Man and his empires.  Today, in our own country and around the world, Christians again stand battered and confused by forces and events we scarcely understand.  But Christmas reminds us once more of the real hope for a better world in which we, in His image, will all have the freedom to grow and give according to the talents and opportunities afforded us.

Jo Ann and I wish all of you a joyous Christmas, and a new year where ‘Better!’ will properly respond to every ‘How are you?’ coming your way.

Transhumanism, Cosmism, and the Singularity

George Rebane

Last week my son-in-law sent me David Brin’s latest great sci-fi novel, Existence.   I couldn’t help but immediately put it into my reading stack.  Like most of you who frequent RR, I read several books concurrently, and Brin’s description of the state of the world in mid-century was something I had to know sooner than later.  As a geo-politics, philosophy, and machine intelligence junkie, I was not disappointed as this page-turner immediately grabbed me.

I’m a third through the tome and hope to report more on it later.  But Brin’s world of about 2050 is a very plausible one for those who have agreed with my prognostications here on RR, and those of George Friedman on Stratfor.  America has fragmented into a loose federation of semi-sovereign states and regions that still calls itself United States.  Global warming has caused the sea level to rise precipitously, apparently from the sudden loosening of massive ancient freshwater lakes underneath the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps.  And the social order is more stratified than ever with various “estates” of people having even a wider range of wealth, belief systems, and various affinities for technology.

The Singularity has not yet arrived, however robots and very intelligent machines dominate all areas of human activity.  The web has multiplied into several levels of extremely broadband nets, and sensors are deployed everywhere, looking at and listening to everything.  Everyone is plugged in through various implants and headgear that superimpose layers of information and data into the visual and aural fields as people go about their business.  However, society is at a potential breaking point, having suffered several short but intensive global catastrophes and political calamities between now and then.  There are layers of visible and corrupt invisible layers of power with the main contention being between the ultra-rich (trillionaires) and the religionists – one group seeking stability, the other a revolution to a new world order.

And then Earth is contacted by what is clearly an established galactic society.

‘Does God Watch Paint Dry?’

George Rebane

[I fear that this posting will be of little interest to most RR readers.  It is memorialized here as part of my personal record of thought that I am willing to share with those few whose interest might be piqued by such subjects.]

Religions in general and Christianity in particular are suffering an assault of reason that has reached a zenith through the ascendancy and promulgation of secular humanism (q.v.) that is now touted as the all-explaining worldview held by the educated in every land.  Christianity has been on the wane in developed countries – in Europe it is mostly extinct as a belief system – enjoying gains only among the pre-educated in less developed nations.  Staying its current course, Christianity may expect a similar fate in those countries when they too become developed.

In my extended study of this phenomenon, the fundamental reason for the retreat of Christianity is that its adherents and protagonists continue to teach the faith through promotion of tenets that are easily rejected in this age of accessible mega-information.  What is taught from the pulpit on Sunday does not match the encountered reality during the rest of the week.  And when the supplicants and/or prospects present these dichotomies to Christianity’s purveyors, their counter to reason is ‘You must believe more strongly in the teachings, and then your questions and questioning will disappear.’

Most people answer that they don’t want to become a person in whom such patently reasonable inquiries are no longer possible.  They see it as undergoing a form of intellectual lobotomy, which, at a minimum, will destroy the salutary parts of the image they have of themselves.  And they turn away, proclaiming to other potential seekers the details of their frustrated attempts to understand.

As some previous posts have revealed, I am among those Christians who hold that Christianity is a most plausible and simple system (see Occam) of belief, one that lays the intellectual foundation for our cosmology and provides the most satisfying answers to the deepest teleological questions (the whys) about our existence and fate.  One can even argue that there exist perspectives from which Christianity is falsifiable.  However, such arguments cannot be made from what we may label as the commonly taught ‘everyday Christianity’.

To all this, I believe, there is a powerful yet little known alternative interpretation that can lay to rest the standard litany of doubts about the scriptural history and expression of the faith.  One of the most compelling conundrums for the questioning seeker can be summarized by, 'Does God Watch Paint Dry?'. This is the title of a little apology I have composed for those who would still like to discover whether for them Christianity can serve as an illuminated path between intellect and faith.  Perhaps it will be of help.

HE IS RISEN!

George Rebane

Hearing that strong assertion, the Christian answers joyfully, ‘He is risen indeed!’

For us, Christmas is the promise, and Easter its fulfillment.  The summation of all Christianity is Christ’s covenant in the promised transcendence of Man, all concentrated into one simple declaration – ‘He is risen!’  Without this, our faith is a fraud; with it, Christianity promises Man to become an unending part of God’s love of all of Creation.

Secular humanists need religion too, but …

George Rebane

There was an interesting essay in the 18/19feb12 WSJ adapted from Alain de Botton’s latest book Religion for Atheists: a Non-believers Guide to the Uses of Religion.  It is really a lament about all the things that atheists are missing out on that come to people of faith who gather to worship their God.  Everything from “reclaiming community” to finding commonly shared purpose in life, and all the trimmings that go in between for folks in a faith-based organization.

It seems that atheists are somehow not fulfilled in their flirtations with environmentalism, productivity seminars, yoga, moral relativism, and endless group and individual analyses by various therapists and psychological ‘rent-a-buddies’.  There seems to be an emptiness underneath it all that is not only perceived by the hard-working career climbers, but is made more stark in the built-in loneliness that comes from attempting to connect with people with whom there is really no common connection.

Well, according to M. de Botton, there is a solution at hand that can bring our secular humanist friends into a chummy communion with other similarly searching souls (which really don’t exist).  It turns out that atheists can join with each other just like the bible thumpers, but without all that God baggage.  And the solution lies in starting an institution, or is it really a franchise, called Agape Restaurants (I’m not making this up).

The Agape Restaurants would become the locus of congregations following the Book of Agape prescribing a liturgy that is cobbled together from the essential essences of the Catholic Mass, the Jewish Seder, the Zen tea ceremony, … you get the idea.  People would assemble there to go through the warm and bonding formalities that bring and hold together people of faith.  They would even get to ceremoniously consume the moral?, ethical? equivalent of the Eucharist.

In his ‘Religion for Everyone’ de Botton tells us of the glorious gemütlichkeit of such venues –

Thanks to the Agape Restaurant, our fear of strangers would recede. The poor would eat with the rich, the black with the white, the orthodox with the secular, workers with managers, scientists with artists. The claustrophobic pressure to derive all of our satisfactions from our existing relationships would ease, as would our desire to climb ever higher in social status. …

The Book of Agape would direct diners to speak to one another for prescribed lengths of time on predefined topics. Like the famous questions that the youngest child at the table is assigned by the Haggadah to ask during the Passover ceremony ("Why is this night different from all other nights?" "Why do we eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs?" and so on), these talking points would be carefully crafted for a specific purpose, to coax guests away from customary expressions of pride ("What do you do?" "Where do your children go to school?") and toward a more sincere revelation of themselves ("What do you regret?" "Whom can you not forgive?" "What do you fear?").

So there you have it.  You should be able to embrace it all without having to consider any of the aggravating absolutes that come with a religion that teaches transcendence as the gift of grace from a supreme intelligence who created all that IS, and through love and compassion is willing to share all with His critters.  None of those things need to divert us from creaming the good parts of 'TAT TVAM ASI!'  From a thorough analysis of religions, the secular humanists have finally figured out how to fill their emptiness and enjoy it all. For it’s now or never – remember, oblivion awaits.

And yet, and yet …

Happy Thanksgiving 2011

‘Thank you God for this day, and for this food.’
Traditional Rebane family grace.

A Reader’s Complaint Answered

George Rebane

Mr Ben Emery is a regular RR reader who vigorously defends his Left/liberal ideology in these pages.  He recently issued a complaint about the content, viewpoint, and perhaps the form of this weblog.  His general lament is that RR’s scope of topics is too narrow and doesn’t cover the substance of the ideas discussed.   I believe his comments deserve a more extended answer that may also be of interest to other readers of this weblog.  This follows BenE’s complaint repeated below, which is also his ‘8nov11 09:12 AM’ comment to ‘The Liberal Mind – How much socialist, before being a ‘Socialist’?’.

The Morass of Morals and Morality

George Rebane

The ‘morality’ of capitalism, of empire, of wealth redistribution, and many other things are much on the minds of people these days.  Yet, as with notions like race, prejudice, government subsidy, censorship, socialism, …, almost no one comes to the debate with a coherent, let alone operational, definition of the terms they glibly sprinkle into their arguments.  Such ignorance has reached unheard heights that now call for books – e.g. philosopher Jamie Whyte’s Crimes Against Logic – Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders (2005) - that have been published on the rising incomprehensibility of public babble.

To this semantic morass I now wish to add an understanding of the notion of morals and morality since it is often brought up in the comment threads of RR, usually as part of an indictment of fellow readers or their wayward beliefs.  This contribution joins a growing list of other terms on RR (see ‘Critical Thinking and Numeracy’ category) I have defined, many at the request of readers.  The intent of such definitions is to make my commentaries and comments more understandable, and hopefully invite others to appreciate the offered semantics.