A Few Thoughts on Religions and on Belief Systems
Posted by Gail the Actuary on March 29, 2009 - 9:55am
Topic: Sociology/Psychology
Tags: belief systems, religion [list all tags]
I am not an expert on Religions or on Belief Systems, but I am often struck by a couple of things:
1. How much the various secular belief systems have in common with religious belief systems.
2. How important aspects other than beliefs are to the systems.
Examples of Belief Systems
It seems like we encounter quite a number of secular belief systems, such as:
1. The Oil Drum, and our message
2. Contemporary economic theory (several different flavors)
3. He who dies with the most toys wins.
4. Beautiful bodies are everything.
5. Technology will solve all problems.
6. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
7. Beliefs of a political party.
8. Permaculture can save the world.
Role of a god
I have been taught that a god is anything that one attaches supreme importance to. Money can be a god. In fact, in "contemporary economic theory" and in "he who dies with the most toys wins," money becomes a god. In "technology will solve all problems," science becomes a god. In "beautiful bodies are everything," perfect bodies become a god.
I don't think that a belief system necessarily has to have a god, although it will have some articles of faith. On The Oil Drum, it is an article of faith that geological limits are of supreme importance in determining the future flow of oil. When someone (like me) suggests that this may be trumped by the indirect influence of the financial system, this is viewed as a form of heresy by some.
Anthropogenic global warming has as its central belief, the belief that man caused recent changes in climate. There are different flavors of this belief system, depending on whether one believes that one can change the course of events, and if so, what needs to be done.
Writings or stories underlying the belief system.
The Oil Drum has its series of posts. There are also related writings by people at the various ASPO organizations, and by people like Matt Simmons.
Not all of these writings would be viewed as being equally true by Oil Drum readers; some are even contradictory. The Oil Drum belief system is constantly being refined and added to.
Each of the other belief systems, as well as the religions, has its own set of stories or writings, generally by several authors. Not all are viewed equally true or important. In the "He who dies with the most toys wins" belief system, additional chapters are added each week in slick magazines advertising the things that a person must have to impress others. With enough repetition, those who adhere to a belief system consider the belief system's major points to be true and important.
Filter for viewing what happens in the world
The world is a mysterious place. Since ancient times, people have been putting together stories to try to explain their understanding of how the world operates and what it truly important. In many ways, each of these (and other) belief systems provides a way of viewing the world and determining what is truly important to our existence. To some extent, these belief systems also provide a view as to what future outcome is likely. This outcome may vary depending on what actions we take (reduce carbon dioxide emissions; increase fuel efficiency; initiate free trade; fund enough scientific research; perform the right rituals).
The belief systems also provide sayings and understandings that filter how we view the world. "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want," can be viewed in many ways. It can be taken to mean that there is a God who will stop AGW and will stop any problem with oil supply (as well as any other problem). I personally don't consider this be a valid interpretation, since clearly the world is full of problems, and so far, no being has intervened to stop them, even for the very religious. The Lord is my shepherd statement can also be taken as a way of viewing the world: there is no need for concern about tomorrow, because we each have the resources we need to face the challenges ahead. We need not waste our energy on worry.
View of how we treat others
Religions probably excel in this area, with lots of sayings like, "Love your neighbor as yourself," "Honor your father and mother," and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Modern economic theory gives another view of how we treat each other. Whatever provides the most profits is "best." If this can be done by reducing the wages of workers, so be it.
Even at The Oil Drum, we have both a written and an unwritten code of how we treat each other. There is a precedent for civil discussions, and everyone knows that Leanan (or someone else) will delete their posts, if they start behaving in too abusive a manner.
Circle of friendships
Each group has its own organizations, where one gets together with other like-minded people. If one is concerned about AGW, one can joint the local Sierra Club, and work together with like-mined individuals. If one believes a beautiful body is all important, there are gyms and health food stores that one can become associated with.
In a business community, one is likely to encounter a huge number of people believing contemporary economic theory. If a person raises doubts about its truth, one risks ostracism from the group.
The Oil Drum has its own online circle of friendships. Staff members particularly communicate frequently with each other. We also have quite a number of regular commenters, whom all of us look forward to hearing from.
It is this circle of friendships that is part of the reason that adopting new belief systems is difficult. If all of our friends believe one way, it is difficult to change our belief system.
Reconciling different belief systems
Each of us is likely to end up adopting at least some parts of different belief systems. Sometimes there are conflicts--what is important to one, is not necessarily as important to another. The friendship groups may be different. The way of acting may be different.
Probably the first step in reconciling belief systems is stopping to realize that there are a multitude of different belief systems "out there". One could quite easily come to the belief that He who dies with the most toys wins is such a statement of truth, that one need not even question it. It isn't a religion, is it? So what is there to question?
At the same time, it is easy to disregard religions, because they seem to be carry-overs from a pre-scientific era. We all know the world most likely wasn't created in seven days, and that "be fruitful and multiply" doesn't make sense is a day of modern medical treatment and overpopulation. But the unlimited growth preached by economists doesn't make any more sense, and it was developed much more recently.
Each of us needs to make his or her own choices regarding belief systems and religions. I am probably one of the few religious folks on The Oil Drum staff--not necessarily because I believe that the church's teachings are "true" in a scientific sense. I come from the liberal end of religious belief--the Bible (and religious books of other religions) have worthwhile things we can learn, especially with respect to how we treat others and how we view the world. The collection of writings is not literally true. It is more a collection of stories that have been passed down through the ages, that we can learn from.
In the next few years, it is likely that some form of relocalization will be needed. In the USA, churches may be good centers for this type of activity, because many people are already members of a church, and have many friends there. (In Europe, I would expect the situation to be different.) This reason, apart from any other, might be a reason why some Oil Drum members might want to join a church (or other local religious group), even if a person doesn't agree with all of the beliefs. I personally would have difficulty with the more conservative religious groups, because I would have difficulty with many of their teachings. But even these groups have value for their members, providing a network of friendships and shared values.
8. Permaculture can save the world.
One belief has the richness of the Amazon the result of humans practicing permaculture.
(Alas, I could not find a link to this belief system)
In the USA, churches may be good centers for this type of activity
History had The Masons as a group to join. The standard US State system excludes females/atheists. The French system has been known to allow such.
I wanted to hijack your comment to add a reference to a study done at Emory that a reader sent me.
Emory Study Lights Up the Political Brain
The staunch representives of both parties seem to want the other party to fail at something big, no matter the damage.
Gail,
The folks at Integral life did two videos which try to explain the prevalent belief systems in American life, which they characterize as
Traditional Conservatives, Modern Conservatives, Modern Liberals, and Post-Modern Liberals, as well as three dimensions of politics: Externalist vs. Internalist, Individualistic vs. Collectivistic, and Progressive vs. Conservative.
http://integrallife.com/files/articulate/A%20Tale%20of%20Four%20Americas...
Their second video is analyzes how McCain and Obama sought to "light up" voters' political circuits by appealing to these belief systems in their respective acceptance speeches:
http://integrallife.com/files/articulate/Barack%20and%20McCain-Seeing%20...
Some sad sci-fi fans like me might add.
9) Battlestar Galactica
The entire new series was pretty much about "Thoughts on Religions and on Belief Systems"
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/note6192.doc.htm
Battlestar Galactica at the United Nations (short video clip)
Jump Complete. FTL offline.
I find this post interesting as my Wife and Daughter head off to church. My Wife asked me this morning, "so why is it that you don't go?" I had to state that I wasn't interested in being part of a system where the core fundamental principle is belief in the teachings of a guy who I don't think was actually anything special. All that aside I'm thinking I might give it a try. The value of the social network might be worth it. I behave ethically, I don't need any all-powerful threats to do so but I'm thinking my boys might benefit from a few more examples as well. I like the idea of the post, it seems well considered.
If one believes that the purpose of life is to serve others, nothing can take it away--not even peak oil or AGW. If the purpose of life is accumulating more toys, peak oil is a real threat. It can change a person's outlook on life.
Interesting --- needless to say, there is so much you can do and so much you can go about against the mad crowd. Jesus was nailed on the cross for some reason.
New Orleans post Katrina showed us of what to come. People will form groups to "maximize" their chance of survival. It's probably better to start thinking of forming some group now instead of when TSHTF -- like someone mentioned of start going to church to begin this threading process.
"If one believes that the purpose of life is to serve others, nothing can take it away--not even peak oil or AGW. If the purpose of life is accumulating more toys, peak oil is a real threat."
Wow, Gail; that's beautiful. I've added it to the collection from which a random signature goes on the end of my email.
Would you like to come live on our island?
Whether or not he was special should not influence whether or not any of his alleged teachings have any value. (This is a distinction based on the idea of separating the sin from the sinner, or the author from the words.)
If you take a look at the Sermon on the Mount, for example, it may have some useful ideas, like Blessed are the Peacemakers (or mediators).
Having said that, I must say that I am one of those who thinks that it is highly likely that there was no such creature, that Jesus Christ is the evolutionary result of an imaginary god called Hesu Krishna invented by Constantine. (Look at religious history to see how distorted are our current belief system origins and claims.) I also find the Sermon on the Mount to be a confused mishmash of a number of entirely different belief systems, theistic and pagan, that were extant around the time it was compiled (300AD or so?).
Hi Nate,
I'd like to relate a story to you. My father was an abused child, who would have been killed by his stepfather, had he not been saved by Dorothea, his high school English teacher. She recognized a child in distress and he lived with her until he graduated from Stanford. She also rescued may other creatures both men and beasts. The men included Derry who became the editor of Stanford’s Mark Twain collection; Ted who helped design project Mercury’s heat shield; Morey, whose hard-scramble parents thought school was for suckers, but when to college because of her and became one of the principal designers of modern satellite communications, Chief engineer for Voice of America, and later Director of Whitehouse Communications; and my father, who went into television.
Raised by Dorothea with a strong sense of moral and social duty, he felt that broadcasting was a privilege, and that TV stations had an obligation to help the less fortunate. As a result, he hired the first woman newscaster (KPIX), read the first on-air editorial and asked for public response, hired the first black TV anchor man and woman in the nation (WTOP, DC.), pioneered children’s educational shows, and produced the first TV documentary on urban blight and decay. One night, while returning from a TV conference, he found himself sitting next to the producer of "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau", who was under enormous pressure to cut it because its ratings were below expectations. He spent the entire flight lobbying him to keep it, because it was a moral responsibility. Fortunately, the producer decided to keep the show, which became a springboard for the Cousteau Society and a large portion of the environmental movement.
The reason I mention all of this is because Dorothea referred to herself as a Christina woman, and went to church every Sunday. I don't recall her every telling a story or a quote from the Bible, she certainly lived the best parts of it. She said it gave her guidance and the strength to do what was right. Sometimes the stars align so that good things happen, and Dorothea was one of these.
Mark Anthony’s eulogy for Julius Caesar is often quoted as representative of today’s society, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”. I disagree. Disasters and violence grab our attention because they are dramatic, but they are not what lasts. Every day I see Dorothea’s influence on the world, and so to for the thousands of other men and women like her whose kindness and dedication is reflected in the good deeds we do to help each other and why society and civility, against all odds, perseveres.
Thank you Pragmatic, that was lovely. We may not, as a species, be able to creatively address the global predicaments that confront us, but we can, as individuals, make a difference in each other's lives.
Hi Pragmatic,
Yes, thank you for sharing this. Has anyone written up this account? (It sounds a little bit familiar.)
It also reminds me I want to try to get in touch with a woman I met a year ago at a social gathering. People were talking about "what they did", and she said something along the lines of "I had one son, and then I raised 7 boys." (i.e, not her own.) Somebody asked her why, and she said "Because they needed raising."
I've often wondered how amazing it is that there can be such a wide range of people in the world. What I'm thinking of...is people I've met who are like Dorothea. I mean, just so compassionate and giving. And, doing this in situations where no one would ever know, for example, taking care of an elderly person in a nursing home or something. Just in situations where no one sees, and pretty much no one cares.
And then, there are people who live so much the opposite kind of lives, and probably themselves don't know that the other kind even exists.
People are not good because they are religious, but good people often turn to religion because it gives expression to their ideals, and enables them to contact other good people
From a more pragmatic point of view, a society where people are accustomed to help each other is a stronger society than one where everyone is out for themselves and the devil take the hindmost. This is shown up in natural disasters; very few people died in Cuba because of the hurricanes that have battered the country in recent years, but we can see the results of a selfish society in Katrina in our country, and the disasters in Haiti. Unfortunately in our society, what is good for society (cooperation) is often not rewarded as much as selfishness is. IMO, this is the result of our system of ruthless capitalist competition.
From the same religion came the Inquisition, justification for slavery, religious wars of all sorts etc. Dorothea internalized the best of Christianity, just as some internalize the best of the Muslim faith or Buddhism, or Communist philosophy. When I stopped being a Christian I did not change any value of behavior towards other people. Why there are Dorthea's and also Hitler's in the world is not explained by religion as both the good and the evil can be found within or without religion. It was the good in Dorthea that let her select the good in the Bible and it was the evil in the hearts of the slave owners that let them select the biblical justification for slavery.
Hi Oxidatedgem,
Excellent observations and I completely agree. When John Dean (Nixon's lawyer who told congress what had happened in the Watergate scandal) was attacked and vilified by the up and coming Neocon's, he was confused. Like Jason Bourne in the movie series, he had fallen off of the map, and was not involved in politics or anything that could be perceived as threatening. In determining why he had been singled out by them, he discovered a branch of psychology that deals with authoritarian personalities.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality
He found that the Neocon’s had many of the characteristics of Super Authoritarians and social dominators. This group uses words like “Predator” to describe themselves and “weak, pathetic” to describe those they dominate. While they tend to be conservative, they can be leftist too (Stalin, Mao, Ceauşescu), and uses any philosophy they can to control others. While religion is one of the primary ones, various political and social ones are used as well. A reformed Super Authoritarian once told me that in her prime, if she was not in charge, someone was going to get hurt. She also said she was as sensitive to the slightest perceived loss in power as any of us would be to being unable to breath.
This cycles back to Gail’s central theme, which is the balance between our guiding beliefs (theories) and principals. We must persevere in our beliefs (peak oil, resource limitations, global warming, achieving sustainability, etc.) to achieve results. However if perseverance becomes dogmatism, and our theories become unassailable internal realities, then we will eventually be wrong. However, if our principals are to continually reevaluate our beliefs against external realities, then what we believe will (more closely) reflect the real world.
You do realize that historically the greatest reason for the end of slavery was Christianity? Men like Wilberforce, Gordon and Livingstone to name just a few struggled and frequently died to outlaw slavery. Slavery in historic times was practiced by all societies (including athiest societies such as under Hitler and Stalin).
BTW the typical Western view of slavery was the African slave trade of the 15th to 20th centuries but this involved Christians taking slaves in fewer than 5% of the total. The main 2 groups taking slaves were tribalists (inter tribal wars and local chiefs selling off excess stock) and Arab slave raiders. Whoever was involved (Christian, Muslim, animist, athiest) the trade was abhorrent; the example I always think of was 2 men in upper Egypt in the 1840's who worked for Mohammed Ali, in just a few years their work involved crushing the nuts of 40,000 freshly taken Sudanese men by banging 2 rocks together.
The Bible doesn't speak out against slavery. Paul even exhorts slaves to be obedient to their masters. People of good heart who were Christian helped stop slavery. They had to infer from the life of Jesus that slavery was wrong as the Bible was not guide here and was easily put to use to endorse slavery, apartheid, genocide of American Indians etc etc etc.
"Passages from the Christian Scriptures which Sanction Slavery.
Neither Jesus nor St. Paul, nor any other Biblical figure is recorded as saying anything in opposition to the institution of slavery. Slavery was very much a part of life in Palestine and in the rest of the Roman Empire during New Testament times. Quoting Rabbi M.J. Raphall, circa 1861, "Receiving slavery as one of the conditions of society, the New Testament nowhere interferes with or contradicts the slave code of Moses; it even preserves a letter [to Philemon] written by one of the most eminent Christian teachers [St. Paul] to a slave owner on sending back to him his runaway slave." 1"
http://www.religioustolerance.org/sla_bibl2.htm
Their is a hospital for the mentally ill in Raleigh, NC. Its named Dorothea Dix. Or once was some time back when I lived there.
Any connection?
Airdale
Not that I am aware of. Her last name was Kauffman, and she grew up in the hill surrounding San Francisco.
The Unitarian Universalists get to claim Dorothea Dix, the pathbreaker in establishing the beginning of American mental health hospital/treatment programs.
Ahhh...I often wondered. It was as I recall rather well thought of at the time.
Thanks for that info.
Airdale
Such a huge and interesting topic, and one I'm involved with, sometimes to the point of obsession.
I've striven to avoid "beliefs" altogether. By "belief" I mean "to hold something to be the case in spite of or even in the absence of any evidence." When the evidence warrants accepting something as true, "belief" is no longer a requirement.
For example, I don't "believe" in evolution: but I do hold it to be the case. The evidence arrived to me via several years of college courses in biology and geology.
I also don't "believe" in peak oil, but a course I took in '81 called "Geology and Human Affairs" showed me early on what to expect. Then there was another professor whose courses I took, Craig Bond Hatfield, whose early writings on the subject convinced me that the evidence was pretty clear--oil supply problems will arrive sometime in the early twenty-first century.
I've held and outgrown many beliefs in life, starting with church dogmas.
As an adult, I've been disillusioned by, in succession, psychoanalysis/psychotherapy; AA/AlAnon substance abuse "treatments"; and the spurious claims of "organic" farming. Some good places to get a handle on what are beliefs and what are valid, scientifically-sound phenomena are the skeptics' sites, such as The Skeptic's Dictionary, Bad Science, and No Beliefs. (Unfortunately, the editor at the latter site is completely inured to peak oil arguments, holding that "because no one knows how much oil is in the earth's crust, peak oil is therefore a myth," or words to that effect.)
It's funny how we think we know something to be the case, without having looked at the evidence. I used to know that talk therapy cured mental "problems"; that cultish "anon" groups "work" as "cures" for substance abuse problems; and that "organically-grown" food is "safer, and more nutritious" than foods grown conventionally. Each disillusionment is painful to acknowledge--especially when one wastes a considerable amount of time indulging such beliefs.
In each case, it came down to "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" I've seen people spend years in therapy, only to be misdiagnosed and later go on to taking medications--and they STILL attribute improvement to therapists! I have a brother who has been in and out of substance abuse programs--that is, AA--for fifteen years now, only to see him continue drinking and crashing cars--and going right back to AA. I've seen two generations of my family having grown up eating ONLY conventionally grown food with no adverse effects--indeed, my nieces and nephews, fed only "unsafe, nutrition-lacking" factory-farm food, are some of the best athletes you'd ever want to meet.
The bible issue is one that I'm pretty wrapped up in. Nothing has been more fascinating and liberating than looking at the history of the composition of biblical documents. Everyone "knows" Moses wrote the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, etc.). But it turns out these early books contain the evidence themselves needed to overturn the belief in Mosaic authorship. Just read Genesis chapters one through three, and you encounter two separate creations stories, in two different styles, from two separate traditions, centuries apart.
Everyone "knows" eyewitnesses wrote the Gospels. Yet by reading them "horizontally"--that is, reading them scene-by-scene, from gospel to gospel--one discovers that "Mark" is the original document, written by an unknown scribe, and the gospels of Matthew and Luke, also anonymous, are revised, expanded and corrected version of Mark's text. Today, we'd call this "plagiarism," but in the ancient world this is the way things were done.
Not only have the stories "been passed down through the ages," but they have EVOLVED. The bible evolved through a succession of scribes.
Now, that's one "belief" I can dig--Universal Darwinism.
Mike, a really great post. Thanks.
Another quality most religious people have, and especially liberal religious people, is tha ability to believe two contridictory things at once. Things like; the Bible contains a lot of nonsense but can and should be a guide for our lives. Or things like; the Bible is true and evolution is also true. Our humble minds simply cannot understand these apparent contridictions between science and the Bible. Those who believe the latter are a little less liberal than those who believe the former. ;-)
Ron P.
I would have agreed with both of you at one time. IMHO, you both, along with Bill Maher, totally miss the point on this one. Religion is a tool (no different than a hammer or a gun) to improve your life. If it doesn't then it is of no use, however, if it does, no matter how absurd the belief system would appear on the surface, it is of great value. The bottom line is getting what you want, not pointing out the obvious logical flaws in all these religions IMO. If you were a lousy car salesman and some sales trainer said chant "I am King Kong" ten times every morning and it will make more sales for you IMO both you guys would start arguing "but you don't understand, I am NOT King Kong" rather than just spend the lousy 10 seconds and see if it puts any money in your pocket.
One could assert that individuals in various different religions making themselves feel good does not correlate to society making appropriate choices and individuals exhibiting appropriate behaviors to support the long-tern sustainability of the human species and the environment in which it lives. In my opinion, organized religion has not thus far not promoted the long-term sustainability of humanity. Individuals can sleep soundly at night secure in the comfy blankets of their personal 'Matrix' but that does not change objective reality.
Brian, I would have agreed with you at one time. went down the same path. Raised catholic, I eventually discovered evolutionary biology/anthropology etc. and that caused me to be repelled by the dogma and ignorance of modern religions. But then I went a step beyond and realized that religion DOES improve peoples lives. It allows them to think about the future, via better social relationships and lower discount rates, among other things. So I became much less antagonistic towards religion and recognized its power/worth - which is where you are. However, if everyone says 'I am King Kong' 10 times each morning, and is happier for it, we are still faced with natural resource and human demand drive constraints. Strong reciprocity locally and regionally is going to be a big deal - but a 'don't worry - be happy' -rapture meme would be a barrier to change. Unless the religious message (as EO Wilson is attempting to do), is melded into an ecological systems worldview, religion as is, will help many but hurt all.
True, individual "success" does not equate to societal success, but IMO when discussing resource limitations the reality of inter-society competition cannot be downplayed. Again IMO the USA is very different culturally from Japan or Sweden or France and when things get really tough individuals and various groups will to a certain extent be competing with each other to advance-the common good isn't valued very highly in the USA and again IMO won't be valued hardly at all in the future USA so individuals are going to be looking for every possible edge or competitive advantage over fellow Americans.
This may be the most substantial understatement of the day.
I agree with Bryant. So many people selflessly spent their entire weekend, working free of charge, at the Seattle Green Festival. For every "greenwashed" product, in counterpart there was a real, tangible sense of community, sharing, and activism.
And very different this year was a sense of urgency :-) At the risk of sounding New Age-ish, lots of waves building and cresting out there in the collective consciousness....
From PZ on religion:
that is really a great quote - who is PZ?
Nate:
PZ
When Ben Stein's movie Expelled had the private screenings a web site where you could sign up for the showing leaked and PZ signed up there, and for some guest tickets also. When he was standing in line for the showing guards came and escorted him away. A guest of his wasn't recognized (PZ only had to use his name when signing up) and was permitted to enter. His guest was Richard Dawkins.
I signed up myself for a screening near me and got the confirmation e-mail, later I got a notice that it was cancelled. I later saw in the local news some reporters interviewing people coming out of the showing for which I was sent a notice that it was cancelled.
This quote is annoying and condescending. I am a successful scientist who is also religious (and who, by the way, believes in and studies evolution as his research subject). I don't think I'm at any disadvantage as a scientist due to the fact that I hold clearly absurd viewpoints (e.g. that a loving God exists). In fact, my guess is that the same thing that makes me open to nonempirical truth also lends me creativity within an empirical context. And it makes people like me a puzzle to many atheists. But maybe rather than ask, as many have in this discussion, why liberal religious people are able to believe two contradictory things at once, you should look in the mirror and ask whether your own mind is really as open to truth as you think it is.
I loved the hightrekker quote from PZ but I can understand how a thin skinned deeply religious person would find it annoying. The truth is always annoying to the deeply religious. But the question you ask is whether my own mind is really as open to truth as I think it is? That is a very good question.
I was raised in a deeply fundamentally religious family. My dad believed that every word of the Bible was the literal truth. He believed in the six day creation and that the world flood/Noah's ark story actually happened. Had my mind not been open to truth I would still believe such nonsense, as I once did believe it.
My dad was a poor sharecropper. Everyone in my family and everyone for miles around believed the Bible was literally the absolute word of God. And so far, I am the only member of my very large extended family, or even in the general vicinity of the rural neighborhood I grew up in, who now disbelieves the Bible. I would say Lean-To, that I was open to something else I would still believe that crap.
I think it is you who needs to look in the mirror.
Ron P.
hi ron,
if defending religion against what i regard as specious generalizations makes me thin-skinned, then i guess i'm thin-skinned. but i don't want to get into a row with you, nor do i really want to get into an argument over who is more open-minded, the tone of my post notwithstanding. indeed, i feel that the argument over who is open-minded and who isn't is a big part of the problem, though obviously i'm not immune to becoming defensive and joining the fray. i do think that some atheists like Dawkins are on a pretty high horse, and i'm tired of it. i'd prefer a truce.
in any case, clearly you had a lot of guts to break away from something pervasive (and apparently oppressive) in your upbringing. my own story is partly opposite in direction and not as stark in contrast...i was raised in a family of more-or-less agnostic middle-class scientists a generation off the farm. we did go to unitarian church when i was a kid, but all i learned there was how to play bridge. i was pretty much a confirmed atheist or agnostic for the rest of my childhood, and returned to unitarian church (as a "doubter") during college. after a while, i came to realize that i didn't find it very nourishing, and within a few years i'd gotten baptized and become a mainline Christian. i am now one of the only people in my own family and circle of acquaintances who believes in the christian God. so you and i have something in common in that sense...we both ventured away from what we were taught and what we were used to, to reach something that seemed truer and richer to us. in some sense, it estranged us from what was around us.
what it all makes me wonder, and i would ask this not just of you or of myself, but of anyone interested in exploring it in themselves, is how much of our belief system is 'reactive', i.e. a response to something we see as negative or limiting, and how much 'creative'. Through what lens are we seeing life?
slainte,
lean-to
Lean To, I am a determinist. A determinist is one who believes we are the sole product of our heredity and enviornment, because there is nothing else. What we were born with and everything we have experienced since then, including our prenatal enviornment, is all there is, nothing more. Therefore we are all victims of circumstance. We were made, brick by brick, from the foundation up, by our heredity and our enviornment.
I realize that my position is held by a tiny minority of people. But among those to hold it were Darwin, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Kant and a host of other philosophers. I cannot explain it, it can only be understood via long hours of contemplation.
Be that as it may I cannot possibly believe in any religion or philosophy that grants rewards or punishment for any belief or behavior, for obvious reasons. Other than that, I cannot explain it.
Ron P.
I was going to respond to your comment above, but this is an even better place to do so.
I am a scientist who works in genomics and evolution. I was agnostic with a strong atheist bent until recently, and now have come to believe in a form of "God" that is independent of most standard religious teachings. I won't go into detail here about how I've worked out the "conflict" that people like you point out, instead, I am writing a book. And there isn't a conflict. My "belief" has come from wide-ranging reading on the subject, including on topics like philosophy, evolution, consciousness, quantum physics, and many more. I am uninterested in organized religion, BTW.
I will give you a hint about my premis: you claim strict determinism. But maybe you are unaware of an important component of biology termed "bistability." Bistability is a condition where cell fate can be driven to two completely different phenotypes, simply due to "noise." (identical genetics and identical epigenetics, with different outcomes). Ok, so what is noise? Noise is randomness. What is randomness - well, if you are truly a strict determinist, then there is no randomness, it is all essentially a pre-determined program, and there is no free will. If you are not a true determinist at this level, then randomness has to come from somewhere - and the only place it can come from is the quantum world, which we are far from understanding.
It just so happens that there is increasing evidence piling up about the important links between quantum effects and biology (for a good layperson article, see the latest issue of Discover).
As much as I am a firm adherent of natural selection, there is a lot we don't yet know about the process of evolution (primarily, the second component of evolution, "randomness").
Mcgurme, I am a determinist but not in the sense you suggest. I am a determinist only as the term applies to the human will, not as it applies to the physical world. I agree with Spinoza who wrote:
There may be true randomness in the physical world but that does not concern me. I am only concerned with acts of the human will. My point is that every act of the human will is determined either by something in your genes or something that happened before in your life or some combination of the two. Genes and environment because that is all there is. Even if some randomness causes this or that to happen in your brain, or genes, that is still a cause. That is, the randomness caused you to wish this or that or even do this or that, it was still not an act of free will.
I am sorry for the confusion, that is probably my fault.
Ron P.
The Universe has infinite precision. Randomness, Noise, Chaos, Nonsense DNA, Dark Matter, are simply concepts and words for things we do not understand. The Razor's edge of any interaction of forces in the universe is infinitely precise. Choice simply, cannot exist.
The Three Fates lead those who will... the rest they drag.
In an infinite world, all things must exist.
however, in an infinite world, every single thing is infinitely unique,
never to be repeated, ever.
One's nature is what it is, and it changes if it is in it's nature to change, or not.
Humans want to limit and map reality. We cannot stomach things out of our "control" so we create belief systems to make the universe finite and manageable. these can be useful, but they are not reality.
the finger pointing at the moon, is not the moon.
the universe will not be controlled by the likes of us.
a teacher of mine once said, "the only purpose of a belief system is to show one how to destroy one's belief systems."
I'm not oblivious to the irony of these things. We have no choice
but to speak through a conceptual language.
I experience the world as a mysterious and fantastical place, and I find the limitations of belief systems that say "only this exists" and "this cannot exist", at their core, rather tragic, for the world
is so much more than we can possibly define.
we can study a honey bee for a thousand years and we'll never truly understand it; dissect it, sequence its dna, make artificial ones, but blind to what BINDS it together.
"To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery."
-Emily Dickinson
We could use a little more reverie on this planet. If it's in our destiny to do so, we'll survive and thrive, if not, something else, possibly better, will eventually replace us.
In the meantime, the Animal Spirits are angry with us. THAT we will have to deal with, because when they leave, we are finished.
-g
John Conway recently coauthored a paper proving that if we have free will, then electrons have it too.
"ask whether your own mind is really as open to truth as you think it is."
If your mind is truly open you should at least consider the possibility that Evolution is one big farce:
Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future’s endless stair:
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
Wrong or justice in the present,
Joy or sorrow, what are they
While there’s always jam to-morrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we’re going,
We can never go astray.
To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.
Ask not if it’s god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.
Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature’s simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
Goodness = what comes next.
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.
On then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present
Standards, though it well may be).
Evolutionary Hymn by C. S. Lewis
That's funny...C.S. Lewis always had a great sense of the satirical aspects of humanity, maybe we could go down that path more often, humans as joke?
I once saw an interview with the late, great historian of evolution Stephen Jay Gould (and he was one of the greats) in which a questioner referred to evolution as a tautological argument: "How do you determine what is fit? Because it survives." "How do you determine what survives? Because it is fit." The questioner went on to say that this made evolution essentially a useless argument because it was doing was defining it's own terms and telling us nothing about existence. Mr. Gould became livid, and called the questioners argument crap, saying anyone who knew anything would know better than to even consider such a line of reasoning. Interestingly however he never posed a counter argument! If you think preachers get angry when you question them, try questioning a scientist!
I remember my own reaction to the discussion well. I was a young student, and I was ASTOUNDED. Could evolution be questioned on logical grounds? The only folks who I had ever heard question it were those who questioned it on religious or moral grounds. I was devoted to my own educational gains and proud of the fact that I grasped evolution on logical grounds and accepted it at that time as the be all end all of arguments about the existance of life on earth. Gould's questioner was to me like someone telling a kid that may be no Santa Claus!
In the long run it did me good though. I began to study more, and re-examine my own belief system, as opposed to what I REALLY KNEW. What I found out is that I, and the rest of humanity for that matter, still knew very little.
Again, I came back to the words of a prior teacher, one who told me that anytime I read or hear something or see it in the media, remember to ask myself, "HOW DO THEY KNOW THAT?" This took me naturally to that great French essayist Montaigne "What can I really know?"
The answer is of course, we as humans still KNOW very little.
RC
"How do you determine what is fit? Because it survives." "How do you determine what survives? Because it is fit." The questioner went on to say that this made evolution essentially a useless"
This isn't an attack on evolution, or natural selection, but on the work "fit". Anyone who's bred dogs knows that selection works quite well to make your pool of dogs evolve, but that "fitness" is another thing entirely.
So, just choose another word.
So then, if not "fit", what word would you choose...
it obviously isn't speed, or either the turtle or the cheetah would be gone.
It obvously isn't size, in the world that contains both the titmouse and the elephant.
It can't be just fighting prowess, we see variations inside species of every animal from the large cats to the birds that are both ferocious fighters and cowards.
It can't be honesty, since some animals survive entirely by theft and deception.
We can argue that it is because they "suit their "niche" but almost every niche on earth seems full of variety, from fast to slow, from large to small, from ruthless predator to meek.
What does evolution tell us, other than what the word means itself "change" about the larger picture of existence on Earth?
I do not argue that "evolution" or "change" is not going on, and has from the start of life on earth, in fact it was going on even before with the non-living geological structures of earth as well as in space, but it tells us essentially nothing. I always get a kick out of people who use it as a guide, when you see sentences here and there such as "Our knowledge of evolution indicates we will outgrow our resources and perish as a species." How does our knowledge of "evolution" indicate anything like that? Would you have bet on the tree sloth getting to this point in history? There's the ultimate conserver of energy, lay on your ass in a tree and you can't consume much! On the other hand take the native deer of North America, which tramples and wastes more simply rambling around than it ever eats! Now that's much more humanlike, and we can't get rid of them, they manage pretty well out there except when cars smack them into the ditch (is no one surprised that after seeing other deers get smacked dead again and again they would somehow learn that cars are dangerous? Kind of makes you wonder about Pavlov and that damm bell too...
RC
Gould's frustration was the simplistic use of "fit" as an absolute universal term. It isn't, its dependant on local forces there is no single ultimate fitness peak, there is a wavy landscape with many small humps that changes over time. Your description of a niche is not too bad of a description of what the fitness lanscape is like. It may help compare ecology and niche to economy and job. Cheaters can and do thrive, but above some nominal fraction the selective pressure becomes negative, if there more cheaters than the population can support the population reduces. Below that level there is a local fitness peak that can support some fraction of cheaters so they can't be gotten rid of. If you're a predator in a locality with no fast predators and the prey is fast, then there's positive selection pressure to become a fast predator. If a locality is already awash with fast predators, best to find another niche. Island populations are good examples, insects sometimed get large and fill the niche filled by small mammals in other places. What are weeds in most places can find a niche taken by trees in other places (like the dandelions on Easter Island).
I am surprised that that question was a problem for Gould. Its a no brainer. How do you determine what survives is NOT answered by "because it is fit" but by the fact of its survival. While you can't trace forward you can document it in the present time and trace backward. You can say that dodo birds were once fit in an environment with no humans because we know they survived. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo They were numerous. The survival of themselves and their progenitors was documented by the fact that the current crop existed when humans arrived on their island. They suddenly became unfit with the arrival of new predators, humans along with dogs, cats and rats. Then they stopped surviving as documented not by their sudden unfitness but by their extinction.
All of us alive today are currently surviving which means that the genes of our ancestors are surviving in us. The proof is not because we deem ourselves fit. The proof that we are surviving is our current existence.
Nothing survives indefinitely, not individuals nor species. But what has survived to date is what is alive now. What gene have survived to date are those that are represented in what is alive now. Their "fitness" depends not on something absolute, but on whether the environment stays the same (same climate, same food, same predators) or changes. Their fitness is not the proof of their survival but rather their embodiment in a currently living being.
We don't know that the "fitness" question was a problem for Gould. All we have here is RC's vague recollection of some such event. There is no context of the situation. Given how much Gould has written on and researched evolution, one would have to surmise that something is missing in RC's recollection.
One of Gould's main themes about evolution, after all, was contingency. He is famous for saying that if the tape of life were replayed, there is no guarantee that any particular species - let alone homo sapiens - would arise.
The utility of evolution is not that it describes the FACT that species change over time, but that it provides MECHANISMs for the those changes. Mechanisms that can be tested, and could be falsified - by evidence - not because someone's religious text said so.
The word fit I think is one of the problems with people's conception of evolution. It may have specific meaning to scientists but it evokes sentiments of "better", "stronger", etc to the general public. In fact what we have with evolution is selective survival based on the environment a creature lives in. Who survives is the survivors - no value laden terms apply. In one environment one day the survivors are dinosaurs, the next day they are not survivors due to a very unexpected change in the environment. They did not change their embodied fitness overnight - the world around them changed when an asteroid hit earth.
Thanks jimjv for reminding us that evolution of species is about the mechanism of selection in self replicating creatures. Therefore to compare evolution of planets etc to the evolution of species is comparing the same word but not the same process and therefore any such comparision is worthless.
"But what has survived to date is what is alive now."
Oh good, just so it's not a tautological argument! :-)
"One of Gould's main themes about evolution, after all, was contingency. He is famous for saying that if the tape of life were replayed, there is no guarantee that any particular species - let alone homo sapiens - would arise."
And I think that was the questioners main interest. He was not refuting that evolution occured, and that the evidence for it was scientifically very strong if not irrefutable, but at the end of the day, was the theory nearly as useful in describing any type of real pattern as it had been made out to be?
We must remember the history of not only biological evolution, but recall the vast number of other sciences who hitched their wagon to it, from social and psychological sciences to political science and ecology. Does evolution provide a sturdy enough framework of useful predictive tools to be a science (and isn't one of the claims of good science be that it has a predictive function, i.e., Newtons physics could be used to protect the behavior of mass and gravity well enough not only to predict the behavior of a falling apple or a rocket to the moon, but also a planet in space, i.e., the predictive function is central to the science)
I think that Gould was a great mind and a great man. He could instantly see in the questioners argument that the predictive function of evolution was being undercut, and thus the science, because science implies predictability. It would be the next logical step, if one undercuts predictability, to ask if evolution was really a science in the true sense (!) We must recall that Gould himself was a noted historian of the scientific method, he was no novice. This is what explained his very vocal annoyance at the question. The questioner was asking once more "What do we really know?"
RC
The argument was "How do you determine what is fit? Because it survives." "How do you determine what survives? Because it is fit."
Since we cannot peer into the future and see what conditions will prevail we can never determine what will survive in the future and therefore what would constitute future "fitness". (for example our telescopes cannot detect all the asteroids that might hit the earth in the future radically altering the environment in which creatures will attempt survival) All we can do is look at what is currently surviving. One shouldn't have to use a tautology to determine what is currently surviving but apparently the author of the argument needs a tautology for straight thinking on the subject.
The argument sounds cute but is just plain stupid and not designed to find anything but rather to try trip people up. A tautology is the correct response IMO to such an argument - some people you just have to hit over the head by saying the same thing more than one way. What survives - that which lives. What gene line survived, that which is represented in what is currently alive. What will survive in the future - we cannot know or predict with any great assurance that we will be right, and since we won't personally survive beyond 100 years or so we won't find out beyond our remaining years.
We DO know that Stephen Jay Gould was Jewish. The petulant rage you noticed is characteristic.
Aw come on Waxwing, I have seen petulant rage in my German ancestry Lutheran father-in-law. I have seen petulant rage in a boss I had who was non-Jewish but uber-feminist. I have seen petulant rage in children of all backgrounds. I have seen petulant rage in anti-semite posters. I have exhibited petulant rage myself. When stupid things are said it provokes petulant rage in many people. In the case of this example I could imagine it provoking petulant rage even if that petulant rage is not admirable.
If you are talking about honesty, there is no way of knowing what anyone "believes" re the existence of "God". Usually your life is easier is you profess to believe certain things-if someone's career or social standing is enhanced by professing a certain belief than for most persons that belief is going to be professed even if there is nothing behind it internally.
And speaking of PZ, He has posted a picture of a sign in front of an Arkansas church that says
"Reason is the Greatest Enemy that Faith Has" He then says that this is an irreconcilable difference...
We aren't going to kiss and make up, sorry
So while I accept that it may be possible for an individual to do good science while still truly believing that the rabbit's foot in her pocket brings her good luck, I would be seriously concerned that she is teetering on the edge of a very slippery slope of cognitive dissonance. What if the compartment is breached and her irrational beliefs should cloud her scientific judgment in some way?
I am an atheist; and became one because I cannot bring myself to believe in God. Not because I do not want to note, but because I cannot. For me, and me alone, the fact that this foundation element of religion is built on sand nullifies their entire argument. And I personally do not need life after death. I am happy to acknowledge that I was dead for billions of years before I was conceived and I shall be identically dead for billions of years after I die. But that is just me. Other people can believe what ever they want.
Nevertheless I respect all religions and their faithful. Intellectually I am inferior to a good many of the faithful and I certainly lay no claim to a better understanding of the world. I am happy to be humble in this respect. Religion is and always has been a key component of the human experience. Religions provide a social network, comfort and support for billions of people. I have no desire to tear that down. An excellent TV program on atheists aired on ABC Australia last night. Check it out here: http://www.abc.net.au/compass/
I do not like religion in one respect though. That is when someone tries to impose their version of the truth on other people. When this problem occurs it is called fundamentalism. Therefore I am also a very strong believer in the secular state and am concerned that a number of governments have moved away from this principle in recent years. It has allowed fundamentalists in to positions of power.
Summing up... religion is undeniably needed by most people and therefore not only can it be an enormous force for good, but atheism is not going to take over anytime soon. We do need to take care that fundamentalism is not allowed to develop; and when it does to stop it. Fundamentalist states need to be discouraged, but that can go too far as well. Invasion, especially when illegal, as with Afghanistan, is wrong and definitely is not helpful. The Afghan issue has probably done more to destabilize Pakistan than anything else. If Pakistan fails, Afghanistan will be looked back on fondly as the easy occupation.
Saildog: You are making a lot of assumptions here which may or may not be valid ones. You cannot believe in the absurd premise of life after death, even though hordes of religious believers easily accept it (in your view). Where is your evidence? Suicide bombers are notable exceptions, but you could just as easily assume that the % of church going Americans that actually believe in life after death approaches 0%. My guesstimate based on very little is that your belief in God or lack thereof is about the same as the average churchgoer, you just take the whole subject way too seriously.
Nice Saildog, "I am happy to acknowledge that I was dead for billions of years before I was conceived and I shall be identically dead for billions of years after I die."
We are basically at the same place, although I phrase it a bit differently. Before I was alive, I was fine, a part of the energy flow of this universe, while I am alive I am also a part of the energy flow of this universe, and when I am dead I expect I will be just as fine, and again a part and parcel of the energy flow of this universe. No fear. Who knows, a molecule in Ghandi's shit, might be a part of me, or a dust particle that was breathed in and out by Hitler.
Drops of water who don't quite comprehend they are parts of the ocean, or a raging stream. I don't assume that I can understand the wholeness, and actually I have no need to. I can experience it each day in the world around me. My old "stars at night and the wind in the trees". The hawk that hovers over me, or the deer that take food from my hand.
Two things about organized religion. First, and foremost I object to the fear mongering, build the fear, the Bush administration doesn't even hold a candle to organized religion for that. Remember
"fire and brimstone" or go way back to excommunication. How many centuries has that worked. Fear is a mainstay of organized religion. The more fear, the better to control. I don't think instilling fear in people is a good and honorable thing. The backdrop, the churches are all to inspire awe and set the stage. To manipulate. Talk to me about tithes or the inquisition.
And do you all really think, that helping the poor or disadvantaged, or the natural disaster victims is out of the goodness in their hearts, it's to reach people when they are hurting the most and add them to the flock.
That said, I was on a webcam that was in Bagdhad when we hit, it was not a coincidence that I was listening to the "call to prayer" as the first bombs dropped, and I cried for all of us. It was haunting, and a new low for the US.
Science brings me a ray of hope, quantum physics. Non-local coherence is a fact. Proven, over and over again. Science tells me we are all connected, even if we do not believe it, we are all a part of a greater energy field. Eastern religions are aware of this, in some fashion, but phrased and articulated in the words of the time. This stuff you can't read you have to breath it in. Sometimes we search for answers that are right in front of us.
Heavy spring T storms rolling through, I have a dog in my lap, and he's really to big for that, but the energy is a little too much for him.
Cheers
Don in Maine
Re:"Fear is a mainstay of organized religion." so is sexism, for the most part. Why I left the Russian Orthodox church my family founded (nope, sorry, you can't be an altar boy because you are a girl.) and am now happily Unitarian Universalist for exploring.
Russian Orthodox not related in any way to Greek Orthodox?
Guess I could google it. But your info maybe more valid.
Airdale
I too, tried to believe in God, but was unable.
Ron, there is no contradiction between the Bible being true and evolution being true. The only contradictions occur when straw man arguements are invoked by sections of the various camps (such as if you believe in evolution then you must believe in dragons and other such nonsense). Nobody can prove or disprove that God exists and therefore (based on the logic of Pascals wager and the Biblical meme of the hidden hand of God) if God exists (with presumably omnipotent power) then the world could be created containing all the genetic materials and pathways for that material to evolve from day 6 of creation till now = creation AND evolution.
Spoken like a true believer. Yes God created the world in six days six thousand years ago. God made man out of mud and woman from one of his ribs. Adam then later named all the animals. They were originally meant to live forever but a talking snake convinced Eve to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. She convinced Adam to take a bite also. Then they suddenly were aware that they were naked. Some knowledge! Then they were made mortal and driven from the garden and forced to work for a living.
That is in no way a contridiction of evolution and the scientific point of view.
Yeah Right!
The most amazing thing, to me anyway, of the true believer is his/her ability to believe it two totally contridictory points points and to then even argue that the two points are not contridictory at all. I have seen it time and time again and it simply floors me every time. One would think I would be used to it by now but it simply continues to amaze me.
Ron P.
Ron, as I demonstrated how there need not be any contradiction between creation and evolution then please don't insist that there must be a contradiction. To argue along those lines is dogmatic and not scientific (as any debater of religion knows a believer in just about any religion can use both dogma and science in their arguement; the counter view has however lost as soon as they use dogma and not science or logic).
Well no, you did not demonstrate that at all. To make a dogmatic statement, as you did about there being no contridiction between the Bible being true and evolution being true, is not a demonstration of fact but a dogmatic statement of belief. And you simply ignored my assertions as to what the Bible clearly states and their glaring contridiction with evolution and science in general. You simply state that contridictions do not exist while ignoring obvious contidictions. Let me again quote the same passage from Hoffer as I did above:
So keep on denying Neal because that is what true believers do.
Ron P
One of my favorite websites:
http://www.evilbible.com/Biblical%20Contradictions.htm
Hi x, too bad these are not part of a Catechism - they could be worked into some kind of a chant for the little children that are being indoctrinated.
I try to avoid these arguments. I learned in high school that there's no point arguing with the religious - they believe what they believe, and that's it.
However, if you truly think there is no contradiction between the Christian creation myth and evolution, they you really do not understand either. Evolution says your (and mine) great-great-great grandmother times umpteen million was something less complex than a bacteria. Intermediate grandmothers include, but are not limited to, fish, reptiles, tiny mammals and apes. All development, including the entirety of the human form and consciousness itself, is the result of essentially random mutation, within a complex, constantly changing web of species in a constantly changing geography and climate. This process took over 3 billion years.
To paraphrase Christopher Walken from True Romance: "Your grandmother's grandmother f*cked a monkey".
I think Christians just have a hard time accepting this.
Sorry that you have a poor grasp of the actual meaning of evolution. All evolution means is that something (it need not even be alive) has evolved. Nothing more, nothing less. The example that you give is of one particular group of theories usually labelled Darwinian evolution and unfortunatly most people only think of Darwinian evolution. Remember that Darwinian evolution is called Darwinian THEORY? Based on scientific principles it can never be proven as fact.
Yes, of course evolution itself is a fact but just because you can observe the descent of living things (like observing breeding programmes) it can never be proven in the other direction due to the well known principles of evidence falsification that can be observed in just about everything that is observed by looking backwards.
Some examples from various fields:
False paper trails in accounting.
False provenance in the art world.
False ancestory records to obtain inheritances, titles or social position (I have seen examples of people with ancestory charts that link up to the genealogy in the Bible, unless you accept the Bible literally then those charts prove evidence falsification has occurred for thousands of years).
False pedigrees in livestock breeding.
False evolution records (Piltdown man and others) for multiple reasons.
False drug testing and medical records for financial gain
False history for societal reasons (rewrite history books).
Remember, if people can do all of the above then how hard would it be for God to lay a false ancestry trail to hide his role and keep mans belief in him based on faith rather than big neon signs on everything saying "made by God".
So ultimatly it comes down to faith on both sides; athiests faith that there is no God hiding his handiwork and believers faith that there is a God.
Btw Simkin, your narrative of the past 3 billion years is also just one of many theories that is out there, other scientists speculate that mans (and other creatures) origins are primarily cosmic in origin (from comets) whilst other theories have evolutionary pathways different to the path you described. With so many competing theories how do you know the ONE that you believe in is the right one?
The issue with the trickster God hypothesis AKA Omphalism AKA Las Thursdayism is the the idea of an pleasant afterlife may also be a deception.
With so many competing theories how do you know the ONE that you believe in is the right one?
There are no competing theories for evolution as described above. The broad history of life is fairly well documented through the fossil record, and has been extensively verified through many disciplines.
There are competing theories for how the very first self-replicating life arose, and you'll note I made no mention of them. There are still differences of opinion as to how mutations arise and spread into a population, and indeed even under what conditions speciation events occur, but really none about how it all fits together.
Of course, if there is a God, and if He has a special sense of humor, it could all be masquerade. But that's not science, nor can it be referred to as a "theory". That's just hedging because you really really don't want to believe your great-grandmother 50000 generations back looked like a monkey. And that's fine. Just stop talking about it like it has anything to do with science.
What does "true" mean?
I would recommend Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment. He was a child psychologist who read lots of fairy tales (Grimm and many more) and said that these fairy tales are really stories which contain deep truths which help children understand the world. For example, "Hansel and Gretel" teaches that children must become independent and manage on their own, that they must confront their fears, not run away from them, that they can't live in an infantile state of eating and receiving, but must be active and thoughtful in their approach to life.
The Biblical story of Genesis perhaps has some deeper truth than the surface one apparent in a summary.
Isn't it true that by consuming the apple Adam and Eve are embodying the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Or perhaps I should say they're enacting it. They're unable to choose to leave it on the tree. Actually, the ancients (as well as us) may have had trouble conceiving of a "Paradise" where apples stay on trees forever. Yet in such a place, the inexorable laws of thermodynamics would have had no sway. And there would be no entropy.
Adam and Eve are helpless in the face of the laws of Thermodynamics, as are we. We must go out and work like Adam (energy is defined as the potential to do work). We must reproduce like Eve, or face extinction, as our own fate individually is to die. Because of entropy.
Time passes and music starts and ends. Seasons come and go. Animals are born and die. The people who wrote Genesis were surely impressed with the power of entropy and wished to underscore its FUNDAMNETAL role in human life. I think they suceeded by the way. That there should be some regrets about the power of entropy is only natural (if only it didn't exist, if only "Eve hadn't eaten the apple!").
You can't take it literally but if you examine Genesis it is all about our fundamental energetic relationship with the universe. Moreover, people unconsciously recognize this. In fact, if you start in on explaining the Laws of Thermodynamics to most people you will get absolutely nowhere. I know many people with PhDs who don't understand laws of Therm. and have no idea what the definition of energy is.
But Genesis makes the process of entropy and thus the second law of T. easy to understand, at least on a visceral level, although not on an intellectual one. It is a powerful myth because it is fundamentally....TRUE.
I agree with you.
Each of the ancient people living at that time had myths describing their view of how the universe came into existence. The myths tell some worthwhile things about how they viewed the world and god, and even their understanding of physics.
One can't expect the myths to explain everything we know with today's science.
Finally...
At least some people on this forum that talk some sense.
Personally, I think the "religious fanatics" who believe the Bible is the word of god and only to be interpreted literally are full of sh*t and completely mis the point.
The "scientific fanatics" on the other hand who believe the bible is "a piece of crap", because it contains literal contradictions are just as bad, and are also completely missing the point.
The enlightened point of view is that which seeks a middle ground and understands that science and religion are just two different ways of knowing.
Science and religion are both tools we use to understand and explain the world around us and the mystery of our existence. Like a good carpenter you should pick the right tool for the job.
If you attach to one point of view only, you are like a carpenter who's trying to use a hammer for every job (tough if you need to cut a board). Science has its merits. But attaching to scientific thought as the only ultimate way of knowing "the truth" is a very limited way of perceiving the world.
Though I don't believe in the Christian idea of an all powerful omnipotent God. I'm with Gail and Pi on this one. Science and religion both offer explanations for the world around us. From a scientific point of view many religious dogmas may seem rather childish (like a santa clause tale?). But I don't believe that scientific accuracy is the point of these tales... so what? Like the fairy tail (as Pi points out), there is a deeper message/value. The message of *all* religions, in my opinion, is in some way or another about how to live "good" and fulfilling life.
This is a department in which science really doesn't have very much to offer at all. In fact, I dare say that the world is in deep sh*t right now, because science has progressed too rapidly, while our way of understanding how to live "good fulfilling lives" is infantile. Thus we have managed to dig ourselves into a big mess and will probably soon destroy the planet's eco system completely.
So in summary:
If you want to understand how the physical universe works, turn to science for the answer (at least in as far as science has been able to penetrate this question).
If you want to know how to live good and fulfilling life, turn to religion (pick one that suits your own personal temperament... tip: if you are a scientist, you might like Buddhism).
If you want to pick a religion... stay away from
1) fundamental religious nut cases who believe their version of "the truth" is the only right one, and their equivalent of the bible is to be read as literally true, rather than a mythological tale with some deeper lessons.
2) also stay away from scientific fundamentalists who think the only thing worth knowing/believing is discoverable by the scientific method.
Actually, come to think of it number 2 is really just a special case of number 1, isn't it.
But of course a "scientific fundamentalist" will disagree. To him/her the scientific method is "the only true way" of knowing, in that sense scientific fanatics aren't really any different from other fanatics: all fanatics think that they are right and everyone else is wrong.
PS: Not all scientists are fanatics, just like not all religious people are fanatics.
That is a pretty good summary. The Oil Drum probably leans in the direction of the "scientific fundamentalists".
Thank you Gail, Picoday and Pi for bringing some much needed nuance and open-mindedness to this discussion--the fairly frequent and rabid anti-faith attitude that dominates the TOD community is a bit much at times, and hardly productive. It seems fundamentalists on both ends of the debate suffer from the same flaw: they both read the Bible literally, hence the cognitive dissonance and apparent contradictions.
I would like to submit an idea to the TOD community, and since we're talking religion here, sermonize a little ;) : instead of antagonizing 'religious' people with condescension and contempt TODers should view them as an ASSET to TRANSITION and spread their 'gospel' to them. Though I understand certain elements would refuse the PO 'gospel' (well it's good news to me anyway), religious communities are often the only communitarian experience people have and these communities exist WITHIN MUCH LARGER NETWORKS. There is potential for some serious leveraging effect here and some positive change. Imagine some mainline church (or in my wildest dreams, some well-known evangelical pastor) were to understand and embrace PO and mobilize their local communities and their resources to prepare for PO, educate people, become a resource to everyone around them, etc. Beats preaching to the choir!
I think tapping into such pre-existing and well coordinated networks is essential to effect change.
Let's package PO content without the anti-faith rhetoric, let's stop trying to score points against religious people/each other, let's stop trying to always be right and have the last word and let's try to be as constructive as possible. Otherwise all we'll do is put these folks on the defensive, and they'll be unreceptive. My 2 cents.
I agree. It may not work, but a large share of our established networks are churches.
Our myths have a short time- frame or none at all. Icarus flew too close to the Sun - one sunny afternoon. Jesus died for our sins ... then returned a few days later, Odysseus was at sea for seven years, give or take ... the time frames do not allow for millenial or trans- human- lifetime processes to unwind.
This is a real problem ... our problems are defined as short term and solutions are instant. Jericho blows and the walls tumble. Leda becomes a swan. It is judgement day, not a judgement century or even a judgement ten- thousand years.
Myths without drama and a good narrative are not theatrical enough to be useful as myths. 'Lord of the Rings' takes place over thirteen months. to 'destroy evil forever'. Nice story, but completely unrealistic. So is Genesis. Seven days to start the universe? That's moving right along. What's the rush? Maybe that's why everything is so screwed up.
The myth gap makes dealing with longer- term erosive issues very difficult there are no myths for addressing - much less solving - five hundred year problems like climate change. Our national narrative of constant economic growth is more of a moving stage, a subtext. The supporting myths are superimposed un top of it; episodes such as Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb, Ford developing the Model T, J. P. Morgan averting the 'Knickerbocker Trust Panic' in his library, NASA going to the Moon. Our cultural narrative doesn't have room for myths that don't follow the program; Bell invented the telephone, but so did a number of other people at the same time. Who cares about them?
In a commercial setting, religion appears to allow everything, it's like Star Wars' where the action takes place long ago and far away where it cannot be cross- examined. Jesus is like Madden; he healed the sick ... and 'Boom!' ... off to something else. Useful for entertaining the kids, but not so useful to deal with something like credit expansion. Particularly over fifty years.
I don't know if physicists are good at making myths but this group has a long enough timeline horizon. Nuclear scientists and engineers routinely think in terms of thousand and ten- thousand year periods. What is the half- life of U 233? This kind of longer- term thinking transported to mythmaking would be useful in he society at large.
Far more useful that the one where the cow jumped over the Moon, presumeably in an instant.
I don't know about other faiths, but even a cursory reading of the Bible reveals not a short time-frame, but a freakin' long one. Whether it is the promises made to Abraham, or the Jesus event as a culmination and accomplishment of century-old prophecies, the biblical narrative evolves and plays out over very long stretches of time. Intertextuality throughout the Bible reveals that no book can or should be read in isolation from another--they are all part of a 'metanarrative' spanning millenia.
But many myths come close!
Why does Eve want to eat the apple? Because she is curious and intelligent. She wants to see what will happen. She's bored if she can't. Our intelligence is a gift from evolution. I think Genesis hints at our fundamental curious and intelligent nature and in so doing hints at the process of evolution. The process of evolution is the progress of energy-capturing adaptations.......
Ron P., you say,
"The most amazing thing, to me anyway, of the true believer is his/her ability to believe it two totally contridictory points points and to then even argue that the two points are not contridictory at all. I have seen it time and time again and it simply floors me every time. One would think I would be used to it by now but it simply continues to amaze me"
Your right, you should be used to it, it is the history of of human thought on Earth, from the Pre-Socratic Greeks, through the Enlightenment, right up to Stephen Hawking.
The master at "duelism" was Isaac Newton:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
Yes that great creator of the universe of "mechanics" was constantly fascinated by the realm of religion, Masonic ideas and even occutism! He actually wrote more on those subjects during his life than he did on science!
Does this tell us anything? Is it possible that the full functioning human mind must retain it's ability to dwell in the realm of mystery, magic, and faith as well in the land of "mechanics" to be able to deliver results that are extraordinary, "outside the box" thinking?
What we now have is a nation of functionaries, technocrats and bureaucrats. We have trained our young out of the ability to dream, to believe in things not yet built, not yet seen. They get that from Hollywood and the comic books now. Why do you think our young are addicted to the graphic novels and to the fantistic stories of wizards, vampires, and anime? This has been the catastrophe of our age, that we have taught our young that only science can provide you with answer, but our scientists are equally empty of imagination and creativity, creating an endless stream of reports refuting other reports. Perhaps we could try BUILDING instead of REFUTING.
Give me a Newton with his superstition and flamboyant imagination, almost certainly as gay as they come, but a scientific mind so creative and broad it opened a new age! Cheers to dualism! IMAGINE a little, imagine things you have not yet seen! It's fun! Just once believe in something!
RC
I was raised a fundy too, left the church and somewhat came back, because I loved reinterpreting the Bible from a "Science" perspective. The ignorant notion that the English King James Version if laughable, but most realize even in fundy churches that the original text was not written in English, so wide latitude may be achieved in the interpretation especially in Genesis. Genesis viewed through the lens of science and genetics can tell a much different story. I will not write volumes but give the highlights.
Rib is derived from the Hebrew word for curve - If I was a Scientist I would uncurl man's curve (DNA) XY and make woman- XX. I love this explanation as it is simple but still brings in genetics too the debate and allows fundies to accept science.
This is the beginning of the Noah story which is another one that rips the fundies up because of two things. God has more sons than Jesus as Jesus was god's only Begotten Son and it implies Two Genetic Lines on The Earth. One of pure man and one of the Mixed Races. I can weave this one back to Adam and Eve and imply that Cain is the Offspring of the Devil.....
This passage describes how man should shun Agriculture and merely tend the garden (See Link on the A Farm for the Future Jared Diamond has confirmed this with his contention that Agriculture is the worst invention in the world and Mr. Quinn's Ishmael tells the same story.
I could go on a parse all kinds of verses pull the Hebrew and tell a compelling story that incorporates the latest science into the Bible and have it say that the Book can coexist with Science, which is a step forward for all, IMHO.
My position is that just about everyone has gotten Genesis I wrong. It amazes me that so few see the obvious: IT COULDN'T POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT. So why interpret it as such? It was written sometime after the fact. What was it? An account of a vision or dream; what else could it have been? Look at similar passages recounting other visions or dreams in Daniel or Revelation; the literary style is actually quite similar. What they all have in common is a rather loose approach to time, often compressing large passages of time into small units, often overlapping and not always in chronological order; also lots of symbolism and metaphor. Only an idiot would interpret any of these passages literally, they obviously were not intended to be read that way. They are not historical narratives. They are meant to reassure, to inspire, to expand our consciousness and our imaginations.
Given that, if one is open-minded enough to entertain a basic premise that something (the universe) did not come from nothing (was not self-creating) but was initiated by someone or something that exists "outside" of our universe of space-time, matter and energy, and if one grants a generous dose of artistic license, then as a work of literature, Genesis I can work pretty well as a topical summation of the evolution of the universe and earth, with each "day" being one topical scene in the drama. Those who think that Genesis I teaches a literal 7-day creation totally miss the main point: the story is structured in 7 acts to correspond to the command to measure our time in 7-day increments, with one rest and worship day out of every seven, as a way of acknowledge that time, as well as space, matter, and energy, is part of the created universe (hello, Einstein!), and thus is subordinated to and under the mastery of the Creator (who is not bound by time but exists "outside" of it, and is therefore "eternal").
If one reads it that way, then there is absolutely nothing in Genesis I in conflict with the scientific view that the age of the earth is ~4.5B yrs +/-, nor really even with current scientific understanding of the evolution of life.
I think another basic problem is that both believers and non-believers assume that a transcendent Creator must think like us and go about things the way we would. Thus, the assumption is that this Creator must have "designed" everything just as we would; we then debate whether or not there is any evidence that species or anything else was in fact designed. It is a false assumption. IMHO, any transcendent Creator worth even considering for belief must necessarilly be so utterly, incomprehensively different from ourselves that no assumptions about what such a Creator would do, based upon our character and experience, must be valid. A Creator which exists outside of our space-time continuum, and exists in some form not made of matter and energy, must be totally "other", and must exist outside of any concepts that our earth-shaped minds can form and thus imagine.
Evolution has unfolded in a manner different than we might have expected a Creator to do it; that only proves that the Creator, if one exists, transcends our expectations and imaginations. This, I believe, is a way that one could reconcile Genesis I, at least, with secular science.
Not only have the stories "been passed down through the ages," but they have EVOLVED. The bible evolved through a succession of scribes.
Now, that's one "belief" I can dig--Universal Darwinism.
Hah. Here in Texas, they're pondering a requirement that schools teach the "debate" over Darwinism. Maybe we should legislate "debate" in the Sunday Schools -- King James evolved from Gutenberg, which was translated from Latin, which was translated from Greek and so forth. Then we have the Torah and Koran branches of evolution, a whole taxonomic system of bibles.
mikeB,
The word "belief" is itself a mind twister and raises all kinds of framing issues depending on what it is coupled with.
If you say, "belief in science", that evokes one set of cognitions.
On the other hand, if you say, "belief in God", that evokes a whole other set of cognitions.
Generally, I prefer to use a modern version of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The human mind is the inside of the cave. It has numerous cognitive "models" running (like parallel computer programs) to represent its understanding(s) of the outside world.
From an evolutionary point of view, it is advantageous to allow for dissonance (contradiction) between running models. It is good to contemplate several possibilities and choose among competing models as circumstances change.
So a person can easily have one model running in his head that supports "belief in God" and at the same time another model that supports "belief in science". In fact, I've seen a number of news stories about "scientists" who express a devote "belief in God". For my "model" of how the human mind operates, this is not at all a contradiction. It is perfectly OK to have many models running in one's head even though they contradict each other.
____________________________
Other links related to Platos' Allegory here, here, and here
In the interests of not leaving something half correct stand (and this is waaay off topic, I realise):
So, it's not quite correct to say "Mark was the original author and everything else was copied."
This is certainly true of the Old Testament, where there was a long period between the original events and anyone writing them down, and co-opting other culture's mythologies and re-interpreting them in your own terms was fairly common practice.
This is less true of the New Testament which was all written in the lifetime of Jesus' contemporaries and written by people who had assimilated Graeco-Roman ideas of history and narrative.
For the New Testament, it's probably better to say that a small amount of "noise" has crept in over time as different copyists made mistakes, made corrections, make wrong corrections, and shifted words around to make a passage clearer for the pressing arguments of the day. They're pretty insignificant; probably the most interesting is Mark 1:41 "Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand" versus what we now think must have been the original text: "Filled with anger, Jesus reached out his hand."
Here ends the nitpicking. Now, back to the discussion...
Indeed, everything after Mark 16:8 is forged, probably cribbed off Matthew. But Mark's original ending is not "lost." It originally ended at 16:8, with the women fleeing the empty tomb. It fits the theme of the messianic secret in Mark, and it implies an imminent Coming: as the tomb is empty, Jesus has risen--and that means the end is near. The delay of the coming was revised into subsequent gospels.
Well, no. Luke did not talk to "Mary." The gospel wasn't even written by anyone named "Luke." The author is unknown. He claims to have worked with preexisting sources but never names any. By the time Luke was written--around the year 80--Mary would have been, what, about 110 years old?
The earliest gospel, Mark, was written at least 40 years after the crucifixion. The others come decades later. They were not written "in the lifetime of Jesus' contemporaries," unless they lived into their eighties and nineties.
There are very significant differences between the gospels. John reads as a completely different story, although it shares some events with the other three. It's also widely acknowledged that much of the story is made up, and that interpolations have been added by later scribes.
And the synoptic three differ in hundreds of ways. Bart Ehrmann writes extensively about this in "Misquoting Jesus," and "Jesus Interrupted."
I would agree. I have listened to Bart Ehrmann tapes. While you are at it, Paul tells a fairly different message than Matthew, Mark, and Luke--probably a little closer to John.
If you are looking for things to criticize, the birth of Jesus stories don't match up at all between Matthew and Luke. Most people believe they were added later.
One does not have to believe that the Bible is "true" in any sense of the word to find worthwhile things in it. I personally prefer the synoptic view of the Jesus to John's view.
To me, the most precious part of the NT are the core "Q" sayings:
These are judged as being among the most "authentic," but of course we'll never know.
They're profound all the same.
Whether or not they are authentic, they are worthwhile things to listen to and understand for our lives.
One doesn't have to believe most of the story line of the Bible to get useful sayings from the Bible to think about.
I have been teaching Sunday School to three and four year olds. The material has virtually zero Bible stories. It is much more about what the church is (a place where we have friends, a place where volunteers help those in need, a place where we sing and learn), and how we are supposed to treat others--family, friends, etc.
When there is a Bible reference, it is likely to be something from Psalms - "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord", or something similar.
Gail, let me suggest that there is an important function of religion that you should include: that of prayer.
From a traditional point of view, prayer is essential, and little explanation is needed, I think.
From a secular point of view, it can be seen that way as well, via a meditation/personal therapy function. Repetitive prayer provides meditation; oral prayer provides "talk therapy"; silent prayer allows one to listen to one's unconscious, core self. Group prayer amplifies the effectiveness of all forms.
These functions are very important, and tend to get lost as churches try to evolve in the way you're describing.
Of course he didn't talk to Mary as he was writing, LOL! (Yes, unless she was very long-lived). What the author name drops is that he had previously spoken to Mary.
Yes, I've read one of his books (can't remember which one, because I was just browsing it in a book shop). Keeping in mind that when I do read the New Testament I read it in Koine Greek, I'm kind of acutely aware of the differences in the texts. I recently helped out a friend of mine by writing a program to match up the textual differences between the texts we use and the ones Athanasius quoted from (to figure out which family of copies Athanasius was reading). That was fun. Anyway, I think I might be able to say with some authority that, yes, having researched the matter fairly carefully, they differ but not in very important ways. ;-)
John almost certainly did live about that long. Many of the early believers wrote about this because they were quite surprised when the second coming didn't happen before John died. ;-)
Shrug. Maybe, maybe not. Nobody knows. If you assume the resurrection didn't happen, then you would expect Mark to finish at 16:8; if you assume the resurrection did happen, then you would expect Mark to have continued.
Which really is the nub of it; if the resurrection didn't happen, then it doesn't really matter much about how the gospels ended up the way they are because there's no real validity to it all. On the other hand, if it did, then that's kind of, umm, important.
But either way, it's probably only of tangential relevance to our current problems of peak oil and so on.
Having followed this portion of the thread, and others, about the Bible, I would suggest you take some time to read John Shelby Spong. He believes (and I agree) we need to break some paradigms regarding religious beliefs, especially since the Bible is used as a source by many for traditions that the Bible never mentions and were developed elsewhere. His most recent book, Jesus for the Non-Religious, incorporates his chief ideas, many discussed in previous books, and the bibiliography is extensive.
Regarding the New Testatment Spong would take issue with a lot of what you wrote.
At the end of the day believers are ultimately going to be challenged on their must fundamental assumptions. In the case of religion it is the basis for belief in God, as currently expressed. Spong mentions a theologian who asserts that any God that can be killed should be killed. Spong himself does not believe that any God that needs defending is really God. Those are ideas that devout religious believers are not going to readily accept, assuming they even consider them.
Here at the Drum the challenge will be to our beliefs in what we will face once fossil fuels go into permanent decline. I think it is generally accepted that fossil fuel decline is a given, even if the timing is uncertain. At issue is what the outcome will be for humanity. Will our future be darkness and chaos or the dawn of a new era of human development? I have seen both beliefs expressed here, and with vigor.
Eyewitnesses, eh?
This link has an interesting demonstration and explanation as to how the human brain can be visually deluded.
In can only imagine that cognitive delusion in the form of belief systems such as religion must also have such scientific explanations. I can only think of such systems as a sort of mental Ames room distortion in which an otherwise perfectly rational individual distorts his perception to match his indoctrinated assumptions despite the fact that they run contrary to evidence and reality.
"It's funny how we think we know something to be the case, without having looked at the evidence. I used to know that... "organically-grown" food is "safer, and more nutritious" than foods grown conventionally... I've seen two generations of my family having grown up eating ONLY conventionally grown food with no adverse effects--indeed, my nieces and nephews, fed only "unsafe, nutrition-lacking" factory-farm food, are some of the best athletes you'd ever want to meet."
You thought you HAD to eat organic food to be a good athlete and lead a reasonably healthy life? I thought it just helped!
Your conclusion doesn't match your facts. But since you now "know" that organic food is not safer or more nutricious than agri-business food, I'll leave you with this:
A Zen student once quoted an old Buddhist poem whilst out walking with his teacher, "The voices of torrents are from one great tongue. The lions of the hills are the pure body of Buddha. Isn't that right?"
The Zen master replied, "It is... but it's a pity to say so."
Gail, I really don’t know where to start. I think you get a lot of things right in your short essay but a other things wrong. For instance such things as; He who dies with the most toys wins in no way resembles a religion. In fact people who behave as if that is their goal really do not have that as a goal at all, they are, for the most part, simply selfish and greedy. Other things like fishing are often called religions because some people are so devoted to it but fishing, golf, and other such activities lack even the basic requirements of a religion such as a god and belief system based on faith.
Opinions, like Beautiful bodies are everything are not religions even though some believe with the fervor of a religion. Believing with religious fervor does not constitute a religion because it has no god, no devil and does not require worship. The confusion arises because of the words we use to describe such a person: He worships her body. But in this case most are simply confusing lust with worship.
Most of the other things you mentioned sometimes resemble a religion but upon closer examination lack the defining characteristics of a religion. In fact I think religion is not the word you are looking for. A religion requires implies worship of a god as well as a belief system supported by faith rather than empirical evidence. What you are trying to describe could best be described as a ”Mass Movement.”
A mass movement is something believed in with the devotion of a religion usually with an earthly god, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc. And as Eric Hoffer wrote: Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil. That devil can take many forms, Capitalism, Communism, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party or just the world as it is.
The best book ever written describing the nature of Mass Movements was Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.
I cannot regard The Oil Drum and our message as a religion in any in any sense of the word. We do not have a god or a devil and most important of all we do not require worship of any kind. Also our message and our beliefs are based on evidence rather than faith.
Ron Patterson
It is the true believer's ability to "shut his eyes and stop his ears" to the facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacle nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence.
Eric Hoffer:
The True Believer.
Darwinian -
Well put!
I agree with you 110% on your distinctions between a genuine religion, a set of attitudes or notions, and a mass movement. While each can be held or pursued with total commitment and fanatical fervor, the distinctions are indeed quite important. The full-blown true believer of almost anything can be a very scary and dangerous person. Most of the truly horrible events in history have been committed by people with a 'cause' who felt absolutely certain that right was on their side.
I was just about to say something about Eric Hoffer's 'The True Believer', but you beat me to it. Hoffer's little book is by far the most lucid treatment on the subject that I have come across. I too highly recommend it.
I would agree almost totally with what you just wrote. It may be a matter of semantics but the only thing that you wrote that is wrong is the term "believer" as some of the most fanatical people that I have met are hard core, militant athiests; the ultimate non believers. Having met some hard core zealots who passionatly believe (ironic!) that all believers in any religion should be oppressed (such as expelling kids from school who wear Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Sikh etc religious symbols as has happened in French schools). Even the ACLU has on occasion had to protect people against such oppression in the US.
neal -
Well, one might argue that militant atheists ARE 'true believers', in that their belief is in the absolute certainty of no god, supreme being, or whatever you want to call it. It is their absolutely certainty that makes some true believers so noxious.
On the other hand, in my view an agnostic would definitely not qualify as a true believer, simply because that person has readily admitted doubts about the whole thing.
Agreed!
It brings up one of my pet peeves with peak oil "skeptics": the idea that peak oil is an "apocalyptic" cult.
People who make such statements seem not to know much about the "apocalypse" (which, by the way, has come to be misused: the original Greek means "unveiling" or "revelation": hence, The Revelation [Apocalypse] of John.)
I can refute the peak oil/apocalypse connection point-by-point:
1. There is no peak oil god. Apocalyptic beliefs have retribution coming from On High. Peak oil has only geology coupled with evolutionary psychology. Hubbert is hardly viewed as a god.
2. There is no messiah. The belief in a coming "messiach," Hebrew for "anointed" ("christos" in Greek) is central to Apocalypticism. In peak oil, there is no messiah. No biofuel, no fusion, no solar array, no conservation ethic can allow us to escape the inevitability of depletion.
3. The world is not going to end. After peak oil, the world will continue. We don't know how, but the world isn't about to end--though we may wish it had, depending on how bad things get.
4. The "elect" will not be saved. Apocalyptic beliefs are promulgated by those who believe they are among the saved. Their fantasies include the destruction of the sons of darkness by the followers of the messiah, the sons of light. But in peak oil, everyone will be affected, and the effects will be unevenly distributed, and they will have nothing to do with personal virtue, but rather with the vicissitudes of the "market."
5. There are no prophets. Oh, we used that word all the time, but Hubbert and his "acolytes" work from data, not visions.
No rapture here, folks.
So what's left that parallels peak oil with the Apocalypse? Nothing.
mikeB -
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but you may find it useful to read Toby Hemenway's Origins of Peak Oil Doomerism to flesh out your conception of apocalypticism. He runs through a good survey of the apocalyptic genre in this essay, and highlights similarities between that genre and *some* PO-Doomer's presentations of our Dear Little Situation.
Gail -
Great essay. I think Daniel Quinn's run-thru of the concept of "myths" sheds light on the issues you're raising. the human mind runs on stories; everyone has a myth (super-story; meta-story) (or a parallel set of mythologies - to ride on the coattails of the person who brought up the Plato's Cave analogy, and minds running parallel algorithms - sorry, can't see your name right now whilst I'm posting - but this was insightful). Scientists have mythologies which account for the origin and destiny of "facts," investment bankers have mythologies that orient their activities within the cosmos (kind of a sick cosmos some of them are living in), and, of course, the religious folk like you and I have our sets of mythologies. Everybody's in the same boat; not everyone has the same level of awareness of the extent to which mythology is the archetype for our cognition.
The key, then, is now that we know this, what kind of mythologies should we be creating? I hope we're all down for creating some awesome ones. I'm done with boring ones like "science is the sole arbiter of certain knowledge about the world" ... talk about a centuries-old snooze-fest ...
love (in a hippie, David Suzuki sort of way),
-Symbiont
For me this is the second most interesting subject concerning peak oil the first being possible solutions and outcomes.It is very clear peak oil rhymes with end times,apocalyptic beliefs and sacrificial rituals based on feast/famine mythology or boom/bust cycles.It feels like we have a deep instinct for this tendency and it may drive us to replay this dance of selfdestruction.It indicates mans' struggle with success,guilt,pleasure and happiness.Illusions of sustainable prosperity for all are not possible except in the afterlife our primative mind tells us.Democracy,capitalism and all other institutions of social ordering fail to control the beast.Dieoff has become the new rapture each reduces the population who will be "Left Behind".Absolutely fascinating and frustrating.
If Gobekli Tepe really was the allegorical Garden of Eden, then we probably have a very strong cultural memory of the self-destructive nature of over-population/resource limits - feast to famine - because the foundations of our religious beliefs were built around it. I'm sure other boom/bust cycles over the ages would have reinforced this cultural memory.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html
So maybe PO doomerism is attractive to many because of our cultural memory of previous boom/bust cycles. That may be a good survival trait.
How is Gobekli Tepe related to boom/bust cycles?
It was probably the biggest example of boom/bust after the end of the last glacial period (I'm talking about populations moving to a new area, growing, and then having a hard landing because of resource constraints) – and that may well have burned the recognition of such constraints into cultural memory, passed down through religious allegory (the latter part of that statement is highly arguable of course, but is based on a limited understanding of the religious activity that grew up and changed around that site). What is fairly clear is that an abundance of wildlife and natural resources lead hunter-gathers to settle in ever growing numbers, until they reached a point where their needs outstripped those resources and they then had to rely on early agricultural methods to survive. Early agricultural life would have been extremely hard compared to a hunter-gather's existence in a resource rich area.
I can see this as the source of the Out-of-Eden story, but not as a source of apocalyptic myth.
This is all pretty speculative (and the research supporting the hypothesis that agricultural life was harder is pretty thin, IIRC), but our guess here is that population grew with the advent of agriculture. That's not boom/bust at all, and doesn't support the idea of an apocalypse narrative.
I'm going to have to throw my hat in with Gail on this one. I just don't discern any fundamental difference between traditional religions and secular religions, and I don't believe Hoffer did either:
Religion is certainly corrutible. But so is science, as the National Socialists more than amply demonstrated.
One can make an argument about comparing and contrasting 'mass movements', but juxtaposing the two words 'secular' and 'religion' and then gluing them together into the term 'secular religion' creates an oxymoron. It is like trying to create new words such as GoStop and OffOn. No one contests that secular 'movements' can be counterproductive or 'bad' or that secular people can make bad choices or do bad things. Very few people would try to make the case that all religions accomplish only negative things either. One does not have to speciously attempt to conflate religion with non-religious movements, clubs, societies, group, people to make that point.
I don't believe the conflation of secular and religious movements is specious at all.
Nominally religion deals with "other-worldly" phenomena and secularism deals with "this-worldly" phenomena. We see this dichotomy expressed in the 2nd-century writings of the Epistle of Clement: "This age and the future are two enemies...we cannot therefore be friends of the two but must bid farewell to the one and hold companionship with the other." Modern-day mainifestations can be found in the frequent attacks on "secular humanism" by a host of Christian fundamentalists.
However, a closer examination of American history and its Puritan underpinnings reveals that, in our culture at least, the difference between the this-worldly and the other-worldly is not nearly so clearcut. As Neibuhr explains:
Thus Puritanism does not meet Hoffer's criteria for a mass movement, because it is not predicated on self-sacrifice.
Other Christian movements, however--those that call for suffering and sacrifice in this world because their "reward is in another world"--do satisfy one of Hoffer's key criteria for mass movements.
DownSouth, you are mistaken if you think Hoffer would agree with Gail on this one. I have read "The True Believer" not just once but most parts of it numerous times.
The key word in your Wikipedia quote is "fanatical". Have you ever know a fanatical believer in "The one who dies with the most toys wins"? Is that a masss movement in any sense of the word? What devil do the "dying with toys" religion despise? The same could be said about most of Gail's other "religions". Hoffer would not have regarded The Oil Drum as a fanatical mass movement. Ditto for "beautiful bodies" and AGW.
Yes, that describes the fanatical true believer but it hardly describes many members of TOD, nor even the "Permaculture can save the world" group. No, there is a world of difference between what Gail is describing as religious belief system and what Hoffer would consider a fanatical mass movement.
Ron P.
The career success and status trip is definitely a mass movement and failure is the Devil.
Ron,
Transcendental qualities have been attributed to "beautiful bodies" in both traditional and secular religions:
Again, this wall between the transcendental and the tangible is not nearly so well defined as you would lead us to believe.
DS, I am really puzzled here. You quote Clement of Alexandria and a book about the Third Reich in an attempt to prove that the admiration of beautiful bodies is not only a belief system but one that Eric Hoffer might have called a mass movement. Then you imply that this has something to do with the differences between the transendental and the tangible! Or, more correctly the lack of differences between them.
Goodness man, I really don't think we are talking about the same thing. I was discussing the difference between fanatical mass movements and ordinary everyday things that people casually believe or do.
Oh, the fact that males admire the beautiful body of a woman is really a Darwinian adaptation. It's in their genes...and jeans. (Pun intended.) It really has nothing to do with belief systems of any sort.
Ron Patterson
Re in their genes I think you might be pushing it somewhat-Art,Architecture, Nature, etc. possess beauty that is appreciated by humans-IMO the appreciation of female beauty is accentuated by horniness yet it is not caused by it-e.g. a beach can be very beautiful but you have to pretty frustrated to start pounding the sand.
There have been secular mass movements. And there have been religious mass movements. Hoffer described both, and he attributed the same doctrinal characteristics to both. He did not discern any great difference between the two.
It is just as easy to become deluded by an iniquitous secular mass movement as it is to become deluded by a pernicious religious mass movement.
The doctrinal characteristic that both secular and religious mass movements share is that the "reward" for which both their converts self-sacrifice must be transcendental. In the case of religion, the imagined reward is a paradaisical "everlasting life" in another world, after death, commonly referred to as "heaven." This is the concept inherent in the quote from the Epistle of Clement.
In the case of secular mass movements, the reward, although secular, must also be transcendental, and equally as imaginary. Thus the quote from Peter Adam: "Reality is transfomed into an ideal world: the experience of the individual becomes the experience of the whole people." In the blond, blue-eyed beauties that populate the art of the Third Reich you find the ideal to which National Socialism asked its adherents to self-sacrifice--the Volk, the "perfect race". But again, the "perfect race" no more exists in this-world than does heaven.
To quote Hoffer:
And to reiterate, what the things I have pointed out demonstrate is that the line between the religous and the secular, between the spirit and the flesh, is not nearly so unambiguous as you postulate.
That said, not all people are the same. And while many may indeed derive spiritual elation from ideal physical beauty, or the perfect house, the perfect car, or the perfect clothes, these things leave other people cold. And living in a society which places so much emphasis on these things leaves them with a sense of spirital emptiness.
beauty is momentary in the mind
the fitful tracing of a portal
but in the flesh it is immortal.
the body dies; the body's beauty lives
Ron, there are many examples of fanatic believers of "he who dies with the most toys wins". Look at the number of megarich people who continue to work long hours until the day they die. Here in Australia the richest man a few years ago (Kerry Packer) was still making deals to amass more toys in his hospital bed. A few months before he died he offered half a million dollars to buy the first megahuge plasma screen TV; he wanted to have the biggest toy before he died.
What stupidity drives people to amass fortunes and still try to amass more in their 70's and 80's? Why do you see examples of people stipulating in their wills that priceless artworks be buried with them?
As far as their devil goes these money worshipping fanatics abhorr people who want the simple life or turn their back on greed. Plenty of rich people have disowned family members that don't follow their creed "greed is good".
I said religions and belief systems have a lot in common. I didn't say they were the same.
Everyone has some values and some things they consider important in life. Some of these come through religions; some come in other ways. Some of them have a scientific basis; some don't. What is important really can't be determined through science.
Darwinian. I think you're maybe missing Gail's point. If you stretch your definition of religion and its cognates and not narrowly focus on 'god' as a necessary object/subject of religion, you will see most philosophies, systems, mass movements, etc. for what they are. That is, essential religious in nature, since they elicit similar to same behavior, devotion, identity, cohesion, stability just as they require similar/same quantities of faith, trust, hope, etc. to work.
You said:
and
Belief in a god and worship as you narrowly define them are not a prerequisite/defining characteristic of religion. Take Buddhism and Taoism as examples. This is a traditional, western conception of religion and a projection of values. Furthermore, such an understanding of religion as a phenomenon is reductionist and obsolete, as it fails to even explain/express contemporary western 'religious' experience, let alone that of oriental civilizations.
If one thinks outside of traditional semantic/cognitive constraints, then mass movements can and are like religions, perhaps without a sacred element. But then again, an expanded understanding of what "sacred" means, can lead us to the conclusion that mass movements/ideologies/philosophies are indeed religious in nature (perhaps because homo sapiens is religious in nature): there are unquestioned foundational beliefs; these beliefs give order to the world and may even explain it; these beliefs also have underlying anthropological and cosmological assumptions which largely determine adherents' values; there is an exaltation of certain ideals, objects, values, etc. and the relentless pursuit of these, or symbols that embody them. Much behavior is ritualized, professions of faith, or at the very least, deference and passive submission/resignation are required; etc. Anyway, all this to say that they shape thoughts, values and largely determine behavior, choices etc. and require devotion in such a way that they are practically religious in nature. Materialism, capitalism or any other -ism, PO, evolution, even friggin' universal home ownership all share these characteristics. I think that foundation of one's religion, whether empirical or not, is of no importance. What matters is the psychological and behavioral impacts and how they play out.
From Merriam-Webster online
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English; akin to Old High German got god
Date: before 12th century
1) capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as (a): the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe.
(b)Christian Science: the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit : infinite Mind (2)a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality:
(3)a person or thing of supreme value:
(4)a powerful ruler
From Wikipedia, 'God'
God is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism.[1]
God is most often conceived of as the supernatural creator and overseer of the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the many different conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. God has also been conceived as being incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent".[1]
A thought-provoking post, indeed.
A few thoughts: 1) You have conflated the primary definition of God (a supreme being, omnipotent, omniscient, believe in it and good things will happen to you/you will be granted access and membership in an eternal paradise/afterlife/etc. with a 'turn of phrase' colloquialism: calling 'God' anything that people find centrally important is their lives, such as bodybuilding, money, fast cars, whatnot. Obviously, these two broad usages of the word 'God' are vastly different concepts, and I do not see the utility in conflating them.
2) Your list of 'belief systems' skates over the intellectual thin ice of conflating things that people value such as money, power, beautiful bodies, etc. with theories about the world based on the scientific method (observe, model, test, refine theory, wash, rinse, spit, repeat, with a healthy dose of peer review and no Deus ex machina) such as AGW and the idea of finite oil leading to a period of time of peak oil per unit of measure per/unit of time extraction.
3) Although not explicitly mentioned in the post, I will address point three preemptively, since for many people it is mantra: Atheism or agnostic is not a religion, and strictly speaking, not a belief system either. a-theism is 'lack of theism' or 'lack of belief in God'...Agnosticism is lack of knowledge of God. Unlike as said by various commentators, lack of religion is not religion...it is intellectually dishonest and/or ignorant to define the lack of something that is the something that is lacked.
There are many fine books on these subjects, but to the point:
A rigorous proper statement by an atheist or agnostic for that matter would be something such as: I do not have evidence to support the hypothesis of God (the Christian God, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, Shiva, Odin, Xenu, etc). Logical fallacies such as appeals to antiquity, appeals to authority, or appeals to mass/majority beliefs do not hold any water. In this sense, and until some being appears and is subject to peer-reviewed testing and verification, one can no more justify the existence of the Gods I just mentioned any easier than one could justify the existence of elves, fairies, leprechauns, unicorns, or Russell's teapot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
People who state that 'God does not exist' are technically making a logically indefensible statement, since it is not possible to 'prove' a negative. Again, the accepted scientific/logical framework/statement would be: 'I do not have evidence to support this/these theories as accurate representations of reality.' or something to that effect. Since most people are not very scientifically schooled/experienced, most people communicate ideas in this realm using the sloppy vernacular which leads folks with an agenda to skillfully conflate unlike ideas in the public square.
Back to what I perceive to be the goal or point of your post (other than to incite lively comment): 'Humanity's circumstances are going to pot due to our unsustainable lifestyles, so it would be useful to form or join enduring social networks to engage in mutual community support.''Churches already exist and serve this purpose for many people, ergo, they may be relied upon for this purpose to an even greater extent in the impending post-peak world.'
I happen to have seen sufficient evidence and logic to support the idea of peak oil, and of limits to human population and consumption growth wrt numerous other sources and sinks limitations...check.
I can see, based on historical examples, the wisdom in social/community cooperation, based on each person contributing their proper share of effort....check
I have seen historical evidence that membership in certain religious communities has provided such mutual support...check
However, if pretending to adopt someone's fairy tale and mouthing words faking belief in concepts which I have no logical support for is my price of passage to survive or prosper, then no thanks.
For those who do not hold religious beliefs, rather than join a church to effect community support I would recommend starting or joining a 'Community Center', 'Cultural Center', Grange, sewing/knitting/quilting club, farmers' market, woodworking cooperative, plumbers' guild, or something similar. One does not have to 'drink the Kool-Aid' to provide and receive community support, be a good citizen, and 'have values'. The good ideas (Do unto others...etc) that exist in the Christian Bible and in other religious texts were the same good ideas that have existed since humanity started communicating...just wrapped up in creation/afterlife mythology in order to provide carrots and sticks (heaven and hell) to motivate believers to implement these fine rules of thumb for having functional societies.
Precious! I'll have to add that to my list of quotations.
Hi MoonWatcher,
Your posts on this subject certainly gets my vote and I'm humbled by your grasp of the subject. Just a couple of observations:
I now live in an area that is overrun with Christian churches (mostly fundamentalist) and it saddens me to think how community centers (of which there are few) would do so much more to promote common goodness. I've experienced places that relied more on the community center than churches and found that very refreshing.
Basically, I find this whole discussion kind of depressing and saddening. I guess it has merit to help understand why the vast majority of people are incapable of understanding the real issues facing the planet - but, much of this discussion does not seem to lead in that direction.
The fundamental issue is the belief in a supernatural world beyond the natural world in which we live. Sam Harris makes the point very bluntly: if a person is willing to accept as "true" something for which there is zero evidence (and only the scientific method has any credibility for dealing with the concept of "evidence") then that person's capacity for understanding the truth or falseness of any assertion is severely compromised.
Obviously, I won't change anyone's religious inclination. But, if someone is questioning their "Faith", they might read
http://www.amazon.com/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591026520/...
I stand by my previous comments on TOD that teaching a particular religion to a young child is a serious form of child abuse. Once their impressionable brains are imprinted with these myths, they will either hold them as true for life or suffer a painful process of separation.
Moonwatcher,
"However, if pretending to adopt someone's fairy tale and mouthing words faking belief in concepts which I have no logical support for is my price of passage to survive or prosper, then no thanks."
I see you have a tremendous respect for intellectual and verbal accuracy. You might consider a scientist of yesteryear may have picked his nose, ass, and teeth without washing his hands. Of course we now have "germ theory" that would indicate this is a no no from any logical point of view, the focal point of the AMA. Now we have peer reviewed arguments against germ theory. The world was influenced by catastrophism, no it was steady state, you get the point. Study the history of science for more details. What does science get wrong now - besides being amoral, disingenuous, self serving, and subjecting scientists to increasingly narrow specialties and viewpoints? OK, I may have gone too far in that description.
As a scientist with some understanding (BS Geology, evolution emphasis) I am not so willing to ignore other forms of knowledge. The "church" said the world was flat, now it's round, go figure - they were probably wrong then and right now.
Truth is something in the making, at least to human minds. I believe in science because it comes close to the truth. I believe in the spiritual because of personal experience, as do some if not most religious people. You probably won't get personal experience strictly from a science belief structure. I laugh to think of my immediate contemporaries seeing me as religious. The works of Emerson and others are specifically about experiences that trump something so subjective as our cognition functions, which are the tools on which everything depends in science. If you wish to argue experience is dependent on cognition I can't defend that other than to say this is not what I mean.
Originally, deep thinkers used both scientific and religious reference, it was called philosophy or "love of wisdom" Wikipedia reference. It is only in the last hundred years you could be considered educated with only science under your belt.
The problem scientists have with religion and the religious have with science stem from "fundamentalist attitudes" as mentioned in other posts. If you buy into the science then the religious is obviously bunk and vise verse. I will be long dead and buried before one or the other has the whole answer. Until then I will seek value where it is found. Admittedly this is mostly in science and the natural world for me, but I KNOW this is not the whole story if believing is knowing.
Faith is the word I use when describing what most are calling belief here. Faith in science or religion is the same, beyond question. Belief, on the other hand, is subject to further refinement over time. This is similar to the concept of competing theories in science.
I bring this all up in response to the original post as the idea of joining the local church has been on my mind for two years, ever since becoming alarmed about serious human problems. I went a few times and since they are my neighbors, some discussion was possible about beliefs and accepting the church with all its flaws. A surprising number of parishioners were of like mind and only were able to deal with the outmoded ideas of the church because of the fellowship with their neighbors.
Unfortunately, the day I last went the preacher added a victory prayer for the US of A and our troops in Iraq - contrary to everything I believe the church to represent and I haven't been back. I'm am afraid I might stand up and start arguing with the preacher. Too bad, the church is the only local institution with the comprehensive cohesion to pull off an organizing role, at least in this po-dunk town I call home.
Steve UP of Michigan
Excellent post.
I do not post much as I am avid lurker but I think Religion should be co opted and not ridiculed as some do on this site. Gail is right it is an established community and may be turned to "good" if the message conforms to the bible teachings. And believe me the Bible can certainly be interpreted to live a simpler life that respects nature and fellow man. Now I am not saying it will be easy to turn the tide, but once it is turned by "respected" clerics of many faiths it could make a vast difference in how "things turn out".
The arguments and data just has to use the Bible as a foundation for making the argument and has to be nuanced for every audience. In other words how you get Catholics to make the choice would be easy, if you had the right Pope. However, the Protesters are a diverse and un organized lot.
Ah yes, "the belief in the belief in religion" argument. This is what we really need to get beyond, as even the liberal left, or some science people (while embarrassed by Talking Snakes and childish creation myths) still believe religion is essentially good.
There is a huge movement of people who are seriously looking at and questioning this "belief".
Dennett sees religion as a natural phenomena (his book Breaking The Spell is an excellent to start).
Gray in Straw Dogs makes a good point Humanism is a religion, and quite convincingly.
Then there are the people who see religions as memes, replicators who use humans a hosts for continuance of their existence, with often toxic effects on the hosts (if you are infected, your replicator will not allow you to see this).
Gail,
This is an insightful, thought-provoking essay, and I think quite appropriate for TOD.
It's important to identify the bedrock belief that brings us together here on TOD, which you did:
But I believe there's another article of faith almost as universially accepted on this blog, and that is that oil is of utmost importance, that it cannot easily be replaced, and that as it grows scarcer and more difficult to extract, that this will result in extreme changes in our economic and social organization.
Beyond these two articles of faith, however, I don't discern a great deal of conformity here on TOD. It's a place where, from the fertile soil created by these two underlying core beliefs, a thousand flowers bloom. Some advocate a return to a premodern ways of life--green bioregionalism, new age spirituality, primitive chic, etc. Others seek to preserve and improve on modernism and its imperatives for scientific-rational thought and a national culture/religion. Some hope to construct a new way forward from the ashes of modernism, a new way that has not yet been fully conceptualized. And yet others have embraced nihilism.
It's this ideological diversity that makes TOD an interesting place to be.
I agree with you. The importance of oil is another article of faith. Also, the diversity on The Oil Drum makes the site an interesting place to be. No one came down with tablets of stone, telling us what the way forward is.
"The importance of oil is another article of faith. "
Why is that? Oil has been replaced before - it was the source for lighting in the late 1800's, and then was replaced by electricity.
Is it because of the number of people from the oil industry, who have a hard time imagining a world without their industry?
Oh my, given what I wrote in this same thread this is amusing.
I guess not everyone has actually studied peak oil 101 much. There's a set of peak oil primers on the left frame at TOD, here's one of them:
http://www.omninerd.com/articles/What_You_Need_to_Know_about_Peak_Oil
Jason, you're assuming that I can only disagree with you out of ignorance. I'm confident that I know as much about peak oil as you do.
This is a basic question, and a long discussion. This is a bit off-topic, but it's probably a good idea to support the idea that "the importance of oil" is often exaggerated on TOD. Further there are certainly people reading (lurking) who would be interested. So, here goes - here are a few posts from my site:
Can oil can be replaced?
Would reducing CO2 emissions be that hard, if we really wanted to?
Is there academic support for the idea that declining oil imports mean declining GDP?
How pessimistic should we be?
-----
Now, let's turn back to the question raised by the Original Post. I'd agree that the explanation you provided below supports the idea that "the importance of oil" isn't an article of faith for you. I think others on TOD have stronger opinions. Here are a couple of quotes from TOD that suggest that the importance of oil is an article of faith for many:
"We ARE unavoidably going to becoming materially poorer....The underground physical resources, hydrocarbons in particular, that underpin industrialism are depleting"
And, from Gail's recent article:
"There is nothing Bernanke or Geithner or the G20 meetings can do to fix the lack of growth--it is closely related to the lack of cheap oil and cheap natural gas, now that these have been depleted. Growth is not possible any more..."
Hi Nick,
Thanks for the clarification and sorry I misunderstood you. I actually agree that in theory, if done with enough vigor, we can rapidly kick the fossil fuel habit and have a decent (even better) quality of life afterwards. I believe it would be much different life than the one we have now.
One of the books I really liked that went through some of the potential with respect to climate change (and acknowledging peak oil) was Climate Code Red by Spratt and Sutton.
Would you agree that if the world DOESN'T make the shift to renewables and other modes of transportation and production methods in a timely fashion then the risk of severe social dislocation due to a decline of oil is high?
Appreciate the links, will look into your posts a bit more.
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
"Would you agree that if the world DOESN'T make the shift to renewables and other modes of transportation and production methods in a timely fashion then the risk of severe social dislocation due to a decline of oil is high?"
Sure. There's no question that in the short term, we're highly dependent on oil.
OTOH, you have to define the context of this statement, and what is meant by "severe social dislocation ".
From a "BAU" standpoint, mass forced carpooling for several years (while awaiting very largescale production of plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt) would be "severe social dislocation". From the point of view of many who fear total collapse, such a measure would probably be considered trivial.
From the POV of someone who works in coal mining, mass replacement of coal plants with wind turbines is "severe social dislocation". If you're a GM retiree, then GM dropping pensions in a chapter 11 re-organization is "severe social dislocation". If you work in a Toyota Prius plant in Texas, not so much.
We could easily face more events such as our current credit crunch, and the 79-82 recession, due to oil. Is that "severe social dislocation"? Probably, but it's surely not collapse.
I've been reading McKibben's book Deep Economy: I like a lot of what he has to say. Oddly, I don't yet see any sign of a sharp choice between prosperity and, say, local and better food.
For instance, he discusses the conflict between conventional growth and income distribution, and then says "in fact, there's persuasive evidence that if all you cared about was growth, the best way to speed it up would be to redistribute income more fairly" (Page 14, 2007 paperback edition).
For another instance, he says that low-input farming requires twice as much labor per acre, but then that it produces twice as much food per acre. That sounds like it requires no more labor per unit of food. What's not to like?
As I look things over... It looks like we're kind've saying the same thing, doesn't it?
Bless you Nick!! How nice it is to see informed and rational thought in place of DOOM. Murray
Thanks!
I am not sure I would put "the importance of oil" as an article of faith. I recall examining the uses of oil, its unique properties of energy density and ease of transport, and comparing it to proposed alternatives, e.g., hydrogen and electricity. The "oil replacements" didn't stack up well, so then I really saw that oil was super duper "important" and without some thinking, planning and acting ahead of the depletion curve the world as we know it would be in the lurch.
How's that faith? I would call it a well examined premise that we now tend to accept. Once we "get it" we move on to the implications, which are of course vast and confusing.
“Persons have to keep from going mad by biting off small pieces of reality which they can get some command over and some satisfaction from. This means that their noblest passions are played out in the narrowest and most unreflective ways, and this is what undoes them. From this point of view the main problem for human beings has to be expressed in the following paradox; Men and women must have a fetish in order to survive and to have ‘normal mental health.’ But this shrinkage of vision that permits them to survive also at the same time prevents them from having the overall understanding they need to plan for and control the effects of their shrinkage of experience. A paradox this bitter sends a chill through all reflective people. “Self-knowledge is the hardest human task because it risks revealing to persons how their self-esteem was built; on the powers of others in order to deny their own death.” “Life imagines its own significance and strains to justify its beliefs. It is as though the life force itself needed illusion in order to further itself. Logically, then, the ideal creativity for humans would strain toward the ‘grandest illusion.”
- Ernest Becker, Escape from Evil Page 153.
"...if the message conforms to Biblical teachings."
Which Bible? Which version? How about the 'New New' Testaments as revealed to Joseph Smith in the 1827 and the separate new chapters revealed to the Reverend Sun Young Moon in 1935? The followers of the teaching of both these men claim to be Christians...just ones with the new, improved messages! We have witnessed the birth of new Christian texts and new congregations in our modern times...you can read the microfiche newspaper articles from upstate New York describing what a charlatan Smith was. He is be one of multitudes.
And which teaching in the King James Bible do we hew to to make a more perfect Union? Not Eating shellfish? Treating one's slaves with kindness? Not using bowels and utensils made of wood? Not wearing garments made from two different fabrics?
One can (and people have) used snippets from the Bible, written and re and re-re-written by men, not Gods, over the ages, to justify just about darn anything. The book is a collection of fables and allegories written over a wide range of time, not downloaded from some Godly server into Gutenberg's printing press. It borrows concepts from may pre-existing religions and belief systems and wraps them up in a different bow.
How has religion led us, especially in the U.S., one of the most religious nations, to lead a sustainable life? By outlawing contraception? By being used to promote and justify war and taking other people's resources? By promoting unlimited fertility? By convincing people that the resources of the Earth were given to man to do with what he will, and that we are sinful and imperfect and will make all the wrong choices, but as long as we 'believe', God will ride in on his white steed and renew the Earth in paradise for 1000 years then take all of his believers into eternal heaven?
Really?
This is the path to constructing sustainable human societies?
Making statement about religion and one's views as to why one doesn't subscribe does not constitute 'ridicule'. Nice try, but the 'sacred cow' attack is another tired old tactic to nullify discussion of/challenges to one's beliefs. As far as I can tell, this board seems to accept respectful exchanges of facts and opinions.
How many people on this board know what a 'Glory Trip' is?
http://www.spacearchive.info/peacekeeper-gt-32pa.htm
http://www.yokwe.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2116
http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/citations/glory_trip_1/
If the intentional religious/Armageddon imagery in the name for this function doesn't keep you up at nights, go back and take the Blue Pill and go back to your dream world. There are many, many people wishing for prophesy to be fulfilled, and many of these are in critical positions.
BTW, I was a big fan of the new BSG as well...and the religious themes bothered me not a bit...because it is a work of fiction/entertainment.
Some interesting gospel music collected by Alan Lomax. Some of these tracts were reissued by the Smithsonian using a politically correct title. I have long held a greater fondness for religious music than for the religions.
http://vslam.com/music/negro-church-music/
Gail,
In addition to the other fine comments above, I want to add that I think you are confusing what I call "world view" with "belief system". Your religion is Christian, which finds it's basis in the Bible, a book derived from events thousands of years ago. For many, the Bible is Fundamental Truth (with a capital "T"), unquestionable and absolutely true. Even your so-called "liberal" interpretation does not allow for dissent on the basics of The Book, i.e. the existence of the god thing. The Book defines your world view and your comments are an example of trying to force the rest of the world into your belief system by equating those other world views as if they were based on belief, not evidence and logic.
In contrast, a scientific world view doesn't rest on belief, indeed, science is as much a process as a set of results in the form of theories that appear as dogma. The theories are ultimately tied to facts (as in data) and the theories are often modified as new facts are brought to light. The physics behind what's called Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is not based on belief, but upon considerable investigation of the natural world. In that sense, the problem is not one of religion, i.e., belief. That there are many who do not understand the scientific basis of AGW and thus are placed in the situation where they must believe or deny the science does not change the facts. The same is true for other areas of physics, chemistry, geology or biology. Gravity and the idea that the Earth orbits the Sun is a radical idea which was strongly opposed by the Church when it was first presented. People lost their freedom and even their lives for saying that this was true. Other more recent findings, such as the concepts of electromagnetic radiation and the germ theory of disease, have radically altered the ways in which we interpret what our senses record.
As a consequence, the old Biblical world view is essentially dead in the modern world view. As you point out:
Yet, we find that about 25% of the U.S. population takes the Bible as literal truth. By coincidence, I was asked if I wanted to join a Baptist church last week, as I have been meeting with a local renewable energy group in their building. I didn't want to tell the Fundamentalist pastor that I thought he was exceedingly ignorant with his focus on the Rapture, etc. I would find it almost as difficult to join a so-called "liberal" church, since their basic world view would still be so opposite to that which I hold to. In either situation, I would have little to say to the other members of such a church, as I would likely try to point out the many obvious flaws in their logic. I'm not a hypocrite, which would have been HeyZeus' position as well...
I think that the churches, which provided a sense of unifying community for society as the U.S. began, are now likely to be the cause of much disruption as people who hold the Fundamentalist world view find that they can not accept the secular world views and resort to repression and violence to force their world view on the rest of U.S. There are undercurrents of rebellion out here in the country, much like the days before the War Between the States, which, BTW, had strong religious overtones. Given enough economic stress, the Old South might just decide to bold the Union again, only this time, other states might join in Secession...
E. Swanson
OTOH, at the 25 percentile, what would be the IQ in the USA? 80? 75? and the senile % of the population is also quite high so just looking at the non senile, IQ exceeding say 95 part of the USA population that 25% might drop down to maybe 5% (guesstimate).
This does not fit my experience. The basic intelligence of what we are calling true believers is not related.
I found the inclusion of Anthropogenic climate change as a belief system to be jarring and out of place, although I agree with you that those who do not understand climate science may be forced to take it on faith.
When I present the topic of climate change in my classes, I always encounter climate change skeptics among my students from both the right and the left - its either an environmentalist plot to undermine free enterprise and the American way or a corporate plot to control society (go figure). I usually ask them to hold their objection until we look at the topic from various angles.
1. What do we know for sure - certain gases trap infrared radiation, there is a historical correlation between temperature and atmospheric CO2. Burning fossil fuels, deforestation, rice and ruminant production all produce GHGs. These things are provable through repeated tests and other than saying something akin to "God is doing that just to test our faith," they are undeniable.
2. What have we observed - Increase in atmospheric concentration of green house gases, elevation in sea level, retreat of glaciers, lowering of ocean pH etc. Again these are all examples of factual information, one may debate their etiology but not their factual existence.
3. What do we thing will happen - This is based on our understanding of climate and the climate record. Here's where different scientific view can come in. As Physicist Eugene Skonikoff said way back in 1990, "The vision of an inverted pyramid comes to mind, of a steadily broadening basis of implications that rest ultimately on the point of a relatively small band of dedicated scientists who recognize the uncertainties of their work." Of course in the 19 years since he wrote "Gridlock on Global Warming," our understanding has vastly increased as has the small band of dedicated scientists.
4. What should we do about it. This is clearly where belief systems come in and it is dependent on one's political ideology and the way that they view humanities place in the global environment. In response to some pretty overwhelming evidence that something is afoot, the current trend among deniers is "OK its happening but its the result of natural forces so we don't need any changes in behavior."
But to say that accepting a changing climate is like accepting a secular belief system is like saying accepting a heliocentric solar system, germ theory, or plate tectonics is a secular belief system.
In my opinion, lumping them in with the other examples Gail gives is quite inappropriate.
its either an environmentalist plot to undermine free enterprise and the American way or a corporate plot to control society (go figure).
Like most issues, if you seek to control others you can use whatever comes your way as a tool. All depends on framing and what you can 'sell' to your allies/convince others to go along with.
It can be both - one group wants to try and dampen business (and really - is anyone happy with Wall Street at the moment) and controlling the population is always good for the leadership.
Oh and "free enterprise" - emotionally loaded words that mean nothing.
lowering of ocean pH
I've seen the arguments/counter arguments on all but this one - what is the typical counter to the pH change?
Like you, I have never seen any counter-argument. Either it is too arcane for the usual denial (better to focus on a cold winter and polar bear population stats) or no one has been able to come up with a counter explanation. Perhaps it is due to the the implications of a collapse of the lower ocean food chain being just too scary to complicate. The same could be said for melting methane clathrates in permafrost.
Like you, I have never seen any counter-argument.
Ok. As I've not spent years looking into global warming, I'm not up on every counter argument. Thanks for letting me know that I've not missed an argument.
I'm willing to consider solar variance, air particulate/chemtrails or even its another way to tax. Because all but the chemtrails have data one can look at.
Perhaps it is due to the the implications of a collapse of the lower ocean food chain being just too scary to complicate. The same could be said for melting methane clathrates in permafrost.
The kinds of people who need their minds changed are like the local elected reps:
1) Why are you worried about farmland being turned into suburbs? There is no farm crisis - I can go to the store and get all the veggies I want
2) Lets hook up giant electodes at the water intake and electrocute the bacteria (the intake pipe is 12 foot in diameter)
3) When talking about an ethic group the statement was "they are an endangered species" (What? Just because you, the elected rep is Homo Dorkus doesn't mean others of your ethnic group are a ignorant as you.)
Face it - 'lower ocean food chain' or 'clathrates' are beyond their ken.
Both Libertarians and Socialists have attached Peak Oil for the same reasons. They reject due to the implications, not a study of the evidence. People generally get mad when they are told they can't keep their habits or meet their expectations.
I take anthropogenic climate change on faith, because I'm not a climatologist. I dont know about ice cores, the exact relationship with CO2 feedback loops, the total effect of water vapor, interconnectedness of ocean acidity, let alone the whole big picture. I take it on faith that most of those who are public figures refered to as climatologists are credible and that those who fall into the climate change denier catagory I find less credible for reasons beyond climate science, which again isn't my area of expertise.
Corolation vs causation problems perhaps. Not saying I believe that, I believe that the prominent climatologists are more correct. But again, its something I take on faith.
Its not inherently obvious that we can do anything about it at all.
It is true that Correlation does not equal causality. But my point was that the observable phenomena are factual. Drawing a causal relationship is based on whether those phenomena "fit" with the hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change, which they do. There remain anomalies that must be explained. If someone comes up with a different explanation that better explains the observed phenomena and existing anomalies then the hypothesis must be altered to reflect that new understanding. So far that has not happened.
As for whether we can do anything about it: that is, indeed, something based on belief - belief in the political will, ingenuity and technological prowess of the global society. Not that I'm very optimistic, mind you.
Oh I believe that, but again, unless you're a climatologist you're forced to take it on faith that this data fits the hypothesis just because theres so much of it and its so complicated that for anyone not working directly in the field they wont be able to evaluate it.
Its not inherently obvious that climate change mitigation is worth doing either. If we have to spend x% of our wealth to reduce emissions y% we dont have any data on how that will mitigate climate change and more importantly the damage caused by climate change. We cant know weather we get a return on our investment. It gets even more complicated by discounting. We might, but we're making policy decisions entirely in a vacuum of information.
I am new here. Very interesting posts and points of view. My two cents:
Summary: Beware the broad brush.
Argument:
Some versions of Christianity view the Bible as a document written by humans to be read and thought about but not literally true. Many important truths are metaphorical, after all. Some religions consider care of creation and also scientific investigation to be very important. Some religions view despoliation of the earth to be wrong and a sign of humanity's arrogance and refusal to recognize and failure to live within limits. Some scientists find it possible to be both scientific and religious.
To me religion is a way of seeing the world and living in it according to non-violent principles, which requires reverence and a desire to live with rather than dominate. Many people confuse this kind of living and practice with forms of organized religion that become authoritarian instruments of control, in reality not much different than mass secular social movements that control and oppress people "outside the pale." Thus the Spanish inquisition and Stalin's murderous activities. Thus religious fundamentalists' efforts to keep women from gaining education or the freedom to control their own reproductive health. Thus extreme scientific fundamentalists' refusal to acknowledge that some things might be beyond human understanding and that religious reverence might be worthwhile and necessary--with consequent prejudice against those who espouse a religion.
Hi quakergardener,
Thanks for the good thoughts and the worthy reminder on avoiding overgeneralization. By the way, your multiple (and correct, in my opinion) use of the term "reverence" brought to mind an interesting book from a few years back by Paul Woodruff, called "Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue". His conception of reverence goes well beyond religion but certainly also includes religious reverence. In any case, I get awfully tired of the indiscriminate trashing of religion, and the treating of religious people like some kind of zoological curiosity to be studied from behind a large window. As someone who works in scientific academia, I see a lot of this, and it strikes me as at least as narrow and poorly considered as a lot what you hear coming out of the mouths of the faithful.
Nice post Quakergardner. A little point, I noticed in what you wrote: "religious fundamentalists efforts to keep women from gaining an education or controlling their reproductive health". This is a all encompassing statement that effectivly means all fundamentalists are tarred with the same brush. Of course we all (myself included) make this same mistake of viewing all others as having a single viewpoint and fail to realize that the other may be composed of multiple points. After all I doubt the Protestant fundamentalist viewpoints are the same as a Catholic fundamentalist or a Salafist or any other fudamentalist and even within a group there would be major differences.
I'm sure there are just as many viewpoints on the atheist side.
"You can't count on God for squat. He pretty much told me so himself."
Bender Bending Rodriguez
Futurama
The episode in which Bender meets God.
Gail, Thank you so very much for putting The Oil Drum at the head of your list, and for bringing up the topic of belief systems in the context list of traumatic contemporary issues (Peal Oil and global financial meltdown). Engaging in belief systems appears to be intrinsic to the human condition (I believe that Nate, in prior posts, had comments on along this line of thought).
The current cognitive environment for industrial society is highly complex and detailed. Most people approach the problem of validating the multitude of assertions put forth by falling back upon the fundamental cognitive structures of belief. They develop a confidence in the truth or existence of something that is not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof. For highly complex concepts, where excessive and inordinate amounts of effort would be required of any given person to engage in validation, they place their confidence in demonstrated experts who are capable of determining for themselves the validity. Interestingly, given that humanity is a social animal, a group can substitute as the expert -- the old saw of, "everybody says it's so, so it must be that way." When there is a lack of acknowledged experts, perhaps the concepts are novel or the extant social leadership represses development of experts, the group is the sole source of expertise.
Group-think as the foundation of a belief system can suffer from positive feedback. Without external checks and balances, there will arise an echo chamber effect were the loudest or most emphatic voices predominate. I find TOD to be rather interesting in that amongst the many cliques in the TOD camp, there are contrary belief systems founded on the common bifold tenet of Peak oil being real and the consequences of that reality will have dramatic affects on the human condition. One of the most interesting behaviors is that of the TOD staff putting up articles, of their own and of guests, that run counter to beliefs of one or more cliques.
The intentional and repeated perturbation of a self-reinforcing belief system is is one of the actions that keeps TOD from spinning off into the neither regions. Sadly, loud voices, impolite responses, and ad hominin attacks can easily overwhelm and drive away dissenting voices. When a group of believers engages in a common set of practices, then a religion arises. Religions are notorious for stamping out dissenting viewpoints. 'nuf said about that.
Back to PO and the economy. I do not feel that one can actually foretell the future. Once can forecast and, when a sufficiently robust model exists, make predictions based on probabilities. I know that given a constant rate of production and a finite resource that peak oil is a given. However, the uncertainties regarding the fossil fuel industries, and the highly uncertain and rather degenerate models of economics, means that predictions of when and how much impact PO will have must be relegated to the realm of belief. That's OK. Anything of a sufficiently complex nature requires that people use their innate belief system. After all, it's only natural. On the other hand, development of that belief into a religion is cause for concern. So long as there are experts contributing to the TOD discussion AND so long as people are willing to be nice to dissenting or alternative views, TOD will continue to be a useful source.
You make some good points. Thanks for writing.
We sometimes need to define the words use because they can and many times do have multiple meanings.
Religion comes from the ancient word ‘relio’, which means to tie or to bind. From that we can understand why we use the word religion to describe what religious organizations do. But it also can describe what how other groups or thinking might be, those that don’t think their point of view can be wrong and others that don’t study what is wrong about their religion or thinking.
Most people haven’t come to their Religion by studying all of them and then deciding on the best one. They mostly got them from their parents and were raised in them much as Presidential candidate Mitt Romney called ‘The faith of our fathers.’ If his parents were of a different Christian denomination, other than Mormon, so would he.
But then we can also have Religious like thinking, where we are tied or bound to a narrow thinking. But what is non religious thinking? It’s called Freethinking or a Freethinker, who isn’t bound to a certain point of view. Many times this is the person who will change their mind when the evidence changes.
I’d like to tell you my personal thinking and quest for truth that I went though. One of my parents was born in Germany in the 1920’s and went through World War II in Germany as a teenager (near Hamburg.) I remember thinking, what is it that allowed those people to believe what they did and go though what they did? What was it that would allow and hopefully allow a person and society to not go through a 1930’s Germany type thinking?
The answer? To be skeptical and critical of your own thinking and beliefs. To look for evidence against your beliefs.
This means the Christian should read and study the reasons why Christianity might not be true from the best sources. It also means Athiests should figure out why they might be wrong.
It’s been pointed out by Philosophers of Science that what Science does and how it can be good at describing the world is that it doesn’t prove things to be true, but ties to falsify them. That’s the whole purpose of experimentation and peer review, that ideas are looked and discussed to find mistakes and wrongness and for reasons why they are not true.
Everything we talk about has some elements of faith and they have some elements of reason. And what we need to examine things using faith and reason is to do it Honestly.
I think therefore I am. Something Descarte said a few hundred years ago. What makes it what many people think is the first thing that we can think is true is because it is the first Honest thing we can say. And then try to build from there.
What organized Religions do. Imagine if you were put into a windowless room with the door closed (lights on.) Someone pointed at things in the room and said “is that in the room?” Yes. “is that in the room?” Yes. “is that in the room?” Yes. And keep asking that question a hundred, a thousand, a million times and everytime the answer is yes. And then they can say “well, that means everything is in this room.” Well, what about walking thru the door and finding other things, then that question would be found out to be not true. But if you are in an organized Religion or have religious thinking, you are encouraged to not criticize the organizations beliefs. ‘To believe is virtue, to doubt is sin.’
But humans want to have good opinions of ourselves and we want help in life, so we have a God, the biggest, strongest being in the universe, who if God is for us, who can be against us.
Better to be a sober Christian than a drunk Atheist even if there isn’t a God. Strong beliefs help some people phychologically.
So we need to criticize our beliefs so we don’t become like 1930’s Germany. But some may need beliefs of wonderful things so we can get through life which can be very difficult at times.
I will take issue with one comment made by the original author. The author says that Anthorpogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a secular belief. (Actually that may be the entire reason for the article) But to say that AGW isn’t true is also a belief with much much less evidence and reason to think is true than AGW being true. Science, which has reviewed the evidence and has had peer review, has concluded that Human machines and land use is affecting our climate. I think it is completely reasonable to hold to the conclusions of the largest Science organizations on our planet and that continuing to release carbon dioxide into our atmosphere will lead to a less livable planet for humans.
Human culture, that which has been passed own to us (many cultures disappeared traceless), builds upon itself in a gradual manner. The Torah and law written in babylonian captivity were a summary of traditions, like a US constituion in comparison to a British "cosntituion"( colleciton of precedents and customs). The new testament Chrisitanity takes a similar role towards Judaism that synagogue Judaism took ot tribal jewish semitic culture, a sort of quick and dirty method to bring over the basics in a few books, to the whole population. Ideological simplicity and clarity and not passed on tradition became more and more pronounced an dimportant to hold followers due to "globalization" adn competing ideologies. Yahweh against Baal in OT for example. esus against Greco-Roman pantheon. In India a similar process took place with the formation of "hinduism" which was thn simplified into Buddhism.
Historicity and similar concepts came into being along with various philosophical schools during the high cultures in China, India, Greco-Roman empires. Dark ages lost and later recovered much of this "knowledge". Occult=East asian esoteric (not religion) holistic philosophical concepts and practices are much more inclusive than western science / relgion / philosophy in toto. The west slowly catches up as with fractals, chaos theory and similar, putting belief and experience on a solid footing together so that how we experience life subjectively can be expressed mathematically/scientifically. The west reinvents the wheel, i.e. recreates the knowledge base using objective tools of mathematics, etc. to replace the purely subjective introspection techniques described by patanjali in the yoga sutras to acheive enlightenment and superficial "magical" powers, i.e. scientific control over the various elemental powers.
At any rate in culture there seems to be an evolutionary progress of ideas takking place from similar traditional practice to systematization and simplification of ideas into ideologies, religion, science or philosophy, name it what you will. Patanjali is obviously no atheist but such techniques described in the sutras are a "subjective science". Western scientists believing that exclusion of the subjective observer is possible are very anive as 20th centruy scientists ahve discovered. Our beliefs effect our environment and then change our beliefs in a constant feedback loop. So understanding ourselves seems to be the critical element. Self observation of oneself individually of humanity collecitvely, our systems and ideologies is key to survival, if that is so desired, in supposed balance with "nature" or in rule over that same, which latter seems unlikely. The ruling of one's own nature is well known to be the most difficult of tasks. Introspeciton is not known from men of action however. How do we in The West known for our culture of Action learn to introspect on our way of life and relationship with nature and one another without losing hope and decsiveness of action. Usually a crisis forces one into introspection and fundamental change. Perhaps most people are incapable of this and only death will allow change. So PO and accompanying economic crisis will force introspection and change in society. They will do until they can't anymore.
So yeah, traditional religion is good in forcing introspection into human relations; science is good in forcing introspection into physical facts, "subjective science" is important to synthesize the two to force an objective view of the role of the subjective and vice-versa on a continual developing basis so that "right action" is taken or "wrong actions" omitted. Buddhism is not equal to passivity or simple self control. At higher levels this can be quite "magical" to modern westerners in the same sense that our technology is "magical" to simple primitives. For example tibetan monks who can visualize a picture in their mind for hours without interruption is deemed impossible in western science. Similarly we can accept or not telepathic and similar concepts claimed by such esoteric practitioners. These are not simple introspective techniques to impove ethical behaviour. How can we become a better society without fulfilling our potential? We will keep going in circles like every civilization before and after us that has died out and restarted.
The oildrum just gets more and more fascinating. Yesterday Nate's piece - what do we know? today Gail's - what do we believe? We go from statistical analysis to epistemology. Thanks, keep it up.
Geology has shown there was no worldwide flood of Noah. Darwin showed the natural selection of species as opposed to all species being made in a day. Jericho was destroyed at a time different from other cities Joshua was supposed to have destroyed or taken over that were not inhabited at the time.
The errors of the Bible do not prove there is no supernatural omnipotent life, only that there were errors in the Bible. The Iron Age, Babylonian, and Persian cultures near Israel also suffered some superstition and myth. Some of the laws in the Bible were used by cultures before Israel and are being used to this day. One may not want to do away with a law merely because it is in the Bible, nor to use it merely because it was in the Bible.
Jesus acts of mercy and teachings are more popular than the teachings of Mao Tsetung. Even the brutal Chinese Communist authorities have turned towards capitalism, but have not trusted as much in religious freedom for their people.
Mind-blowing post & comments (as we 60s people say).
I'd like to expand on a point made in a few comments: There are big differences among belief systems. For example:
1. Belief systems vary in their capacity for self-criticism and self-correction. Science has a high capacity, fundamentalist religion a low capacity.
2. Belief systems vary in their survival value, in their ability to adapt to changing conditions. Capitalism has been very flexible over the last 200 years; will it continue to do so?
Christianity also has changed dramatically even over the last few decades. When I was growing up, fundamentalist Christianity occuped a small niche. Now it crowds out the traditional churches.
3. Belief systems vary in their openness to other belief systems. Christianity was hung up on evolution and modern science for a couple of centuries, whereas Islam and Buddhism never had that problem. Eastern religions in general are more tolerant of other beliefs than Judaism-Christianity-Islam.
4. Belief systems can play different roles in society - preserving the status quo, providing a neutral zone in times of conflict, serving as a flag for warring interests.
I think these are important characteristics to keep in mind, as we return to Gail's comments about peak oil and climate beliefs.
For example, in my mind, peak oil and climate (AGW) are much more allied to science than their opponents. The opponents seem to have much more in common with fundamentalism and as preservers of the status quo.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
The belief system that has been most interesting to me since I started reading The Oil Drum is economics. It would like to ally itself with science, but there is not really not as much science behind it as people would suppose. Our business leaders have great faith that the economic system is self-healing, but I see little reason to expect this to be the case.
Having been a member of a church which accepts the Book of Mormon and contemporary inspired documents as an equal testimony as the Bible (Community Of Christ) for nearly 40 years I do believe that religions grow out of the society of its time. People of all ages have been challenged to explain certain persistent questions like where did the world come from, where did people come from, and natural phenomenon like earthquakes, weather, or why do most stars stay in a constant formation while a few wander around the sky. As new data becomes available then old beliefs are challenged and subject to new interpretations. It is this ability to reinterpret which is the core of a living religion. Even science is based on a belief that reality doesn't change but our understanding of reality does. The ancients knew this and as mentioned above that there are multiple creation stories within the first few chapters of Genesis. From the start the editors of the Torah knew that the stories are not a literal account of what happened. It was later generations who were trying to maintain an orderly society that insisted on a literal interpretation.
Somewhere in the writings of M. Scott Peck is a description of four stages of spiritual growth that persons may or may not go through. 1st stage is one of total disregard for other people which is present in infants and psychopaths. 2nd stage is one of adherence to strict unquestioned rules and beliefs. It is the "because I said so" phase which toddlers accept from their parents. In adults this stage is seen in career military and fundamentalists. These people crave order in their lives and are loyal to leaders even to the point of killing those who the leaders say to kill even if it involves a suicide mission. There is considerable overlap between soldiers and police officers and their adherence to fundamentalist branches of religions. 3rd stage is the questioning of authority which adolescents go through and what some call the "dark night of the soul". Here we find agnostics, some atheists, and the searchers who bounce from religion to religion, different forms of psychotherapy, and assorted New Age cults. From here rise the few who go on to the 4th stage of the mystical experience where the connectedness of all persons and the universe is synthesized. These few see the transcendent principles of divine love as that which controls their lives. They see the purpose of prayer as not a way to change God's mind but as a way to change their own perceptions of reality. Rituals and rules may be followed but not because some authority said so but because they see the good it does for themselves and society. They may see the need to change the rules and therefore bring on the contempt of those in power which leads to their martyrdom. Such has been the fate of many prophets.
May I recommend my just-published book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse. It is indeed an emotional and spiritual roadmap for the unprecedented transitions that lie ahead. It may be ordered at my website at www.carolynbaker.net.
SHARON ASTYK COMMENTS:
"In some senses "Sacred Demise" covers familiar territory. Like all books in the genre of peak oil literature, it must cover the basic ground of our situation. But at no time does this look like just another peak oil or end of the world book. Instead, Baker asks her readers to think seriously about defining the end of the society they know in new terms - thus far, most books have no asked us to imagine collapse both as inevitable and as contextualized as a moral journey.
The stories we tell ourselves about the future will, in the end, define it more than our technologies or our practices. In the end, practices are vulnerable to shift in meaning - one can see poverty or wealth in a simple, subsistence life, for example. Fixing meaning is the only way to sustain ethical practice - modern society at its root transforms things that are good and sustainable into things that are backwards and impoverished. Few other books that I know of on our coming triple crisis - the end of economic growth, peak oil and climate change - has begun to answer the deeply important question "how shall we view this, how shall we speak of it."
I often joke "I'm not spiritual, I'm religious." That is, I am something of a skeptic about spiritual approaches that pick and choose appealing bits from faiths, without addressing or fully dealing with the whole structure of religious belief that underlies them. I worry about the lack of rigor of such an approach, and so when Baker sent me a copy of her book, I was afraid I'd struggle to find something good to say. I was thus, favorably impressed by the way that Baker uses her raw material to speak about spiritual life in ways that are not pallid or empty, but are deep, rigorous and complex.
Baker is unflinching in her diagnosis of our situation, and never pulls her punches. She does not offer false hope or false reassurance. What she offers is a deeply complex and valuable narrative in which to contextualize our experience, a great deal of personal wisdom, and a long historical view of our present state. It might seem that these things are small in comparison to what we lose when we look honestly at our situation, but they turn out not to be.
Perhaps the best and most useful thing I can say about Carolyn Baker's book is this - it manages to leave you consoled, sustained and in new ways prepared to face the future. Despite the fact that its unflinching honesty takes away denial as a choice, it leaves us better off than before. And what more can one say about a book?"
I read much of this thread to see if it would go where i thought it would. Down numerous rat holes. When it comes to discussions of "religion"
"religions" "secular" etc. I have only found two truths. Some people believe and some don't. All the rest of the discussion is esoteric bullshit.
Hi treeman,
I would like to disagree with you, but I'm hard pressed to fault your observation given much of this discussion. It seems that many of us enjoy posting our own POV and supporting birds of the feather (I'm guilty) - we did get several inches of snow here today and this is better than shoveling.
But, I'd welcome a real discussion about how the "belief" in a supernatual world, human superority, life after death, etc, contributes to the destruction of the planet by humans.
I made no statement about the veracity of Gail's arguments. I personally believe religion does more good than harm. The extreme religious excesses would happen with or without the religion associated with them. People would find another reason to kill their neighbor and take what they had. What I do think is true is that cheap energy has allowed members of mankind to be generous to other members of mankind. The largess thus supplied could be shared without adversely affecting the generous individual. Take away that cheap energy, ala peak oil and the subsequent social ramifications, and as George Montbiot says " We'll go back to fighting like cats in a sack". Religion will still serve a purpose to help bind the community together as it has for millenniums. IMHO arguing about whether it should is akin to pissing into the wind.
Peak oil would fit well into "stewardship" discussions at many churches I've attended. Lutheran and Episcopal congregations (and many other denominations as well) often have a strong thread of caring for and conserving the creation. I think that Christianity can be a major player for the good in spreading awareness and preparing people psychologically for the necessity of societal change to adapt to energy scarcity. In fact, I think it's about as well positioned as any institution to do so.
My background is Lutheran and my husband's is Episcopalian. We belong to a Lutheran church, and the Episcopal Church is similar. You are right that there is a strong thread of caring and conserving the creation. Also, a thread of care for the poor and those less fortunate.
The "sending" at the end of the service is, "Go in Peace. Feed the poor."
The words 'belief', 'faith', 'knowledge', etc. are used fairly loosely by most people, but I think it leads to a lot of confusion. Rather than get all pedantic on ya'll, I'll just drop that clarification of how we are using these words (loaded meanings, often) would really help discussions.
Take 'certainty' for example. People claim to 'know' something and are 'certain' of the veracity of their 'belief'. Certainty turns out to be a 'feeling' (in the sense described by Antonio Damasio). I just finished a really enlightening book (complete with a feeling of certainty that the author has hit the nail on the head!) On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not, by Robert Burton. A good read.
Here is the Amazon.com product description:
Philosophers say knowledge is justified true belief. They assert that the only thing that can be rattling around in your noggin is just a belief. Neuroscience seems to concur. How it got there (many paths) and how you came to hold it with some certainty determines how close to some sort of objective knowledge you hold. In general, beliefs in xyz based on observations and causal correlations (evidence), even if produced by others (like scientists!) serve best.
In other words: Question Everything
Religion is not science and science is not religion.
The most important thing I have learned so far in life, besides things like remembering not to let the spinning chain bite my fingers or making sure I'm hooked in before running off a cliff with the hangglider(otherwise known as making sure the force of evolution doesn't evolve me away), is that we are all artists.
We are all "painting a picture" of ourselves by means of the facts we select to share and the stories we use to build an image of ourself for others to enjoy. This form of art is a process and therefore has milestones(ever look back on those funny pictures of yourself from the 1960s that celebrate the image of ourself frozen in a milestone?) and not destinations. The process of creating an image for others to enjoy can be celebrated by anyone who develops an awareness of this view of reality.
For me, understanding that at best, all I "know" about any other person, a wife, child, best friend, politician, celebrity, spiritual master, economist or oil industry "expert," is the story they create and share with me. This explains for me why we can never truly get to know somebody else and therefore relieves me of the pain of disappointment when people don't live up to my expectations. This also provides me with a "well" of tolerance and acceptance for others, no matter how odd their "beliefs" and behavior may seem.
Tolerance and acceptance are warm and fuzzy but at times life takes courage and some of us have to step up and speak up as leaders and help those who don't have what it takes to recognize the asteroid of Peak Oil that is bearing down upon us.
I recently gave a Peak Oil powerpoint presentation to a religious group and afterwords one of the members was anxious to let me know that he thought the story of it all was "consistent with scripture." Whether it was or it wasn't I don't know, but it was interesting that I got a sense that this very religious gentleman was straining to give himself permission to listen to the message, especially about the "dieoff" concept and doing his polite best to avoid attacking the geologist in me, at least in public.
I consider it a moral imperative to share the Peak Oil story with as many as I can get to listen, even if that means interrupting their inane parroting about the "global economic crisis" and explaining that the crisis is actually energy-based.
About religious and secular systems it's noticeable the similarity between Roman Catholicism and Communism. That's why communism had it's highest levels of support in catholic countries like France and Italy. Switching from a pope in Rome to a pope in Moscow wasn't such a leap.
To link communism and catholicism is at best a poor understanding of the various groups within the Christian church. The most obvious thing to point out is that Russia is an Orthodox country and not Catholic! As far as popes go the Orthodox churches are not subject to the Catholic pope.
The answer to the silly question "is the pope catholic?" is no, he is Orthodox and he is more than one. Pope Shenoudah is currently the 117th Pope in the Holy See of St Mark (Coptic Church) also popes in other orthodox churches.
I was talking about popular support. In Russia the communists seized power in the chaos caused by revolution and defeat in war. They were never that popular. In France and Italy the communists were the main parties of the left. millions of people voted for them
MUST.... EAT.... BRAINS....
Starting discussions comparing reality-based accumulative-knowledge with mythology-based belief systems is akin to beating on a beehive with a stick, and expecting the bees to meet you halfway in some sort of compromise.
BRAINS!! MUST.... EAT....
However, when surrounded by organized legions of the insane, there is an undeniable pragmatism to trying to blend in, at least outwardly.
URK! ::slobber:: BRAINS HERE???... [thumpa-crash]
Excuse me, there's someone at the door. I think I'll go eat some brains with the neighbors. Localization really IS key to our future.
YESSS... WE EAT BRAINS NOW... MUST EAT.....
Finally... someone I can relate to.... Thank God. oh.... wait a sec...
I guess I'll have to thank someone else' God... I don't have one... or however many is required to qualify.
I hope someone else' God has a sense of humor tho I understand it does have some anger management issues. wrath of god/ smiting the unworthy and such.... oh well...I suppose I will be smoted...
I wonder if I will have time to go thru the five stages of being smoted.... I can only remember 3 stages anyway so .... smote away!!!!
Of course god has a sense of humour.
A favourite quote is: "When God created Man, She was only joking!!"
I think one should distinguish between belief systems and knowledge systems.
A belief system is something that is imposed, something you receive without being truly conscious of what is happening.
A knowledge system is what you construct from the debris of the collision between belief and reality.
A belief system consists of traditional and usual answers to questions. Questioning those answers is not required nor wanted.
A knowledge system begins when one separates the wheat from the chaff, when confirmation is required before an answer can be considered for inclusion in The Truth, and The Truth requires confirmation beyond doubt.
As a Catholic child, I was taught bad girls like sex and good girls don't. That was part of the belief system I grew up in.
I found out that girls who like sex are often very nice people, whereas girls who don't like it can be quite unpleasant.
My belief system broke down and died.
My knowledge system remains agnostic about the correlation between liking sex and good or evil. I do know chastity does not make you a good person, just as lubricity does not make you a bad person. Not being Casanova, I do not have the statistical base to pronounce on either side of the question.
I acknowledge that it is impossible for any one person to accumulate certain knowledge about everything. I am quite incapable of following the more abstruse reasonings of Steve Hawkins, for example. It is however quite feasible to build a knowledge system on a scientific basis; only confirmed observations are allowed for The Truth - the rest must remain conjecture, at best of high probability.
In part, one can refer to the science and technical literature, for which the oil drum is an excellent source, among others. In part, one has to rely on the horse sense that got knocked into one when ones belief system died. A healthy skepticism will help you navigate the relative trustworthiness of any sources of information. Provenance, context and confirmation are essential, if one wants to determine the true 'value' of any message.
lukitas
Now we're getting to the crux of the matter: "Peak Oil" is as much a spiritual problem as a material one. If the dominant religion of techno-progress can't deliver several miracles rather quickly, it may become an entirely spiritual problem as we face the unavoidable fact that "growth" and "progress" have led us to the abyss of self-destruction. I see the Peak Oil movement as somewhat analogous to the early Christians--amidst the collapse of Rome, they carried the message of an inverted order, a new belief system that could redress the evils of the bankrupt Empire. Just as Christianity gradually converted the Roman elites, it will be interesting to see how quickly our own leaders embrace this new way of thinking as the failure of their mythology becomes difficult to deny. The point is, if you're looking for a new religion for a post-peak world look no further; the prophets and apostles of the new faith are right here, and the ranks of the faithful grow larger every day.
I agree with mistergrinch on this. I would say that the belief system(s) of limitless growth, inexorable historical progress and the gradual perfection of human society through technology are incredibly pervasive in America and many other countries. They are so ingrained now that they almost aren't even noticed as belief systems. And they are held dear by members of the left and right wing alike, albeit clothed somewhat differently. They constitute a sort of secular faith, though one that also often rears its head within organized religions as well.
I would have thought that the disastrous wars/genocides etc of the twentieth century would actually have put these ideas in major jeopardy, coming as they did amidst (and sometimes linked to) major technological progress. Instead, many people seem to perceive a failure of "ideology". I think this is a grave misreading of the situation of the human race.
At any rate, as mistergrinch points out, peak oil symbolizes the failure of these belief systems in a very powerful way. Indeed, it will put it right in people's faces to the point where they can't look away. I like the comparison of the Peak Oil movement to the early Christians in Rome.
Surprised 'Personal defense through fire-arms' doesn't show on the list - given the degree to which people are arming themselves now in the US. Ammo sales at an all time high. At least something isn't suffering YET during the downturn.
First two disclaimers, 1) Im not a climate scientist so I can't really speak to the validity of this particular scientific theory, but that is not what is important here.
2) I think this is a good example of what many lay people may indeed refer to as a belief but I do not "BELIEVE", (pun intended) that climate scientists think of this as such, any more so than for example, evolutionary biologists believe in the theory of evolution or physicists believe in gravitational theory.
There is not supposed to be (granted scientists are human) any belief involved in the way scientists think about and apply these theories. If there is then they are doing it wrong and not practicing science.
http://wilstar.com/theories.htm
I appreciate the points made in the post itself, but today don't have the energy to plunge into the ensuing melee.
I think this is perhaps the central point of Gail's essay, and I both agree with its practicality and cringe from it.
A substantially similar case could be made for becoming well-placed to join an organized crime syndicate pending the breakdown of civil order; I think Orlov has implied that if not said it outright.
My grandfather wasn't religious, but belonged to the local church, and the Elks. And to increase his fitness in Illinois still further, the KKK. My mom remembers the Klan as an organization which held picnics. It wasn't really about black people; couldn't have been, since there weren't any in her town. Just a bunch of happy people sharing beliefs.
It's so easy, practical, and logical.
You sure say a lot in a few lines.
Jay Hanson has recommended to his readers for years that they join a church, lodge or community group of some sort for protection during the coming anarchy. Personally I find the idea of compromising my beliefs in order to maybe survive for a few more years not really worth the effort.
yeah, and if Hanson has become my spiritual advisor, I pretty much figure the gig is up anyway...:-)
RC
Hi Greenish,
I wondered what happened to you! Although a few bright spots (like MoonWatcher comments), overall I find this thread depressing. As usual, you have great insight. All the happy talk about the good deeds done in the name of religion demonstrates the depth of the delusion and the collective amnesia of the destructive power of religion.
Hi Bicycle Dave,
Just a friendly note to refer you to my comment which is "happy talk", well, let me change that to..."musing" (not happy, not sad, just curious)...about good deeds done *for their own sake*.
Or, maybe I just like the idea of raising a bunch of kids nobody else wants. The deed is so much more amazing than talking about it.
Hi Aniya,
I see by the time stamp that you've been up late again ;-)
I always admire people who provide assistance in times of need to other humans and other species. But, I've not seen a strong correlation between that idea and Christianity. One person's idea of "good deeds" may be a "bad deed" for someone else. In this regard, I would trust a humanist/evironmentalist more than a person who is primarily more interested in getting a better seat at the table in their afterlife. The former is less likely to "liberate" Iraq than the latter. George Bush is a good Christian.
Do you folks realize that if we moved this string over here
http://www.uua.org/
It would fit right in!
RC
I have refrained from posting a comment on this debate. Its almost over though so.....
I will only say a few things though about the KJV Bible, the Old Testament and taking a literal view of the KJV Bible.
First the KJV is incomplete. It does not contain the apocrypha. Its in most other bibles. In the Catholic versions as well. I read that when it was being made available way way back in this countries early times that the Quakers wanted the apocrypha deleted from the American version and so it was. And was in the original KJV.
Next. The New Testament has errors. This is ackknowledged. The genealogy of Christ is one that is admitted to. There are others as well.
Next. There is no J in Hebrew. There is no J in Greek. There is no J in Latin. There used to be no J in English until a couple three hundred years ago. We got it from the French. Or so I have read and others may disagree but here is some valid proof:
On the cross Pilate had a sign made and nailed to it above the one he cruicified. It was this:INRI..and in a Catholic Church you will see that sign and those letters. They translate as Ieous Nazarezum Rex Iudea(might have misspelled Narazerum but it means this in english Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. NOTE noooo J. His name in Hebrew would have been Yeshuoa Ben Yosef...perhaps what we translate as Joshua. Not Jesus. And Christ in Greek means Messiah or so I read.
So where did that Jesus word come from? From our tampering with the documents.
Next. The chapter names of the Old Testament are all Greek. Not Hebrew. And they are NOT in the same layout as our Old Testament shows them. They are divided quite differently. Berashith is the first part of Genesis..because that is the first word in that beginning. Berashith means In The Beginning...
Like wise the portion about Moses starts as Moshe..since Moses of course is not Moses name. Its Moshe. and so forth and so on and concluding in that we have altered the hell out of those books and documents.
Lastly. The Torah(first five books attributed to Moses as author) was given and written as one continous stream of Hebrew words. No spaces and no vowels and no other puncutation marks. The Jewish Rabbis and others believe it to be a 'living' entity that can alter itself as time and other events dictate. And it can there fore be translated in many different ways.
Its said that the very first verse of Genesis can be translated 16 different ways and all valid.
And one last point. The first verse in KJV says:
In the beginning Gods created the heavens and the universe.
GODS? Plural. Elohim is plural. The im ending means plural.
So what exactly can this mean? More than one God? Perhaps one know as Ein Sof? The limitless one,the undefinabe one, the unknowable one? Etc..Since God is undifferentiated He cannot really be KNOWN?
And I might add that Elohim is not Gods name. Its the tetragramaton .
A word that the Jews will not pronouce but instead say Ha Shem..meaning 'the name' or they might say Adoni.. which we translate as Lord. ...and then never can be sure who anyone means when they say LORD...???? I asked a preacher.."who are you referring to when you say Lord???" He became very upset and claimed I was LOST!
He was the one lost.
I studied this one verse(the first verse) and pondered it for about 3 weeks solid one cold winter as I started my long long trek into the world of Hebrew and the bible in search of what it REALLY SAID or MEANT. I had given up on lots of words from the 'pulpit' and some what out and out stupidity at that.
So I studied and studied and started translating the Hebrew and found an entirely different aspect to the God of the bible and the God of the Jews and what was stated and what was really there,,,along with copious readings of ancient and mystical Hebrew belief systems. Such as the numerous books of the Kabbalah. BTW the word Jews comes from Judea and since no J its really Iudea and I believe the Romans first stated using that word for the Hebrews. (Judah)
Translation is a devil. So much of our language changes over and over and truth is trampled and beliefs are changed and many are confused.
I would guess the bible has been through several translations and thats why I started with the Old Testament for in every synagogue there is a Torah scroll and every one has to be dead letter perfect and not one single jot changed ever. Same in all synagogues and since it is most definitely THEIR old testament then I preferred to translate slowly and more accurately.
I have many many books gathered during my years of study. I find a spiritual insight I never would have gained in all my many many years of sitting in chruches of various denominations.In fact outright lies and bullshit.
Many may not be able or care to go this route. I chose it and found it worth the effort for to me the truth has been my journey all thru my life here on this earth. I have untruths. Fabrications and lies.
I say to each his own. I find amazing events that transpire in my day to day life as I seek further to the spiritual aspect of man. Some I could almost label as miracles. Events that synchronize in amazing manners. To me its the spirit that speaks. I don't care it the Holy Spirit. I just call it spirit and sacred.
To me its as real as the trees that surround my farm. The quality of plain soil and what comes out of the ground. The sun in my face and the moon over my shoulder. I find comfort in this. I seek it and do find it.
My way is just my way. If someone asks I tell them it. I try not to preach it...But as a once popular show slogan went;
The Truth Is Out There. I agree. You will only find it if you search with an open mind and forget the pulpits of this world. Nature and the earth will show you. If you don't try to destroy it or trash it and respect it.
I call it Transcendentalism I suppose, much as Thoreau and Emerson might have espoused it.
So try not to listen to other than your own spirit. Study what has been written and try to find enlightment. Or not as you chose.
But its not an easy path. It is a path though. We each will walk our own as we feel led.
Airdale-enough preachy stuff from me
PS. If any errros above? Get back to me. I might have stated something wrong. Its late and I am famished and tired. And I know what works for Airdale. I don't know what will work for you..but thats my story and I am sticking to it..well it might be all I have in the not too distant murky future.
PPS. Little pithy sayings on Church billboards outside near the driveways? Drives me crazy. Things like God loves YOU!. God wants you to do this and that.??? How the hell do 'they' know the mind of GOD? Really? This is utter bullshit. They can study and postulate. They can recommend but to say they speak for GOD? Nonsense. That God told them to tell us this and that? Quakery. They can preach what is in the bible but that don't mean THEY are right. They can lead but they can't demand anyone follow. This is what makes people leery of organized religion. And the POPE? Don't get me started. The Vicar of Christ on earth? Rubbish. Unfalliable? I don't buy it.
Hi airdale,
Glad to see that the old dog is still able to howl (at the moon?).
Here's hoping that you will again find the time to comment more frequently, now that last winter's mess is melting away...
E. Swanson
---
By the way, I have a younger sister Lois Tverberg who writes religious books. A book from a few years ago is Listening to the Language of the Bible. It is about how Hebrew words don't translate well, and what they really mean.
She also has a new book out called Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus. I haven't read it yet--I think it is about Jewish customs of the time of Jesus.
Hi Gail,
Here is one area that I have a conflict with.
Its said by many , and many preachers do preach this. That 'The Jews Killed Jesus'. Well at that time there were huge numbers of Jews living in other countries. Also this was more like a rabble that the High Priest, Anianias(sp) had managed to sway in Jerusalem. What about all the jews not in Jerusalem? Those thousands that Jesus had 'saved' by his oral sermons.
In fact what I read is that since the time of the Greek(Alexander) that the high priest was then 'appointed' as a political position by whom ever was in control of Palestine(as the Romans referred to it).
And that the current High Priest was not a true member of the Levitical priesthood. More like an Hasomonean. That the real Levite priesthood had left to found Qumran and rebelled against the Sanhedrin.
So did the Procureator of Palestine who was Pontias Pilate and with the full strength of the legions of Rome behind him have to bow to the wishes of a rabble crowd? No. It was the Romans who crucified Jesus.
The same romans who later declared Christianity a part of the state and assumed the role of Pope. This became the Holy Roman Empire.
They then spread the gospel of the Jews being the culprits so that they could absolve themselves of their bloody hands.
Quite a trick. And further if they were so innocent why did they also crucify thousands of Christians and line the roads with them upon stakes? Or put them in the arenas to be devoured by animals?
The romans have clean hands? I have an older Catechism prior to the 60's that states the attitude of the Catholic Church towards Jews.
It wasn't until the 2nd Vatican in the 60's that they started to recant a bit.
History paints a different story of those events. For this I read Josephus and others. Including the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi plus others unearthed more recently.
Airdale
Airdale, as you are interested in the language of the bible, you might want to read Everett Fox's translation of the Torah. He tries to stick to the poetry and cadence of the Hebrew. It's not the easiest version to read, but an interesting one.
I stqrted with Atler's "The Five Books of Moses".
For this reason. He is a very learned scholar and head of Hebraic studies at a university, which I forget, but his view and I agree is that far far more is known presently of Biblical Hebrew than at any other time.
It is not a complete translation but he calls on many expert Rabbis for interpretations and most generally I agree that he is breaking new ground in better understanding the panoramic view of the Torah.
I learned an enormous amount. Mostly what I learned is very distorted by todays clergy. To the extent that they are many times creating fiction.
I recommend it.
I think I have viewed Fox's material. I don't believe I found it worth purchasing.
For most people who try to take the Old Testament literally they do it mostly to bash religion. Most of the early chapters are somewhat symbolic and many have deep hidden meanings.
For instance the Tree of Life. This is symbolic. It relates to some very esoteric knowledge that was never made public until very recently.
Airdale--I would suggest Leonora Leet who has written a large number of books in this area. A Phd from Columbia and head of Medieval English at a noted university,again I can't recall and too lazy to go look in my library. Again this is esoteric Jewish Mysticism at its deepest level. Has to be understood that the Jews have studied this for thousands of years. Our Protestant preachers for only a very very short time and they want to tell us how it is? ???? I don't think so!!! If you wish to understand better this area then I suggest one needs to go to the Hebrew material.
Thanks for the advice and I will revisit Fox once more.
I am sure my sister's book has nothing at all to do with Jews killing Jesus.
She is a student of Jewish customs, and is trying to interpret some of the things in the BIble in terms of the customs of the day. She is not Jewish (she is of Norwegian ancestry, as I am), but has studied in Israel and also in some synagogs here. Some of the Jewish men thought it was interesting that a blonde woman wanted to come and learn more about Jewish customs and history.
I know with Lois' earlier book she sold copies to a very wide group, including Unitarian Universalists and Bob Jones University and practically every kind of group in between. She is more of a researcher than anything else. He early book comes across as very fact-based. The later one is still fact based, but I think the publisher wanted it to have more of a story-like feel to it, so it would appeal to women as well as men. (The early book was especially popular with men.)
Gail,
Don't know if you will read this reply or not but I was not trying to impugn your sister's works or books in any way.
What I was trying to uncover was that the Jews are many times charged with the death of Christ and this leads to an enormous amount of hypocrisy and hate fostered by Christian religions against the Jews
and Israel.
Prejudice that never seems to go away even though they were slaughtered by the Nazis by the millions.
I will look up her book/s on the net and perhaps order a copy via Amazon. Thanks for this topic post. It has been most illuminating.
Airdale
Hi Gail
Many of these "beliefs" are worded as absolute statements that create a false dichotomy. As such, it makes partial agreement difficult.
For example:
He who dies with the most toys wins.
Sometimes being able to pay the rent is pretty cool. A certain amount of material comfort is a positive thing. It's not necessary to be an ascetic.
Beautiful bodies are everything.
There's nothing wrong with being attractive or attracted to the physical appearance of people. We are all objects of some sort, but we are also more than objects. The statement again creates a stark divide between two absolutes. Regardless, one can enjoy pornography and still believe in ecological limits,
Technology will solve all problems.
What about technology will solve some problems, or even many problems. Even a shovel is a type of technology.
There are many shades of grey in all of this. Ideologies are not helpful. I agree with many of the ideas here, but to make Peak Oil into a religion is a huge mistake.
I didn't say it was. I just listed what I call "belief systems". The thing they have in common is that for any one of them, there are some people who think they are wrong. There are a lot of people who refuse to consider the idea of peak oil. Some people lead their lives as if "He who dies with the most toys wins" is really true. There are a lot of others who believe it not true at all, or only a little.
Capitalism, especially as currently being practiced by the USA, is the source of more dogmatism and religious fervor than any church.
For most, Capital is God, and The Free Market Is the chosen path, agreed..
However, I believe Gail is pointing out people getting together to acknowledge the Psychopathic Space Daddy, and other such creation myths from bronze and iron age fiction. In the US, the Cosmic Jewish Zombie is and important fictional character.
Until people find this a form of psychosis, this will be a reference point to base reality, and the world as we observe it will