Exhibit A
July 31, 2010 in Objections
This is pretty much the idiocy that worries me about my growing interest in Christianity…
Really, thanks Thickshades…
You are browsing the archive for belief.
by G. Scott
by G. Scott
In My Own Shadow
July 30, 2010 in General, Religion
I’ve always had certain associations with the name “Jesus.” “The name “Jesus” makes me cringe,” I began, explaining my religious upbringing’s effect on my personal associations with the name.
The name makes me shudder for other reasons, though. There are current, cultural associations that disturb me. I think of wildly dancing Pentecostals; of prosperity-gospel-preaching mega-church pastors who use the name to get rich by assuring their pastorate that they too can get rich in Jesus; of individuals that have such a poor understanding of Christianity that they become easy targets for people like Bill Maher. If I were to say, “I’m a Christian” (something I’m still not willing to say at this point), I would be associated with such people.
That’s a nice example of the evasive nature of passive voice. “I would be associated with such people.” Who would do such associating? Friends. Neighbors. Coworkers. Family. Strangers.
Yet isn’t that me getting in my own way, tripping over my own ego? Of course it is.
In making an intellectual and emotional change from non-belief to, well, to non-non-belief at this moment, I’m making enormous changes in my worldview and whole life, and that stings the ego.
The whole process is pretty much thumb presses and Chinese water torture for the ego, admitting I might have been wrong in all my vitriolic attacks on belief and faith and wondering where I might end up when the whole process is over — if it ever is.
by G. Scott
Thresholds
April 28, 2010 in General, Religion
I’m finishing up Crossing the Threshold of Hope. The title never really meant anything until I began to hope. I find it to be the most inviting book title I’ve heard in a very long time. It seems to be what I’m doing, but to cross a threshold, one must walk.
And there’s the rub.
John Paul II writes,
Christ wants to awaken human hearts. He wants them to respond to the word of the Father, but he wants this in full respect for human dignity. In the very search for faith an implicit faith is already present, and therefore the necessary condition for salvation is already satisfied. (193)
I’ve read that a dozen times, and it brings a smile each time. It’s not that I’m thinking, “I’m searching, so I’m home free!” Rather, there’s been this sense, this ineffable feeling, that this working on faith is itself a kind of faith.
The old adage about longest journeys and first steps isn’t merely an empty cliche. In picking up my foot, I have to have a certain kind of — dare I say it? — faith that it will land on solid ground. I take this for granted daily, but only because it has been confirmed again and again. And because I constantly and unconsciously check my environment countless times as I walk to make sure I am on firm ground. Yet infants don’t have that experience, and each step is an adventure.
This surely is what Paul had in mind when he wrote of “mere babes in Christ.”
by G. Scott
Decade of Doubt
January 6, 2010 in General
This time of year it’s natural to look back over the changes of one’s past, seeking patterns and insight — things to repeat, things to avoid.
As I look over the last ten years, all I see is doubt: a great arc that went from hatred to fascination to calm acceptance. And now — to what? I’m still trying to figure it out.
The mid-1990s weren’t a time of doubt for me; they were a time of violent, aggressive anger toward all things religious. All that was religious was bad; there was nothing about religion that had any redeeming features. I hated religion with such unnrational wildness that even to go near a church set my jaw in such a tight bite that it seems entirely possible I could have damaged my teeth.
At some point, religion began to fascinate. As I explained it to a professor who eventually served as a grad-school-application reference, it was like watching a vast ball from a soundproof chamber: I could see the motions; I sensed the harmony; I suspected there was something going on that I wasn’t aware of.
I began graduate studies in the philosophy of religion at Boston University in 1999. I was definitely an agnostic, but religion fascinated me. I dropped out at the end of my first year. There were many reasons why, but chief among them was a feeling of impracticality. “Castles in the sky,” I recently told someone.
That’s a positive thing, though.
And that’s the irony: I was completely emotional in my attacks on religion. Of the two of us, religion wasn’t showing itself to be an irrational dolt; I was.
by G. Scott
Map Check
January 2, 2010 in General
What is the nature of a journey? Simple: it’s the motion from one place to another. Mode and destination can vary, but as long as there is a destination and movement towards it, there is a journey.
Is a spiritual journey any different? Certainly the motion is more mental and less physical. What about the destination? Unlike a physical journey, the destination of a spiritual trip — mine, anyway — seems much less well-defined. There are fuzzy edges, and the destination is much larger than a single city or an old castle in a medieval village.
At what point should I have answers? At what point can I be held accountable for what I believe and what I don’t believe? If we’re speaking in terms of accountability to God, we can’t answer. I wonder if it’s different for accountability to humans?
A reader asks for a map check:
Before we can move forward to any meaningful discussion here , it MUST first be determined IF you even believe in the Bible.
The short answer is, “No, I don’t.” The long answer is, “No, I don’t. But there is something very appealing about belief, about faith, about Christianity and I’d like to believe.”
There are some serious roadblocks to my belief, though, and I’ve been sharing them here.
Meaningful discussion: I haven’t had meaningful discussion about the Bible in ages. I’ve raged against it; I’ve declared it backward, idiotic, full of nonsense, and challenged Christians to prove me wrong. That hardly counts as “meaningful discussion.”
Instead of raging, I’m seeking answers. Instead of declaring it backward, idiotic and full of nonsense, I’m trying to understand how very intelligent people see it differently. And here’s the key: I’m doing it all in the hope that eventually my views on scripture will change. That feels meaningful to me, and as long as I’m asking these questions respectfully, I hope it seems meaningful to others.
You have stated in the past that you do NOT know what position you take (theologically), hence, if you DO NOT believe in the Bible, then any and all discussion is a moot point,and frankly,it looks like you’re just playing games.
I used to play such games. Atheism was a new bauble and I took it to school after Christmas for Show and Tell, convinced I’d found something magnificent. I used it to feel superior to others, and I used it as a tool for mockery.
Fortunately, I did most of this in my head, even the raging declarations mentioned previously. Occasionally, with friends, I might share some of my thoughts, but generally speaking, my atheism was a personal affair. I certainly wanted more people to reject faith and embrace rationality (as I defined it), but I understood that I wouldn’t change their mind; they had to change their mind.
And now that has circled back on me.
So, I hope I’ve outgrown games of this nature. Maybe I haven’t. Maybe I’m fooling myself. Maybe I’m wasting my time and everyone else’s. Or maybe not.
So, let me ask you straight out – (and it requires just a simple “yes”,”no”,or “I don’t know” answer). DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE BIBLE AND DO YOU SINCERELY WISH TO FIND AN ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTIONS ?
I’ve often held that many Christians are unable to understand how (or even believe that) anyone could not accept the tenants of their faith. It seems black and white to them, so the third option is helpful.
I choose a fourth option, though: I don’t believe, but I want to. To frame it Biblically, I am proclaiming the second half of Mark 9.24 before I can mutter the first half. I have many reservations. I don’t believe much of it now. But I’m looking for alternative points of view on the questions that matter most. This is a journey. I’m picking up my feet slowly, and I’m looking carefully before putting them back down, all with the hope that I’m moving toward a destination that has more meaning than my starting place.
Not a simple answer, I understand. Then again, these are not simple issues.
I shall await your HONEST answer.
I hope this suffices.
by G. Scott
Proof
December 26, 2009 in General
Yesterday, after Mass, a friend (though “acquaintance” might be more accurate) asked me if I was Catholic. Like me, he married a Polish woman; he accompanied her to Mass as they’d driven into town to share a Christmas dinner with us.
“No,” I answered, quietly. A year ago, I might have been more emphatic in my denial. “You?” I asked, though I knew the answer. He always struck me as an individual lacking passion, and for some reason, that deficiency made me think he was a non-believer.
“No!” he said with a little chuck and a touch of indignation. “My mind works in different ways. More scientific. I need proof.”
Funny — I might have said something like that a year ago. I wouldn’t have used those words: I don’t know if I was ever very dogmatic in my disbelief when talking. I might have put it as Tom Hanks’ character in Angels and Demons expressed it: “Faith is a gift I’ve yet to receive.” In fact, this gentleman later quoted that passage. “I like that,” he said. (I might point out that I Googled all the information about the quote. I’ve not seen Angels and Demons, nor read the book, and given the author, I have no intention of doing either: Brown couldn’t write a convincing grocery list.) I might have liked the attempted diplomacy in such a statement myself at one point.
Later, after Christmas dinner, we were talking with a third friend. We got to talking about faith and evidence again. I mentioned a proof which an online atheist (I can’t recall the name) said he would find convincing: imagine that at the moment of Jesus’ birth, a message miraculously appeared on the moon stating that Jesus was indeed God incarnate. It would be visible to all for all centuries, and due to prior astronomical records, we would know that it hasn’t always existed.
“That would be fairly convincing evidence for many,” my second friend, a believer with a Ph.D. in physics, said.
Friend One shook his head. “No, I’d need to see him appear before me.”
I found myself thinking, “You’d probably find a way to explain that as well.”
He seems to be of the same mindset as Jennifer Fulwiler was:
I always assumed that the reason I didn’t believe in God was because I was a more scientific-type thinker. My mind simply demanded proof before it would believe a theory to be true. And as nice as it would be to think that God and Mr. Jesus love me and want me to hang out with them and the pretty angels in heaven, the Christian story just seemed so bizarre and, really, absurd. (Conversion Diary)
Proof is such a slippery thing because of the subjective nature of our individual experiences. That which is proof for one individual is folly for another. The proof provided in the DNA evidence in the OJ Simpson trial of the mid-nineties is a superb example: proof for some, nonsense for others.
When we begin discussing proof in a religious context, that becomes even trickier. In some ways, proof is impossible for matters of spirituality. My earlier doppelgänger would have retorted that that makes spirituality nonsense. What’s the point of believing something that can’t be proven false? It’s something I’m still wrestling with.
There are a thousand reasons I could give why I don’t believe, why any “reasonable” person shouldn’t believe. But something seems to have changed. I’ve changed mindsets.
William James, in “The Will to Believe,” writes that there are two ways of looking at truth: we must know the truth, or we must avoid error. The atheist in me has always been the latter; I’m beginning to wonder about the former. Right now, proof — however I might have defined that a year ago — is not as important as I thought it would be.
by G. Scott
Restraint
December 25, 2009 in General
What keeps me from believing?
One would think that the mere desire might be enough. Czes?aw Mi?osz wrote:
The Catholic Church wisely recognized that faith is more a matter of collective suggestion than of individual conviction. Collective religious ceremonies induce a state of belief. Folding one’s hands in prayer, kneeling, singing hymns precede faith, for faith is a psycho-physical and not simply a psychological phenomenon.
That makes me think that if I just attend Mass and kneel to pray long enough, I’ll believe. Wouldn’t that be too easy? And isn’t that really the effect of a group serving as a legitimizing structure, a sort of group suggestion? “I’m okay; you’re okay”?
I just wish sometimes that there were more to it than that. I sometimes long to lose my senses and fall in admiration — even praise — of someone. To do so in ritual, in the warm embrace of certainty.
And what stops me? Ego. It’s a long time unwinding that mess.
by G. Scott
Footnotes
December 23, 2009 in General
As an English major in college, I became fond of Norton Critical Editions. For books like Tristram Shandy, the critical remarks became more than an aid to understanding; they became an addiction.
It struck me one day that it might be convenient if life had a critical edition. Footnotes (or endnotes, I’m really not picky) would make things all the more navigable. In those moments of indecision, we could check a critical article at the back, or perhaps browse through the endnotes, hoping to find something of help.
In the end, we create our own critical editions. Looking back over life, our myopia corrected through experience, we whisper to our younger selves, “This moment is really not as critical as the pain makes it seem,” and “This appears insignificant; it’s not.” We compile the notes and hope for the best in future situations.
In high school, or in college, I would have given a great deal for such notes. I would not now. The price I paid then (and after) was and is too dear.
It occurs to me, though, that one might create the critical edition to one’s life in the now. Write the footnotes on the fly, so to speak. And it occurs to me, given the momentous decision I’ve been putting off for years, that now might be a good time to begin writing it.
I start this site on Christmas Eve somewhat by accident, but perhaps hoping it’s something more. Christmas represents the start of a new era for Christians. It was when a savoir entered in the most inconspicuous of ways and rewrote the rules about how humans relate to God and to each other.
That’s what Christians believe, but I don’t. And that makes me a non-Christian. An atheist on some days, an agnostic on others.
But on some days, I want to believe.