#although not the root of my atheism

[uter-us]

this sunday, it was dissapointing to see how easy it was for the boys to run around and get their energy out outside, but for the little toddler girls in impractical frilly puffy dresses and impractical shoes, it's an obstacle for their play.

the girls', clothes are made to be seen in as opposed to being made to be worn, unlike the boys which are still nice for easter but they dont have to trip over the edge of a skirt or dress, or have their shoes fall off or pinch their toes when running, they can move and play freely.

it's a problem too cuz when toddlers don't get that energy out, they get irritable and pitch fits, so then the boys look like easy kids, and the girls difficult. let the girls run around!

female subjugation starts from birth. these girls are praised for being beautiful in their dresses, while also learning they cannot play in them. this correlation will not be lost on them especially as they grow up. "If i want positive attention from the important people in my life (like my congregation), this is what i do." the whole "beauty is pain" narrative, while not incorrect, is often viewed as normal and a justified fact of life, like "beauty IS pain and thats just how it is! oh the things us women go through to look pretty haha!". stop teaching girls that their beauty is WORTH pain, because it's not! they should never sacrifice to look attractive.

if half the congression can dress both formal and practical, so can the other half. don't handcuff little girls to femininity at the cost of their happiness and energy and play.

[woodlandenjoyer]

As I’ve aged and gained responsibility and perspective through my life, my formerly staunch atheism has… softened. I see value and merit in a church community, in a network with shared values rooted in care and generosity. I see the appeal in the prospect of capital-G Grace and Forgiveness and the idea that there is someone in charge of all this, and even better, that they love you. I’ve met some wonderful, giving, warm, incredible people that credit all good things in their life to their God and their faith.

What I also see though is a million different groups believing a huge gradient of varying but similar beliefs, all certain to their core that their particular niche interpretation and perspective is not only True and Correct, but that it’s true and correct to the exclusion of everyone else’s. That they’re on the Right Side and therefore anyone that disagrees with them is on the wrong side.

And I see organizations of people acting as they always do, forming rules and structures to elevate and maintain those in positions of power, the vulnerable and downtrodden ignored or abused in the process. Using shame and status and fear to steer people’s behavior. Many hold and encourage bigoted, judgemental views of their fellow man for a wide variety of reasons.

I don’t know what I believe. My dad took my sister and me to church through our childhoods, although he’s never really been a believer. I understand why more now that my son is here, but I don’t know if I’ll do the same.

[cigaretteliker]

please say more about your jordan peterson and/or richard dawkins papers?

i wrote a paper on dawkin's the god delusion for a course on christian apologetics. i argued that dawkins' book fails because although he sets out to prove that since creative intelligence is a late evolution in the universe, it cannot be responsible for its own design, and thus god is a "pernicious delusion." my criticism is that he does not actually succeed in doing this because his focus ends up being fairly libellous and often fallacious or outright incorrect criticism of religion. if you're criticising religion, you're not disproving the existence of god: you're criticising religion, which is a legitimate thing to do, unless you- like dawkins- stray frequently into questionable territory that reeks of personal stances (an audacious oversight from an evolutionary biologist) on ethnography, race, culture, and ability. the book puts him dangerously close to bigotry or worse, enough to rival the most deplorable members of the very religions against which he argues. what, then, separates dawkins’ criticism of religion from his own beliefs? his arguments are unable to engage in the very exercise of self-awareness which he ardently urges religion to undertake in order to be logical, which begs the further question: is dawkins setting out to disprove the existence of God and the ridiculousness of religion, or is the book a exhibition of dawkins’ own fundamental refusal to engage in a view he disagrees with, making it instead of a philosophical debate, a creed of atheism refusing to engage with the opposite view except through tirade, and thus rooted in the very sorts of ignorance and illogic he claims classifies religion as a fool’s project? a close reading of dawkins reveals that his shortcoming is not that he hates or doesn't believe in god: on the contrary, dawkins does not hate god, he simply hates religion. but because of his project- proving that god does not exist- falls short of its aim. he engages in a logical fallacy of proving his argument by simply not addressing its rebuttal, instead confusing the existence of religion with the existence of god, and scapegoating something he does not believe exists for the behaviour of those professing religious credo. its a really bad book lol even though i legitimately agree with a lot of his criticism of religion, but he was too caught up in post-911 scaremongering to actually create something of worth.

wrt jordan peterson, my semester project last year was about mystical bodies and erotic space and the idea of feminine chaos as part of theological studies. peterson has written extensively and worryingly about feminine chaos, and i cited this quote in particular from his book 12 rules for life: an antidote to chaos in the footnotes of that paper:

Chaos, the eternal feminine, is also the crushing force of sexual selection. Women are choosy maters (unlike female chimps, their closest animal counterparts). Most men do not meet female human standards. It is for this reason that women on dating sites rate 85 percent of men as below average in attractiveness. It is for this reason that we all have twice as many female ancestors as male (imagine that all the women who have ever lived have averaged one child. Now imagine that half the men who have ever lived have fathered two children, if they had any, while the other half fathered none). It is Woman as Nature who looks at half of all men and says, “No!” For the men, that’s a direct encounter with chaos, and it occurs with devastating force every time they are turned down for a date.

i'm simply going to paste my response to this view of feminine chaos- which is absolutely not new and has dominated the treatment of women since the rise of christian supremacy in the west. as always the idea that women = chaos is rooted almost entirely in views of female sexuality and continues to dictate how women are treated (the paper was mostly about mary, so i was focusing on the madonna/whore dichotomy from a freudian theological perspective).

like dawkins peterson is largely incapable of forming coherent arguments, instead relying on his ability to cobble together scholarship into something vaguely resembling intelligent thought and then hawking it to the most vulnerable and reactionary people who will give him money. whether or not he is a bad person is not up to me to decide but he is a terrible scholar who does not actually say anything of worth, only glomming onto christianity now because he's noticed the rise of "trad" culture online and knows he can make a few bucks off the poor suckers. anyway this was my response to chaos and femininity:

Critically, Audre Lorde resuscitated the view of feminine eroticism by connecting it to chaos: “born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony,” an assertion of feminine life forces that empower and must be reclaimed. While second wave feminism sought reclamation and derived authority from feminine eroticism as irrupting from primordial Chaos, contemporary male supremacist pseudo-theorists have attempted to appropriate this view as a means to further marginalise feminine sexuality as base and responsible for male impotency. More seriously, the association of feminine sexuality with chaos has also been used to obfuscate the feminine “No” by treating it as a means of natural selection rather than as an untapped, unacknowledged source of individual authority. Nancy Nienhuis has drawn a revelatory link between domestic abuse and rape, and the belief purported by churches that women are of an "inferior" or weaker nature that must be subjected to the control of men "lest society find itself in [moral] chaos.” Cishetero male supremacy derives its means of controlling the feminine chaos of women’s life-giving (procreative) and life-sustaining (“No”) impulses by treating chaos as a void without God rather than the void from which God draws the material of his own creation and incarnation.  In Genesis 1:1, God’s spirit does not rest or hover over the water but broods, as a bird over its nest, and by implication the spirit relaxes into the creative act. The language of “hovering” or “resting” over the water suggests a hierarchical, dominating relationship between God and the void to tragic cultural effect. The original image of a god of order who nests over the abyss reveals the cosmic interrelationship between chaos and cosmos, the intimacy and requirement of both aspects for both the act of creation (creation ex nihilo) and the irruption of the sacred (the Logos). This creative relationship between chaos and the cosmos constitutes the life-energy which I argue is the presence of a theological, cosmological Eros. This Eros derives its authority from God and is capable of both a divinely authoritative Yes and a divinely authoritative No. Both Yes and No constitute a threat to dominant patriarchal dogmas because they reveal that those whom dogma wishes to subjugate receive authority from God and are capable of unbounded creative power. The threat of the “void” of femininity, the “uninhabited chaos” that threatens patriarchy, dogma, and systems of domination, is that it is the space from which the Trinitarian God chose to derive his incarnation (and the space from which God in the other Abrahamic traditions derives emanations of his existence or manifestations of his attributes).  Where the erotic spirit exists unbounded and unstigmatized, not subjected to a pornographic soul or reduced to its commodity value, there also is God.

[iscariotapologist]

I want to believe in God so badly it’s so hard.. why must we have faith? Why do you believe in God? your blog is great for my faith it helps thank you i downloaded Sefaria

hi beloved, i'm sorry you're struggling and honored that the blog helps you. the way i would answer this question depends on how you define faith i think. personally, i don't really think about "having faith" anymore. when i was young, because of the theological environment i grew up in, i had this idea of faith as some kind of magic spiritual key that would unlock god for you ("faith as a mustard seed" etc.) and i spent quite a bit of time trying very hard to do or feel it correctly even though that never made sense. these days i suppose i would say faith is an action and a choice, much like love, which is its root. it is almost more of a byproduct of my relationship with god than part of its foundation, although certainly there are things that are foundational for me which i choose to believe despite my doubts about them. faith is the word we use to describe hopes we act on, regarding god, and they are hopes because the nature of god does not lend itself to very many certainties, in the intellectual sense.

i believe in god because i cannot help it. i went through a stint of trying to be a very bad atheist for about a year after my father died (possibly shorter or longer, my memory from this time period is shoddy at best), which is to say i held god at arm's length and tried really hard to believe he wasn't there, which was difficult because literally every day he was bothering me. i was also 12-13 at this point which is not the easiest point of ones life at the best of times (and what is the angry not-atheism of a 12 year old anyway). after i gave up on that i went through a few other smaller crises (oh shit i'm queer/oh shit evolution is real/oh shit i think adventism is full of horseshit) and most recently The Great Spiritual Crisis of 2018-present (hence the blog) and throughout that time i've had periods of agnostic tendencies to various extents, phases where i didn't really talk to god at all, where i was terrified of god, etc. but i'm just not cut out to be an atheist or even super agnostic, although there are some things i'm pretty agnostic about. of course some people do great with those belief systems (or with being "religious but not spiritual") but god literally will not leave me alone so i'm not one of them.

i would invite you to consider that your desire for god is a reflection of god's desire for you. try not to try too hard....let god come to you, and allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to do so.

[aerial-jace]

On cat atheism and human atheism

So, I’ve been successfully peer pressured into reading Warriors TPB, and I’m enjoying it so far. Once you’re past the like first third of so of Fire and Ice it stops being a constant chase for the proverbial carrot on a stick and you really get into the meat of the cat soap opera with heavy political drama elements. I’m about halfway through A Dangerous Path at this point and in between witnessing Bluestar’s tumble into paranoia, Fireheart growing into his leadership by taking matters into his own paws, and the tragic death of our beloved Snowkit, there was something else that caught my attention. It is in between all this chaos that we first address an element of one character that I had been aware for quite a while having thoroughly spoiled myself on the whole series beforehand: Cloudpaw’s atheism.

Now, the atheist cats of the series like Cloudpaw/tail and Mothwing have always caught my attention, particularly in regard to how the fandom portrays them. The general attitude of the fandom towards this aspect of their characters seems to be extremely dismissive and mocking. In a world where the existence of StarClan is so demonstrably true and where blatant magic such as leaders coming back to life 8 times before they can finally kick the bucket, any skeptic must be fairly quickly convinced, shouldn’t they?

Well... no.

I’m pretty firmly atheist myself and I think it’s fairly self evident that the world we live in is completely natural. But unlike most atheists I don’t think the belief in theism is inherently irrational, ignorant, or unreasonable. My own atheism is pretty firmly rooted in my subjective experience and perception of the world after all. Who am I to say that theists don’t have their own personally convincing subjective experiences and perceptions that are equally valid as mine?

Although I have heard and pondered most of the major arguments in favor and against the existence of God (the argument from complexity, the watchmaker argument, the first mover argument, the problem of evil, the problem of Hell, Paschal’s wager, etc.) what ultimately drove me away from faith was the personal introspection and reevaluation that I went through following my confirmation at age 15. Once I realized all my experiences I had before interpreted in light of divinity were not actually very strongly convincing me of the existence of any deity in particular, I started contemplating the possibility of an atheistic world view.

Really, the intellectual argument mostly convinced me of the impossibility of the existence of the capital-g God, the one god all the famous atheist arguments were designed to defeat. By technicality, my theological position is agnostic atheism. That is, I don’t believe in the existence of any deities but I don’t think you can ever know for sure either. If I had a strong enough personal experience, there’s a really slim chance I could perhaps be convinced of some form of theism.

The only forms of theism I absolutely believe are impossible to be true are monotheism and monism (the belief that the different deities are all aspects of a single divine source). In my own experience and knowledge of the world, existence is too chaotic and unorganized as to have been created or directed by a single entity. Order arises from the ground up not from top down. If the God of Abraham exists in some capacity, which I could also be convinced of although as before slim chance, he’s definitely not a sole god who orchestrated all of reality.

But uh... back to cat books.

My point is, that as firm as I am in my lack of a belief in a deity and as much as I think that is self evident, I’m rooting myself in personal experience and I acknowledge a strong enough personal experience can change my mind. And a committed, intellectually honest theist probably sees the universe in much the same way. They’re both valid and rational ways of seeing the world and I think it demeans both theists and atheists to act like the only way anyone could possibly be an atheist in this universe is by being too stubborn or stupid.

And that’s not even mentioning how atheism is not nearly equal to naturalism. These cats could easily attribute the magic of their universe to a variety of different causes without invoking StarClan specifically. Lack of belief in StarClan does not immediately imply lack of belief in anything supernatural much like how lack of belief in the capital-g God does not imply lack of belief in any number of other deities or the supernatural.

[tinyshe]

Witchcraft 101

by Michelle Arnold  • 7/1/2008 Catholic Answers

What springs to mind when someone mentions “witchcraft“? Three hags sitting about a cauldron chanting “Double, double, toil and trouble”? A pretty housewife turning someone into a toad at the twitch of her nose? Or perhaps you think of Wicca and figure that it is witchcraft hidden beneath a politically correct neologism.

Witchcraft has become a hot topic in recent years. From J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books to self-described witches agitating for political and social parity with mainstream religious traditions, Christians have had to re-examine witchcraft and formulate a modern apologetic approach to it.

In an age of science and skepticism, it may be difficult to understand why intelligent people would be drawn to witchcraft, which encompasses both a methodology of casting spells and invoking spirits and an ideology that encourages finding gods and goddesses both in nature and within the self. In her “conversion story,” self-described Wiccan high priestess Phyllis Curott, an Ivy League-educated lawyer who was raised by agnostics, describes her journey from secular materialism to Wicca as a rejection of the idea that humans are made for mammon alone:

I discovered the answers . . . to questions buried at the center of my soul . . . How are we to find our lost souls? How can we rediscover the sacred from which we have been separated for thousands of years? How can we live free of fear and filled with divine love and compassion? . . . How can we restore and protect this Eden, which is our fragile planet? (Curott, Book of Shadows, xii)

These are indeed important questions that deserve answers, answers that can be found in their fullness in Christ and in his Church. In a homily then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger gave at the Mass just before his election to the papacy, he famously observed:

How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves—flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth.

Witchcraft has been around for centuries, perhaps even millennia, but is emerging once more from the shadows as one answer to skepticism, to materialism, even to self-absorption. It is, so to speak, the wrong answer to the right questions; it is, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “gravely contrary to the virtue of religion” (CCC 2117). Catholics should not discourage these questions but must be prepared to offer the only answer: Christ and his Church.

Witchcraft’s apologists like to claim that they are the misunderstood victims of centuries of religious prejudice. Unfortunately, all too many Christians make such claims credible when they misunderstand witchcraft and craft their rebuttals of it based upon those misconceptions. If someone you know is dabbling in witchcraft, here are five things you should know before starting a conversation with him.

Witches do not believe in Satan.

If there is one belief common to witches everywhere, it is that they do not believe in Satan and that they do not practice Satanism. Witchcraft’s apologists are quick to point this out.

Denise Zimmermann and her co-authors of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft emphasize, “Witches don’t believe in Satan! . . . The all-evil Satan is a Christian concept that plays no part in the Wiccan religion . . . Witches do not believe that negativity or evil is an organized force. . . . Neither do Wiccans believe there is a place (hell) where the damned or the evil languish and suffer” (13).

Christian apologists should acknowledge that witches do not consciously worship Satan and that they do not believe he exists. But this does not mean that Satan needs to be left entirely out of the conversation. A Christian apologist should point out that belief in someone does not determine that person’s actual reality.

One way to demonstrate this is to ask the witch if she believes in the pope. “No,” she’s likely to answer. “The pope is a Christian figure.” True, you concede. But there is a man in Rome who holds the office of the papacy, right? Your belief or disbelief in the papacy does not determine whether or not the papacy exists. Put that way, a person will have to acknowledge that something or someone can exist independently of belief in its reality. That’s when you can make the case that Satan exists and that he does not require belief to determine his reality or his action in someone’s life. In fact, disbelief in him can make it easier for him to accomplish his ends.

In the preface to The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis notes that “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”

While it is true that witches do not directly worship Satan or practice Satanism, their occult practices, such as divination, and their worship of false gods and of each other and themselves—which they explain as worshipping the “goddess within”—can open them to demonic activity. To make the case though, it is imperative to present it in a manner that won’t be dismissed out of hand.

Witchcraft and Wicca are not synonyms.

Wicca, originally spelled Wica, is the name given to a subset of witchcraft by its founder Gerald Gardner in the 1950s. Although some claim the word Wicca means “wise,” in her book Drawing Down the Moon, Margot Adler states that it “derive[s] from a root wic, or weik, which has to do with religion and magic” (40). Adler also says that the word witch originates with wicce and wicca. Marian Singer explains the difference between Wicca and witchcraft this way: “Witchcraft implies a methodology . . . whereas the word Wiccan refers to a person who has adopted a specific religious philosophy” (The Everything Wicca and Witchcraft Book, 4).

Because witchcraft is often defined as a methodology and Wicca as an ideology, a person who considers himself a witch but not a Wiccan may participate in many of the same practices as a Wiccan, such as casting spells, divining the future, perhaps even banding together with others to form a coven. This can make it easy for an outsider to presume that both the witch and the Wiccan share the same beliefs. But, if someone tells you he is not a Wiccan, it is only courteous to accept that. The Christian case against witchcraft does not depend on a witch identifying himself as a Wiccan. (There are also Wiccans who reject the label “witch,” but this is often a distinction without a difference. Even so, use the preferred term to avoid alienating the person with whom you are speaking.)

Several strands of Wicca attract followings, including: Gardnerian, Alexandrian, and Georgian, which are named for their founders; Seax, which patterns itself on Saxon folklore; Black Forest, which is an eclectic hodgepodge of Wiccan traditions; and the feminist branch known as Dianic Wicca after the Roman goddess Diana. Knowing the distinctions among these traditions may not be important for the Christian apologist, but he should keep in mind that there are distinctions and that he should not make statements that start out with “Wiccans believe . . .” Rather, allow the other person to explain what he believes and then build a Christian apologetic tailored to that person’s needs.

Witches question authority.

When dealing with self-identified witches, remember that no two witches will agree with each other on just about anything. Witches are non-dogmatic to the extreme, with one witch apologist suggesting “[s]ending dogma to the doghouse” and claiming that “[r]eligious dogma and authority relieve a person of the responsibility of deciding on his or her own actions” (Diane Smith, Wicca & Witchcraft for Dummies, 32).

Generally speaking, witches prefer to give authority to their own personal experiences. Phyllis Curott, author of a book titled Witch Crafting, puts it this way: “Witches, whether we are women or men, experience the Goddess within us and in the world all around us. I love what Starhawk [witch and popular speaker and writer] said about this: ‘People often ask me if I believe in the Goddess. I reply, Do you believe in rocks?’” (121, emphasis in original). In other words, witches know “the Goddess” exists because they can experience her by at least one of their five senses. Faith in such a material deity calls to mind the demon Screwtape’s longing for hell’s “perfect work—the Materialist Magician” (Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 31).

Throwing a bucket of cold water on a witch’s “personal experiences” will not be easy, particularly since one of the frightening.aspects of witchcraft is that some witches do have, and blithely report, extraordinary preternatural experiences. Incidents that could and should scare away many dabblers from playing with forces beyond their control are recounted by witchcraft’s apologists as affirmative of their path. Curott tells of a man who once dreamed of “being prey” of a monstrous creature; ultimately, in the dream, he was captured by the creature. Rather than taking this as a sign he should reconsider the path down which he was heading, he awoke “deeply transformed” by the dream’s ending because he believed “tremendous love” was felt for him by the creature. He eventually became a Wiccan priest (Witch Crafting, 154–155).

How can a Christian argue against a belief like that?

Ultimately, it may be that a Damascus-road moment might be necessary to sway someone that deeply entrenched in traffic with preternatural creatures. To those who are not as enmeshed, a Christian can point out that sometimes apologists for the occult have warned their readers not to be taken in by their experiences with spirits.

In a section of his book titled “Practicing Safe Spirituality,” author Carl McColman gives a checklist of “some common-sense precautions” occultists should be aware of “while meditating, doing ritual, reflecting on your dreams, or doing any other spiritual work that may involve contact with spirits.” The first item on the list is “Don’t automatically believe everything you hear. Just because a spirit says something doesn’t make it so” (The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Paganism, 129).

Witchcraft is an inversion of Catholicism.

Observers of witchcraft have claimed that it is remarkably similar to Catholicism. Catholic journalist and medievalist Sandra Miesel called it “Catholicism without Christ” (“The Witches Next Door,” Crisis, June 2002). Writer and editor Charlotte Allen noted that “Practicing Wicca is a way to have Christianity without, well, the burdens of Christianity” (“The Scholars and the Goddess,” The Atlantic, January 2001).

It’s easy to see why the assertion is made. Allen notes that as witchcraft cycles through its “liturgical year,” many of its adherents honor a goddess who births a god believed to live, die, and rise again. Fraternization with apparently friendly preternatural spirits is encouraged and eagerly sought. The rituals of witchcraft call to mind Catholic liturgies, particularly the libation and blessing ritual alternately known as “Cakes and Wine” and “Cakes and Ale.” Like Catholics collecting rosaries, scapulars, statues, and prayer books, witches have their own “potions, notions, and tools” as Curott calls them —some of which include jewelry, statues and dolls, and spell books and journals.

But to say that witchcraft has uncanny similarities to Catholicism is to understate the matter. Witchcraft is an inversion of Catholicism: Catholicism emptied of Christ and stood on its head. This is most readily seen in witchcraft’s approach to authority.

In his book Rome Sweet Home, Scott Hahn compares authority in the Church to a hierarchical pyramid with the pope at the top, with all of the members, including the pope, reaching upward toward God (46–47). With its antipathy to authority and its reach inward to the self and downward to preternatural spirits, witchcraft could also be illustrated with a triangle—every adherent poised at the top as his own authority and pointed down in the sort of “Lower Command” structure envisioned by Lewis’s Screwtape.

Witchcraft is dangerous.

In my work as an apologist, I have read a number of introductory books to various non-Catholic and non-Christian religions. Never before my investigation into witchcraft had I seen introductory books on a religion that warn you about the dangers involved in practicing it. The dangers that witch apologists warn newcomers about are both corporal and spiritual.

In her book, Diane Smith includes a chapter titled “Ten Warning Signs of a Scam or Inappropriate Behavior” (Wicca & Witchcraft for Dummies, chapter 23). Her top-10 list includes “Inflicting Harm,” “Charging Inappropriate Fees or Demanding Undue Money,” “Engaging in Sexual Manipulation,” “Using Illicit Drugs or Excessive Amounts of Alcohol in Spiritual Practice,” and “Breeding Paranoia.” Smith claims that such a need to be wary is common to religion: “[U]nscrupulous or unstable people sometimes perpetrate scams or other manipulations under the guise of religion, and this situation is as true for Wicca as for other religious groups” (317).

However true it may be that there can be “unscrupulous or unstable people” involved in traditional religions, most practitioners—Christian or otherwise—do not experience problems with these behaviors to such an extent that religious apologists see the need to issue caveats to proselytes. That Smith does so suggests that these problems are far more widespread in witchcraft than in traditional religion.

We noted one paganism apologist who warned his readers to “practice safe spirituality.” McColman goes on to caution that the “advice” of spirits “must be in accordance with your own intuition for it to be truly useful.” He goes on to say, “You remain responsible for your own decisions. Remember that spirit guides make mistakes like everybody else!” (Paganism, 128).

Catholics concerned about loved ones involved with witchcraft may not be attracted to witchcraft themselves, but there is danger for them in pursuing dabblers down the road to the occult in hopes of drawing them back. In preparing themselves to answer the claims of witchcraft, they may feel the need to read books like those mentioned in this article. If they are not fully educated and firm in their own faith, such Catholics may find their own faith under attack. Three suggestions are in order.

Not all are called to be apologists. If you are not intellectually and spiritually prepared to answer the claims of witchcraft, leave such work to others. Search out knowledgeable Catholics with whom your loved one can speak.

Prepare yourself. Common sense indicates that if you are about to rappel down a cliff, you do so with safety ropes firmly attached and in the presence of someone you trust who can help you if you are in danger. Don’t even think of rappelling down a spiritual cliff without seeking to fortify yourself intellectually and spiritually—particularly spiritually. Inform your confessor or spiritual director of your plans to study and answer the claims of witchcraft. Ask trusted Catholic friends to pray for your work. Regularly receive the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist. If you need to stop or take a break from this area of apologetics, by all means do so. And, most importantly:

Pray. Whether or not you are called to personally minister to those involved in witchcraft, the most fundamental thing you can do to help witches and other dabblers in the occult is to pray.

Saints whose intercession you can seek include Bl. Bartholomew Longo, the repentant former satanic priest who returned to the Church and spent the rest of his life promoting the rosary; St. Benedict, who battled pagans and whose medal is often worn in protection against the devil; St. Michael the Archangel (Jude 1:9), invoked especially by the prayer for his intercession commonly attributed to Pope Leo XIII. And, of course, there’s St. Paul, who reminds us: “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39).

SIDEBARS

The Catechism on Witchcraft

There are a great many kinds of sins. Scripture provides several lists of them. The Letter to the Galatians contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit: “Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.” (CCC 1852)

God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility. (CCC 2115)

All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone. (CCC 2116)

All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others—even if this were for the sake of restoring their health—are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity. (CCC 2117)

Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

Further Reading

Charlotte Allen, “The Scholars and the Goddess,” The Atlantic, January 2001 (Available online: www.theatlantic.com)

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (HarperCollins)

Sandra Miesel, “Who Burned the Witches?” Crisis, October 2001 (Available online: www.catholiceducation.org)

Sandra Miesel, “The Witches Next Door,” Crisis, June 2002

Catherine Edwards Sanders, Wicca’s Charm: Understanding the Spiritual Hunger Behind the Rise of Modern Witchcraft and Pagan Spirituality (Shaw Books, 2005)

Donna Steichen, Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism (Ignatius, 1991)

Alois Wiesinger, O.C.S.O, Occult Phenomena in the Light of Theology (Roman Catholic Books)

[wisdomrays]

THE QURANIC CONCEPT OF HISTORY AND WESTERN PHILOSPHIES OF HISTORY: Part 1

I wonder whether it is a scepticism to see a political purpose behind some philosophies produced in the West during the last few centuries. Whether they might label me to be unscientific or a sceptic, it is not more reasonable, in my opinion, than trying to find a political purpose behind those philosophies, to attribute to those people who have made gigantic advances in science and technology such theories as biological ‘evolution’ and that the western brain is apt, because of its biological composition, for science while the Eastern brain for romanticism and the Negro brain for jazz and athleticism.

It is true that almost all of the nineteenth century Western philosophical theories were based on the idea of ‘progress’ and ‘evolution’. As everyone knows, the roots of the Darwinian theory of evolution lie in the theory of Malthus, an eighteenth century Anglican priest, who was interested in the influence of demographic factors on economics. According to his theory, only those who are able to produce have a right to survive, while the others-the poor, the sick, the disabled, who are not able to produce-are condemned by nature to be eliminated. Having much appreciated this socio-economic theory of Malthus, Darwin put forward, as a scientific theory, that selection is an overall law encompassing the whole of nature, according to which only the powerful can survive; the weak are cleared away in the course of time. Maurice Bucaille, a contemporary French scientist, says that he has not been able to find, in the work of Darwin, a single scientific proof although Darwin made plenty of observations to support his theory, and that his is more of a philosophical, not scientific, theory. If, then, some socio-economic worries lie in a ‘scientific�� theory, one which has shaken the circles of science for the last two centuries and been used as a ‘weapon’ against religion, why should it be unfair to seek a political purpose behind some philosophical ones?

It may well be asserted, albeit difficult to affirm in a brief article intended for a magazine, that the Western philosophies of history, especially those put forward in the nineteenth century, had some political intentions and functioned as an ideal precept for the nineteenth century Western imperialism. Almost all of these philosophies suggested that mankind were in an irreversible flow towards good and nothing could stop this flow. This was an assertion of continuously forward movement of progress. The sociology of Spencer, for instance, is a continuation of the theory of Darwin. According to Auguste Comte, mankind had already passed the stages of metaphysics and religion, and reached the last and happiest age of progress by entering the stage of science. We can find the same notion of progress in the historical philosophies of Herder, Fichte, Hegel and Karl Marx.

Hegel’s philosophy of history can be defined, according to Abdu-Hamid Siddiqi, as a composition of conflicts and contradictions. As a matter of fact, Hegel holds that each period in the history of social civilisation represents an independent unity. This unity, which is thoroughly of its own, gives rise to it antithesis over time, resulting in a thesis-antithesis conflict. After a while, the sides agree on a ‘synthesis’, which finally ends in a new conflict of thesis and antithesis. As a result of this conflict, a new thesis is brought about which encompasses both its thesis and antithesis. This tripartite system causes ‘thoughts’ to progress, until it attains to the ‘Geist’.

The ‘Geist’ is, in the philosophy of Hegel, who appeared to be under the influence of the Indian philosophies, a spirit-the universal spirit-which manifests itself through concrete events. Each event, together with the philosophy accompanied to it, is a stage in the evolutionary course of this spirit, and because of this no philosophy is not to be criticised as being wrong. Every event is planned by an absolute, determining will, and all of the desires, inclinations, efforts and conflicts are the means which the Geist employs in self-realization. Everything in the world, therefore, happens irrespective or independently of man’s free will and man is nothing more than a plaything of an all-powerful will. That being so, only those who can perceive the demands of this will or, more clearly, the course of events, and act accordingly are the heroes of their time to be absolutely obeyed.

His theory mostly based on the atheism of Feurbach, the evolutionist theory of Darwin and the dialectics of Hegel, Karl Marx, in his own words, stood up the Hegelian man who stands on his head, upright on his feet. (To this, an Egyptian Muslim thinker responds: ‘Is man really a being who ‘walks on his head’) According to Marx-in all his views whether philosophical or historical, sociological or economic-man is a being ‘walking on his feet’, that is, whose mind is directed, commanded by his ‘feet’.

Marx maintains that man is an outcome of the legal relationships between himself and the tools of production that he must originally have found present in nature and then developed in the course of history. What we call ‘human thought’ is the reflection in his mind of the relations between himself and his material, economic life and the tools of production he uses. For this reason, the only true knowledge is, according to Marx, that which will come out in human mind when the legal relationships between man and the tools of production are established in a communist system according to the principles of communism. We can rightfully conclude from this argument that all the Marxist theories are substantially false because Marx himself conceived them all in a capitalistic system. Again, to Marx, all the human life or history on the earth consists of the conflicts between individuals, classes and peoples for the economic reasons. This conflict, which is inevitable, after passing through the primitive feudal and capitalistic stages, is certain to result in communism. For this reason, all these stages are not to be criticised.

As to historicism, which was once quite widespread, because sociological laws vary according to time and place, we cannot find a long, stable period in human history by which we can come to long term general rules. History never repeats itself at the same level. We cannot make true predictions about ‘tomorrow’ since the relationships between events are very complex. This is truly so, but, in historicism, activity has a great importance, although what we conceive of is impossible to realise unless they are in conformity with the main course of history. This main course, however, depends on certain blind and irresistible laws. So, only when man acts in accordance with these independent laws and the urgent, inevitable changes they impose, man means to have acted reasonably. What falls to man, then, is to give a hand to the changes or attempts that he is expected to accept because it is completely unreasonable to desire to give a better shape to the world.

[automatismoateo]

Hinduism is particularly horrible. via /r/atheism

Submitted June 13, 2020 at 09:00AM by thepunnylord (Via reddit https://ift.tt/30CikpZ) Hinduism is particularly horrible.

Unlike other religions, Hinduism is more of a way of life. It dictates most aspects of life from the food you are allowed to eat all the way to the person you are allowed to marry. Despite all the problems it creates, I don't really see posts on it, so I thought let me make one. Here are my biggest problems with Hinduism.

Casteism - How the fuck is this still a thing.

Untouchablity because of the casteism. It still exists to this day. People just aren't open about it anymore.

Sati - now abolished practice wherein the wife was expected to burn herself after her husband's death

Child marriage (now abolished although children do get betrothed in some parts of India)

Diabetes - India is the diabetes capital of the world. This is mainly because of the large quantities of carbs that the Hindutva diet forces on it's followers.

Who you get married to - In some parts of India, marrying someone from a different caste means there is a real chance you get killed. In the west people are fighting for the rights of LGBTQ+ whereas here, thanks to Hinduism, it's pretty difficult to marry someone of the opposite sex but a different caste.

Hatred - Hinduism breeds division. This is rooted in casteism. Most voters vote on the basis of caste making horrible people our representatives. You think Trump is bad? Look at Indian politicians.

Superstition - This is the worst. You have scripture on the way in which your house can be built, the date of birth of the person you marry, stuff you can do to cause rain, rituals you are expected to do literally years after a person dies and the most random stuff. For everything that goes wrong in your life, there is some piece of text that promises to fix it.

Expenditure - Being a Hindu is expensive. You pay priests for literally everything. Just look at their marriages, people in India borrow money to spend on their marriage just because religion demands it.

I don't really have a problem with Hindus worshiping their million gods as it doesn't really affect me. But the impact of Hinduism on the socio economic standing of India hurts me and a billion others.

Hindus pretend like they are better than all the other lunatics but they are just as bad. It's always purported as a the religion that does no harm. Although these are problems with India as a country, these are rooted in Hinduism.

[arcticdementor]

A gaggle of representatives from theologically liberal denominations recently issued a statement against Christian nationalism in America, claiming that it threatens both American democracy and the ability of our religious communities to live in peace.

To be sure, Christian nationalism is an extremely odd place to find the threat to religious freedom in a world that increasingly makes demands like “shut up and wax that woman’s b-lls.” But the irony goes deeper than that. It’s not some stroke of blind chance that lead to religious freedom in the Christian West—it was, in fact, due to our Christian faith.

To be sure, although I know self-described Christian nationalists, I’m aware of no organized political movement for this statement to oppose and so, no standard definition. Nevertheless, I have never found the label to apply to some of what the statement opposes—calls for theocracy, a conflation of American and Christian identities, and certainly not a “cover for white supremacy,” which the statement tosses in to poison the well. I’ve no interest in contending on behalf of such things.

Nevertheless, until “Christian nationalism” coalesces into something more definitive, in my experience the phrase best describes something much simpler:  a rejection of the religious neutrality of the late 20th century in favor of 1) a recognition that Christianity has had a unique and privileged influence on our American heritage that overshadows the influences of other faith traditions, 2) a conviction that a Christian understanding of the world should predominate over other worldviews in American civic life, and 3) an understanding that a nation that successfully excised or sufficiently diluted this influence could no longer be called “American” in the same sense as before. Although more general than what the statement condemns, this understanding would actually encompass many Americans, whether they accept the label or not.

…

The First Amendment forbids the establishment of a state church in the United States, but it in no way imposes the incoherent burden of religious neutrality on our civic institutions, nor demands that the right to free exercise of religion end when one crosses from private life into the public sphere. We are already experiencing the erosion of religious liberties that these erroneous presumptions have caused, with Christian business owners and officials forced to promulgate ideas they abhor and facilitate celebrations that are incompatible with the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Today, when the American left speaks about religious freedom at all, it speaks in terms of “freedom of worship” rather than of free exercise. But freedom of worship is nothing more than the right to go into a private building and follow one’s preferred liturgy on any day of the week so long as it is out of the public view.

The right of free exercise of religion cannot end there, for no religion on earth ends there. Life is a series of choices in which we each decide what’s most important to us. As we order these priorities, every knee eventually bows to something more important than the rest—the “god” we consider to be the Most Important Thing. Whatever the specific details of one’s god, the very nature of a god is that it is supreme—it lays claim to one’s entire life rather than merely one’s private life.

…

So it is also with the Christian, the Muslim, the secular humanist, and the utilitarian. So when the follower of a god enters into civic life—as anything from a simple voter all the way up to president—he does not and cannot cease following that god. He will instead look to what that god demands of someone who holds the positions he occupies.

Different gods make different demands. One of the reasons theological liberals are so blind on this issue is their ignorant presumption that, at their root, all religions are basically the same—that they all worship the same God, proclaim the same general values and ideals, and merely have different cultural trappings or modes of expression. In such a fantasy, a neutral pluralism is conceivable, but reality is a different matter.

…

What then does that mean for American democracy and religious freedom? It means neither can ever be religiously neutral. Some gods demand such things; some gods merely tolerate them; and other gods abhor them. To embrace these things as worthy of our support and protection and prioritize them over other concerns is to favor some gods and therefore some religions above others.

Rather than submitting to a fantasy of religious neutrality, Christian nationalism accepts and adapts to this reality. After all, the Christian faith is the root from which our form of religious freedom grew, and the American nation is the heritage in which it is enfleshed. The positive forms of secularism and religious liberty that had been enjoyed in America grew out of the specifics of Christianity.

…

The Western tendency to tolerate different creeds proceeded from the blood and chaos that different Christians inflicted on one another during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. It took considerable time and effort to accept this understanding and begin teaching our governments to loosen their grip on the religious habits of their citizens. This effort hinged on the experiences of many different groups of Christians who sought out places where they could freely adhere to their creeds.

So our religious freedom is not simply an abstract ideal floating in the ether, but a heritage—a specifically Christian one. It is precisely English Christians of that sort who learned this very Christian lesson and brought it with them to this land, where they eventually grew into their own Christian nation. It was also those Christians who decided to extend that Christian freedom to the believers on other creeds.

Nevertheless, extending that freedom to other faiths never made it religiously neutral. On the contrary, we embedded our religious understanding of such freedom into the way we governed—blatantly privileging Christianity over other religions.

After all, in most other religions, goodness—however it may be conceived—proceeds from a person’s works as much or more than from his faith. State requirements to make the right sacrifices, participate in the right ceremonies, or live in the proper manner make a great deal more sense in other religions. Likewise, religions that demand the infidels be slaughtered wherever they may be found tend to be far less willing to allow those infidels the same kind of freedoms.

…

Nevertheless, though we put no prohibition on free exercise per se, we always drew the line at publicly immoral behaviors even when those behaviors are also religious duties for some. Certain faiths, for example, have explicitly allowed or encouraged bigamy, but for most of our history, this was never seriously considered an allowable matter of free exercise.

In decisions like that, the state was not and cannot be morally neutral, any more than it was or can be religiously neutral. In every decision, it weighs one set of goods against another and decides which is of more value.

In America, the weight of those past decisions have always been rooted in the values of the Christians who founded and cultivated this nation. Their substance is indelibly colored by Christianity. Our Declaration of Independence hinges the entire matter of independence on the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and ascribes our rights to endowment by the Creator.

These are by no means religiously neutral statements. They are not sectarian, grounded as they are in the language of natural law, but they are nevertheless grounded in a Christian understanding of that natural law. Not every religion sees the matter the same way. Not every religion even has a natural law tradition.

…

Deism itself was always an attempt to possess a Christian heritage without possessing a Christian faith. What’s more, the reason deism went defunct so quickly is that this attempt was almost immediately found to be a fool’s errand. The only remaining progeny of deism are those who returned to Christianity and those who proceeded down the road to atheism. Inasmuch as deists contributed to the founding of this nation, they were still operating under the inertia of the Christian heritage they had received.

Others would claim that our religious liberty is no longer Christian because many non-Christian nations have also provided measures of religious freedom. This is true, and I’m quite pleased that they’ve culturally appropriated religious liberty from the Christian West. I believe my heritage to be of value, so I think it’s great when others learn from it.

But that appropriation does not change where our own liberty came from. Neither does it change the fact that these other nations have modified religious liberty according to their own religious understandings. Israel, for example, allows for a great deal of religious liberty, but it is no more religiously neutral than America is. After all, simply believing that Jesus Christ is the messiah voids the right of return granted by Israel to other ethnic Jews. No nation is beholden to religious neutrality, no matter what freedoms it grants.

…

To be sure, our more recent history has seen a remarkable shift away from our Christian heritage and its moral wisdom. Under the guise of religious neutrality, too many Christians have been tricked into withholding their good judgment from matters of state. This has led to some profound changes, but there’s nothing religiously or morally neutral about them.

We have, for instance, allowed women to choose whether to murder their offspring, but this is not neutrality—in this, the state blatantly values personal autonomy and privacy more than it values love or the right to live. We have forced people to speak as though men are actually women or act as though two women can be married to one-another, but this is not neutral—it demands that Christians set aside their understanding of marriage and sex. Even something as simple as getting rid of blasphemy laws that respected the name of Jesus Christ was never “fair” or neutral—it only cleared the way for new blasphemy laws that respect sexual deviancy and other politically correct subjects du jour instead.

Christian nationalism is rising precisely because more and more Christians are realizing that we’ve been lied to on the matter. We were persuaded to set aside our heritage in public based on a faulty notion of neutrality and the expectation that everyone else would do the same. But everyone else has done no such thing, and we should never have expected or asked them to. We allowed our religious values to be replaced by others’ religious values and, unsurprisingly, have little to show for our foolishness.

…

Christian nationalism is not an attempt to requisition the state to teach Christian theology—it would be even less competent at this than it is at all other types of education. Neither is it in any way an incitement to the largely hypothetical violence over which the statement’s authors wring their hands.

It is simply American Christians who believe that their religion is true and their nation valuable contending for their own convictions about goodness, truth, and beauty rather than for others’. We are not “merging” our two identities, as the statement alleges, but holding onto both of them in everything that we do.

Far from destroying American democracy and religious liberty, Christian nationalism embodies the very same spirit that built that heritage of ours in the first place.

[sanherib]

“"I’m doomed twice" Although he has a full time job in Sweden and risks death penalty in Afghanistan, the Migration Board wants to deport Elias Payam. Everything seems to be due to a mistake made at the Afghan Embassy. Neatly collected in an envelope are copies of the documents that summarize Elias Payam's struggle to stay in Sweden. He gives a calm and collected impression, but says that he suffers from sleep problems and heart palpitations. Some time ago he had to go to the psych emergency room. - I do not feel well, I’m very worried and disappointed that the Migration Board does not believe..I have learned Swedish, I pay tax and have not committed any crimes, says Elias Payam. According to his "tazkira", an Afghan identity document, and school grades from Afghanistan, Elias Payam was born in 1999. He came to Sweden in 2015 after being convicted according to the country's sharia law. Since leaving Afghanistan, the hometown has been occupied by the Taliban and his family now lives in Pakistan. Elias Payam has a good life in Sweden with jobs and friends but the Migration Board has decided that he should be deported. Everything seems to depend on a figure in the passport. - The Swedish Migration Board made the assessment that I was born in 1997, not in 1999. I had to quit school, but then I had managed to get a job within the municipality, says Elias Payam. Today he works full time at Svartbäcken's home care and shines up when he talks about the work with the elderly and how much he likes his co-workers. The future appeared to be bright for Elias Payam, because a full time employment makes it possible to be granted a work permit.   However, the Swedish Migration Board considers that the passport issued by the Afghan Embassy is invalid, since the year of birth - 1997, when they considered that he was born - does not correspond with his "tazkira". The Afghan embassy has written a certificate to the Migration Board that all the information in the passport is genuine, but that they made a mistake and used the year of birth from the so-called LMA card, an identity document from the Migration Board, instead of what is stated on the "tazkiran". - The embassy offered to correct the error. But the Migration Board does not want to give me the passport until I go back to Afghanistan, they do not trust that i’ll stay in Sweden. I know it's in their office, but they wont give it to me. Why would I go away, and where? I have a job in Sweden, says Elias Payam. The Migration Board's request is that he should apply for a new passport in Afghanistan, and then apply for a work permit at the Swedish Embassy in Tehran or New Delhi. The Swedish Embassy in Kabul does not handle work permits. - It's a risk to my life. I already have a shari'a conviction over me since before,  and now I am open about my atheism and participate in discussions on social media. I didn't care about religion when I lived in Afghanistan. In Sweden, I began to take an interest in atheist writers such as Richard Dawkins and realized that I do not believe in any religion at all. The only thing I believe in is human rights, says Elias Payam. In a café in Uppsala, the statement does not feel particularly controversial, but in Afghanistan it can lead to death. - The legal system is not at all like in Sweden, you get punished without trial. I'm doomed twice. I have not told my mother that I am at risk of being deported, she would be so worried. The date of the deportation was set to January 7, but Elias Payam's lawyer has presented enforcement barriers so that the decision is postponed for a few more days. Harry Kwiek, Elias Payam's legal spokesperson, says that, according to Swedish authorities, Afghan identity documents do not meet the requirements for being able to prove the identity of the holder. - At the same time, the LMA cards are not intended as identity documents. Which has led to this problem. Elias has done what he has been able to do, it is a catch - 22. The case has been appealed to the Migration Court. Harry Kwiek emphasizes in his opinion that Elias Payam has been rooted in Sweden and is risking his life if he returns to Afghanistan, and that the Migration Board's decision is incorrect in that they question their own age assessment in the handling of the case. Elias Payam can do nothing but wait for a message. He has not stopped hoping that the Migration Board will let him supplement the passport without having to leave Sweden. “

[custos]

Exploring how Coleridge presents changing psychological states in ‘The Pains of Sleep’ by Beth Worthy

Coleridge often explores his own psychological state through his conversation poems and does so in attempt to reach a conclusion when experiencing emotional conflict or difficulty. This is most apparent in his poem The Pains of Sleep written in the later years of his career (1802). In which Coleridge strives to explain his restlessness and pain through his relationship with God and faith, which he views as unstable yet vital in times of religious doubt (atheism). The relationship between man and God is commonly a focus of Coleridge's writing, appearing in most of his other conversation poems such as Dejection: an Ode and Fears in Solitude. In The Pains of Sleep however, the influence faith has on the individual mind is at the forefront of the poem as the narrator questions the cause and prevention of suffering in relation to God.

In the first stanza of this poem, Coleridge as the voice of the narrator portrays how man relies on God as a source of power to live contently 'Since in me, round me, every where / Eternal strength and wisdom are'. The use of listing and triplets in the first line creates a sense of surplus power held by God and emphasises God's influence on individuals supported by the repeated pronoun 'me'. This heightens the contrast to the powerless and insignificant image of man that depends on a higher being to achieve peace, thus making such a relationship fragile as any change in attitude to faith removes man of his spiritual strength. This is further implied in the imperfect rhyme of 'where' and 'are' which creates discomfort and irregularity in both the technical rhyme pattern and the symbolic connection of man and God. Such an unstable connection between the individual and God is also apparent in another of Coleridge's poems, Dejection: an Ode. Coleridge describes how he 'can see, not feel how beautiful they are' in relation to God and nature, of which were synonymous due to his pantheistic beliefs. The individual is shown to have the ability to achieve happiness ('can see') yet because of self-doubt rooted in their psychology, is unable to truly 'feel' and connect with God and happiness. In The Pains of Sleep this same inclination is depicted 'I am weak yet not unblessed'. Here Coleridge reveals his qualms in his own conduct as although he has access to God's blessings, he is unable to utilise this to become content and happy, leaving him 'weak'. Later in the poem this weakness is depicted as infantilisation 'I wept as I had been a child' further cementing how mankind are powerless in comparison to, and depend upon, the power of God.

A sudden shift occurs in the beginning of the second stanza from a lexis of faith and God, to fear and hell. This is intended to delineate how the absence of God causes the individual subconscious to surround itself with fearsome images in response to it's loss of strength (God). Coleridge describes the nightmares as a 'fiendish crowd / Of shapes and images that tortured me' here the hyperbolic metaphor 'tortured' accentuates the narrator's pain caused by confusion and weakness to such an extent that the audience cannot sympathise. The substitution of divine semantics with hellish semantics such as 'fiendish' imply how impressionable people are when seemingly abandoned by God and thus left directionless. This shows how many people turn to other sources of power or wisdom in the absence of God. Although this is highly unlikely to be the devil itself, Coleridge may be suggesting the 'fiendish' represent the rising notion of atheism and technology/science. In Fears in Solitude, one of Coleridge's earlier poems, the corruption of atheism and the enlightenment movement is also explored: 'the very name of God / Sounds like a juggler's charm'. The satirical simile comparing a deity to 'a juggler's charm' also shows how the social shift from appreciation and faith (romanticism) to progression and technology (enlightenment) is damaging to the human spirit by separating and removing God from the individual.

Throughout The Pains of Sleep a persistent lack of clarity, often fuelled by the absence of God, leads to emotional turmoil in the psychology of the individual. As the poem progresses from stanza one to two, this sense of uncertainty intensifies and results in the narrator being left directionless. Coleridge expresses his attitudes to the images in his nightmares; 'Which all confused I could not know / Whether I suffered, or I did'. The deviation from the couplet rhyme scheme to an alternating rhyme marks a shift in attitude that focuses on the narrator's doubt of the purpose or legitimacy of his suffering. These lines insinuate that the individual's subconscious and dreams can infect reality, exploring how man creates his own suffering rather than it being conducted by another power such as God. By using caesura in the second line, the confusion and fragmentation of the nightmares is emphasised, a concept also evident in Coleridge's supernatural poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. After the Mariner experiences supernatural events (such as the sudden death of his crew and a ghost ship) he describes his attempts to overcome his guilt and fear 'woful agony / which forced me to begin my tale; / and then it left me free'. These extracts from both poems tell the audience how after experiencing the fearsome and unknown, man faces self-doubt and self-punishment, leaving him even more in need of salvation and peace. Later in The Pains of Sleep this ideal is confirmed as Coleridge accepts his suffering: 'such punishments, I said, were due / To natures deepliest stained with sin'. This can be connected to Coleridge's own views of his shameful opium addiction as this 'sin' manifests as addiction and weakness. Thus furthering the depiction that man needs God to achieve forgiveness and remove 'sin'. This psychological state of seeking an explanation of the inexplicable through God, exemplifies man's desire to understand their own subconscious and overcome their flaws or fears.

In the final stanza this acceptance of suffering comes with the realisation that man must accept the inexplicable and seek love in order to heal their psychological state. In the final couplet of the poem Coleridge states 'To be beloved is all I need / And whom I love, I love indeed'. The repetition of 'I love' creates a very comforting and optimistic atmosphere which is complimented by the natural smile the reader's mouth makes when the assonance of 'e' is spoken. This sits in stark contrast to the horrifying imagery in the previous stanza and seems to be undermined by the fearful lexis, cynically leaving the final couplet as nothing more than Colerdige convincing himself of hope. This psychological shift in Coleridge from helplessness to hope also appears in his conversation poem Youth and Age. In this poem Coleridge maintains hope to counteract the effects of Age on his psychology, stating ' Life is but thought: so think I will / That youth and I are house-mates still.'. This mentality of engaging the individual mind to achieve happiness through love and hope is strongly associated with faith. In The Pains of Sleep the 'love' that the narrator depicts as saving him could be either that of God, returning to relieve him of his suffering, or the love of a friend or partner. Coleridge is known to have been in a loveless marriage with Sara Fricker and is perhaps here pining for the love of the women he truly loves, Sara Hutchinson, the sister-in-law of close friend and fellow poet William Wordsworth. This closing couplet is representative of Coleridge reconnecting with the peace he felt in the past, shown as 'humble trust' in the first stanza. This shows the reliance people have on others, as well as religious strength, to be fulfilled in themselves and reach tranquillity.

In conclusion, Coleridge presents changing psychological states as responses to the individual's relationship with God and loved ones. This includes shifts between states of self-induced fear and confusion and acceptance and hope for salvation. The relationship between man and God, made unstable by the notion of atheism, is perhaps what most heavily causes Coleridge to question his own suffering and pain. The lexis of the unknown and fearsome within the subconscious in The Pains of Sleep is not supernatural but rather a reflection of the gothic within man. Exploring the impacts of both substance abuse (such as Coleridge's opium addiction) and a dramatically changing society as leaving many people feeling lost and alienated. These themes became increasingly common in Coleridge's poems towards the later years of his career as his confidence and self-worth began to deteriorate 'life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame'. Despite his qualms, Coleridge still finds hope in love, faith and acceptance in order to regain the strength he considered lost in the middle of the poem.

[thinkveganworld]

This is an article I wrote a few years ago, “Embracing Mystery, Loving Wisdom.”

For the human race to evolve in consciousness beyond its sense of separation from others and beyond greed and perpetual war, it needs to learn to 1) embrace mystery, and 2) cultivate a passion for continuous independent learning, beyond formal education. Authoritarian thinking gets in the way of both options.

A defining trait of authoritarianism is intolerance of ambiguity. Authoritarian personalities are, by definition, people who rely on others—authority figures from parents to teachers to “experts”—to do their thinking for them. They tend to have rigid belief systems and have “pre-decided” what position they will take on any new information they receive. Whether their belief system is a religious one, or whether it’s atheism-as-a-belief-system, the result is the same: a mind made up in advance, opinions based on the authority of “experts.”

The word “education” comes from the root word “educare,” meaning “to draw out of,” not “to drum into.” Our culture tends to take the “drumming into” approach. After so many years of having certain facts drummed into our brains, we consider ourselves sufficiently stuffed with information. However, the “drawing out of” approach, real education, would leave us feeling there’s always more to learn—with openness to mystery and real love of wisdom.

I think if the human race is going to evolve beyond authoritarian thinking we have to be open to exploring unfamiliar spiritual traditions and seek out the views of various iconoclasts whose ideas have made a dent in the collective unconscious. I’ve read many hundreds of books on those subjects over the years, but two of my favorites are Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics, and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

Capra’s book explores the relationship between quantum physics and the religious and philosophical traditions of the Far East. Capra shows that concepts in today’s physics bolster the worldview of Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists and other Eastern mystics. He writes, “Modern physics leads us to a view of the world which is very similar to the view held by mystics of all ages and traditions. Mystical traditions are present in all religions, and mystical elements can be found in many schools of Western philosophy.”

Although Capra’s book was published around twenty-five years ago, most of it is contemporary. Capra says that because many of today’s scientists don’t seem to understand the philosophical implications of new discoveries in physics, many “actively support a society which is still based on the mechanistic, fragmented worldview, without seeing that science points beyond such a view, toward a oneness of the universe which includes not only our natural environment but also our fellow human beings.”

Capra is says human consciousness needs to catch up with what mystics have known all along—the fact that all of nature and all people are fundamentally interconnected. I think we also need to be open to doing what the poet Rainer Maria Rilke suggested in Letters to a Young Poet.

Rilke said the human race should be more open to our own expansiveness. He said we need the courage to “face the strangest, most fantastical and impenetrable things that we might conceivably encounter … the entire so-called ‘spirit world,’ death, all these things that are so bound up with us, and yet, through our daily attempts to ward them off, we have pushed them so far out of life that the senses with which we could grasp them have withered.”

From early childhood, authority figures—parents, teachers and others—urge people to push away any experience that can’t be explained by the mechanistic view of science. These “authorities” often aren’t aware that a different, non-mechanistic, kind of scientific understanding is available. Rilke says “the senses with which we could grasp” spiritual experiences, including our natural intuitive understanding, atrophy due to lack of use. Again, in a society where people are discouraged from questioning authority regarding fixed belief systems, people tend to fear ambiguity and innovative thinking.

Rilke continues, “Not to speak of God. But this fear of the unfathomable has not only impoverished individual existence, it has also limited relationships between people, lifting them from the river bed, as it were, with its endless possibilities and setting them down in a fallow place on the riverbank, to which nothing ever happens. For it is not only indolence that makes human relationships repeat the same pattern each time with unspeakable monotony and lack of novelty, but also the dread of any new, unforeseeable experience that one does not live up to. But only the person who is ready for anything, who won’t rule out anything, will live the relationship with another as something living and tap into the potential of his own existence.”

In this society, people aren’t encouraged to be “ready for anything,” or to avoid ruling out anything—in one-on-one human relationships or otherwise. The readiness of mind Rilke refers to is usually indoctrinated out of people from early childhood. The fear of the unfathomable Rilke writes about amounts to intolerance of ambiguity. For those with closed minds, anything new and ambiguous is a threat. When authoritarians are faced with any sort of challenge to the status quo, they panic. Authoritarians are anti-intellectual, because they fear receiving any “messy” new information that might challenge their ego-protecting belief systems.

I think the change of consciousness required of the human race for the planet’s survival is spelled out in the Capra and Rilke quotes and is available in hundreds of other similar sources as well. We need a human race capable of independent thought, open to new ideas and experiences, aligned with and able to feel and act on the universe’s rhythms and the inherent unity of all living beings. Unfortunately, many of our institutions—churches, schools, governmental agencies—cling to outmoded methods not aligned with reality. This clinging attitude and the authoritarianism that feed it are what keep the human race at war—war with “other” nations, “other” species, and a natural environment perceived as “other.” Let’s hope today we can move toward unity and toward healing the world.

[againstauthority]

Politics and Philosophy: Why I'm on the Left

My philosophy of the Left can be summarized in one word: Humanism. Humanism is an atheist perspective that prioritizes the relationship between logic and the human experience, which means humanists believe the human race should abandon theism and superstition in favor of scientific truth, subsequently bring us to a median where we can focus on ethics without the illusion of theology. "The Left" is an assorted party with members that have different ways of thinking and objectives, and although there's no consensus on the interests of the Left, there's one unifiable priority: liberation. Socialism, feminism, anti-racism, and to a more lateral extend, atheism are all movements and ideologies of the Left. The object of the Left is equalize and free people, but in order to practice this idea effectively, these beliefs have to be seen through an irreligious and holistic perspective.

To begin, we need to first understand what theism is and why it exists. Theism is the belief in a god or higher power, which branches into religions and spiritual theologies. Theism as a concept is seperate from logic or reason, because theology lacks and defies scientific evidence otherwise. To understand why theology can't correspond with a holistic outlook, we need to understand that theology isn't a theory - it's customary. Since there's no evidence of any religious or spiritual narrative in nature, we can't consider theology as parallel to atheism because these are two belief systems don't follow the same school of thought: atheism is a scientifically-supported theory, theology is a traditional practice. In the pursuit of truth, we need to examine everything both in truth and in whole, without the distractions of our cultural praxis. This will allow us to communicate with each other effectively so we can progress in a scientific consensus.

From an atheistic and holistic perspective, we start with spirit. To even begin fighting, there needs to be a will to fight. The problem with the modern-day Left is what people are fighting, why, and how. Most people within marginalized groups have an innate will for liberation, and the issue with the Liberal party is that it's members are largely

a. Privileged

b. Inexperienced and uninformed

I believe the reason for this is because liberalism has lost it's rebellious roots and assimilated into fashion. The zeitgeist now is under occupation by the Liberal party, and as a society, we aren't as concerned with equality as we are with being "kind". With this generation of altruism, we ignore the historic and established complexities of our prejudices, leaving learned biases unchallenged and letting oppressors off the hook.

The issue with being a privileged member of the Left is the motivation to fight being usually sourced in social obligation or instinctive empathy, which are unstable. Privileged members are inexperienced with direct discrimination, and the majority of modern liberals are uneducated in a historic, psychological, and philosophical context. The question is now, "how can privileged leftists fighting in a way that's effective?" The answer lies in why we're fighting in the first place. The reason why disadvantaged members make the best leftists is because they aren't fighting out of kindness or political correctness - they're fighting for their lives and other members of the group. What motivates someone who is advantaged in the system to compromise their privilege and possibly their status within their own group to join the Left? This is where humanism is important.

Empathy is what makes us "human." Empathy is not only an innate emotion, it can be a form of intelligence. Our culture values empathy in its ties to a higher power, and altruism is largely associated with religious obligation. Religion-based altruism is undependable because it functions out of fear. The humanist, the atheist, doesn't fear a higher power and practices empathy out of individual will. What is the biological function of empathy? Empathy is a risk. When we become vulnerable, we show our "humanity", and when an individual chooses to show their vulnerability for a greater cause, other humans feel safer and will follow. The quote, "Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one" (by Marcus Aurelius) is an important means. The purpose of empathy is to make us "better" human beings by a simple principle of "you scratch my back, I scratch yours." Not all suffering in this world exists in oppressed circles. No matter how much progress we make, we're always going exist in an unfair world with cruel people, but we can become a better human race by helping each other. The philosophy of the Left shouldn't be limited to groups of people, but the wellbeing of the individual as well.

What if I'm a privileged member of the Left?

If you are a leftist who doesn't face direct discrimination, where you begin is by making leftism not your political standpoint, but your philosophy. You believe all humans are equal and our society should reflect this truth. If you believe it, now it's time to live it. If you perceive this belief as the natural existence of all people, and perceive inequality as a human invention to gain power over other humans, then you're already inclined to a Leftist perspective. Politics will feel less like a game, and become more naturalized. Gaining a greater perspective is important, becoming more aware of the history and culture of the groups you're fighting for is the next step. Becoming more knowledgeable of black culture for example will make you a better ally, and not in just a political context. Black movies, tv, literature, comedy, cultural or political, is a lens into the black experience. Why is this important? When you become aware of black culture, your lens shifts away from a white narrative - it humanizes and culturalizes black people, and gives a greater cultural/political/and historical context to the black experience. This applies to any group. Listen to various perspectives and ideas. People are still individuals with different experiences and viewpoints. People who have experienced the most discrimination and are the most informed are the best to learn from. It's going to take time, your understanding and perspective will shift with time as well, you're going to be wrong about things and change your mind, and that's all part of the process.

What if I'm a disadvantaged member but I don't know where to begin?

It starts with you. Your interest in leftist ideology comes from an intrinsic desire to rebel - rebelling because you want to be seen as equal and have equal opportunities, because you believe in your ambitions and maybe those of your group as well, and because you're angry. Anger is your greatest driving force. We feel anger as human beings because of injustice, it's there to serve you. You're especially lucky if you have an innate hunger for knowledge. Channeling anger into will and seeking information is a natural inclination to rebel. Educate yourself in history (no matter what group you're a part of, I think studying WWII is pivotal for any leftist). Utilize your curiosity to seek out media like film and literature made by and about your group. When you perceive leftist ideology not just as a political standpoint, but a philosophical outlook on life and an individual inclination towards liberation, you'll begin to perceive your beliefs less as political and more as natural. Representation is crucial - it broadens your perspective, lessens the narrative of the oppressors, verifies your experience, and naturalizes your position in society. In my experience, politics are important, but it's a lot more effective to watch media made by people of your group. When you stop perceiving yourself solely as a group member, you stop seeing your identity as a political subject and more as an aspect of who you are. You fight for liberation because is a part of you, an important part. Connect with other members of your group and those adjacent to your group. When you stop seeing yourself as a "minority", you become more comfortable fighting for yourself. You are the priority, other members of your group are the priority, but also use your experience to empathize with other disadvantaged groups and have a "it could've been me" perspective. This is going to take time, but that's all part of your journey.

There's no post that's going to make you the perfect leftist. It's going to take time. You're always going to be taking in information, changing your mind and outlook, and that's all part of the journey. You're not seeking an outcome, it's finding you. With a fundamental and natural perspective, your heart will take you to where you want to go. Let it.

[bloodandcanvas]

What a strange thing it is to believe

Believing might seem stupid to some but right now, it is what I have and what I can offer myself; it is all I can do to go through this life.

I have been tempted for more times than I wanted to renounce my faith altogether because there were many things my mind could not reconcile. In those moments I felt incredibly stupid and universally alone (although I know I am not the only one with questions, the aloneness was from the shame I felt to talk about the questions I had with others). Why my neighbors could believe so faithfully in God (although I get confused sometimes if they are talking about the same god) while I could not even reconcile His reality myself was a question that led me to believe that there was merely something wrong with me. I always thought that if the majority thinks one to be true, shall that not make my disbelief simply invalid? 

But as I wandered through life in the middle of my vast unknowingness trying to look for Something I must indeed know, I stumbled upon books by C.S. Lewis which has made all the difference. In Miracles, it felt like Lewis knew the questions that would form in my head with every new paragraph. I felt my questions heard and because I was heard, I felt unalone. 

When I asked the question “Does the Christian God exist?”, I felt the road I was currently standing on crumble before me. All the evidence that answer “No” came streaming through my consciousness. But also, all the evidence that answered “Yes”, although incredibly weaker, came rushing through like bricks going to the direction opposite mine. Then I stopped and allowed myself to just float around the void. Although I felt lost without a Christian God, it felt in a way more comforting to think that God was simply the whole of it all for in that scenario, I would not have to think so deeply about a Personal God existing. But because I am made up of my experiences and my instincts, I had the urge to investigate, to find answers. 

In favoring atheism, I would read articles and watch videos regarding it. However, I found most references, although very persuasive, were merely answering why we shouldn’t believe there is a God rather than why we should be an atheist. That would simply not do because my mind would always have a rebuttal. In addition, I would always seem to find that these references that favor atheism are rooted in resentment towards religions and their institutions rather than a logical explanation for why they believe what they believe. They insist the sciences as evidence enough yet all I see in the sciences are just more proof of an Intelligent Being beyond us. I did fortunately gain a few tips along the way when it comes to questioning the Bible and for that I will always be grateful. It is because of the defenses against it that has led me to yearn to dive deeper and seek for myself more than what is simply served (or more often, force fed). 

Because I could not find any defense on atheism very much worthy of believing, I opted to turn to the defense of Christianity (and have read about other religions and their accounts of creation along the way). However, again, I could not find a logical defense but merely a resentment of atheism but now with a dose of self-righteousness and a whole lot of biases. Unlike atheism, what I read on the defense of Christianity just led me further from it.

Both ideas now have proven unhelpful to my floating around the abyss wondering if I would ever be led to Truth. I have been stuck not in the middle of it all, but in the nothingness of it all. 

My wander in the wondering drained me. In my disbelief, I would still ask a Higher Being to rid me of my questions and my longing to find Truth. I knew that my life would be simpler and my mind more at peace if I had just believed. But somehow, I could not conjure from God knows where enough energy or apathy or whatever I must conjure to simply do so. 

Does the Christian God exist? 

I kept asking myself this. In my mind, I was convinced that it was possible if He did not - that of course all this was a product of Something but if all this were a product of the God I was taught, that I did not know. In my mind it was possible that there was a Higher Being but if He was at all involved in the human race or if He was just an ever-present Being that goes around and about the dimensions as He pleases, that I was not sure of.  

In summary, Lewis argued, and effectively did so, that one of the most obvious evidence for the existence of God is the validity of our rationality. If then the birth of the universe we know is merely an accident, then we also would merely be accidents, unable to form patterns and if able to form arguments, the arguments must always be invalid. Something rational cannot be created by something irrational; there must be a Rational Being behind both the rational and irrational. Further, in connection with the universe being god, he gave the analogy of a house being built by an architect - the architect is not in any way the wall or a part of the house just as God mustn’t be part of the universe; rather, He must be beyond it. This made sense for the wall being dependent - having to lean on foundations to stand - cannot therefore be the one true thing. It must be independent to have existed on its own in the first place. 

My mind has established that God MUST be true because a God is necessary for anything else to be; the Cause of all causes. But that still leaves me with the question, why of all gods should I believe a Christian God? If God is indeed true, was He at all involved? Why, of all that I can meditate on, must I meditate on the Bible? Why would I deem trustworthy some ancient literary work?

Christianity has been rooted in Christ for years and years. There were times I had to believe that Jesus was simply a super intelligent man and a great teacher who falsely claimed to be God. To be honest, I still do ponder upon his claims from time to time. 

But I could not find in Christ, or in any sane man, any reason why he should claim something that will not, in any way, benefit him. All the more, why would Christ, or again any sane man, claim anything that would lead to his own death? Of course one could say that there were noble men before Jesus, and I’m sure there were. But the noble men we have heard of have only died for a natural world cause - like equality, or justice, or any of the wonderful things men have fought and continue to fight for. But Jesus died for, more than us, a cause beyond this world. He died claiming our sins forgiven - and why would a mere man forgive me for sins I have not even done to him? He died not for a people nor a race nor a religion nor a gender but for all humanity and not because of a certain social system but because of man’s unfortunate predicament to choose evil over good. Even gods do not claim to die for the evils of humanity. Gods do not die for their enemy so why on earth would a mere man? 

But more than all these, Jesus (apart from His Miracles) was an ordinary man - not rich, not powerful (in a worldly sense like earthly kings and rulers), not wealthy - why should there be viral evidence of the Resurrection of an ordinary man? And to what and whose benefit will it be if Jesus had merely lied His way to a religion?

When it comes now to the sanity of Jesus, I am at war with myself. The question if Jesus was merely insane is frighteningly valid yet also immensely irreconcilable to me. If his insanity came from merely saying He is God, then He is a megalomaniac. Yet His teachings, His principles, His Life say otherwise - all these were centered around people, not Him - something impossible for a narcissist to do. He is no mere legend either for even the great Grecian epics had less popularity than the ordinary God of the Jews.

I must admit that my defense on Jesus is still immature and weak. I do not even know if I can or if I want and if I believe so much in the virgin birth enough to defend it even to myself. But Jesus, if a mere man is harder for me to believe than if he is, indeed, God. And if He is indeed God in Flesh, then God must be involved.

---

I cannot also defend the Bible. As I am writing this, I still do believe that the Bible had been written by ancient men (whether Old or New Testament) within a society that was heavy on patriarchy. A few days ago in reading Genesis, I could not get out of my head that maybe the writers then lived on a world that was so patriarchal that they had to write a woman to be so easily deceived and had to write that it was God who commanded her to submit to the man. Of course that was not the point but it does affect how I read the whole of the Bible. In my head, I cannot for the life of me just shrug off violence and war crimes and sexism and slavery and permitted innocent deaths so explicitly narrated. While I am convinced that God had a hand in writing the entirety of it all, I cannot be sure if the men He used were rid of all their social views. And because of that I wonder if their laws on sex and marriage and divorce and whatever rules they had back then should still hold true today. I find it dangerous then to claim the Bible to be a “Manual for Life” because with all the evils written on the book, all the laws, all that drama, I would not say that the Bible is exactly the book to guide one’s morality word per word. 

The Bible is a strange thing - so many copies produced throughout history, so much done in order to preserve it yet still so incredibly difficult and confusing to decipher. I have seen both culmination and contradiction within its books. I do not know what to make of it. I do not even know if I have the right motivation in studying its contents, I think I am only reading to determine what it truly is, what it truly says, and how it is ought to be read. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing for I have learned so much more about God now than I ever did back then when I convinced myself to be reading the Bible because I “love God.” 

And what does that even mean - “to love Him?”

---

I have said that I have nothing but belief but if what I believe in is true then shall not have I the One I believe in too? Believing may be stupid for some, but to me I have found, and continue to ensure, that my faith is founded on reason. After all, is not God reasonable? A man, created to be rational, must not skip analysis for analysis is an activity not for the faithless but actually for those who practice the virtue of faith all the more. It is through reason that I have discovered that my beliefs then were in the wrong path, and it is through reason (and all the more by grace) that I am led to the beginning so I could start anew with the right path.

In Mere Christianity (my least favorite of his works, a discussion for another day), Lewis writes - 

“If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man...When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start again, the faster I shall get on.”

And so I shall admit that whatever I have written here or anywhere may not be the whole and absolute Truth - only truth as I presently know it. The more I am susceptible to ideas, the easier I can admit that one thing is wrong and so the faster I can turn away from it. But by grace I must never again in my pride (for I have done it a thousand times) to yearn to be or to think that I am better than anyone else for it is there where I think I shall fall and my reasoning deemed to be done in mere vanity. I am not better for merely progressing but I do yearn to be a good man as defined by He who radiates and therefore knows goodness in its most immaculate and genuine form.

[badri2]

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Sam Harris - An Essay by Badri Tulsiram

Sam Harris and Ralph Waldo Emerson are two thinkers from entirely different eras. They both represent spheres of thought likable by people who may call themselves atheist, nonreligious, or secular. The Harris perspective, unlike the Emerson perspective, has no belief in God, although both thinkers seek to make changes to how one perceives Him. Emerson, rather than making any claims of God not existing, seeks to redefine God to the masses who seem to understand God only from the perspective of the Bible. The two agree in saying that religious texts are of no benefit for a progressive people. In this essay, I seek to identify and analyze the similarities and differences in the thoughts and theories laid forth by these two influential thinkers by comparing and contrasting their language ideologies, epistemologies and ontologies.

In Emerson’s Divinity School Address we get a brief understanding of his ontological views on the nature of things. Emerson delivered his Divinity School Address to the Senior Class at Cambridge. Emerson is in no way an atheist, however, he shares the distaste in the ways of the Church, and advocates new revelation. He says that the way in which preachers preach the Gospel is as if God had spoken, and died. They speak of God as if he was here a long time ago, and is no longer here. Emerson has a strong foundation of moral sentiment based on intuition and insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul, laws that execute themselves. Emerson says that every action has an equal reaction. Thus, if you do a good deed, a good deed may be done upon you. “He who puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity.” Emerson believes in the effectiveness of good intentions. In a broad sense, summarizing his main points into one phrase; your perception is your reality. Each and every one of us is a soul. He closes his address saying, he “shall see the world to mirror the soul; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy.” In other words, our souls are not separate from our world, but by only illusion. Gravity is, as our hearts beat. Our purpose is one with Science, Beauty, and Joy. Based on this summary of his address, we can assume a few things about Emerson; 1)he believes that we are each individual souls 2)he dislikes antique practices 3)we have a purpose.

Harris, at first glance, proves to be a little more difficult to tackle in understanding his ontology and beliefs on the nature of things. For the most part, Harris subscribes to the notions of modern science. As far as having a strong foundation for fundamental beliefs, as Emerson does, Harris seems to be on his way-- and this progression can be seen in tracing his early work to his newer work where he begins to open up to changing his adamant views. When reading Harris’s earlier work, such as his Letter to A Christian Nation (2006) and The End of Faith (2004), you can sense a sort of anger or resentment towards large populations of people for their belief systems that are different than his own. Emerson does not do this; he may point out the flaws in existing systems, but he does not downplay or criticize them in the way that Harris does. In Harris’s later work, however, such as Waking Up (2014), Harris proves to have grown considerably in many areas, spirituality in particular. So much so that he spends much of chapter one explaining spirituality in a context that may be friendly to his atheist readers who would dismiss anything “spiritual” as being mere nonsense. Harris does this by redefining “spiritual” in the atheistic context as having to do with “breath” as its Latin roots imply.

One of Harris’s main arguments in his work is that “there is a sacred dimension to our existence,” but it does not require superstitious beliefs. In The End of Faith, Harris argues that words like “God” and “Allah” must go the way of “Apollo” or “Baal.” He says that belief is what puts meaning to these words, and belief is like a lever; when pulled, moves almost everything else in a person’s life. This may be true, but my only criticism is that it is slightly hypocritical when considering it being written by someone who believes themselves to be an atheist. Harris argues that these are “mere words, until you believe them.” Given these notions about belief, and the faith put into words, we can begin to understand Harris’s language ideology, that is, his ideas and ideals associated with the way he uses language. To put it into binary terms, things are either 1 or they are 0. On a spectrum, for Harris’s ideology, subjects he supports are often as far left on the side of 1 as they can be, to denote what he would define as “true” and; subjects that he does not support, such as religion, and words like God-- fall as far right on the 0 side. The distance between these two is a lot greater, than say, the distance between Emerson’s opposites--which are as close as possible when thinking of his language ideology in this way. When thinking in this abstract way, Emerson makes it clear, whereas for Harris, one must seek to look past the obvious. For example, Emerson in his essay The Over-Soul, says the soul knows only the soul. The soul requires purity, but purity is not it. If you replace what he says with numeric values, you get something like this: 1=1, from 0 to 1, but 0 does not equal 1. One is for the soul, zero is for purity.  

Emerson’s epistemological views are much more refined and developed than Harris’s. This may be because Emerson’s lifetime has come and passed, while Harris is still fairly young, and may have more books to be written. Emerson’s tone is also much more poetic, which is why I think it is so much more favorable than Harris’s heavily critical tone at times. In The Over-Soul, Emerson says, “Supreme critic of errors past & present and any prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other” (p.262, Complete Works). Notice the poetic tendencies. We are also introduced to his ontological view of the Over-Soul, which is some sort of “higher self” or God, that is the unity of the individual soul to this Supreme “Over-Soul.” A point that Emerson makes, that Harris may agree with, is that faith that stands on authority is not faith. That is to say that if you are basing your faith off the authority of a book or a religious majority, then that is not really faith. Emerson states that the reliance on authority leads to the decline of religion and ultimately the withdrawal of the soul. Emerson also states that in a conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made to a third party, a common nature, which is not a social, but an impersonal God. It seems to me as if with Harris, this conversation is ongoing-- a dialogue between himself, based on reason and rational discourse, and a Bible-believing faith fanatic. The tacit third party is not quite as obvious, and I believe that in Waking Up, we begin to work towards that through the idea of “spiritual but not religious.” Emerson further states that “We know truth when we see it.” This is another Emerson statement that Harris may agree with. Emerson also says, “infallible index of true progress is found in the tone the man takes.” I have noted that Emerson’s tone is individualist, and more personal to man; while, on the contrary, Harris writes with a societal, communal lens (that community being modern atheists or skeptics), addressing that group. Emerson is speaking to an individual, while Harris is speaking to a people. Here are some important quotes from Emerson: “The heart in thee, is the heart in all,” “the source of nature is in his own mind,” and “he must greatly listen to himself.” Given Emerson’s conception of the Over-Soul and the soul, the last statement on listening to oneself, one must consider this self to be the soul, and in relation to the Over-Soul, so that one is listening to that transcendent self that is not limited by conforming beliefs. That Over-Soul present in the heart of the enemy, is the same as that Over-Soul present in his own heart. I say this because when listening to an Atheist speak at events, I get this notion that he is judging religious people in an unfair and close-minded way. Unfair, because he places on them his learned beliefs of what they must believe because of what he has discovered in his research of their books. Rather than respecting other people’s beliefs, an Atheist has a tendency to show what is wrong, and poke at the elements that may be outdated, to formulate an argument which at its core is claiming an entire people’s faith to be wrong. This in itself is wrong, but it is important to mention that this happens on both ends, as religious people do this just as often. Just as Harris claims that we put meaning to words, we must hold this to be true in analysis of these faiths--that is to say that we put meaning on these religions and atheisms. This perspective is based off of my reaction to his public Q & A video, where Atheists and Deepak Chopra go back and forth, and the Atheists don’t really hear or understand Chopra’s perspective, as they think of his beliefs as being vastly different.

In Chapter 1 of his book, Waking Up, Harris opens with a story of his experiences with meditation and spirituality. He tells us of a story in his past when he had done MDMA (Ecstasy) with his best friend in the late 80s and had realized an immense feeling of unconditional love, where his friend’s happiness was his happiness. Harris makes an important distinction between spirituality and religion. He says that any dogma or superstition associated with the term spirituality is ill-advised as the meaning had been distorted at an earlier point in history. The real meaning of the term has Latin and Greek roots for the word meaning breath. Harris makes the point that the feeling we call “I” is an illusion. That we are not the small person sitting behind the eyes, at the control panel of our brain operating our functions-- that concept or perception is an illusion we create. In this work, Harris finds religion to not be entirely fallacious, as compared to his earlier work. He says that there is some profundity to be found beneath the rubble of what is left of these belief systems, in what has been said by Jesus and the Buddha about compassion and empathy.    

In Emerson’s essay entitled Circles, he notes that St. Augustine “described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere and its circumference nowhere.” Harris believes we should do away with such words like God. Harris makes the argument in The End of Faith, that religion is a cause for much violence and provides many examples of wars on the basis of religion (26). Harris shares, as Emerson does, a notion that there is more to our existence than it seems. Harris says that as the basis of our spirituality, the range of possible human experiences far exceeds the ordinary limits of our subjectivity. Some experiences can utterly transform a person’s vision of the world. The feeling we call “I” separates us from the universe. Harris, actually indeed does share with Emerson a notion similar to the Over-Soul, in that once this feeling of “I” is removed, we can be connected to ourselves and the rest of the universe. Harris remarks that religious ideas have grown around this idea, and spiritual experiences like these are as dangerous as they are remarkable.

Harris’s main goals for The End of Faith, are noted on page 43: “(1) Our religious traditions attest to a range of spiritual experiences that are real and significant and entirely worthy of our investigation, both personally and scientifically. (2) Many of the beliefs that have grown up around these experiences now threaten to destroy us.” Given this, we get a clear concise perspective from Harris, and his ontology. One of Harris’s main driving points is that spirituality can be-- and must be-- deeply rational. In Self-Reliance, Emerson states that the youth make the seniors unnecessary. He states that a man must be a nonconformist, and “blind man’s bluff, is this game of conformity.” Nothing is sacred except your own mind. Society is in conspiracy to its members, and reliance on the self is the way to avert society’s conspiracy. This is similar to Harris’s methods of removing the belief of “I” to learn more about yourself, and begins to change how we may have previously defined Atheism as being a pessimistic view about God, to a personal exploration of the self. It takes the focus away from these conforming thoughts and beliefs and helps the individual become an individual again.

In Sam Harris’s Waking Up, we begin to see how meditation and spirituality can help benefit the individual and to receive this benefit, one needs not the belief in God or superstition. Through understanding the intellect, one’s mind, by meditation, one can become aware of their spirituality. Harris advocated the practice of mindfulness in this book, and even provides many methods in which the individual can begin a mindfulness meditation practice. Harris has a newfound interest in Buddhism and it helps him learn about this concept of mindfulness and awakens him to his spirituality, while still maintaining his rational discourse.

Harris discusses stages in self-development in which one becomes more aware of their spirituality in a sense. He says that in Buddhism, by beginning to see things as they are, we see things as usual. Suffering often is in the mind, and it is from ego and created. In his conclusion, he brings up a simple question that his three year old daughter had asked him and his wife about the origins of gravity, to which he did not know the answer, so instead of saying from God or some other faith-based answer, he honestly replied that he does not know. He relates this to how people create religions. Further in his conclusion, he reinstates the importance of mindfulness and the mind as our greatest faculty for understanding the world. Harris wants all to open their eyes, and see.

Harris and Emerson seem to have more in common in their beliefs than different. Apart from being born in different eras, a hundred and fifty years apart, they actually have a lot in common. They both believe that the mind is man’s most important faculty for understanding the universe. They both agree, that we create our suffering and our success. They both agree that conformist religious institutions do not help individuals in understanding their spirituality or Soul. Religious sacred texts only allow for people to misinterpret and create false boundaries of separation between one another and are out-dated and though may preach Love, they also preach the stoning and killing of other people-- which is not beneficial to a peaceful society. They both agree that God is not a man with a beard somewhere hurling plagues at his people. Emerson has an esoteric understanding of God as a being of profound Unity. Harris has a notion of spirituality, which is his understanding of the profound Unity. The two men also agree that people need to constantly be making progress in their thinking. Subscribing to antique beliefs and thought-processes because the majority is doing so, or that is what your parents have done and their parents have done before them won’t cut it. One must seek their answers from within, and use their mind, as it is the most powerful faculty in realizing one’s individual place and position in this world. Atheism does not have to be about hatred and disagreement, and neither does religion. We are all individuals having spiritual experiences, and it is important to ultimately think for yourself, and not give in to conformity.

[revenantscholar]

As interesting as this post is, I do not think it is accurate. I have absolutely no love for Calvinism or for apocalyptic Evangelical fantasies, but theodicy is a crucial question in most religious traditions.

First of all, my personal background. I grew up in a place which had no Protestants at all -- I probably met my first Protestant when I was 14. About half of the population was Muslim. My father was and is firmly atheistic. 

When war broke out, we moved to Germany. I identified very strongly with the Jewish experience and I kept trying to learn more about the Abrahamic God, especially the YHWH aspect. Latin, classical Hebrew (in which I eventually tutored other students), Greek. After a flirtation with early Christianity, I wanted to convert to Judaism because of Jewish respect for knowledge, and, just as much, Jewish experience of exile and marginalization. I returned to the faith of my childhood, atheism, for about a decade, and it always remains a temptation. Then, while I was living in India, everything changed again.

Here is the crucial part: Even before the war, even when I was a small child, I always found the question of theodicy crucial. In comparison, I do not get emotionally at all why people get into all those twists re: science vs. religion. To me, that’s not a real issue, but I have to admit it has been for a lot of people. To me, all theology ultimately tries to resolve the question of suffering and pain, allowing us to make sense of life and how it should be lived.

Speaking as a scholar now: You’ll find theodicy all over the Tanakh, especially in the Book of Job and in the Nevi’im (prophets). We could argue whether at that point YHWH is seen as universally powerful, but at least in the Book of Job, he is. As for Christian tradition, debates on theodicy long precede the term, think St. Augustin (the word was invented by Leibniz, who was a Protestant, but who wrote most of his major works in Latin, remaining close to Catholic roots of western European Christianity). 

Suffering is such a crucial theme in Buddha’s thinking that it eclipses Gods themselves, although they return in most folk traditions. Even more importantly for my own path, you have the discussion between Arjuna and Krishna, which is strangely similar to the Book of Job because of its emphasis on an overwhelming vision which stops the human questioner from doubting. I used to love it, but now I find that argument highly questionable.

Finally, theodicy has been of immense importance in post-Holocaust Jewish theology, and deservedly so.

You can argue that the US hegemonic Protestantism puts a different slant on it, and that most people are influenced by it, but there is no way you can claim it is their invention.

Atheists who dismiss gods on the grounds of human misfortune are brilliantly Protestant Christian.