#saying they are dismisses their Buddhist and Jewish inspiration

[jedi-enthusiasm-blog]

Jedi antis stop projecting your religious trauma into the Jedi challenge.

The Sith are right there if you want to project your religious trauma into Star Wars.

[ameliarating]

I read through @pumpkinpaix‘s deeply thoughtful post about cultural appropriation and dismissal of Chinese cultural concerns (two related but distinct phenomena) in non-Chinese MDZS/CQL fan-spaces and should-be-obvious-but-painfully-is-not disclaimer: 

When it comes to these things, the voices that should be rising above the rest are the Chinese fans speaking out about what they’ve seen.

I’m only here because I feel I have what to say on this bit here: 

For context, we are referencing two connected instances: the conflict described in these two threads (here and here), and when @/jelenedra tweeted about giving Jewish practices to the Lans. Regarding the latter, we felt that it tread into the territory of cultural erasure, and that it came from a person who had already disrespected diaspora’s work and input.

Context

The Lans have their own religious and cultural practices, rooted both in the cultural history of China and the genre of xianxia. Superimposing a different religious practice onto the Lans amidst other researched, canonical or culturally accurate details felt as if something important of ours was being overwritten for another’s personal satisfaction. Because canon is so intrinsically tied to real cultural, historical, and religious practices, replacing those practices in a canon setting fic feels like erasure. While MDZS is a fantasy novel, the religious practices contained therein are not. This was uncomfortable for many of us, and we wanted to point it out and have it resolved amicably. We were hoping for a discussion or exchange as there are many parallels and points of relation between Chinese and Jewish cultures, but that did not turn out quite as expected.

What happened next felt like a long game of outrage telephone that resulted in a confusion of issues that deflected responsibility, distracted from the origin of the conflict, and swept our concern under the rug.

Specifically, we are concerned about how these two incidents are part of what we feel is a repeated, widespread pattern of the devaluing of Chinese fans’ work and concerns within this fandom. This recent round of discourse is just one of many instances where we have found ourselves in a position of feeling spoken over within a space that is nominally ours. Regardless of what the telephone game was actually about, the way it played out revealed something about how issues are prioritized.

(Big surprise, I’m going to talk about Jewish things and MDZS)

I haven’t read the fic in question, but I have certainly made many posts about Jewishness and the Lans, imagining certain traditional Jewish educational settings and modes of learning and argumentation as superimposed onto the Cloud Recesses. I’ve also written other posts, mostly for me and the three other people out there who would find it funny, imagining different sects as different Jewish sects - or at least, who they have most in common with.

Never was I imagining these characters or worlds to be actually Jewish, but, as people often do in fandom, I was playing around in the spaces, delighting in overlaps I found, out of a deep-seated wish that I could have anything like MDZS or so many of the other fantasy I loved with Jews.

I’m jealous. I’m so jealous. 

Here’s how I was relating to it: 

China is a country of billions with an immense media audience of its own, its own television, movies, books, comics, etc. The only Jewish equivalent could ever be Israel, very tiny, and while there is a lot of good Israeli television, books, etc out there, it doesn’t approach what’s available from China, and certainly none of it has broken through to be a fandom presence of its own, not even in Jewish only or Hebrew speaking spaces. And even when that happens, the creators don’t often draw on Jewish history and myth. (One example I can think of a show that does is Juda, a Jewish vampire show from Israel, but I know exactly one (1) person on tumblr who’s seen it.)

So I was treating MDZS the way I treat American media - as a playground. Since I can’t find Jewish stories, especially in fantasy, I’m going to play around with it in non-Jewish stories.

Here’s how I should have been relating to it:

There are so many people who, like me, have been hungry to find themselves and their stories and their magic in fandom spaces. They have a show that’s made it big. Is it fair to, even playing around in tumblr posts, set so much of that rich cultural context aside in order for me to find room for my own? 

In the U.S., at least, where I am, it’s not the same as doing the same thing with, say, The Lord of the Rings (where I wrote a fic making use of Jewish mourning practices and assigned them to the Beorians) or Harry Potter, because that’s taking a dominant culture which is all I usually ever see and make room for myself. 

In MDZS, especially in the English language fandom where the Chinese cultural context is never dominant and is often shouted over and overlooked, and where there just aren’t many other examples of media that made it big in the fandom, I am only making room for myself by shoving aside something else that barely has any room at all.

In many ways, I became the fan that frustrates me, that writes about Jewish characters celebrating Christmas, rather than the fan that I wanted to be, which gets excited about cultural overlap and similarities. I’m sorry and I apologize.

My first reaction was not to. My first reaction was to say it’s not the same. Because it isn’t the same. It’s never the same when minorities do things to each other. But even if that’s less destructive, in some ways it’s more painful, because that’s where we should be able to look to each other for solidarity. (Obviously this is in English language fandom - Chinese fans are not a minority in Chinese language fandoms!)

I do believe that there should be room to make silly posts about the Lans doing things that Jews do, because the Lans do do things that Jews do. When I made an edit where Lan Wangji was responding to Lan Qiren quoting in Hebrew from the Jewish prayerbook rather than the sect rule to distance from evil, I did that because he was saying the exact same thing. It was wonderful to me, that a Lan sect rule could be exactly the same as something I pray every morning.

That’s very different from when I wrote imagining the Lans as Jews which left no more room for the Lans as Chinese Buddhists. It’s those later things I apologize for and what I’ll be careful about in the future.

I do still want to return to something I said just above, however: “Because it isn’t the same. It’s never the same when minorities do things to each other.”

I worry, as I wrote in a separate post, about the tendency I see in anti-colonial, anti-imperialist spaces to look at Jewish practices and laws and culture and see it as an example of Western hegemony rather than as a survivor of it. Especially in a post that talks about the Chinese diaspora experience, where the very word diaspora was coined to describe the Jewish scattering across the globe and only much later was used for other cultures and peoples.

I don’t object to its now much more universal use as a word. It’s useful and it’s powerful and I believe it can be used to build solidarity. I do ask for, however, recognition that while Jews, especially in the West, might reproduce Western hegemony and use it against others, our own ethno-religious experiences bubbling up is not one of those reproductions.

In other words, when we erase, accidentally or purposefully, the Chinese cultural and religious contexts of characters in MDZS/CQL in our rush to write in Jewish cultural and religious contexts, we are doing harm as ourselves, not as representatives of Western/European/Christian hegemony. And in fact, what inspired us to write in our own contexts is that there are certain things (deference to elders, life carefully regulated by a series of laws about everything from interpersonal-ethical behavior to food habits to modes of speech, cultural horror regarding desecration of the dead, etc) we find in these stories that we don’t find in many Western stories that resonate with our own cultural background.

Which is not to erase the harm itself. I am sorry for it and I will do my best going forward to write about overlaps without erasing or replacing what is already there from the beginning and should remain so.

[mojowriterblog]

When I was a kid, and other kids were Catholics or Protestant, or Baptist, or Jewish, or born again, I asked my mom what we were.

"Methodist," is what she told me.

"So, Methodists don't go to church?" I asked.

I asked this because at no time during my childhood did either of my parents get me anywhere near a church unless there was a wedding or a funeral involved. It came out that in the past, before I was born, they did go to church, but from what I gather it was more for the social scene and Dad's business contacts than for any kind of spiritual enlightenment.

My Dad avoided any questions about God or church. I don't remember him saying anything about it other than dismissing any questions I had, or diverting them to my mom.

Mom, on the other hand, was a bit of a free thinker on the subject, and what she believed came from her own personal set of superstitions more than anything else. I think she leaned more toward the Hollywood God-as-a-old-white-guy-on-a-throne type of deity. However, she didn't push it on me at all, and when at one point I came home and announced to them I was a born-again Christian, they looked at each other with alarm, their expressions toward each other clearly saying, "Oh, here we go."

Their influence on me was more of no influence -- or, perhaps, encouragement to find spirituality in my own way. So that's what I did. I was born-again until I began to see my fellow brothers and sisters in God were *not* practicing what they were preaching, which caused deep disillusionment on my part, and me rejecting the whole thing as a sham.

So I spent a portion of my life with Jesus in my heart, and then I spent a good portion of my life as an atheist and later agnostic. Buddhism kept calling me, and I started following that, accepting Buddha as a great teacher -- which, like Jesus, he was -- but not a god. Or, actually, not a god as Christians would think of God.

Spirituality came to me one again not through Buddhism but via science and quantum physics. There are a lot of parallels between Buddhist teaching and quantum physics, just as there are a lot of parallels between the teachings of Buddha and the teachings of Jesus (after you strip away parts obviously layered on later to glorify the church itself, and help it keep in power). Core teaching of Christ hint strongly of Buddhism, and you know, Christ did disappear for a while to go study somewhere else...

That's where I stand today. I'm spiritual, and I see the magic in the mundane world, because it's a miracle that anything exists at all. No matter which version or flavor of spiritual leanings, or even if you're a stout atheist and consider it all superstitious, the fact that -- even according to science -- everything sprang from nothing has got to be the most profound and awe-inspiring magic of all.

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/crash-course-anti-semitism/

A Crash Course on the True Causes of “Anti-Semitism”, part II: the hunt for anti-Semites

[This article was written for the Unz Review]

First, anti-Semites everywhere!

It has been over a year since I wrote an article entitled “A Crash Course on the True Causes of “Anti-Semitism “. I tried to illustrate how the kind of ideology and worldview of what ought to be called Rabbinical Phariseeism but is, alas, usually referred to as “Orthodox Judaism,” results in an inevitable hostile backlash from those whom this ideology and worldview even deny the status of “human being.” Today, I want to do something a little different: look at a political tactic which appears to give Jews a very desirable position but which in reality places them all at risk: the use of the accusation of “anti-Semitism” on practically anybody who dares to be critical of anybody and anything Jewish. The following recent headline on RT was what inspired me to discuss this issue:

Trump accused of anti-Semitism over claim Soros funds ‘elevator screamers.’

I won’t take up space here by quoting the article at length so please check it out on the original RT page. Here is just a short excerpt:

Critics of US President Donald Trump were quick to accuse him of anti-Semitism over a tweet claiming that women accosting senators over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh were paid by liberal billionaire George Soros. “The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad. Don’t fall for it!” Trump tweeted on Friday. “Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love!” Outrage ensued, obviously. ThinkProgress, the media arm of John Podesta’s Center for American Progress think tank, immediately accused the president of anti-Semitism. A Slate editor chimed in, calling Trump’s words an “anti-Semitic dog whistle.” And a staff writer for The Atlantic called it a “conspiracy theory that a rich Jewish boogeyman is making women claim to have been raped and assaulted.”

I have no idea why the RT reporter wrote that outrage ensued “obviously,” but let’s first note that none of those who accuse Trump of anti-Semitism makes any effort to explain why exactly Trump’s words are anti-Semitic.

[Sidebar: I know, “anti-Semitism” is a misleading and basically meaningless notion. In this article “What is Antisemitism” Michael Neumann how this already ambiguous and misleading concept became fundamentally meaningless (he concluded his analysis by saying “the real scandal today is not antisemitism but the importance it is given”). I will be using this term only because it is so widely used by Jewish organizations to discredit pretty much all those who dare to express a critical thought.]

Think Progress simply tweeted this: “Trump tweets out anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about George Soros.” Here we have a classical double-whammy: anti-Semitism, of course, but also a “conspiracy theory.” We will come back to this conceptual pair.

But first, the basics.

Is there any doubt at all that Soros sponsors all kind of protests in many different countries including the USA?

Let’s check the hyper-politically correct and doubleplusgoodthinking Wikipedia and see what we find there. In the 6th paragraph of the introduction to Soros’ entry, we see the following sentence:

“Soros is a well-known supporter of American progressive and American liberal political causes, to which he dispenses donations through his foundation, the Open Society Foundations.”

Really?! Not only does Wikipedia unambiguously state that Soros is sponsoring various US progressive and liberal causes, but he has also even created a special foundation to do that. Does this entry mean that Wikipedia is also part of an anti-Semitic campaign and is spreading conspiracy theories? Did Trump not say precisely the same thing as Wikipedia when he tweeted about “screamers are paid professionals” and “professionally made identical signs? Paid for by Soros and others”? It sure looks to me that Trump and Wikipedia are saying the exact same thing, yet one gets accused of being anti-Semitic while the other is left in peace. Why? Besides, what Trump said is really something which is common knowledge and which is not even denied by Soros himself. Even better, the “elevator screamers” themselves don’t even deny it either.

And yet, in spite of that, the Daily Beast says that “Trump goes full conspiracy nut” while the Deputy Washington Editor of The New York Times, Jonathan Weisman tweeted that “I’m sorry but the “Soros is paying them” trope from the president of the United States is … wow” and then proceeded to plug his book (((Semitism))) Being Jewish in American in the Age of Trump. That book was enthusiastically endorsed by The Washington Post: (“a passionate call to arms”), the Jewish Book Council: (“Could not be more important or timely”) and the inevitable Bernard-Henri Lévy: (“It would be wonderful if anti-Semitism was a European specialty and stopped at the border with the United States. Alas, this is not the case”).

Wait!

How do you go from “professional elevator screamers” to anti-Semitism?!

Trump says something which is both undeniable and actually undenied, and that somehow makes him a conspiracy nut and an anti-Semite and that, in turn, is supposed to suggest to us that Jews are in great peril in the USA (“call to arms” + “could not be more important”).

Does that make any sense to you at all?!

Trump is accused of being an anti-Semite because he had the nerve to actually openly state an undisputed fact. More specifically, Trump is guilty not just of stating an undisputed fact, but of stating an undisputed fact in reference to a Jew (hence the specific accusation of anti-Semitism and not of some other form of crimethink). But since Wikipedia and Soros himself pretty much say the same thing as Trump, albeit in a more educated way, what is the problem?

Setting aside the fact that Trump has proven to be the best shabbos-goy the Likud ever had (just his move of the US embassy to occupied Jerusalem was an act of truly abject servility to Israel), let’s deconstruct what is really going on here.

I submit that for all the official propaganda, everybody knows that free speech in the AngloZionist Empire is strictly limited: in the European colonies by means of fines and incarceration and in the USA by means of political hysterics. The methods are different (no First Amendment in Europe!) but the goal is the same: to smear, discredit and eventually silence the crimethinkers.

Let us look at two examples:

Next, anti-anti-Semites everywhere

First, check out this article about “conspiracy theories” in which the author writes: (emphasis added)

The term “conspiracy theory” is used to describe any theory that attempts to characterize observed events as the result of some secret conspiracy. The term is often used dismissively, implying that the theory is implausible. Although conspiracy theories (particularly aimed at Jews and Bankers) date back hundreds of years, the earliest usage of “conspiracy theory” does not always have this connotation, although the theories are quite often dismissed in other ways. Usually, it’s simply a way of identifying the theory from other theories – as in “the theory that happens to have a conspiracy.”

Therefore, since discussing Jews and Bankers is a typical “conspiracy theory” and since the term “conspiracy theory” is often used dismissively, implying that it is implausible, it is therefore implausible that Jews and bankers would have any special political or historical importance. But if this is so implausible, why are such theories particularly aimed at Jews and bankers and not at Buddhists and bakers? Where is the logic here?

The second example is from an article entitled “Holocaust denial and 9/11 “Truth”: Two crappy tastes that taste crappy together” which clearly states: (emphasis added)

Holocaust denial fits into the 9/11 “Truth” movement hand-in-glove. Think about it. Whenever you see claims by 9/11 Truthers that there was some sort of “conspiracy” to bring down the World Trade Center towers, who is inevitably part of the conspiracy in the paranoid vision of the “Truth” movement? Well, there’s usually the U.S. government, but almost invariably the Mossad is said to be involved. Yep, the Jews.

This is interesting. Let’s assume that 9/11 truthers mostly think that Israel was involved in the 9/11 false flag (I certainly believe that!), how does that in any way imply that “the Jews” did something wrong or, even more so, the denial of the so-called “Holocaust”?! Furthermore, how does reaching the basic and inevitable conclusions implied by high-school level Newtonian physics about WTC 7 in any way indicate that somebody is paranoid? Maybe the label of “paranoid” ought to be applied to everybody not trusting the government?

Would it not be much more fitting to apply the term “paranoid” to those who manage to jump from “paid elevator screamers” to anti-Semitism or from doubts about 9/11 to Holocaust denial? I think that the paranoid nutcases are the anti-anti-Semites who are constantly doing two very dangerous things:

1) strenuously denying obvious and well-known facts

2) accusing anybody capable of critical thought of being an anti-Semite

Make no mistake, those still capable of critical thought will challenge the official narratives about 9/11 or about the “Holocaust”. I would even argue that any good and interesting history book will always be revisionist, at least to some degree. Good historiography should always challenge widely accepted beliefs, should it not?

In a mentally sane and politically free society challenges to the official 9/11 conspiracy theory (because, make no mistake, the official fairy tale about 9/11 is quite literally a “conspiracy theory” and a most unlikely and most implausible one!) or to the official narrative about the “Holocaust” should be treated just like the “no moon landing” or “flat earth” or any other theory which should be discussed on its merits and not treated as a form of egregious and evil crimethink. Alas, as we all know, this is far from being the case today.

Personally, I don’t blame “the Jews” for this state of affairs, if only because I don’t even use a category like “the Jews” which I consider to be meaningless. However, I do lay the blame for this situation on organized Jewry; that is, the main Jewish/Zionist organizations who by their constant efforts to place such utterly ridiculous limits on free speech (and even free thought!) create a world in which two main camps struggle against each other:

First, the doubleplusgoodthinkers who are fully zombified by the mass media and who have fully internalized all the characteristics of the doublethink Orwell described in his book 1984: these brainwashed zombies can fully accept and believe two mutually contradictory things with no cognitive dissonance whatsoever.

Second, the crimethinkers who dare to doubt the official views about any topic and who, once they realize that they have been lied to about almost anything which matters, distrust and even challenge those ideas which are the most widely and systematically propagandized.

Of course, this state of affairs is bad for non-Jews, but it is even much worse for Jews because it creates an extremely dangerous mechanism: by rabidly enforcing such outrageous limits on free speech, Jewish organizations are profoundly alienating all those capable of independent thought. Even worse, once they start doubting one thing, e.g., the official narrative about 9/11, they inevitably wonder if they have been lied to in another matter, e.g., the “Holocaust.” In fact, what this pressure to conform to the official doxa of the day, the Zeitgeist if you wish, results in, is what I would call a “chain reaction of doubts,” including very unreasonable doubts. Let me give just one example:

After having read many books and articles about this topic, I find it extremely unlikely that the Nazis used gas chambers or crematoria in any large numbers. I would never presume to say that this “never” happened, but I personally don’t believe that this happened in any large numbers (this is why I consider the word “Holocaust,” which means “all/whole-burning,” a very misleading term). I also believe that the (quasi-obligatory) figure of 6 million is a vast exaggeration. Why? Because I read a lot about it, from both sides, and, frankly, the “revisionists” have much stronger arguments, both factual and logical.

However,

There is also no doubt in my mind at all that the Nazis were genocidal maniacs and self-worshiping racists who butchered millions of totally innocent people, including a very large number of Jews. I just believe that most of their victims were either murdered by the SS Einsatzgruppen or starved to death in various concentration camps (including many smaller, lesser known ones). Is that really less evil than using gas chambers or crematoria? I sure don’t think so. Neither do I think that four, three, two or even “just” one million murdered innocent is much better than six million. I know that there are many others out there who came to similar conclusions. But the problem is that there are also those who, once they began having doubts about gas chambers or crematoria, then decided the entire narrativeabout the “Holocaust” was one big lie and that no Jews at all were targeted or murdered by the Nazis.

My personal observation is that the vast majority of those who come to such a (completely unwarranted) conclusions are, indeed, Jew-hating folks who want to whitewash the Nazis and who would gladly parrot any inanity as long as it is somehow anti-Jewish or pro-Nazi. Not very smart, for sure, but it is nonetheless true that their hostility towards anything Jewish or their sympathies for the Nazis did not come out of nowhere but are a reaction to what they feel is the toxic and oppressive power of “the Jews” over their countries or society. Replace the “the Jews” with “Jewish and Zionist political organizations,” and they have a point, don’t they? One quick but honest look at US or French politics will immediately and easily confirm this.

Conclusion: anti-Semitism is something artificially kept alive

It seems to me that Jewish/Zionist organizations are apparently dead-set on creating as many enemies as possible or, at least, to alienate as many thinking people as possible. I can see how a rabid Zionist would find such a situation helpful for the Aliyah, but is it really good for the Jewish people? I very much doubt it.

The same goes for the mindset which makes any criticism of Soros or of Jewish bankers into a manifestation of anti-Semitism? Again, great for the Aliyah I suppose, but it is good for regular Jewish people? What about applying the label of “nutcase” to all those who dare to question an official theory? In the bad old days of the Soviet Union quite a few “dissidents” were declared suffering from “slowly-progressing schizophrenia” (вялотекущая шизофрения) by “official” psychiatrists and the “free and democratic world” was outraged (in spite of the fact that quite a few of these dissidents truly were suffering from mental issues). Is that profoundly different from placing the label of “nutcase” on somebody expressing doubts about an official theory?

What Jewish/Zionist organizations are trying to impose on the rest of the planet is a blanket immunity from any criticism for all Jews (except the “self-hating” ones, of course!) combined with a grim determination to crush anybody daring to oppose such plans.

The chances that most of the world will ever accept such mental shackles are virtually nil. What is much more likely is that the resistance to such efforts will grow, no doubt reported to the public as an “emergence of a new anti-Semitism” or something equally vapid. And at the end of the road, there will always be a powerful backlash against those who started it all. So what is the point?

I am left wondering whether all these Jewish/Zionist organizations are staffed merely by incompetent people, or whether creating more, not less, anti-Semitism might not be the *real* goal of these organizations.

Whatever may be the case, anti-Semitism is not something which “just exists.” It is something which must be rekindled over and over again. Left alone, it would just fizzle out.

The Saker

[hardword-blog]

Am I a Christian, Pastor Timothy Keller?

Am I a Christian, Pastor Timothy Keller? Nicholas Kristof DEC. 23, 2016

What does it mean to be a Christian in the 21st century? Can one be a Christian and yet doubt the virgin birth or the Resurrection? I put these questions to the Rev. Timothy Keller, an evangelical Christian pastor and best-selling author who is among the most prominent evangelical thinkers today. Our conversation has been edited for space and clarity.

KRISTOF: Tim, I deeply admire Jesus and his message, but am also skeptical of themes that have been integral to Christianity — the virgin birth, the Resurrection, the miracles and so on. Since this is the Christmas season, let’s start with the virgin birth. Is that an essential belief, or can I mix and match?

KELLER: If something is truly integral to a body of thought, you can’t remove it without destabilizing the whole thing. A religion can’t be whatever we desire it to be. If I’m a member of the board of Greenpeace and I come out and say climate change is a hoax, they will ask me to resign. I could call them narrow-minded, but they would rightly say that there have to be some boundaries for dissent or you couldn’t have a cohesive, integrated organization. And they’d be right. It’s the same with any religious faith.

KRISTOF: But the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life, like the Gospel of Mark and Paul’s letter to the Galatians, don’t even mention the virgin birth. And the reference in Luke to the virgin birth was written in a different kind of Greek and was probably added later. So isn’t there room for skepticism?

KELLER: If it were simply a legend that could be dismissed, it would damage the fabric of the Christian message. Luc Ferry, looking at the Gospel of John’s account of Jesus’ birth into the world, said this taught that the power behind the whole universe was not just an impersonal cosmic principle but a real person who could be known and loved. That scandalized Greek and Roman philosophers but was revolutionary in the history of human thought. It led to a new emphasis on the importance of the individual person and on love as the supreme virtue, because Jesus was not just a great human being, but the pre-existing Creator God, miraculously come to earth as a human being.

KRISTOF: And the Resurrection? Must it really be taken literally?

KELLER: Jesus’ teaching was not the main point of his mission. He came to save people through his death for sin and his resurrection. So his important ethical teaching only makes sense when you don’t separate it from these historic doctrines. If the Resurrection is a genuine reality, it explains why Jesus can say that the poor and the meek will “inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). St. Paul said without a real resurrection, Christianity is useless (1 Corinthians 15:19).

KRISTOF: But let me push back. As you know better than I, the Scriptures themselves indicate that the Resurrection wasn’t so clear cut. Mary Magdalene didn’t initially recognize the risen Jesus, nor did some disciples, and the gospels are fuzzy about Jesus’ literal presence — especially Mark, the first gospel to be written. So if you take these passages as meaning that Jesus literally rose from the dead, why the fuzziness?

KELLER: I wouldn’t characterize the New Testament descriptions of the risen Jesus as fuzzy. They are very concrete in their details. Yes, Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus at first, but then she does. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) also don’t recognize Jesus at first. Their experience was analogous to meeting someone you last saw as a child 20 years ago. Many historians have argued that this has the ring of eyewitness authenticity. If you were making up a story about the Resurrection, would you have imagined that Jesus was altered enough to not be identified immediately but not so much that he couldn’t be recognized after a few moments? As for Mark’s gospel, yes, it ends very abruptly without getting to the Resurrection, but most scholars believe that the last part of the book or scroll was lost to us.

Skeptics should consider another surprising aspect of these accounts. Mary Magdalene is named as the first eyewitness of the risen Christ, and other women are mentioned as the earliest eyewitnesses in the other gospels, too. This was a time in which the testimony of women was not admissible evidence in courts because of their low social status. The early pagan critics of Christianity latched on to this and dismissed the Resurrection as the word of “hysterical females.” If the gospel writers were inventing these narratives, they would never have put women in them. So they didn’t invent them.

The Christian Church is pretty much inexplicable if we don’t believe in a physical resurrection. N.T. Wright has argued in “The Resurrection of the Son of God” that it is difficult to come up with any historically plausible alternate explanation for the birth of the Christian movement. It is hard to account for thousands of Jews virtually overnight worshiping a human being as divine when everything about their religion and culture conditioned them to believe that was not only impossible, but deeply heretical. The best explanation for the change was that many hundreds of them had actually seen Jesus with their own eyes.

KRISTOF: So where does that leave people like me? Am I a Christian? A Jesus follower? A secular Christian? Can I be a Christian while doubting the Resurrection?

KELLER: I wouldn’t draw any conclusion about an individual without talking to him or her at length. But, in general, if you don’t accept the Resurrection or other foundational beliefs as defined by the Apostles’ Creed, I’d say you are on the outside of the boundary.

KRISTOF: Tim, people sometimes say that the answer is faith. But, as a journalist, I’ve found skepticism useful. If I hear something that sounds superstitious, I want eyewitnesses and evidence. That’s the attitude we take toward Islam and Hinduism and Taoism, so why suspend skepticism in our own faith tradition?

KELLER: I agree. We should require evidence and good reasoning, and we should not write off other religions as ‘superstitious’ and then fail to question our more familiar Jewish or Christian faith tradition.

But I don’t want to contrast faith with skepticism so sharply that they are seen to be opposites. They aren’t. I think we all base our lives on both reason and faith. For example, my faith is to some degree based on reasoning that the existence of God makes the most sense of what we see in nature, history and experience. Thomas Nagel recently wrote that the thoroughly materialistic view of nature can’t account for human consciousness, cognition and moral values. That’s part of the reasoning behind my faith. So my faith is based on logic and argument.

In the end, however, no one can demonstrably prove the primary things human beings base their lives on, whether we are talking about the existence of God or the importance of human rights and equality. Nietzsche argued that the humanistic values of most secular people, such as the importance of the individual, human rights and responsibility for the poor, have no place in a completely materialistic universe. He even accused people holding humanistic values as being “covert Christians” because it required a leap of faith to hold to them. We must all live by faith.

KRISTOF: I’ll grudgingly concede your point: My belief in human rights and morality may be more about faith than logic. But is it really analogous to believe in things that seem consistent with science and modernity, like human rights, and those that seem inconsistent, like a virgin birth or resurrection?

KELLER: I don’t see why faith should be seen as inconsistent with science. There is nothing illogical about miracles if a Creator God exists. If a God exists who is big enough to create the universe in all its complexity and vastness, why should a mere miracle be such a mental stretch? To prove that miracles could not happen, you would have to know beyond a doubt that God does not exist. But that is not something anyone can prove.

Science must always assume that an effect has a repeatable, natural cause. That is its methodology. Imagine, then, for the sake of argument that a miracle actually occurred. Science would have no way to confirm a nonrepeatable, supernatural cause. Alvin Plantinga argued that to say that there must be a scientific cause for any apparently miraculous phenomenon is like insisting that your lost keys must be under the streetlight because that’s the only place you can see.

KRISTOF: Can I ask: Do you ever have doubts? Do most people of faith struggle at times over these kinds of questions?

KELLER: Yes and yes. In the Bible, the Book of Jude (Chapter 1, verse 22) tells Christians to “be merciful to those who doubt.” We should not encourage people to simply stifle all doubts. Doubts force us to think things out and re-examine our reasons, and that can, in the end, lead to stronger faith.

I’d also encourage doubters of religious teachings to doubt the faith assumptions that often drive their skepticism. While Christians should be open to questioning their faith assumptions, I would hope that secular skeptics would also question their own. Neither statement — “There is no supernatural reality beyond this world” and “There is a transcendent reality beyond this material world” — can be proven empirically, nor is either self-evident to most people. So they both entail faith. Secular people should be as open to questions and doubts about their positions as religious people.

KRISTOF: What I admire most about Christianity is the amazing good work it inspires people to do around the world. But I’m troubled by the evangelical notion that people go to heaven only if they have a direct relationship with Jesus. Doesn’t that imply that billions of people — Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus — are consigned to hell because they grew up in non­Christian families around the world? That Gandhi is in hell?

KELLER: The Bible makes categorical statements that you can’t be saved except through faith in Jesus (John 14:6; Acts 4:11-12). I’m very sympathetic to your concerns, however, because this seems so exclusive and unfair. There are many views of this issue, so my thoughts on this cannot be considered the Christian response. But here they are:

You imply that really good people (e.g., Gandhi) should also be saved, not just Christians. The problem is that Christians do not believe anyone can be saved by being good. If you don’t come to God through faith in what Christ has done, you would be approaching on the basis of your own goodness. This would, ironically, actually be more exclusive and unfair, since so often those that we tend to think of as “bad” — the abusers, the haters, the feckless and selfish — have themselves often had abusive and brutal backgrounds.

Christians believe that it is those who admit their weakness and need for a savior who get salvation. If access to God is through the grace of Jesus, then anyone can receive eternal life instantly. This is why “born again” Christianity will always give hope and spread among the “wretched of the earth.”

I can imagine someone saying, “Well, why can’t God just accept everyone — universal salvation?” Then you create a different problem with fairness. It means God wouldn’t really care about injustice and evil.

There is still the question of fairness regarding people who have grown up away from any real exposure to Christianity. The Bible is clear about two things — that salvation must be through grace and faith in Christ, and that God is always fair and just in all his dealings. What it doesn’t directly tell us is exactly how both of those things can be true together. I don’t think it is insurmountable. Just because I can’t see a way doesn’t prove there cannot be any such way. If we have a God big enough to deserve being called God, then we have a God big enough to reconcile both justice and love.

KRISTOF: Tim, thanks for a great conversation. And, whatever my doubts, this I believe in: Merry Christmas!

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/opinion/sunday/pastor-am-i-a-christian.html?_r=0