It’s all too easy to get one’s own narrative wrong. A pattern-seeking brain takes the raw materials of a messy life, viewed in retrospect, and knits a script with you-know-who in the heroic lead. It’s like a tornado blowing through a junkyard and assembling a 747.
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Posted by
Wanda Oliveira on 11/06 at 09:47 AM
The author tells that he made a wide investigation around all to stated Christian, as well as different religions other beliefs. I ask myself why in all articles that I read about this matter I’ve never found any reference to the works of Allan Kardec.
It seems to me that the question of the faith and of the God’s existence is the constant one in the reflections of all the great minds. Though I am not included between them, also I make part of for that whom that look for answers in this field.
I do not believe personally that the doctrine of Allan Kardec has a definite answer for this question, but I believe that it leads to the reflections different from the known religions .
Anyway, the author ‘s conclusion in this article seems to me almost perfect, if the persons were believing simply in this love independent of a God whom it punishes or rewards, the world would be free of prejudices, and the search of the truth would be much more peace-loving.
Posted by
veronica on 11/06 at 03:34 PM
This was a thought-provoking essay. Not sure what it has to do with IEET, but it was interesting nonetheless.
“I read twice about the infant boy who is abandoned in the wilderness to spare him from death, only to be found by a servant of the king who brings him to the palace to be raised as the child of the king and queen:first Oedipus, then Moses.”
Is that the order these stories appeared in the world, or the order in which you read about them?
For what it’s worth, A.N. Wilson found his faith again, according to wiki and
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169145/Religion-hatred-Why-longer-cowed-secular-zealots.html
I guess Wilson would say that “one could get one’s own narrative wrong” more than once.
Posted by
Titus on 11/06 at 03:59 PM
In a discussion on Gnosticism, Theologian Robert M. Price voiced my own feelings about God. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”.
Yes, we expect something cosmic, but all we get is a third rate Demiurge, because that is what powerful, wealthy and woefully ignorant societal archons give us. But there is a source at the center of our being connected to the Cosmic Source, that is ineffable, and to call it “God” would be an insult.
Posted by
Armand on 11/07 at 06:21 PM
All Myths are True. The nature of their truth is not scientific or historical, but existential. Facts alone are meaningless to us. It is with myths that we spin those facts into stories that give our lives meaning and purpose. Even if there is an objective reality we can’t know it, since both our senses and perceptions are unique to each of us. No one can tell another that their myths are wrong. Whatever comforts you have, those are myths just the same as any other. To me it is atheism that is a thin veneer of reason and science covering their sophism, their ignorance of theology and religion, and their contempt for those who disagree with them. I’ve never once heard a convincing atheist argument. The Teapot argument is wrong because it equates not being able to prove something with having to reason to believe in it. You may as well say there are no planets outside our galaxy since we can’t see them from so far away. Moral evil is explained by free will, and Physical evil is explained by the need for a structured universe. Any attempt to demonize religion only comes across as petty and ignorant.
You say that since the myths of the Greeks and the Bible are similar (since the were both created by Humans who had similar psychological needs) that means the Universe has no Creator? Please. I don’t know how much of the Bible is based on historical fact, and I don’t care, for it is not a history text book. Evolution does not displace Humanity, and if you want the ‘creationists’ to believe it, then it must be interpretted in a way that is meaningful to us. People don’t yearn for scientific theories, they yearn for myths. When evolution becomes a myth that gives our existence meaning, then no one will have a problem with it. You say that science disproves the Bible’s myths? I see science as continually providing more evidence that the Universe was intentionally created. That’s all I mean by the word God; A Creator.
I suggest you read the poem Mythopoeia my Tolkien, and maybe you’ll understand the truth of myths a bit better.
Posted by
CygnusX1 on 11/08 at 12:56 PM
I love this piece, and I thank you for your integrity.
(Thanks to Messrs Udo Schuklenk and Russell Blackford for the edit and post !)
Quote : “Was I “searching”? Was I wrestling, Jacob-like, with God? Was I “on a faith journey”? Not really, no. As compelling as all those narratives are, my goal was simpler. I had already decided that I didn’t believe in the Christian scheme, and did so based largely on armchair reasoning.”
Quote : “I was astonished. More than that, I was pissed off. I felt what Dorothy felt when the man behind the curtain was revealed to be pot-bellied Francis Wupperman. That’s it? Are you kidding me?”
Yet have we all overlooked here some fundamental motive for your/our search for God? (An enquiry, which I do not for one moment believe we really miss at all). The real question on everybody’s mind both concerning life and death and existence and God : “the” most fundamental and basic of enquiries, the question of your own very being : the most important question of all : “who am I?”
This enquiry, this need to define ourselves and reconcile “who we are” is fundamental : why? Because we are born into separation and duality, the duality of mind and matter, and of subject and object. We are thus doomed to reach out from within ourselves for the understanding of ourselves. We reach out for understanding, for consolation, for love, for faith, for God. Descartes, (a hero), opened the can of worms, yet he was by no means the first, (or the last), because the question is with us all in every thought. “who am I?”
Indeed our very own intellect and intelligence is not only a gift, it can be a curse? As we point our enquiries every which way, into space, into ourselves for the answers that are sometimes slow to appear. We have evolved scientifically with our understanding of nature, yet have we evolved spiritually? We construct the ego in reflection of our misconceptions of self, which is based on our own subjective understanding of what others, other “selfs” think of us! It’s no wonder we cannot decide who we really are! Are we God’s children? : Pray tell me what do you think? No really I NEED to know what you think for I am lost, lost in my own subjective understanding of reality.
Knock, knock who’s there Faith!
It may be easy for us, one and all, to stand on the “shoulders of giants”, and to be wise and knowledgeable with hindsight and to look back and scrutinise the errors of theism’s and religions. And most of us would definitely find indisputable the unveiled scientific truths concerning biological evolution, origins of species, (perhaps?), and answers to genetic heredity, and to brain physiology.
Yet we overlook why there is this fundamental need for humans to overcome separation using faith and beliefs. And thus the origins and history and the need of religions and philosophies are revealed. Do we stick steadfast with these early primeval doctrines and beliefs : most likely not, yet we still all need to believe in some thing and have faith, in humanity? In the cultural evolution of society? In the “big bang theory”? In downloading my perpetual consciousness into a machine?
Quote : “We are cosmically insignificant, a speck in space and a blink in time, inconceivably unimportant:except to each other, to whom we should therefore be unspeakably precious.”
“Existence precedes essence?”
Ps. You included “freethinkers”, Simone de Beauvoir, yet omitted poor Satre?
Posted by
Abraham on 11/08 at 09:05 PM
“We are cosmically insignificant, a speck in space and a blink in time, inconceivably unimportant:except to each other, to whom we should therefore be unspeakably precious.”
I like CygnusX’s comment on this, and I have another. It appears that Mr. McGowan reached this conclusion /after/ he became an atheist, and not beforehand.
In addition, one can just as easily conclude that knowing that you are inconceivably unimportant “to the cosmos” should lead another person to treat you as inconceivably unimportant as well.
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