In Bad Faith, part 8: The Case for God – Not What You Think

I just finished read/listening to Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God, and like waking with memories of a vivid dream, I want to get my thoughts down before they get pushed aside by the concerns of the day.

In Bad Faith, part 8: The Case for God – Not What You Think

I think that Armstrong did such a great job summarizing the book in her NPR/Fresh Air interview that the book feels a bit ponderous. What I mean is that this is a book that one really needs to pay attention to and no play as background music (ack, stupid multitasking lifestyle). Armstrong takes the reader from the very beginning evidences of “god thoughts” found in the pre-historic caves of Lascaux, to the new-atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, spending a goodly bit of time going through the Greek, Asian, and post-medieval schools of thought that may not be familiar to the reader.

So, as a former Loyola Marymount religious studies major with a B.A. in Biblical Studies from Biola University and several quarters of study at Fuller Seminary toward an MA in Theology and a piss-pour background in the Greek and Latin Classics (no ones fault but my own), I greatly appreciated Armstrong’s academic, non-polemic, recitation of pre-history and history of religion on this planet. Yeah, that’s the scope of this book. I’m very interested in her other books on Islam and Buddhism to see how deep she dives into these religions where I’m greatly lacking in my own understanding.

Thoughts that struck me as I listened to the book, mainly how every generation and every great thinker felt compelled to re-interpret God based on their own recent history, cultural and personal, and their own cultural problems. For example, how different would modern Christianity be if Augustine had not had such a problem with his pre-conversion sexual appetites, how would the relationship between God and man be cast differently if Augustine hadn’t promoted the idea of Original Sin and demonized sexuality in general, making it a sin except for the purpose of conception? What would have happened if Emperor Constantine had not chosen to use Christianity as a unify force in his divided empire, thus forcing provincial Christianity to agree on which books belonged in the scriptures, the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and what would be orthodox and what would be heretical? How differently would history have been had Christianity remained a Jewish sect instead of a world political power? And every time there was a political or natural disaster there seemed to be gigantic shifts in thought with conservatives abandoning the silent God and liberal’s looking for a literal simplistic God to find comfort from.

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In Bad Faith, Part 6: Is Your God a Tribal Strawman?

So, it seems to come down to this, I’ve had these experiences, experiences that I was shocked to read about in my first year religion course at Loyola Marymount in a book by Rudolf Otto called The Idea of the Holy. The Latin phrase was mysterium tremendum et fascinans, and I completely understood what the author was talking about. I felt connected. At the same time I didn’t see visions, I didn’t hear voices, I didn’t go to another realm of reality. In fact, if it weren’t for my Catholic/Christian upbringing and a friend who was there at the time, I wouldn’t have known how to interpret these experiences. And there, perhaps, is the source of the difficulty.

In Bad Faith, Part 6: Is Your God a Tribal Strawman?

Had I been raised in a different community on a different spot on the globe than the language of my experiences, how I would have interpreted my experiences, would have been different. Had I not had my first experiences during the “Jesus People Movement” in Southern California in the mid-1970s then the direction of my life might have been entirely different. Instead of being a Religious Studies major at Loyola Marymount and then getting a BA in Biblical Studies at Biola University, I might have joined a monastery in Europe or Asia or entered into training to become a Mullah or Rabbi in the Middle East. I wonder, if I had taken those other paths, would those traditions have allowed me to examine their early tribal heritage and eventually find fault with systems of interpretation that don’t hold up to modern scrutiny. I guess I’ll never know. But what I do know is that, experiences not withstanding, I cannot faithfully recite any of the creeds I’ve known without massive mental re-editing. So it would seem that once I moved from “mysterium tremendum et fascinans” to interpretation or human understanding something or perhaps everything got lost in translation.

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In Bad Faith, Part 4: The Evil Media

A few months ago I saw this comment on my Twitter feed: “RT @vavroom: Sometimes, small minded Christianity really saddens me. (via @kubke @snowded @annemcx @euan )” – Christine Morris (@CMoz). And attached was a link to a story from the Telegraph in the UK about how a film about Charles Darwin was having difficulty finding a distributor in the US because the film’s subject, Evolution, is too controversial. The Telegraph story was written in September (2009) when the film opened at the Toronto Film Festival. What the story failed to mention was that this was one of those years when a large number of films were having difficulty finding distributors. The theory of distribution presented in the story came from the film’s producer. So, perhaps, it was economics and not the small mindedness of US Christians that was making finding a distributor difficult. As someone with a degree in Journalism and Biblical Studies I tire from hearing the Christians complain how Godless (liberal) the Press is and from the Atheists and Secularists how Christian (provincial/conservative) the Press is.

In Bad Faith, Part 4: The Evil Media

What both the Left and Right seem to forget is that the Media, especially in the form of the movie industry, is a form of banking, and it will do whatever it thinks will make money for it’s investors. Period. It rarely leads and often plays both sides of the issues because it needs to draw attention to itself, not to change things but to make money. The Media is not a perfect reflection of our culture, remember it’s first responsibility is not to reflect Reality, but to make money. And this “bottom line” mentality is not limited to the movie industry but, sadly, has become a big part of the News Industry too. Journalism has felt the pressure to sell it’s wares. We may think of Journalism as a service, but it’s a business. This is not to say that Journalism has abandoned the principles of Objectivity, but it’s more of an ideal, like how Americans try to live up to our Constitution, Bill of Rights and Pledge of Allegiance. Journalism believes in Objectivity, in part, because it’s business model requires a certain level of trust. No trust, no sales. So, at it’s core the News & Media industries are neither Left or Right. They can’t afford to be. They will follow the interests of their audiences, Left or Right, but the commitment isn’t to the politics but to the business of making money. The Media decision-makers are not pushing any position except the one that keeps them viable and better yet, more than viable.

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In Bad Faith, Part 3: Franky Schaeffer, Son of “Slippery Slide” Comes Clean

I was amazed to hear the interview of Franky Schaeffer on NPR because his story was so revealing about the dangers of when sincere faith is influenced by political power and marketing. I was introduced to his writings in the early 1980s after his father had been promoted as an “intellectual Christian” and Franky continued his father’s beliefs that any step toward accepting “modern values” (particularly abortion) was a slippery slope toward liberalism.

In Bad Faith, Part 3: Franky Schaeffer, Son of “Slippery Slide” Comes Clean

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In Bad Faith, Part 2: Born this Way? or This is Your Brain on God

As a college freshman at Loyola Marymount University I recognized that there had to be at least some psychological aspect to things like Speaking in Tongues (Glossolalia) and didn’t feel that that diminished the “God” part of the behavior at all.

In Bad Faith, Part 2: Born this Way? or This is Your Brain on God

I don’t think that I ever shared these thoughts with my fellow-believers. I just assumed that those in the midst of the experience probably didn’t analyze the phenomenon beyond a few Bible passages and whether the practice was accepted or rejected by their church. Then many years later I saw a documentary TV program where scientists were mapping the brain, using scans that looked for elevated brain activity. They found that persons in deep meditation or prayer showed elevated activity in the Temporal lobe. From what I remember, the pattern of activity was similar to those who reported stories of alien abduction. They were able to induce the “Alien” experiences in some test subjects by transmitting the pattern instead of recording it. Then one scientist, an atheist, thought that he might “see” what the religious participants in the experiment had experienced if he also used the recording harness to transmit the “religious” patterns to his brain. The scientist saw and felt nothing. I wasn’t too surprised, but it wasn’t because of any “God” thing. It might have been that his brain was just not wired to understand the “language” of religious experience that had been recorded in the experiment. According to a recent article in Ars Technica, it might indeed be something lost in translation that’s individual to everyone’s brains.

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Time Inc. Media Pad… Hints on Apple Tablet

In case you haven’t noticed, this is the year of the media pad/e-reader. And no, Mr. Ballmer, we don’t want to read/interact with our media on a big fat (hot!) laptop or, God forbid, desktop computer. We want something small (w/ a big screen), sexy and fast! Is this Time Inc. Pad the unicorn/Apple Tablet? Since I posted this video in my blog, rumors about the Apple unicorn/tablet have really taken off again. End of January announcement? Stay tuned.

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In Bad Faith, Part 1: It’s the Accent, Isn’t It?

Over several months I’ve begun this entry at least half a dozen times, but failed to get past a few lines and embedded videos. That’s usually a pretty bad sign. In this case, however, it was more about the importance of these thoughts, compounded by my inability to successfully find the narrative. But, given my written record in this blog and its predecessors, I felt compelled to dig into this subject and try to make sense of things. Thus, I’ve decided to attempt to divide these thoughts into several parts and in each one confine myself to various books and influencers I’ve encountered over the last few years. Thus begins a series on my recent journey of Faith, that I call “In Bad Faith.”

In Bad Faith, Part 1: It’s the Accent, Isn’t It?

My brother warned me against reading this book unless I was serious about examining my faith. I can only imagine how confusing my circuitous route into and out of and then back into and later out of Faith must appear to my sibling(s). I mean, given that I went against my parents’ wishes and switched from Catholic Loyola Marymount University to Fundamentalist Protestant Biola University, and instead of getting something practical like a B.A. in Engineering I got one in Biblical Studies. This was definitely something more important going on here than a passing adolescent fad. But having gone from highly academic Loyola to wanting-to-be-more-academic Biola (in the early 80s) I learned to approach my Faith and the Bible from a more scientific/academic approach than just a devotional approach. Two of my favorite books from this era were Robert Alter’s The Art Of Biblical Narrative and Robert Mapes Anderson’s Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism. So there was always some danger that I was susceptible to things a little beyond the safe confines of devotional reading.

Fast forward twenty-eight years, divorced twenty-five years, failed MA in Theology from Fuller Seminary. second BA in communications/journalism, teaching credential, MA in Educational Technology, failed Ed.D in Educational Technology, re-located from Southern California to Central Florida, I decided against jumping back into the church thing. I needed to find some balance between my experiences of faith and the academic/scientific part of my personality. That’s when I decided to listen to Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion. Well, actually I watched the TED video first and came away with the sense that this quiet-spoken Englishman could probably get away with almost anything because of our American stereotype that causes us to assume that anyone with said accent is obviously more intelligent than we are. Damn.

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RollTop Laptop – Answering Yesterday’s Laptop Design Shortcomings

What could we do if we had flexible display materials? As advanced as the tech seems, it still might not fly because the rolled up size still seem too big when one thinks about how small and thin and light-weight the Apple Macbook Air, the Sony Vaio X- and P-series and the various netbooks already are. Flexible display materials are just beginning to show up, but there’s something in this design that’s answering problems from when the smallest usable laptops were the 15-inch/6-pound devices. Rolling up said 15-inch devices is still going to be at least 13-inches long and a rolled up girth of four-inches diameter. That’s awfully big when one considers that a lot of people are happy using an iPhone-sized device to do a lot of their communication/computer tasks.

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Windows 7 Launch Party Spoofs

In honor of last week’s launch of Windows 7 we have the “bleeped” version of the lame instructional video. Amazing how much better it is with a few strategic beeps. And as if that weren’t enough, I’ve also included the CNET deconstructed version below and one of the latest PC/Mac ads. Enjoy!

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Let’s Be Friends… For Now

I visited my e-Harmony profile today. It’s been awhile. With Pepperdine fading into a confusing memory and things beginning to settle down on the house-front, I feel okay about re-investing some time on the social side of things. Today I also took a survey on my satisfaction with the e-Harmony service. I’ve been on the service since January 2006. I’ve been matched with 1,251 women. For a couple months in 2006 I dated one of my matches. My matches or I have clicked the “close” button 1,236 times. There are currently 15 matches in my queue and I’ve gotten responses from four of the 15. I’m in e-mail communication with one match outside of the service. Fortunately the survey didn’t ask for numbers.

In the time that I’ve had my one dating experience most relationships have gone through whole life-cycles from discovery to death. Truth be told, the vast majority of my time with e-harmony I haven’t been actively pursuing anything as much as kept the service in my emotional back-pocket as a “Plan B.” I had a lot of fun the first few months when I was convinced that my former relationship was over and loved the possibility of meeting someone who was specially selected for me. Then that former relationship came back… kind’a. Well, it didn’t quite come back as much as it just took an extended period to expire. In the meantime, some of the air was let out of my e-Harmony expectations to the point where I just kept the subscription so that I could feel like there was a possibility of something for me in the future. Then when that former relationship really expired (for real this time!), it took almost all of my ability to trust myself and relationships with it. At that point I kept the e-Harmony account because I wasn’t ready to kill it too. Lately I’ve been thinking that it’s time to change a few things.

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