Let’s save the world… prove Jesus

I’ve been given a vision, it’s been sanctified and verified by god himself, I claimed his gift of faith, and i have faith that it is so.

If the New Testament of the bible is ‘on the money’ then people really need to know about it, and quickly. You might say that there are plenty of people out there trying but the fact is that they aren’t very good at it. They’ve had 2000 years to do it, and there are still a large majority not realising what happened in Judea. If it’s true that there actually is an afterlife… and unless we tell Jesus we accept his sacrifice we’re doomed to hell… then, well the race to save peoples souls should be on the news on a daily basis - we need a daily updated on the souls saved - maybe involved some sort of tracking technology. So why isn’t it?

I think, in my not so humble opinion that it’s the way  go about telling others… it’s almost like we want to keep it to themselves. We’re happy to leave it to the shouty street preachers… who just come across as deranged and deluded. Or to manipulative and cheesy Alpha Course types.

So how do we do it? We need to find a Unique Selling Point, we need to focus on the things that are common to all of the other non-true religions and leave them to one side. There are millions of decent moral, right thinking, loving people who conscientiously adhere to their factually inaccurate faith. Everyone who has a faith is really convinced that they commune with their respective god, and that he answers them and guides them and has a plan for them (to some degree). Amount and depth of faith isn’t impressive at all… lest we’d all be turning to militant Islam. But they are all of course being deluded by Satan, except for Christians. Simply using manipulative phrases like ‘Jesus loves you, why don’t you accept the free gift’ gets seen for what it is…the religious equivalent of ‘when did you stop beating your wife’.

We must remember that if the NT is a reliable message from god then we know that he loves and wants us all to know about the Jesus salvation narrative. The most wonderful gift he gave us, something no other faith has, is the historical events that happened in Israel 2000 years ago. Let’s not get caught up in the mumbo jumbo and benign brain washing of the worlds churches - lets stop all this obsession with ‘faith’ - we don’t need to rely on faith, we have facts, that’s what Jesus gave us. He didn’t need to, the resurrection could have been a meta-physical spiritual battle or could all have happened in the middle of the desert so we’d never know.

We need to be confident in that, we need to put it all on the table. We need to accept that a loving god wouldn’t make it difficult for us, if we approach the evidence with an open mind and with our logical and rational heads fully screwed on then he will bless that. Logic and rationality are gifts which he gave us, and he insists we use it lest we fall for the devils seductions. In order to prove the truth to the world we have to be open to the idea that the Jesus stories aren’t in fact real, and that the Jewish messiah could still return and ask why we fell for the devils trickery re: the Jesus church.

Let’s not peddle this self-defeating nonsense that Jesus doesn’t want to make it too obvious too us so we can have free will. This belittles our lord, and threatens to be a barrier to salvation as it makes people rightly suspicious. Jesus could have been a lot more subtle if he’d wanted to - maybe appearing for a moment in each of our dreams and giving us the salvation choice. Instead, if we’re to believe the NT he appeared to lots of people doing magical signs to convince them - sometimes 5000 in one go. Are we saying he respected these peoples free will less than ours?

God won’t punish you for applying your reason and rationality and assuming Jesus wasn’t who it’s reported he was… until you’ve assessed the evidence and decided he was (or wasn’t).

It’s like when you were a kid and your dad said… don’t get into a car with any strangers even if they say they that I sent them to pick you up… make sure you are 100% convinced they are who they say they are. I’d rather you rejected someone I might genuinely have sent for you, than get into the car with the wrong person, that’s the actions of a loving parent.

I’m not talking about getting a bishop with a doctorate in theology and an obvious agenda to write a book packed full of ultimately true, but logically very dodgy assumptions. This is the definition of preaching to the choir - this will be accepted with the same open minds that we read Dawkins! Maybe we should sponsor a panel of the worlds smartest and most qualified people, a cross section of the intelligentsia (perhaps those who are currently non-aligned to any religion but who have proven themselves open minded) and get them to carry out a thorough investigation and publish the results at the UN for all to see, where they can be challenged and assessed.

How could anyone object to that? Let’s make sure they report back before the rapture.

The Perfect Library

The Daily Telegraph has compiled a list of what it calls The Perfect Library

have a look and let me know how many you’ve read. My number is emabrrasingly, 3.

I’m not going to tell you which ones, so you might beleive that its The Illiad and The Odyssey, rather than Alan Clark Diaries.

Jebus: Martyr or Murderer?

‘Murderer’ is over egging an already well egged pudding - but it has a nice controversial rhythm to it. Anyway, let me tell you a story passed down to me for generations (say).

They say Jebus was born miraculously in a small town just north of Cardiff, a thousand years ago during the English occupation. He was a bit of a thinker and philosopher and when he came of age some people started to say he was ‘the one’, god’s messiah.

As he travelled into Cardiff one spring morning crowds gathered to greet him as their saviour, he didn’t do anything to correct their assertions so the rumours grew - as they did quite often in those times. He did a bit of a speaking tour talking about god and hinting that he was their long-awaited messiah, but then things started to go a bit sour.

There had been rumours of wondrous miraculous happenings, so a caravan of the sick and the needy started to follow him around. One day he was on the way to a wedding when some people stopped him and said… about 10 percent of our children die before they reach the age of 2… what can we do about it? But instead of telling them about water purification, antibiotics and general child heath care (which if he was god, he would have of course known) he said… sorry, I’m on the way to a wedding… but you’ll like this… while I’m there I’m gonna take some of that pure water which you need, and then I’m going to turn it in to wine, yazam! We is going to par-tay. The villagers used their god-given rationale and knew that this couldn’t be the actions of a loving god so they continued their messiah search.

It kept happening… one day on the way to a friend’s funeral… a group mothers came to him and said, our children have all died in the last month of an infection, dozens more are sick, they were innocent kids who we loved, if you are god can you be merciful and raise them from the dead? He said… hmmm , nah sorry… but tell you what how’s about I resurrect my mate Lazarus instead. The mothers where less than impressed, especially when he refused to give them any hints as to why infections spread in the first place (which he of course would have known).

The mothers decided that if someone had this kind of power, yet chose not to use it (apart from the odd party trick), and chose to let these innocent children die that it was tantamount to murder, or at least man slaughter, certainly not the actions of a loving god - so they continued their search for a messiah. Jebus wasn’t the one. There were later rumours of a personal resurrection, but he’s conveniently lifted himself up into the clouds to heaven… the mothers rolled their eyes with a chuckle and continued to worship Yahweh like they always had.

But maybe the problem was that their minds where too small to comprehend the wonder of why Jebus was actually god’s son, and if only they had opened their hearts a little more to Jebus they would have believed… as opposed to following the non-related Jesus of Nazareth who WAS of course, the one, as his actions and the evidence is a lot more compelling.
Happy Easter

The Algebraic god

To early man, the sun rises from its hollow in the ground, processes over his head before submerging into the earth in the other direction. The wind randomly gathers and calms to power his fishing boat to feed his children. Flowers and vegetables emerge magically from the soil every spring bringing with it nurturing life and sustenance. All tempered by the random terror of earthquakes, volcanoes and hurricanes.

Not only where there unknown unknowns like nuclear physics, but there were lots of known unknowns such as basic anatomy, circulation and respiratory as well as the ins and outs of animal and human reproduction - the miracle of life itself.

How did we as a species, summon the courage to even leave the cave never mind to survive and thrive? I read a book some years ago now, by the anthropologist Pascal Boyer - I don’t think it would be too much hyperbole to say that it was a turning point. It is called ‘Religion Explained’ and I read it to learn more about how ‘other’ religions emerged. The can of worms was probably open before I read it, but this book spilled them out all over the floor.

He riffs on the idea that ‘Blind Faith’ is a healthy and natural human phenomenon. It’s perfectly acceptable and desirable that before Galileo worked out how earth isn’t the centre of things, and in fact the earth rotates around the sun… that people had to just have faith that the sun would rise every day (some still did a morning dance just in case). They had no tools or knowledge to rationally determine how or why it would. They had to make some assumptions just to get on with the business of living. It’s completely helpful and normal to see it as a mystically defined ‘black box’ or even personify it as a deity.

The point is I suppose that this is blind faith, and it’s ok, and in fact helpful. The Greeks gave names to the black boxes (Aphrodite, Apollo, Thor, and Zeus). The problem surely comes when after a few generations people start to take these gods too literally, develop dogmas and then when a bright mind inquires how the stars fit in the sky - people call him a heretic for daring to deny the authority of Apollo.

Likewise Adam and Eve is a perfectly helpful algebraic black box until it causes people to
limit their investigations into the origins of man. The ‘universe instigator’ god is helpfully algebraic until it colours our investigations into universal origins.

Perhaps the unhelpful kind of faith is that which allows for acceptance of supernatural claims based on less than convincing evidence rather than the kind that helped Newton explain the natural world. It’s the kind of faith which a makes a suicide bomber believe that he communicates intimately with a loving Allah or for a Christian who lives his life in the light the resurrection and virgin birth of Jesus, not because he is necessarily convinced by the evidence but because he has faith in the dogma.

I don’t see this kind of faith as a virtue; it’s not blind faith, its blinding faith.

Grown ups, pff!

I’m reading a great book at the moment called They F*** You Up, It was recommended to me by a fine scholar and a gentleman of sorts. The basis is a well worn polemic of Nurture over Nature, but it’s very well written and revelatory. It is heavy on case studies from families and evidence of how much the way we treat and relate to our children effects what we become in later life. I’m reading it as a bit of advice on how to be a good parent myself, but I’m finding a lot of things about my own upbringing with rings strikingly true, uncomfortably at times.

The most obvious, yet the most striking thing is how children take on the values and beliefs of parents they respect.  In fact how we relate and teach our children can resonate down through generations. What a responsibility! Both my parents where god-fearing church goers and I ended up having their values and beliefs almost by default… my father in law turned veggie about 20 years ago, and his children who liked and respected him followed suit soon after. Believe-you-me (first time with that phrase) his daughter (and son) can argue passionately for that value.

But here’s the rub… I manged to negociate a default non-veggie ethic for my little boy, but it’s just hit me that he is going to at some stage decide to be veggie or not… probably depending on which parent he respects more,   oh dear, the competition begins!

Some nice pod casts

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/podcast.xml

Paste that into your iTunes postcast bit… the best one, i think, if the Stephen Fry/Hitchens one on blasphemy - interesting as always. The theos among you will like his references to CS Lewis. If only that tw*t Hitchens would shut up a bit, which he does, after someone in the crowd shouts at him .

I think Stephen Fry is great but i think, as i say, Hitchens is on of the most annoying arrogant people on earth. Even though i agree with the large part of what he says - which just shows that sometimes it about ‘how you say it’.

You can listen to the MP3 here.  The first ten mins and the last ten mins are the best.

It’s not exactly a ‘debate’ as both are in more or less in agreement. It reminds me somewhat of those Greenbelt ‘debates’ i used occasionaly attend (but in the other direction).

Blessed with faith

Last week I was walking down High Street minding my own business, when I was stopped by David Blaine and his ‘Street Magician’ camera crew (not really). He did his trick, the one he does on his TV show, he levitated before my very eyes. Like everyone I had the ‘whoa, that’s amazing’ reaction. Blaine walked on down the road, leaving in his wake his mesmerised audience.

I thought about it later in the day and for a moment thought - did he actually do that? Is he actually magic? Only for a moment though, because I know it’s impossible, and even though I’d seen it with my own eyes, I knew it was more than likely a trick, not a phenomenon. Not to say that impossible things don’t become possible, but Joe Normal tends to need a lot more evidence than one performance, under the circumstances of the performers choosing.

So, I don’t believe, or have faith that he really levitated, because it’s impossible according to the laws of physics. Yet I have friends and family who believe that a guy known as Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin, walked on water, raised people from the dead including himself. Why do they believe this? Because its written in an the Bible. In Gospels written decades after the reported events by guys who were trying, lets say for altruistic reasons, to get their religion up and running.

I recently met a lady on a couple of occasions, a friend of my wife’s, who literally believes EVERYTHING. You name it, she’s into it. Acupuncture, Reiki, homeopathy, astrology, cupping, Feng Shuiand that’s only the ones she mentioned in the 2-3 hours approximately I’ve been in her company. I’ve no doubt that she’d have no problem accepting the Jesus miracles as a positive probability. However, most people I think are open minded but heavily sceptical about miracles and physics defying events unless they are proven beyond reasonable doubt. For me, it’s really the only way to get on with your life - we can’t assume every claim of magic to be probably correct - the world would completely unpredictable - I wouldn’t want to get out of bed never mind get on a plane, in case aerodynamics suddenly changed its nature.

So why do intelligent people believe the Jesus stories? Let’s make no bones about it, smarter and more thought intensive people than me have decided in their heads that Jesus walked on water, turned water to wine and in some cases they believe that he guides them in their day to day life! (though obviously Gabriel only appeared to Mary, not Mohammad - THAT would be ridiculous). The answer is faith. I think it’s the same with most religions, but in my culture, Christianity is the major force, and a lot of my family and friends would describe themselves as having a faith in the god of the bible. I have recently had some interesting debates with them, and when it comes down to it, they don’t usually focus their argument on trying to convince me that the bible is reliable when it talks of physics-defying events, they say its at this point in your journey you need faith, and faith is the key.  An intellectual discussion usually turns into a theological discussion, and sometimes I get the feeling they are dancing and gloating in the space between that which we know and that which we don’t yet know. It goes… we don’t know everything, therefore anything is possible, therefore my position is intellectually sound - all i need is to declare my faith!! As soon as they proclaim that it comes down to faith, they admit that they can’t convince me that its true with evidence based enquiry alone - I need faith. In fact if it could be shown to me in an convincing manor, then it would no longer BE a faith.

The problem is I don’t have faith. I could pretend that I do, I could try to talk myself into it, but deep down I don’t have faith and I can’t help it. You can’t make a decision to have faith, I can’t decide in my head that I believe that David Blaine levitated in front of me - even though THAT happened before my eyes! So how can I believe the heavily processed story of a man 2000 years ago who apparently did some physics defying stuff. You can talk someone into believing facts through evidence based inquiry but whether I’m Joe Bloggs or Pope Benedict, faith is something you have or you don’t.

Debating the probabilities and possibilities of various iconic events and the evidence thereof, is destined to lead nowhere. Because depending on what religion you’re talking to, your faith has to be different. It’s not ok when talking to a Christian to say you have faith that you will be re-incarnated when you die, or to a Muslim that you have faith that Jesus was the son of god. To be a Christian you have to have been blessed with the ‘Christian’ faith - I wonder how many little children in Surrey wake up one morning and say mummy, I’ve just been given the faith to believe that Mohammad was a prophet of god.

So either you’re A) lucky and were brought up as a Christian and pretty much taught the bible as fact, so the need for faith is minimal, or you are B) someone who believes absolutely every extra-physical hoodoo, without extended inquiry, or C) god decides to bless you with faith in later life.

This is a dilemma, because it’s not my fault that I don’t have faith. If you believe in the god of the bible then the only outworking of this is that some are blessed with faith, faith is god given. If it is something that some are given and some aren’t then why do Christians try to convert people and tell them the ‘good news’, they might have some success with the lady I know who believes everything from astrology to Reiki, and obviously a child will believe pretty much everything a trusted adult tells them, but as for the likes of me, according to John 3:16 I’m doomed to a fiery eternity because I don’t have faith, which is a smidge unfair I think.

There are of course valid attempts to explain the quandry, but the logic seems quite circular - usualy about ‘letting god do the work’… but there’s a big assumption which has been breezed past - which is of course his/it’s ultimate existance and involvement. Most times when i hear people stuggling with these questions - i fear they have missed the elephant in the room, that it might just all be in their heads.

The comfort and alure of the subculture

All I’ve got so far is a title…  I’m awaiting inspiration

Premise: Most times it seems people are more comfortable being in a majority, group experiments have shown (as in, I saw it on a documentary once!) that people will say they the most ridiculous things which they know to be untrue, just because everyone else in the group says it. Other times though people seem to strive to be considered ‘different’. I think its rare that people strive to be in a minority of one, but as far as music, culture and society go the smaller the subculture the better, and when a music group or cultural totam becomes too popular and ‘mainstream’ people abandon it for this very reason (although they rarely admit it). Why?

9/11 is over

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN is one of my favourite commentators. His book, The world is flat, is probably my favorite book of the last few years.   Not exactly laugh a minute, but I’m a bit of a politics/tech/economics/future geek

check out this article in the New York Times.

Link To Article

John Humphrys on Billy Graham

Browsing in Waterstone’s yesterday, I read an excerpt from the new John Humphrys’ book. It made me laugh as it’s a situation I recognise all too well. (honestly, its not just because having links to such things, ups a blog’s hit count!)

(on attempted conversions)
A friend took me to “HTB” otherwise known as Holy Trinity Brompton, a rich church in the most fashionable area of London. This is were the phenomenally successful ‘Alpha Courses’ were born. It’s the sort of church you may be invited to ‘give God a clap’. I hated it.

Another friend asked me to attend a Billy Graham meeting in Earl’s court with her. Before we left she told me God helped her in everything she does. Only the other day he had helped her find a screwdriver just when she needed one. I told her the joke about the Irish catholic, desperate to find a parking place before a vitally important meeting , who promised God that if he helped out he’d give up smoking, drinking and fornication. Miraculously a place appeared. The Irish man looked up to head and said, ‘Never mind, I’ve found one.’ My friend was not amused.

On the way to Earl’s Court her car broke down. I suggested lightly it must mean God didn’t want me to go. No, she said darkly, it’s the Devil. She meant too.

At the meeting there were endless quotations from the Bible to prove whatever point he was making. This always puzzles me: if a preacher is using the Bible to convert someone, to prove that God exists, then surely he must first prove the Bible is the truth and not just a collection of writings that contradict each other and were written long after the events they purports to describe. If, on the other hand, he assumed we accept the truth of the Bible, why is he trying to convert us?

John Humphrys, In God we doubt

Update: My mrs must have read the post, and bought me the hardback! To be fair to JH, its a decent read - a lot less polemic than others in the genre… in fact its not even in the religion bashing genre… he has as much ire for the Dawkins of this world as the religious whack-jobs.  He’s the master interviewer, and he brings it to bear on the leaders of the three main churches… and they don’t back away. 

Who’s this Shakespeare bloke?

I’ve said before, that my guilty pleasure is watching a bit of Big Brother now and again - not so much the actual show, but the analysis show on a Sunday. It’s a high grade social experiment - mixed with low-brow entertainment. Perfect. I know this is going to sound like ‘kids today! Huh! weren’t like that in my day etc’  but anyway, the favourite to win the show, Brian, was having a discussion the other housemates and he said ‘Who’s Shakespeare? Is he on telly?‘.

At first people thought he was joking, but no, he’s 21 year old, and never heard of Shakespeare. He even seemed stunned that everyone else had.

Really! How can someone go through school, live in this country and have actually never even heard the word Shakespeare? That’s not even a rhetorical question… I can’t fathom how it’s actually possible.

British MPs are spending the summer considering god

A survey by BBC News found today that the most popular summer read for British law makers, is Dawkins’ “God Delusion”. It was the most popular among labour MPs, and second among Liberal Democrats – the Tories seem to be sticking successfully to the party line, and reading their colleague William Hague’s  bio of Wilberforce.

The oath sworn by every MP after every election reads ‘I…..swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth…’.      We live in interesting times.

 

Given that third on the list is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, maybe we shouldn’t read too much into it

Do I offend?

Do I offend? I was saying that phrase over and over in my head… because it’s from some movie… and I couldn’t work out what it was… Google didn’t even help. Then suddenly I remembered. Pretty in Pink ‘Duckie’ says it to the Molly Ringwald character, ONCE! It’s bizarre that I remember that. My sister loved this movie and watched the video about 500 times, so it must have osmosis’d into my head. Anyway, this post was attempting to be about something a little more controversial and important, asking the question (as is my want) about the nature of offence.

My parents used to have a little cardboard flyer sitting on top of the TV that said ‘Seen any good (or offensive) TV lately, why don’t you give them a call and tell them’ it then had the phone numbers of the TV stations.

It’s a well worn chestnut (if that’s not mixing the metaphor) that with out freedom to offend, there is no freedom of speech. If you try to curtail someone’s right to say something that annoys or insults you, your culture or beliefs, then the end result is that your own freedom to say what you like gets curtailed.

Why on earth should my mum and dad think it’s a good idea to phone up a TV station to complain that they were offended, why on earth should the TV station care? (you might say they care because they care about keeping viewers, but should that really cause them to censor!?) And surely if my parents took a step back they would see that it’s a good sign that the media has no qualms about offending them if they think it serves some artistic, entertainment or satiristic goal. When David Icke went on the Wogan should to show us all that he’s a nut job, no one said… hey, hang on, lets be sensitive here, someone’s beliefs are their own business, lets not ridicule.

I’m talking early/mid 80s here, but there’s a direct link to controversies like Jerry Springer the Opera, and the Shik protests against the play in Birmingham last year (Behzti). The idea that a piece of art or satire should be censored because a group of people are offended is ludicrous! They are free to not attend the play or change the TV channel. The very idea of blasphemy, i find dangerous, its one thing curtailing peoples rights to incite hate or violence but its something of a different order to take away the right of people to make fun of my beliefs.

Things I’ve lied about to impress people…

I had a job interview the other day, and while my CV is as pure as the driven snow, it did get me to thinking about the line between lies and exaggeration.

Books I’ve pretended that I’ve read (or at least nodded along to give the impression I’ve read)

• The art of war - Tzu Sun
• The long walk to freedom - Nelson Mandela (I have actually read the first few chapters - he may be a great man and what have you, but a few gags here and there wouldn’t hurt!)
• Anything by Nietzsche - I actually have ‘The Gay Science’ on my bed side table (to impress my mrs) but honest truth, if it was written in the native German I’d probably understand it as much
• Harry Potter. Said I’d read it, so I could say it was sh1t, just to annoy someone who was going on about it (that’s the kind of nice person I am)
• The Bible - I probably ‘know’ most of it, and can quote passages … but when people say why don’t you just go and read the Bible, its easier to say … I have!, now have you read Nietzsche!?!
• The time traveller’s wife - Niffenegger. My Mrs has read it and loved it, and talked about it a lot (one summer)… so when some one was chatting to me about it, I said I’d read it… just to keep the conversation afloat.

 

False experiences and jobs that I’ve claimed

There was once a time, when I was young, free, unemployed and unemployable. So, when one is sipping brandy in a local establishment its important to have a good cover story when a pretty young lady asks so what do you do then?

My mate SG was always of a similar employment ilk, so would make up some crackers too.

These were all said with complete straight face and were largely believed. I have a stammer, so when it seems to be a bit of effort to say something, people (girls) tended to think… well he wouldn’t go to all that effort just for a poor gag, it must be true

• I’m just taking time out to reflect on the next step of my journey.
• I inherited some money, so haven’t had to work, but that’s almost run out, so it might be time to travel soon (a nod to the idea that I owned a yacht to do this)
• I’m a painter, mostly abstract stuff.
• I’m a song writer, I’m taking the summer ‘out’ to work on my music (much used, given than there was a grain of deluded truth)
• I’m not really ‘into’ work im more of a thinker
• (Sometimes I would venture the truth) I’m trying to find myself another ‘Mickey Mouse’ uni course to do, to get me out of having to work for another year.

Anyone else got anything? simalar