Good Friday Message - God Is Love

After a brutal night
begun on capture, then
purgerous inquisition,
Jesus was scourged,
marched wounded
under his cross
up Jerusalem's
stony steeps.

His visage marred,
spit upon by haters,
bearing broken body,
wounded and despised,
hailed as Lord a week
before, mercilessly led
up Golgotha' s
weeping Hill.

Crucified mid-morning,
crowned in thorns,
jered and mocked,
hung creation's Savior
forsaken, forgiving,
dying mid-afternoon,
wept by mom, and
disciples forlorn.

Jesus dead body
was taken down,
cleansed, dressed,

and laid in another's
cold tomb three days,

until Sunday morning
met an atoning dawn
and empty tomb.

- r.e. slater
April 12, 2020
*Isaiah 52.13-53.12

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved

ISAIAH 52.13 - 53.12

The Exalted Servant

13 Behold, My servant will prosper,

He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted.

14 Just as many were astonished at you, My people,

So His appearance was marred more than any man

And His form more than the sons of men.

15 Thus He will sprinkle many nations,

Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him;

For what had not been told them they will see,

And what they had not heard they will understand.

The Suffering Servant

53 Who has believed our message?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

2 For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,

And like a root out of parched ground;

He has no stately form or majesty

That we should look upon Him,

Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.

3 He was despised and forsaken of men,

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;

And like one from whom men hide their face

He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore,

And our sorrows He carried;

Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,

Smitten of God, and afflicted.

5 But He was pierced through

for our transgressions,

He was crushed for our iniquities;

The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,

And by His scourging we are healed.

6 All of us like sheep have gone astray,

Each of us has turned to his own way;

But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all

To fall on Him.

7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,

Yet He did not open His mouth;

Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,

And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,

So He did not open His mouth.

8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away;

And as for His generation, who considered

That He was cut off out of the land of the [s]living

For the transgression of my people,

to whom the stroke was due?

9 His grave was assigned with wicked men,

Yet He was with a rich man in His death,

Because He had done no violence,

Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.

10 But the Lord was pleased

To crush Him, putting Him to grief;

If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,

He will see His offspring,

He will prolong His days,

And the good pleasure of the Lord

will prosper in His hand.

11 As a result of the anguish of His soul,

He will see it and be satisfied;

By His knowledge the Righteous One,

My Servant, will justify the many,

As He will bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great,

And He will divide the booty with the strong;

Because He poured out Himself to death,

And was numbered with the transgressors;

Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,

And interceded for the transgressors.

 

MARK 15

1 And straightway in the morning the chief priests

with the elders and scribes, and the whole council,

held a consultation, and bound Jesus,

and carried him away,

and delivered him up to Pilate.

2 And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews?

And he answering saith unto him, Thou sayest.

3 And the chief priests accused him of many things.

4 And Pilate again asked him, saying, Answerest thou nothing?

behold how many things they accuse thee of.

5 But Jesus no more answered anything; insomuch that Pilate marvelled.

6 Now at the feast he used to release unto them one prisoner,

whom they asked of him.

7 And there was one called Barabbas, [lying] bound with them that had

made insurrection, men who in the insurrection had committed murder.

8 And the multitude went up and began to ask him

[to do] as he was wont to do unto them.

9 And Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I

release unto you the King of the Jews?

10 For he perceived that for envy the chief priests had delivered him up.

11 But the chief priests stirred up the multitude,

that he should rather release Barabbas unto them.

12 And Pilate again answered and said unto them,

What then shall I do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews?

13 And they cried out again, Crucify him.

14 And Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done?

But they cried out exceedingly, Crucify him.

15 And Pilate, wishing to content the multitude,

released unto them Barabbas, and delivered Jesus, 

hen he had scourged him, to be crucified.

16 And the soldiers led him away within the court,

which is the Praetorium; and they call together the whole band.

17 And they clothe him with purple, and platting a crown of thorns,

they put it on him;

18 and they began to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews!

19 And they smote his head with a reed, and spat upon him,

and bowing their knees worshipped him.

20 And when they had mocked him, they took off from him the purple,

and put on him his garments. And they lead him out to crucify him.

21 And they compel one passing by, Simon of Cyrene,

coming from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, 

to go [with them], that he might bear his cross.

22 And they brought him unto the place Golgotha,

which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull.

23 And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh: but he received it not.

24 And they crucify him, and part his garments among them, 

casting lots upon them, what each should take.

25 And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.

26 And the superscription of his accusation

 was written over, THE KING OF THE JEWS.

27 And with him they crucify two robbers;

one on his right hand, and one on his left.

28 [And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith,

 And he was reckoned with transgressors.]

29 And they that passed by railed on him, wagging their heads,

and saying, Ha! Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest 

it in three days,

30 save thyself, and come down from the cross.

31 In like manner also the chief priests mocking [him] among themselves

with the scribes said, He saved others; himself he cannot save.

32 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from 

the cross, that we may see and believe. And they that were

crucified with him reproached him.

33 And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness

over the whole land until the ninth hour.

34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice,

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted,

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

35 And some of them that stood by, when they heard it, said,

Behold, he calleth Elijah.

36 And one ran, and filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed,

and gave him to drink, saying, Let be; let us see whether

Elijah cometh to take him down.

37 And Jesus uttered a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.

38 And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom.

39 And when the centurion, who stood by over

against him, saw that he so gave up the ghost, he said,

Truly this man was the Son of God.

40 And there were also women beholding from afar: among whom

[were] both Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James

the less and of Joses, and Salome;

41 who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered unto him;

and many other women that came up with him unto Jerusalem.

42 And when even was now come, because it was the Preparation,

that is, the day before the sabbath,

43 there came Joseph of Arimathaea, a councillor of honorable estate, 

who also himself was looking for the kingdom of God; and he boldly

went in unto Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus.

44 And Pilate marvelled if he were already dead: and calling unto him 

the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead.

45 And when he learned it of the centurion, he granted the corpse to Joseph.

46 And he bought a linen cloth, and taking him down, wound him

in the linen cloth, and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out

of a rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.

47 And Mary Magdalene and Mary the [mother] of Joses

beheld where he was laid.

Best Easter Songs 2020 - HE IS RISEN - 

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Easter Day Message - Now A Green Blade Rises

The crucifixion was Empire's NO to justice;

and it's YES to domination and repression.

The resurrection is God's YES to liberation and goodwill;

and God's NO to Empire.



Now The Green Blade Riseth

Hallelujah! Jesus is Risen! These grand words we speak to one another today were words but spoken in private among Jesus' followers as religious leaders of Israel's temple backed by Rome's dutiful legates searched for Jesus' seditious followers daring to question the faith institute and rule of their day. 

We know through the gospels Jesus' ministries to be one of reversals. Wherever corruptible faith and religious injustice thrived Jesus stood against it. His kingdom was both spiritual and challenged the faith leadership of his day. His was the upside down kingdom which called out sin, hypocrisy, lies, and corruption. For that He was silenced and crucified. Sinful man did not want to hear what God's love would require of them. 

But the God who loves could not be silenced. Jesus arose from the dead to speak through those whose voices asked with Him, "Whom will you chose? The god of mammon or Me? The god of hypocrisy or Me? The god of lies and corruption or Me?" If it seems like we live in the times of Jesus it means that man has not changed either in his religious arrogance or his hypocritical rule. It is still corruptible, still full of wind and fury, still darkened by lies and folly. To be a Jesus follower is as difficult today as it always has been, even though we describe this post-Jesus era as the Age of the Church.

Yet the church is as corruptible now today as Israel's religion was back then. Ever era seems to go through its own "End Times" even as our Lord experienced in His life and death. Yet, God's faithful still raise the banners of God's love, hope and mercy though these same banners are despised and cast down by those goats who cry "Lord, Lord, when did we ever do such a thing?" In reply, the hosts of God will say, "When love was needed and you showed none; when aide and effort required words of hope your hearts were shut; when forgiveness cried mercy and you offered none. Your words and your works are your judgment."

The religious of Jesus' day were as darken then of understanding as they are today having thrown in their lots with the Empire of its era. Who, having declared a gospel of violence and judgment, find it fallen upon their own head though they decry their innocence. On this Easter morning, to give witness to Jesus' resurrection is to stand against the powers and principalities of the world of today. Including its empire preachers and rulers bespeaking their greatness and sanctimonious holiness while clothed in rags of self-righteousness, legalism, pride, and deception.

Yes, Jesus has risen indeed! But no longer stand ye at the tomb and weep. Nor wait in the Upper Room to be called forth by the Holy Spirit. For the God of love has risen, and cries out with clarion voice to arise and be counted as one of His crucified faithful. That the gospel of Christ demands confessing our prejudices, hatreds and anger; to repent of our sins; to love the stranger around us; and be willing to forgive, to seek, and to serve the despised and forgotten till He comes again as Lord of Lords over all empires of this world whether religious or not.

What Does Easter Mean, by Gordon Sharp

https://www.facebook.com/watchparty/168393617656336/

Geroge Herbert - Commentary on the Christian Poem "Easter Wings"

Mars Hill Live




https://www.adabible.org/live/

When Religion Makes People Worse

This statue of Jesus crucified is included in a collection of
the fragments from Reims Cathedral in France, on display
at the National WWI Museum at  Liberty Memorial in Kansas
City, Mo., on May 2, 2014. The museum holds the most
diverse collection of artifacts around the world. | Religion
News Service photo by Sally Morrow

Christians, Conflicts & Change: When religion makes people worse

http://religionnews.com/2016/04/05/religion-makes-people-worse/

by David Gushee

April 15, 2016

Religion can do a great job helping believers discern right from wrong. Religion can do a great job helping believers relate kindly and justly to other people. And religion can do a great job stiffening the will of believers when they face unjust suffering for their faith.

I was taught these things when I studied Christian ethics, and they continue to motivate me in my work as an ethics professor today.

But hard experience has me seeing the negation of these claims more than I did at the beginning of my journey.

Now I see that religion can sometimes do a very poor job helping believers discern right from wrong. Religion can do a very poor job helping believers relate kindly and justly to others. And religion can easily persuade people that the rejection they are receiving for their hurtful or ill-considered convictions is martyrdom for God’s Truth, leaving them even more entrenched in their destructive beliefs.

My two key teachers in the field of Christian ethics in the 1980s were the Baptist Glen Stassen of Southern Baptist Seminary and the Lutheran Larry Rasmussen of Union Seminary in New York. These men knew each other and shared many common scholarly interests that shaped me as well. These included the Nazi period in Germany, the extraordinary life of the scholar-pastor-resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the challenge of overcoming racism, and the fight against the nuclear arms race during the Cold War.

Both men modeled and taught me an essentially hopeful vision about the role that Christian convictions can play in making Christians more faithful and society better. They taught a faith that had learned very deeply the lessons of the Nazi period; that honored Dietrich Bonhoeffer for standing fast against Nazi seductions when so many of his fellow Christians surrendered their souls; that resisted America’s own racism; and that rejected the idea that more nukes would make the world safer.

My own dissertation focused on that small minority of Christians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. I sought to discover what kind of character, motivations, and faith shaped these people who risked their lives when their neighbors were standing by indifferently. I have spent much of my career attempting to teach what I have sometimes called a “rescuer Christianity,” as over against a “bystander Christianity.”

But now as a wizened old veteran of the fight, I struggle with discouragement sometimes. It is not just that many Christians fail to live up to the clear demands of Christian discipleship. It’s that we can’t even agree on what those demands are. We all say we believe in Jesus, but what we make of that belief is so irreconcilably different that I am not sure that we are in any meaningful way members of the same religious community.

I should have seen this more clearly all along. After all, could it really be said that a Dietrich Bonhoeffer who died resisting Hitler shared the same religion as the “Christian” men who murdered children in Hitler’s name? What was the religious commonality between white Christian KKK members and black Christians fighting for an end to segregation and lynching? And how much do pro-torture, Islamophobic Christians have in common with those who take the opposite path?

A faith that stands with the crucified ones of this world is very different from a faith that does the crucifying. The question becomes not whether you say you follow Jesus, but which Jesus you follow.

Worst of all has been my discovery in recent years of versions of Christianity that actually make people worse human beings than they might otherwise have been. Here churches, pastors, or individuals interpret Scripture or faith in such a way that they do harm they would not do if they were just good old-fashioned pagans. I never anticipated that I would think: “If we could just keep people out of (this version of) church, they would be better people.”

Christian leaders often puzzle over why Christianity in America is declining so badly. Here’s a reason: some highly visible versions of Christianity are so abhorrent that reasonably sensible people want nothing to do with Christianity or the people who practice it.

The same, of course, holds for abhorrent versions of other religions. But that’s their problem, and this one is mine.

Meet the ‘Nones,’ the Democratic Party’s biggest faith constituency

Joe and Betsy Stone, part of the estimated 23 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans,

together at their home in Springfield, Va. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Meet the ‘Nones,’ the

Democratic Party’s biggest faith constituency

source link here

by Michelle Boorstein

February 29, 2016

Joe Stone is part of an enormous but invisible voting constituency.

A “troubled atheist,” the retired Virginia accountant calls himself spiritual, celebrates Christmas and defines religious as the need to “do good.” He says organized religion — Christianity as well as Islam — has “gone off the deep end” and political candidates who emphasize the rightness of a certain faith turn him off. At the same time, Stone calls himself “religiously open-minded.”

When Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders told a New Hampshire town hall last month that religion is a way of saying all people are connected, Stone agreed. “He is speaking directly to me,” he said.

Stone is part of a massive group of Americans who reject any label or affiliation to describe their faith. At 23 percent of the U.S. population, this left-leaning group called “Nones” are the Democratic parallel to the GOP’s white evangelicals — except without organization, PACs, leadership and a clear agenda. They do, however, have one big expectation of political candidates: Be ethical, and go light on the God talk.

The Nones’ impact will be tested on Super Tuesday, when multiple states with large unaffiliated populations hold contests: Virginia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont and Colorado. So far, Sanders has a large edge among Nones.

A huge group that skews under 40, white and non-immigrant, the Nones want politicians to tone it down not because they’ve made some final determination about God — the vast majority are believers — but because they are fed up with religious institutions they see as corrupt and discriminatory. And in the process, they are rewriting the country’s political discourse on morality.

Experts say the country is just beginning to feel Nones’ political power, in good part because their turnout has been low at about 12 percent — unsurprising for a disproportionately young group. But that is likely to change, with early research suggesting they are not inclined to become more religious as they grow older.

Political scientist David Campbell, who focuses on religion, compared the Nones of today to evangelicals of the 1970s — who grew in number and slowly became a massive, organized political force.

“You might say we are awaiting the emergence of a secular Jerry Falwell,” said Campbell, who chairs the political science department at the University of Notre Dame.

With their socially liberal viewpoints, Nones will pull the Democrats to the left — which is already happening with Sanders, said Mark Rozell, dean of the government and policy school at George Mason University and author of multiple books on religion and politics.

“It will make a profound change in American politics in the long run. Put up a candidate who challenges people’s right to love who they want and make decisions about their own lifestyles, and see what happens among the unaffiliated. A lot of other issues go to the back burner,” Rozell said.

If Sanders or Democratic rival Hillary Clinton start talking too much about religion as the race veers South, among Nones that would be “dangerous,” he said.

‘We need a revolution’

Nones talk about tolerance, fairness, choice and “making the world a better place.” In interviews some describe their worldview as being more authentically holy than people who cite Scripture and denominational labels.

“My girlfriend said, ‘Greta, you’re the best Christian I know that doesn’t go to church,’ ” said Greta Clark, 81, of Youngstown, Ohio, an agnostic who says her religion is “do no wrong.” Stone says he has an answer for Christians who are skeptical of Sanders’s bio: “Wait a minute, Jesus was a Jewish socialist.”

In addition to their skepticism about religious institutions, Nones share anger at secular institutions they feel are immoral, interviews show. Their political priorities include reducing big money’s influence on politics, raising wages and making college affordable. They do not trust government to police personal morality.

“We need a revolution at this point because corruption is so vast,” said Cheryl, a 43-year-old chief financial officer from Atlanta. She spoke on condition that her last name not be used because she said the stigma of being not religious in the South would harm her career and her child. She doesn’t like it when candidates talk about religion, but it bothers her less if it seems like lip service — evidence that they probably won’t apply dogma to public policy. If they’re saying it just to get elected, that’s more okay, she said.

“It doesn’t bother me because I’ve done the same thing, tried to pass,” she said. “I have no idea whether there is a God and I don’t think that’s an answerable question.” Before she got married, however, she put “atheist” in her dating profile instead of “agnostic” only to turn off fundamentalist Christians who might misinterpret her as open to their belief.

Although most evangelicals and Catholics say terrorism is their top voting priority, Nones say theirs is the economy, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll in December.

The major check on Nones’ political power is their lack of group awareness.

“This cohort is as large as evangelicals, but very poorly organized, and they don’t have the discipline or political reflex. But you can’t tell me campaigns aren’t thinking about them, especially the Democrats,” said Jacques Berlinerblau, a Georgetown University sociologist who has written several books about the role of religion in politics. Democrats, he said, have to straddle the Nones, most of whom feel candidates are talking too much about their faith and prayer, and the rest of the Democratic faith coalition — which includes progressive Jews, Catholics and Protestants — “who don’t mind it as long as it doesn’t get overwrought.”

A quarter of President Obama’s voters in 2012 were religiously unaffiliated — by far the largest “faith” group in his coalition. Perhaps in consideration of his religiously independent supporters, the president gave the first inaugural nod in his 2008 address to “nonbelievers.”

At the moment Nones are breaking hard for Sanders, a secular Jew who seems ambivalent about how to portray his faith. He has said he is not religious and chose to spend last Rosh Hashanah — a major Jewish holiday — speaking to evangelicals at Liberty University. When he won in New Hampshire last month, becoming the first American Jew to win a presidential primary, Sanders didn’t mention that fact in his victory speech, instead calling himself the “son of a Polish immigrant.” However, last fall when The Washington Post ran an article entitled: “Bernie Sanders: Our first non-religious president?” the Sanders campaign quickly emailed the reporter to point out a September interview about Pope Francis in which the senator referred to a “belief in God . . . that requires me to do all that I can to follow the Golden Rule.”

‘A delicate balance’

Mike McCurry, a communications consultant to candidates and faith groups who served as press secretary to Bill Clinton, said top Democratic advisers to campaigns “just don’t get” the role of faith groups — including the Nones.

“They don’t see it as a political constituency to mobilize,” McCurry said. That said, “it’s a delicate balance. [Nones] want to hear about your values and what gives you a moral stake, but they don’t want an agenda that’s forced down their throat.”

In fact, the Nones are a complex and sometimes contradictory group. They believe in God — but on their own terms. They don’t particularly want to hear about religion, but they aren’t anti-religion.

Clark said she doesn’t believe in confession, doesn’t think she believes in God, considers herself a Christian “in some ways,” thinks candidates shouldn’t mention religion and is disgusted by “houses of worship fancied up with icons and statues, big churches built from poor people’s money.” But she and her husband sent their now-grown sons to Catholic school. To her, the main election issues are things like roads, bridges and clean water. The issue of water contamination “is a disgrace.”

Of Sanders’s statement that religion means “we’re all in this together,” Clark said: “I’ve got to agree with him there. But he has the young people all worked up, they think they’re going to get something for nothing. It don’t work that way.” Of anyone, she said she prefers Sanders, but she is undecided.

Stone sees in Sanders a glimpse of his youth — a time when religion seemed less angry, less divided, when his folks could buy a home in Massachusetts for $8,000, when the system didn’t seem rigged. More recently, he and his wife, Betsy, — both accountants — “retired reluctantly, more or less.” Not that he’s complaining or bitter, and he has lots of positive things to say about religious relatives and pastors he’s known. Stone even regrets a bit not raising his children to be more religious, if only so that when religion and Scripture come up in conversation, they’d be able to more knowledgeably talk — or debate.

Stone sees Sanders as serious about getting money out of politics. He said he trusts Sanders when the senator talks about his spirituality. He even trusts Clinton — a Methodist his age — when he heard her tell an Iowa voter: “I am a person of faith, I am a Christian, I am a Methodist.” But he wishes there was no need for candidates to state their religion.

“I wish we didn’t have to talk about religion in politics. This is not a religious race,” Stone said. He grew up in a big religious family but feels church has become arrogant and intolerant. “We should be a spiritual country, meaning we should endeavor to have a good government in the eyes of whatever God you feel is right, or in the eyes of no God.”

Joe and Betsy Stone, part of the estimated 23 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans,

are seen in their home in Springfield, Va. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Christianity has become too broken into sects and intolerant, “it’s split up more,” he said.

“Back then Muslims were peaceful happy people and, for whatever reason, they got angry. Religions have gotten wacky,” Stone said. “Morality comes from another place. It’s a chicken or egg thing. The morality came before the stories” of religion.

‘A bunch of little things’

Alexis Echevarria, 20, calls herself a None because “I don’t want to label myself. I believe in a bunch of little things, other religions,” including the Catholicism to which her family holds fast and in which she was raised. But in recent years she has started questioning some church teachings, doesn’t like labels and sees her peer group in Katy, Tex., outside Houston, as split on religion — half her friends are religious and half are not. She values choice, whether that comes to whether to go to church, accept abortion or homosexuality or to even call yourself a believer.

“I’m open to everything and everyone,” Echevarria said, including candidates who talk, or don’t talk, about their faith. She has heard “very very little” about candidates’ religion, except Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump talking about religion and immigration, “which is baloney,” she said.

In truth, she said, she has been paying limited attention to the campaign, except that she knows she likes Sanders for her first-ever presidential vote. The senator’s talk about raising the minimum wage and making college more affordable “would be awesome.”

Her feelings about Sanders reminds her of the ones she had about Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. “Sanders seems like a genuine guy, and so did Romney,” she said.

Asked how she can tell if a candidate is speaking genuinely about their faith, Echevarria’s sunny, non-judgmental vocabulary shifted. “I was told candidates lie,” she said. “I’m guarded with everyone. Open, but guarded.”

---

Reseacher Scott Clement contributed to this report.

Michelle Boorstein is the Post’s religion reporter, where she reports on the busy marketplace of American religion.

The Argument of the Agnostic: Is Religion So Easily Deposed by Rationalism??

Today's article can be quite dissettling for first timers considering the arguments of an agnostic. However, it is quite clearly as plain that such arguments must be heard in order to understand the basis of those arguments when they are presented. Though not an argument for pure atheism, today's article is a strong argument with strong questions as to "Why a believer believers what s/he believes?" And if you do, then pray tell, "Let us all know, by all accounts please," asks the inquiring agnostic.

Essentially, for the evangelist and apologist this plea for a rational argument immediately becomes fraught with all kinds of obstacles and trap doors. In fact, though the temptation is to enter in forthrightly to debate and contend, the wise man knows that belief cannot be taught but caught; cannot be understood but embraced. That it is not necessary to answer the unknowable as much as to question our knowing and ourselves as being the universe's all-knowing omniscience source of de facto explanation as the agnostic would have us become.

Yeah, to answer a fool is to be a fool oneself. Which is most likely what an agnostic would think the closest thing to an answer that a believer might bring. However, for the believer himself or herself, we know all too well that some answers do come in our belief while many will not come. That it is not that we must have answers to help belief but that we must move towards our questioning beliefs in the totality of a faith stripped of its rationalism and demands for proof and knowing. Even those who stood before Jesus Himself seeing the God of the universe could not belief. Seeing, knowing, proving are not very good foundations to walking with God.

Yes, to believe is to be a fool in the eyes of the true agnostic, and yet to not believe is to act foolishly when the only best, surest thing that we can do is to simply believe. A man or woman of faith understands this, and through the course of life will have some questions answered and many not answered but the pith of one's faith is not based upon oneself but upon the One who giveth faith. The Creator God whose image is stamped upon us heart and soul. And through His Son Jesus that helps the unbelief of some to wrestle with life's most important questions of personal meaning, purpose, love, and so on.

Even so, my dear brothers and sisters, we move forward. Not clearly, not easily, but forward into the dark rifts and valleys of life's paradoxes, riddles, myths, and mysteries. What we know is that Jesus is come as Savior and Lord and that is enough. It is in that knowledge that all else becomes meaningful and meaning finds its purpose. Be at peace. Be courageous. Seek to love, not argue. And to touch the unbelief of some that they too may come to know Christ as Savior and Lord. Amen and amen.

R.E. Slater

December 24, 2014

God & Jesus | Credit: Wikimedia

Religion’s smart-people problem:

The shaky intellectual foundations of absolute faith

http://www.salon.com/2014/12/21/religions_smart_people_problem_the_shaky_intellectual_foundations_of_absolute_faith/

by John G. Messerly

December 21, 2014

Religious belief the world over has a strenuous

relationship with intellectualism. But why?

Should you believe in a God? Not according to most academic philosophers. A comprehensive survey revealed that only about 14 percent of English speaking professional philosophers are theists. As for what little religious belief remains among their colleagues, most professional philosophers regard it as a strange aberration among otherwise intelligent people. Among scientists the situation is much the same. Surveys of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, composed of the most prestigious scientists in the world, show that religious belief among them is practically nonexistent, about 7 percent.

Academic Philosophers of Faith - 14%

Prestigious Scientists of Faith - 7%

Now nothing definitely follows about the truth of a belief from what the majority of philosophers or scientists think. But such facts might cause believers discomfort. There has been a dramatic change in the last few centuries in the proportion of believers among the highly educated in the Western world. In the European Middle Ages belief in a God was ubiquitous, while today it is rare among the intelligentsia. This change occurred primarily because of the rise of modern science and a consensus among philosophers that arguments for the existence of gods, souls, afterlife and the like were unconvincing. Still, despite the view of professional philosophers and world-class scientists, religious beliefs have a universal appeal. What explains this?

The Appeal of Religion

Genes and environment explain human beliefs and behaviors—people do things because they are genomes in environments. The near universal appeal of religious belief suggests a biological component to religious beliefs and practices, and science increasingly confirms this view. There is a scientific consensus that our brains have been subject to natural selection. So what survival and reproductive roles might religious beliefs and practices have played in our evolutionary history? What mechanisms caused the mind to evolve toward religious beliefs and practices?

Today there are two basic [biological] explanations offered

1 - One says that religion evolved by natural selection—religion is an adaptation that provides an evolutionary advantage. For example religion may have evolved to enhance social cohesion and cooperation—it may have helped groups survive.

2 - The other explanation claims that religious beliefs and practices arose as byproducts of other adaptive traits. For example, intelligence is an adaptation that aids survival. Yet it also forms causal narratives for natural occurrences and postulates the existence of other minds. Thus the idea of hidden Gods explaining natural events was born.

Environmental Explanations for Religion

In addition to the biological basis for religious belief, there are environmental explanations. It is self-evident from the fact that religions are predominant in certain geographical areas but not others, that birthplace strongly influences religious belief. This suggests that people’s religious beliefs are, in large part, accidents of birth. Besides cultural influences there is the family; the best predictor of people’s religious beliefs in individuals is the religiosity of their parents. There are also social factors effecting religious belief. For example, a significant body of scientific evidence suggests that popular religion results from social dysfunction. Religion may be a coping mechanism for the stress caused by the lack of a good social safety net—hence the vast disparity between religious belief in Western Europe and the United States.

Better Conditions = Lower Belief Values

There is also a strong correlation between religious belief and various measures of social dysfunction including homicides, the proportion of people incarcerated, infant mortality, sexually transmitted diseases, teenage births, abortions, corruption, income inequality and more. While no causal relationship has been established, a United Nations list of the 20 best countries to live in shows the least religious nations generally at the top. Only in the United States, which was ranked as the 13th best country to live in, is religious belief strong relative to other countries. Moreover, virtually all the countries with comparatively little religious belief ranked high on the list of best countries, while the majority of countries with strong religious belief ranked low. While correlation does not equal causation, the evidence should give pause to religion’s defenders. There are good reasons to doubt that religious belief makes people’s lives go better, and good reasons to believe that they make their lives go worse.

People don’t want to know; they want to Believe

Despite all this most people still accept some religious claims. But this fact doesn’t give us much reason to accept religious claims. People believe many weird things that are completely irrational—astrology, fortunetelling, alien abductions, telekinesis and mind reading—and reject claims supported by an overwhelming body of evidence—biological evolution for example. More than three times as many Americans believe in the virgin birth of Jesus than in biological evolution, although few theologians take the former seriously, while no serious biologist rejects the latter!

Consider too that scientists don’t take surveys of the public to determine whether relativity or evolutionary theory are true; their truth is assured by the evidence as well as by resulting technologies—global positioning and flu vaccines work. With the wonders of science every day attesting to its truth, why do many prefer superstition and pseudo science? The simplest answer is that people believe what they want to, what they find comforting, not what the evidence supports: In general, people don’t want to know; they want to believe. This best summarizes why people tend to believe.

Why, then, do some highly educated people believe religious claims? 

First, smart persons are good at defending ideas that they originally believed for non-smart reasons. They want to believe something, say for emotional reasons, and they then become adept at defending those beliefs. No rational person would say there is more evidence for creation science than biological evolution, but the former satisfies some psychological need for many that the latter does not. How else to explain the hubris of the philosopher or theologian who knows little of biology or physics yet denies the findings of those sciences? It is arrogant of those with no scientific credentials and no experience in the field or laboratory, to reject the hard-earned knowledge of the science. Still they do it. (I knew a professional philosopher who doubted both evolution and climate science but believed he could prove that the Christian God must take a Trinitarian form! Surely something emotional had short-circuited his rational faculties.)

Second, the proclamations of educated believers are not always to be taken at face value. Many don’t believe religious claims but think them useful. They fear that in their absence others will lose a basis for hope, morality or meaning. These educated believers may believe that ordinary folks can’t handle the truth. They may feel it heartless to tell parents of a dying child that their little one doesn’t go to a better place. They may want to give bread to the masses, like Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor.

Our sophisticated believers may be manipulating, using religion as a mechanism of social control, as Gibbon noted long ago:

“The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world

were all considered by the people as equally true;

by the philosophers as equally false;

and by the magistrate as equally useful.” 

Consider the so-called religiosity of many contemporary politicians, whose actions belie the claim that they really believe the precepts of the religions to which they supposedly ascribe.

Individuals may also profess belief because it is socially unacceptable not to; they don’t want to be out of the mainstream or fear they will not be reelected or loved if they profess otherwise. So-called believers may not believe the truth of their claims; instead they may think that others are better off or more easily controlled if those others believe. Or perhaps they may just want to be socially accepted.

Third, when sophisticated thinkers claim to be religious, they often have something in mind unlike what the general populace believes. They may be process theologians who argue that god is not omnipotent, contains the world, and changes. They may identify god as an anti-entropic force pervading the universe leading it to higher levels of organization. They may be pantheists, panentheists, or death-of-god theologians. Yet these sophisticated varieties of religious belief bear little resemblance to popular religion. The masses would be astonished to discover how far such beliefs deviate from their theism.

Belief Declines with Knowledge or Higher IQs

But we shouldn’t be deceived. Although there are many educated religious believers, including some philosophers and scientists, religious belief declines with educational attainment, particularly with scientific education. Studies also show that religious belief declines among those with higher IQs. Hawking, Dennett and Dawkins are not outliers, and neither is Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.

Or consider this anecdotal evidence. Among the intelligentsia it is common and widespread to find individuals who lost childhood religious beliefs as their education in philosophy and the sciences advanced. By contrast, it is almost unheard of to find disbelievers in youth who came to belief as their education progressed. This asymmetry is significant; advancing education is detrimental to religious belief. This suggest another part of the explanation for religious belief—scientific illiteracy.

The Burden of Proof is on the Believer... Not the Unbeliever

[An Argument for Agnosticism]

If we combine reasonable explanations of the origin of religious beliefs and the small amount of belief among the intelligentsia with the problematic nature of beliefs in gods, souls, afterlives or supernatural phenomena generally, we can conclude that (supernatural) religious beliefs are probably false. And we should remember that the burden of proof is not on the disbeliever to demonstrate there are no gods, but on believers to demonstrate that there are. Believers are not justified in affirming their belief on the basis of another’s inability to conclusively refute them, any more than a believer in invisible elephants can command my assent on the basis of my not being able to “disprove” the existence of the aforementioned elephants. If the believer can’t provide evidence for a god’s existence, then I have no reason to believe in gods.

In response to the difficulties with providing reasons to believe in things unseen, combined with the various explanations of belief, you might turn to faith. It is easy to believe something without good reasons if you are determined to do so—like the queen in “Alice and Wonderland” who “sometimes … believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” But there are problems with this approach. First, if you defend such beliefs by claiming that you have a right to your opinion, however unsupported by evidence it might be, you are referring to a political or legal right, not an epistemic one. You may have a legal right to say whatever you want, but you have epistemic justification only if there are good reasons and evidence to support your claim. If someone makes a claim without concern for reasons and evidence, we should conclude that they simply don’t care about what’s true. We shouldn’t conclude that their beliefs are true because they are fervently held.

Another problem is that fideism—basing one’s beliefs exclusively on faith—makes belief arbitrary, leaving no way to distinguish one religious belief from another. Fideism allows no reason to favor your preferred beliefs or superstitions over others. If I must accept your beliefs without evidence, then you must accept mine, no matter what absurdity I believe in. But is belief without reason and evidence worthy of rational beings? Doesn’t it perpetuate the cycle of superstition and ignorance that has historically enslaved us? I agree with W.K. Clifford:

“It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone

to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

Why? Because your beliefs affect other people, and your false beliefs may harm them.

The counter to Clifford’s evidentialism has been captured by thinkers like Blaise Pascal, William James, and Miguel de Unamuno. Pascal’s famous dictum expresses: “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” William James claimed that reason can’t resolve all issues and so we are sometimes justified believing ideas that work for us. Unamuno searched for answers to existential questions, counseling us to abandon rationalism and embrace faith. Such proposals are probably the best the religious can muster, but if reason can’t resolve our questions then agnosticism, not faith, is required.

Besides, faith without reason doesn’t satisfy most of us, hence our willingness to seek reasons to believe. If those reasons are not convincing, if you conclude that religious beliefs are untrue, then religious answers to life’s questions are worthless. You might comfort yourself by believing that little green dogs in the sky care for you but this is just nonsense, as are any answers attached to such nonsense. Religion may help us in the way that whisky helps a drunk, but we don’t want to go through life drunk. If religious beliefs are just vulgar superstitions, then we are basing our lives on delusions. And who would want to do that?

An Argument for a Better Humanity

Why is all this important? Because human beings need their childhood to end; they need to face life with all its bleakness and beauty, its lust and its love, its war and its peace. They need to make the world better. No one else will.

John G. Messerly is the author of “The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical, Scientific, and Transhumanist Perspectives.” He blogs these issues daily at reasonandmeaning.com. You can follow him on Twitter @hume1955.

When Christian Beliefs Make for Unaffected Religious People

"Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are

often shaped and adjusted by our social goals."

- Jim Forest

Here's a painful reminder that Christian belief isn't necessarily translated into Christian action. More the rather, religious belief that is uncrucified to Jesus' reforms and actions will always sustain the religious heart wearing the mask of Christ and not the heart of Christ....

R.E. Slater

June 15, 2014

*ps. It would be similarly interesting to compare the civil actions of the 10 most non-Christian states in America. If this is done please notify this blog post for a follow up reference. Thanks.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Life in the Most Religious States

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-r-stone/life-in-the-most-religiou_b_5494776.html

by Geoffrey R. Stone

Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago

Posted: 06/14/2014 10:48 am EDT Updated: 06/14/2014 10:59 am EDT

I recently came across a list of the ten most religious states in America. They are, in order: Mississippi, Utah, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and Oklahoma.

One might assume that life in the most religious states in the nation would approximate the idealized "City upon a Hill" envisioned some four hundred years ago by John Winthrop, the Puritan colonist who served as first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

To check that assumption, I did some research:

Eight of these ten states joined the Confederacy and fought a bloody Civil War to defend the institution of slavery.

Nine of these ten states still had racially segregated schools at the time of the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

Five of these ten states are still among the worst states in the nation in terms of the continuing racial segregation of their public schools.

Eight of these ten states are among the eleven states in the nation with the highest rates of incarceration.

All of these ten states still have the death penalty.

Seven of these ten states are among the ten states in the nation with the highest percentage of their citizens living under the poverty level.

Six of these ten states are among the nine worst states in the nation in rates of obesity.

Nine of these ten states are among the twenty states in the nation with the highest rates of smoking.

Seven of these ten states rank in the bottom ten states in the nation in the overall health of citizens.

Nine of these ten states rank in the bottom thirteen states in the nation in life expectancy.

Seven of these ten states rank in the bottom ten states in the nation in the quality of healthcare.

Five of these ten states are the only states in the nation without a minimum wage law.

All ten of these ten states rank in the bottom sixteen states in the nation in minimum wage.

Nine of these ten states ranks in the bottom eighteen states in the nation in per pupil expenditures for public education.

Nine of these ten states rank in the bottom twenty states in the nation in the quality of high school education.

Nine of these ten states are among the twenty worst states in the nation in terms of gun deaths per capita.

Five of these ten states are among the ten states in the nation whose citizens watch the most online pornography.

I'm not quite sure what to make of all this. Perhaps it just means that people who live in states with bad values are more likely to turn to religion. But "City on a Hill"? Probably not what John Winthrop had in mind.

Oh, one other thing: The citizens of these ten states are fervently Republican. Eighty percent of their United States senators, for example, are members of the Republican Party, whereas only thirty-six percent of the senators from the other forty states are Republicans.