Self-development, self-control, meditation, beliefs and spirituality
Do you have a concept of an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a you to discover the essence of your being? Are you looking into yourself to find the deepest values and meanings by which you or other people live? Do you want to get in touch with your spiritual side through private meditation, quiet reflection, prayer, yoga, repetitive movements, t’ai-chi, sitting quiet on a bench or a mountain, or even long walks?
Origin and coming into being
When we look at the world we can wonder how it all came into existence, believe either in a Big Bang, Darwin Theory, other evolution theories, many ideas of many people having brought forth many religions. We all want to explain things or require an explanation for everything? But the world is so complex and our brain so limited that hunman beings can not explain everything. They are not able to find an answer for everything. They may be smart but they are all limited.
Perhaps because we do know our limitation and that of others we are happy to agree with purpose-based explanations for natural states of affairs. We also sometimes like to link such purpose-based explanations to thinking that someone (e.g., a god) accounts for the purpose. Even young children have the intuition that purpose is best accounted for by someone willing that purpose to be. So, perhaps it is a part of human nature to accept purpose-based explanations which also supports belief in a God or gods. As such people made up gods and created many religionswhich are not just a quirky interest of a few, it’s basic human nature.
Brain in a vat. Famous thought experiment in analytic philosophy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Looking for answers in science
From the 1960s onwards more people started wondering and doubting all the behaviours around God and gods and tried to find more answers in science. There has been a desecularization in academic philosophy departments since the 1960′s, according to naturalist (that is, atheist) philosopher Quentin Smith. By the middle of the 20th century, atheism was the dominant view of mainstream analytic philosophy. By the second half of the twentieth century, universities and colleges had been become in the main secularized. The standard (if not exceptionless) position in each field, from physics to psychology, assumed or involved arguments for a naturalist world-view; departments of theology or religion aimed to understand the meaning and origins of religious writings, not to develop arguments against naturalism. Analytic philosophers (in the mainstream of analytic philosophy) treated theism as an antirealist or non-cognitivist world-view, requiring the reality, not of a deity, but merely of emotive expressions or certain “forms of life” (of course there were a few exceptions, e.g., Ewing, Ross, Hartshorne, etc.).
Naturalists
But realist theists were not outmatched by naturalists in terms of the most valued standards of analytic philosophy: conceptual precision, rigor of argumentation, technical erudition, and an in-depth defense of an original world-view. Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism, most influenced by Plantinga’s writings (God and Other Minds, in 1967 a.o.), began to sweep through the philosophical community, until today perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists, with most being orthodox Christians.
Several naturalist philosophers reacted by publicly ignoring the increasing desecularizing of philosophy (while privately disparaging theism, without really knowing anything about contemporary analytic philosophy of religion) and proceeded to work in their own area of specialization as if theism, the view of approximately one-quarter or one-third of their field, did not exist. Quickly, naturalists found themselves a mere bare majority, with many of the leading thinkers in the various disciplines of philosophy, ranging from philosophy of science (e.g., Van Fraassen) to epistemology (e.g., Moser), being theists. The predicament of naturalist philosophers is not just due to the influx of talented theists, but is due to the lack of counter-activity of naturalist philosophers themselves. A large number of publications advancing theism have come onto the scene by such philosophers as William Alston, Robert and Marilyn Adams, Peter Van Inwagen, Eleonore Stump, Nicholas Wolsterstorff, and Linda Zagzebski. Arguing for theism is no longer “an academically unrespectable scholarly pursuit.
Quentin Smith points out that in the past decade one catalogue of Oxford University Press, which is arguably the top publisher of contemporary philosophy, included 96 books on the philosophy of religion. 94 of these argued for theism, while the remaining 2 discussed both sides of the issue. I would add that since this time, with the advent of the new atheists, the publication numbers may not be as one-sided. Still, this is a radical shift that would have been unthinkable 60 years ago.
J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig say that philosophy aids Christians in the tasks of apologetics, polemics and systematic theology. It reflects our having been made in the image of God, helps us to extend biblical teaching into areas not expressly addressed in Scripture, facilitates the spiritual discipline of study, enhances the boldness and self-image of the Christian community, and is requisite to the essential task of integrating faith and learning.
Oppression by religion
Sceptics have been around all the time. Fundamentalist we can find everywhere. Strange consequences may also be found. When religion is put onto people there is going on something wrong. For example when in Kentucky, a homeland security law requires the state’s citizens to acknowledge the security provided by the Almighty God this is imposing something on a whole community which is a matter of personal belief. The law and its sponsor, state representative Tom Riner, have been the subject of controversy since the law first surfaced in 2006, yet the Kentucky state Supreme Court has refused to review its constitutionality, despite clearly violating the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.
Dependence on God may be essential to come to the best form of living. In the end we shall get the best ‘political’ or ‘theocratic’ constitution or condition with the Kingdom of God. But as long as Jesus does not return we shall have to do it with human constitutions. In the Law of God, God demands people to make the choice and He does not force them. Though there are many people who want to force their ideas of Christianity, what to believe, what to chose and how to behave on others. It are them who do not allow freedom of mind, though they often call onto the constitution to say that provides for Freedom.
Saudi atheist “Jabir,” talking to Your Middle East:
Isn’t it a basic right for humans to believe or not believe freely! I know this is only a dream in Saudi, but it doesn’t change the fact that people will have different views and believes [sic], whether society will allow it or not.
Thanksgiving and Christmas
On Thursday in America they had Thanksgiving which nearly every year means it’s time for the ‘Religious Right’ to start carping about the so-called “war on Christmas.” The American Family Association (AFA) has released its annual “Naughty Or Nice” list of retailers. Traditionally, release of this list, which the AFA published on November 15, marks the beginning of the annual Religious Right whine-fest about the war on Christmas.
In Santa Monica, California, a large display depicting the nativity of Jesus had been erected for several years. Last year, an atheist group requested the right to use the space too, so city officials decided to hold a lottery. Atheist groups won most of the spaces in 2011, and there was some discontent over this – mainly, intolerant residents trashed the atheist displays. This year, the city has decided to shut down the forum rather than host any displays.
Lots of Christians do not recognise all the heathen elements in this so called Christian high-feast. Many even think it is an essential part of their faith and they can not come into a spiritual right state without celebrating Christmas.
Others do find that thankfulness is one of the distinguishing traits of the human spirit and therefore Thanksgiving should be the most important Christian holiday.
They may be right to point to the necessity to say thanks, and we realize we ought to be more grateful than we are. We furthermore perceive that we are indebted to (and accountable to) a higher power than ourselves — the God who made us. According to Scripture, everyone has this knowledge, including those who refuse to honour God or thank Him.
Indebted in a human being
Because Scripture tells us that the Creator of heaven and earth has given every part of creation something of Him and the knowledge of the Supreme being, we should not worry about forcing the knowledge of God onto others.
We are conscious that ingratitude is dishonourable by anyone’s reckoning. In case people willfully are ungrateful toward the Creator we do have to accept their choice to deny an essential aspect of our own humanity. The shame of such ingratitude is inscribed on the human conscience, and even the most dogmatic atheists are not immune from the knowledge that they ought to give thanks to God. Try as they might to suppress or deny the impulse, “what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them,” according to Romans 1:19.
Every person born gets from the moment he or she can think a confrontation with everything what is around its person. He or she gets confronted with many ideas and questions about the ‘whys’ and ‘whats’. Each person while growing up shall come to think about existence. More than once in a person’s life the man or woman in question shall think about the reasons why he or she exist and what he or she comes to do or has to do on this earth. A question about beliefs and religion shall also arise.
In many people’s conception if you really can’t be religious, at least you should try to be spiritual. If you are not, then you must be a damned selfish materialist according to them. If taking the word ‘Spriutality’ literally as if you are spiritual you believe in spirits (not of the alcohol-laden type), to be averse to the idea that matter and energy are all there is to the universe. This would not translate into someone being a better, more moral and hence more contactable person.
Indicating someone who devotes part of her time and energy to cultivate her “spirit,” as opposed to just being concerned with “material” things is the better part of the spirituality. It is where we try to get into our life an extra sense. Naturally we are not born with the materialistic mind. We have it in our selves to think about more important matters than just the material ones. It is our wealth which brings our head on the roller-skates. We do not originally think of our life as a dichotomous enterprise in the course of which we have to provide material/energy food for our stomach to process, as well as an entirely different kind of nourishment for our “spirit.” Our mind, whatever the detailed explanation of how it works, is a product of our brain, and the two simply can’t be disconnected, upon penalty of the first one simply ceasing to exist.
The soul of a person is his being, his breath, his thinking. It is not an other sort of spirit being accommodated in a physical body. Without breath we can not survive. Without thinking we shall also not be able to survive, because the brain lets us take care of the thoughts to preserve our body (it is our soul). From the start of the existence we had to get to know it was important to breath, to eat and to drink. We learned we had to provide for nutrition. Nourishment , we learned did not exist only as a power supply, we learned bad food or malnutrition would bring us in problems. Strangely enough many people did not get to see that malnutrition on the psychical part also would bring a person in in-balance and in problems.
From the beginning it was also indebted that we should take care of cultivating and reflecting on our ethics, our way of behavement, certainly because we are not on our own in this world, so we should take care of the others around us. when born soon we learn to react to our environment. The people around our cot let us make certain reactions. We learn from them and we continue to learn from reactions others make in our life. We do have to learn behaving justly and compassionately toward our fellow human beings, and of nurturing our aesthetic sense through arts and letters. This learning process is so different by all that it makes some people more reflective than others, some more compassionate, some more inclined to read literature and go to art museums or concerts (the latter activities also of course greatly depending on one’s means and education, not just our natural propensities).
Odysseus in Dante’s Inferno says: “Fatti non foste per viver come bruti, ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza” (We were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge). No matter if a person is religious or not, it is part of our nature that we have our brains to let us think about matters. Every person has the basic notion about compassion and ethics. We all have a feeling about manners and how to behave to get on in our society. For this reason some think an interesting human being doesn’t need to be either religious or spiritual. He just needs to be human. But this being human, according to us, just demands using the brains to think about everything to get the own soul in unison with the rest of the world. Spirituality is the way to get in line with the surroundings. Religion may help to get oneself sorted out and to have moral qualms.
Question of spirituality
Traditionally, many religions have regarded spirituality as an integral aspect of religious experience. Among other factors, declining membership of organized religions and the growth of secularism in the western world have given rise to a broader view of spirituality. {Michael Hogan (2010). The Culture of Our Thinking in Relation to Spirituality. Nova Science Publishers: New York.} The term “spiritual” is now frequently used in contexts in which the term “religious” was formerly employed; compare James‘ 1902 lectures on the “Varieties of Religious Experience”. {James, W. (1985). The varieties of religious experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1902) + Gorsuch, R.L., & Miller, W. R. (1999). Assessing spirituality. In W. R. Miller (Ed), Integrating spirituality into treatment (pp. 47-64). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.}
Many people do come to an evaluation of a particular individual’s durable moral qualities. Virtues such as integrity, courage, fortitude, honesty, and loyalty, or of good behaviors or habits are questioned. Thought and excellences of character are being questioned.
The Bible defines character as any behaviour or activity that reflects the character of God. The Book of Genesis says that God created man in his own image. (Genesis 1:27) Though we are created to act in accordance to the will of our creator, we are given the freedom to expand, to rule the earth and to use our brains in the manner we would like to use it. But humans should know that Christian character can only be “Fruits of the Spirit” . (Galatians 5:22-23)
Looking for ‘luck’ people have wondered who or what was behind the creation and if they did need to come to a spiritual form to form themselves and to create happiness around and for them. Many people hoped to find peace for their mind in spiritual practices such as mindfulness and meditation. Nearly everybody looks for human fulfilment without any supernatural interpretation or explanation. Spirituality in this context may be a matter of nurturing thoughts, emotions, words and actions that are in harmony with a belief that everything in the universe is mutually dependent; this stance has much in common with some versions of Buddhist spirituality. Sometimes it looks like every human being wants to go into an individual battle with himself and with the ‘existence‘. It seems we want to go into a struggle with the issues of how our lives fit into the greater scheme of things. This is true when our questions never give way to specific answers or give rise to specific practices such as prayer or meditation. We encounter spiritual issues every time we wonder where the universe comes from, why we are here, or what happens when we die. We also become spiritual when we become moved by values such as beauty, love, or creativity that seem to reveal a meaning or power beyond our visible world. An idea or practice is “spiritual” when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life. {Fuller, Robert C. Spiritual, But Not Religious. }
In broad terms “spirituality” stands for lifestyles and practices that embody a vision of how the human spirit can achieve its full potential. In other words, spirituality embraces an aspirational approach to the meaning and conduct of life – we are driven by goals beyond purely material success or physical satisfaction.
Spirituality is connected and particularly shaped to any individual. it can not be imposed by others onto some one else. The human mind wondering and putting ideas in a certain order, trying to coop with behavement according those thoughts, is individually-tailored, democratic and eclectic, and offers an alternative source of inner-directed, personal authority in response to a decline of trust in conventional social or religious leaderships.
Quest for the sacred
“Spirituality involves a search for “meaning” – the purpose of life. It also concerns what is “holistic” – that is, an integrating factor, “life seen as a whole”. ” writes Philip Sheldrake in “Is spirituality a passing trend?”. He continues: ” Spirituality is also understood to be engaged with a quest for “the sacred” – whether God, the numinous, the boundless mysteries of the universe or our own human depths. The word is also regularly linked to “thriving” – what it means to thrive and how we are enabled to thrive. Contemporary approaches also relate spirituality to a self-reflective existence in place of an unexamined life.”
The great wisdom traditions suggest the adoption of certain spiritual practices and it is this aspect of spirituality that attracts many contemporary people. Forms of
meditation, retreat, physical posture or movement such as yoga, chanting or prayers, disciplines of frugality and abstinence (for example from alcohol or meat) or visits to sacred sites and pilgrimage (for example the popular practice of walking the “camino” to Santiago de Compostela) are among the most common. The point is that spiritual practices are not merely productive in a narrow sense but are disciplined and creative. A commitment to the regularity of a spiritual discipline like meditation gives shape to what may otherwise be a fragmented life. Many people also experience their creative activities in art, music, writing and so on as spiritual practices. {Is spirituality a passing trend? Philip Sheldrake}
Spirituality integral part of life
Spirituality is actually concerned with cultivating a “spiritual life” rather than simply with undertaking practices isolated from commitment. It offers a “value-added” factor to personal and professional lives.
Spirituality also expands ethical behaviour by moving it beyond right or wrong actions to a question of identity. Senior Research Fellow in the Cambridge Theological Federation (Westcott House) Professor Philip Sheldrake says “We are to be ethical people rather than simply to “do” ethical things. Character formation and the cultivation of virtue then become central concerns.”
The world moves on and many forms of meditation and ways to come to spirituality have been created. Many forms of meditation, physical posture or movement such as many forms of yoga, disciplines of frugality and abstinence (for example from alcohol or meat) or visits to sacred sites and pilgrimage (for example the popular practice of walking the “camino” to Santiago de Compostela) are among the most common. People try to get their mind to settle inward beyond thought, to experience the source of thought or come to pure awareness. They do hope that they shall be able to come into a state of restful alertness, where their brain shall be able to function with significantly greater coherence so that their body can gain deep rest. The main concern for many is to experience higher states of consciousness at this critical time for humanity.
Every year people seem to come out with a new form of ‘coming to the own self”. The cocooning spirit wants to find a growing diversity of new forms of spirituality as well as creative reinventions of the great traditions.
Sheldrake says: “The language of spirituality continues to expand into ever more professional and social worlds – for example urban planning and architecture, the corporate world, sport and law. Most strikingly there are recent signs of its emergence in two contexts that have been especially open to public criticism – commerce and politics. Equally, the Internet is increasingly used to expand access to spiritual wisdom. So, on current evidence, spirituality appears to be less of a fad than an instinctive desire to find a deeper level of values to live by. As such, it seems likely not only to survive but to develop further into many new forms.”
Careful with spiritualist forms
As Christians, followers of Christ Jesus, we should look to the Master Teacher Jesus, how he meditated and found a way to honour his Father.
太極拳 / 太极拳 Taijiquan or T’ai chi ch’uan in Lanzhou
We should be very careful how we want of if we want to incorporate meditation forms or prayer practices from one faith tradition into another. The last few years we see that for many this seems so natural to them. Many people have a fear of other religions and a nervousness about incorporating any elements drawn from other faith traditions into their own religious practice. And they have good reason. But we must also see that certain forms can be un-connected from the religions where it is associated with. To our mind you may be doing yoga or t’ai-chi without being a Buddhist or without committing yourself to Buddhism or integrating Buddhism in your Christian Faith. The only problem is that we notice certain people doing that.
It is not because many Christians in many parts of the world have long looked to Buddhism and other Eastern religions for spiritual nourishment, that this would be acceptable in the eyes of God. Such a going away from the Biblical guidance has shown that many also abandoned their Christianity altogether. In several regions we can see more pagan rites are taken in to the worshipping and many other have already incorporated Zen meditation or Theravadan vipassana meditation into their Christian prayer.
Many find it hard to focus their mind, but God has also provided ways for them to come at ease. In His Word He provided enough information to come at peace with the own self. It also gives advice to come at peace with other people around you.
St. Francis de Sales, French saint and Bishop of Geneva, said: “If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently…And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back, though it went away every time you bought it back, your hour would be very well employed.”
Each of us can take a moment in the day to just take time for him or her self. Taking a few minutes just to put all the happenings of the day in the collection box of our mind and to analyse everything what happened that day.
When it is difficult to get a moment of rest, wonder what is of hindrance. If you cannot silence your mind, take the opportunity to become aware of what your mind is going on about. Self-awareness is an important skill! Every bit of effort you put into meditation and mastering your mind is time well-spent, even though the process may sometimes seem slow. Meditation, taking time to think or to let your spirit wonder over thoughts, and prayer are very closely related in that they are periods of intense focus, however meditation can be a purely secular practice of relaxation, mind control, and self-mastery. Meditation techniques may differ from one culture to another. Often different meditation techniques are suited to different personality types. Some techniques are expansive and allow for the free flow of thoughts and their observation whereas some types are concentrative that involve bringing focus into one’s thoughts.
A liberating spirituality
Take the Bible in your hand and open it wherever it falls open and start reading there. See if you can find guidance in those text which came in front of your eyes. Next, try to take every day a moment to continue reading the Bible according a plan, for example each day one chapter of a Bible Book.
The Spirituality God has to offer in His Word brings ‘insight’ and shall after some time give you the ability to see things as they really are, attained through a process of self-observation. It means identifying one’s own nature, recognizing the bad elements and consciously eliminating them from the system. When you shall continue to read the Holy Scriptures you shall find that those Words shall be able to transform you. When you are willing to put aside all previously learned doctrines you shall see that the Word of God can set you free of rites and shall help to develop wisdom. The great surplus the Words from the Bible shall give is that it will change your thoughts from being negative to positive. Focusing more on within our self, letting the Word of Goddoing its work we shall becoming free of negativity, transforming yourself, your thoughts, and recognizing the negative thoughts, and changing them into positive and peaceful thoughts.
The Bible compass for life
The Bible shall set your mind free and give a spiritual feeling which brings you further on the road of self-development.
No one can control eradicate adversity in life but you can master the way you respond in regards to your thinking processes. Giving yourself in the hands of the Most High Supreme, shall offer you an open gate to a spiritual world where you shall be able to encounter many more souls with the same free mind. Those people having found the liberating power of the son of God, are prepared to come together too spirituality as Brothers and Sisters in Christ.
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Please do read:
- The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism by Quentin Smith
- A Year in Jail for Not Believing in God? How Kentucky is Persecuting Atheists
- ‘Tis The Season To Be Cranky: Religious Right Gears Up New Round Of ‘War On Christmas’ Claims
- The atheist’s Thanksgiving dilemma Whom to thank when there’s no recipient?
- Is spirituality a passing trend? by Philip Sheldrake
- Religion and spirituality
- Church sent into the world
- Unfair to characterize atheists’ activism as evangelism
- Casual Christians
- The truth is very plain to see and God can be clearly seen
- Life is too precious
- Soul
- The Soul not a ghost
- A Living Faith #5 Perseverance
- A Living Faith #10: Our manner of Life #2
- Seeing the world through the lens of his own experience
- If you have integrity
- Christmas, Saturnalia and the birth of Jesus
- Wishing lanterns and Christmas
- Christmas customs – Are They Christian?
- Newsweek asks: How ignorant are you?
- If we, in our prosperity, neglect religious instruction and authority
- To mean, to think, outing your opinion, conviction, belief – Menen, mening, overtuiging, opinie, geloof
- Doctrine and Conduct Cause and Effect
- The business of this life
- Quakertime
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Of interest:
- If you have integrity
- Choices
- It is a free will choice
- We have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace
- Not enlightened by God’s Spirit
- The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands
- No man is free who is not master of himself
- Only the contrite self, sick of its pretensions, can find salvation
- For those who make other choices
- Are Christadelphians so Old Fashioned?
- Quit griping about your church
- Unconditional love
- Your life the sum total of all your choices
- Choose you this day whom ye will serve
- Merry Christmas with the King of Kings
- Honour your own words as if they were an important contract
- Be like a tree planted by streams of water
- Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love
- Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
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Related articles
- New Books in Theology, Philosophy, & Apologetics – November 2012 (greatcloud.wordpress.com)
Philosophy, archaeology and science are hot topics in Christian circles, perplexing many believers about how these issues relate to faith.
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Do people hold to a particular religion just because of an accident of geography? Is believing in Jesus as arbitrary as believing in Zeus? Why would God order the slaughter of infants or send people to hell? How do you know you’re really real, and not just a character in someone’s book? - William Lane Craig lectures against naturalism at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland (winteryknight.wordpress.com)
Dr. Craig was in Scotland to lecture at a physics conference, but a local church organized this public lecture at the University of St. Andrews. - “Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’” (insightscoop.typepad.com)
For too long, Mr. Plantinga contends in a new book, theists have been on the defensive, merely rebutting the charge that their beliefs are irrational. It’s time for believers in the old-fashioned creator God of the Bible to go on the offensive, he argues, and he has some sports metaphors at the ready.
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Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, “is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism,” with its random process of natural selection, he writes. “Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’ ” - Naturalism and science are incompatible (openparachute.wordpress.com)
Well, that’s what the Christian apologist philosopher Alvin Plantinga claims. And he has written a book to “prove” it - Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. Apparently its required reading for students of theology and the philosophy of religion. Probably because he declares there is a “deep concord between science and theistic belief, . . . . and deep conflict between science and naturalism.”
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all philosophies or ideologies are incompatible with science in the sense that science does not, and should not, a priori, include any of these ideological/philosophical presumptions. - An Imperfect God (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
You often hear philosophers describe “theism” as the belief in a perfect being — a being whose attributes are said to include being all-powerful, all-knowing, immutable, perfectly good, perfectly simple, and necessarily existent (among others). And today, something like this view is common among lay people as well.
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Philosophers have spent many centuries trying to get God’s supposed perfections to fit together in a coherent conception, and then trying to get that to fit with the Bible. By now it’s reasonably clear that this can’t be done. In fact, part of the reason God-bashers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are so influential (apart from the fact they write so well) is their insistence that the doctrine of God’s perfections makes no sense, and that the idealized “being” it tells us about doesn’t resemble the biblical God at all.
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As Donald Harman Akenson writes, the God of Hebrew Scripture is meant to be an “embodiment of what is, of reality” as we experience it. God’s abrupt shifts from action to seeming indifference and back, his changing demands from the human beings standing before him, his at-times devastating responses to mankind’s deeds and misdeeds — all these reflect the hardship so often present in the lives of most human beings. - Theism, Naturalism, and Morality (psychologytoday.com)
philosopher J.P. Moreland argues that there are several aspects of reality which naturalism is unable to account for, while theism can: consciousness, free will, rationality, morality, value, and a substantial human soul.
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The sense of guilt one feels for falling short of the moral law is best explained if a good God is the source or ultimate exemplification of that law. As Moreland puts it, “One cannot sense shame and guilt towards a Platonic form” (p. 147).
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Evolutionary explanations fall short because of what is selected for in evolutionary processes on naturalistic versions of evolutionary theory.
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the theist can offer a variety of reasons to adopt the moral point of view–the moral law is true; it is an expression of the non-arbitrary character of a good, loving, wise, and just God; and we were designed to function properly when living a moral life. - Believe It or Not (dedicatedtothegame.com)
Dr. Kim wants to know if the relationship in question is describable and thus knowable to us as we know other things. He frames his question in terms of a “pairing problem” to lay out how we think of causation. We must somehow be able to “locate” or identify events and objects in relationship to each other to establish a cause and effect relationship between them. He concludes that our understanding of causation requires some shared context. Space-time provides such a relational context for physical objects, but what of the immaterial, wholly separate divine substance?
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The knowledge of a separate substance could only be a direct knowledge. It must be a thing out of context, unextended. . Anything we can know about it is thus available only through “revelation”, “faith”, “intuition” – whatever you want to call pure, non-contingent experience, if such a thing exists, and so, as Kant says, our awareness of the other stuff’s existence must be the full extent of what we know about it. - Plantinga Reviews Nagel (maverickphilosopher.typepad.com)
What excites the theists’ approbation, of course, are not Nagel’s positive panpsychist and natural-teleological suggestions, which remain within the ambit of naturalism, but his assault on materialist naturalism.
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Materialist naturalism cannot explain belief, cognition, and reason.
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As for natural teleology: does it really make sense to suppose that the world in itself, without the presence of God, should be doing something we could sensibly call “aiming at” some states of affairs rather than others—that it has as a goal the actuality of some states of affairs as opposed to others?
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What is Reason? How Did it Arise? Nagel and Non-Intentional Teleology + Nagel’s Reason for Rejecting Theism
Childish or reasonable ways
Several people think of believers as “naive” and “childish”. In the group of believers you have the ordinary folks and the clergymen and clergy women. They form a particular group with persons who seem either far away from the world, being put on a pedestal or being part of the world, having problems like anybody else and understanding how the world turns.
Christian Denomination Logos (Photo credit: scottlenger)
You have the believers who where so much interested in the spiritual that they wanted to make their profession out of it. Those who followed theology at university learned a lot about how people thought God and His Creation would or should be. They did not much learn from the bible, but concentrated on a lot of worldly writings by the so called saints. They formed their ideas on the dogma’s and doctrine‘s brought in by humans and were not interested to take more contact with other believers or unbelievers, save for the few they met in their “fishing expeditions” at the grocery store or during “seeker services.” Thus, all to often, when they have questions about faith or about the Supreme being they do not find other places to go to than their own bunch of people of the same denomination. But there are many who by doing their demanding job and by doing Bible reading for the preparation of their preaches, get in confrontation with the Holy Scriptures and what they have learned. Instead of daring to take the Word of God as the real Word of God, they doubt those Scriptures and want to prefer to hold fast on their doctrines. Much too often this brings them in a severe conflict. Like ordinary people trying to keep on traditions they also want to keep to those traditions, but learn from the Bible how wrong that can be. Everything they have been thought seems to come in the zone of doubtful literature. But when they start questioning those teachings it starts nagging and they do come in conflict with their surroundings. Being interested in the spiritual they first go look with other similar denominations and go to look for other spiritual religions and find much pleasure in Buddhism. Instead of wanting to believe what is written in the Bible, that once we die we are death and cannot think or do anything, they love the idea of the immortal soul they had learned in their teachings. At first they become attracted by the incarnation, but when they go deeper into the teachings of such groups who believe that they do not feel at ease either. As such, they fall outside of the fence of Christian fellowship, there seems to be a complete lack of support. This can be a very depressing place, and it is only exacerbated by the belief that there is nobody else out there who could possibly understand the rather unique situation of being an unbelieving member of the Clergy.
You can ask: “What happens when a clergy person — a minister, a priest, a rabbi, an imam — realizes he doesn’t believe in God? And what happens when he says it out loud? What happens when they find each other; when they support each other in coping with their crises, when they help each other with resources and job counseling and other practical assistance? What happens when they encourage each other to come out? Could this affect more than just these clergy people and their followers? Could it change how society as a whole thinks and feels about religion?”
On March 21st, 2011 in the United States of America the Clergy Project was launched and the question “How can the US motto be “In God We Trust” when so many Americans are Out of the Closet atheists?” came to the forefront. Former Roman Catholic priest Dr. Stephen Uhl wrote the book “Out of God’s Closet” and got as motto: “Atheists work to make this life heavenly.”
The feeling of many with doubts is one of “Once you’re enrolled in the system, there is a strong incentive not to criticise or rebel: we’re all in this boat together – don’t rock it.”
Tufts University (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Philosopher, cognitive scientist and aprofessor at Tufts University, American Daniel Dennett says: ” teenagers glowing with enthusiasm decide to devote their lives to a career of helping others and, looking around in their rather sheltered communities, they see no better, purer option than going into the clergy. When they get to seminary they find themselves being taught things that nobody told them in Sunday school. The more they learn of theology and the history of the composition of the Bible, the less believable they find their creed. Eventually they cease to believe altogether. But, alas, they have already made a substantial commitment in social capital – telling their families and communities about their goals – so the pressure is strong to find an accommodation, or at least to imagine that if they hang in there they will find one. Only a lucky few find either the energy or the right moment to break free. Those who don’t break free then learn the tricks of the trade, the difference between what you can say from the pulpit and what you can say in the sanctum of the seminary, or in your heart. Some, of course, are unfazed by this.” (Read more: http://www.readperiodicals.com/201112/2540123101.html)
English: Daniel Dennett at the 17. Göttinger Literaturherbst, October 19th, 2008, in Göttingen, Germany. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Linda LaScola, a clinical social worker, qualitative researcher and psychotherapist, and him have been investigating the curious, sad phenomenon of closeted non-believing clergy – wellmeaning, hard-working pastors who find they do not believe the creed of their denomination, but also find that they cannot just blow the whistle and abandon the pulpit. They knew that many churchgoers have lost whatever faith they had but continue their membership for social and psychological reasons, and surmised that there might be clergy who were similarly attached to their church. What is it like to be a non-believing pastor? We found some examples who were willing to tell us, and are now completing a second survey of volunteers.
They wanted to know, ultimately, how this happens, and how common it is. It is apparently not rare – nobody knows what percentage of clergy fall into this category, not surprisingly. Their first study reported on five pastors in different Protestant denominations, who were interviewed in depth and in strict confidence by LaScola. Because it was published electronically (on the website On Faith) and under the headline “Preachers who are not believers” (Evolutionary Psychology, volume eight, issue one), this first pilot study has received considerable attention and brought them a host of new volunteers for their ongoing research.
There are many paths into this predicament, they find, but a common thread runs through most of them: a certain sort of innocence and a powerful desire, not for social prestige or riches, but rather the desire to lead a good life, to help other people as much as possible. The tragic trap is baited with goodness itself. (Read more: http://www.readperiodicals.com/201112/2540123101.html#ixzz219XQR8AC)
” Like reluctant debutantes or privately suspicious Ponzi victims , they button their lip for an abundance of good reasons. (Redundancy is always a good trick; it allows a collection of individually porous defences to overlap into anearly impregnable shield.) Historically, pastors have had slender economic resources, and if they live in a parsonage they build up no equity in real estate. Hanging on until the kids are out of college and one can collect one’s meagre pension is an option that can look better than making an honest dash for the door. But a tentative finding of our study so far is that the economic incentive to hang on is sometimes of less importance than the social and psychological factors. As one of our pastors says, “I’m thinking if I leave the church – first of all, what’s that going to do to my family? And I don’t know. Secondly is, I have zero friends outside the church. I’m kind of a loner.” And what about telling his wife? “It’s going to turn her life upside down.”"
So pastors tend to stay put and search for ways of protecting their conscience from the pangs of hypocrisy. Redoubling one’s efforts to take good care of one’s flock is probably a frequent effect, and hence it could be one of the side benefits of this system, a bonus that could almost pay for itself by turning its shepherds into goodness slaves. Guilt is a potent enzyme in many social arrangements, and has been especially promoted in religions.
Your God Is Here (Photo credit: sutton_steven)
Religions changed more in the past century than they changed in the previous two millennia, and probably will change more in the next decade or two than in the past century. The main environmental change, as many have suggested, is the sudden increase in informational transparency. Religions were beautifully designed over millennia to work in circumstances in which the people within them could be assumed to be largely ignorant of much that was outside the membrane.
“Now that mobile phones and the internet have altered the epistemic selective landscape in a revolutionary way, every religious organisation must scramble to evolve defences or become extinct. Much has been made of the growing attention to religion in the world, and this has often been interpreted as a revival, an era of expanding religiosity, but all the evidence points away from that interpretation. The fastestgrowing religious category worldwide is no religion at all, and the increasing noise we hear is apparently due to the heightened expenditure of energy by all the threatened varieties in their desperate attempts to fend off extinction.” (Read more: http://www.readperiodicals.com/201112/2540123101.html#ixzz219YCt2Wl)
Richard Dawkins giving a lecture based on his book, The God Delusion, in Reykjavik
The respectecd Catholic pastor Jerry DeWitt, who lives in Southern Louisiana, went public last October when he posted a picture of himself with the prominent and polarizing atheist Richard Dawkins, snapped at a meeting of atheists and other “freethinkers” in Houston.
Speaking in March before a cheering crowd of several hundred unbelievers at the American Atheists conference here, he described posting the picture as “committing identity suicide.”
The response was swift. His congregation put him out, friends cut him off and some family members will not speak to him, he said.
“It is not just finances and it is not just career,” he said in the fire-and-brimstone cadences of his Pentecostal background. “It is everything that you hold dear.”
DeWitt’s transition from true believer to total skeptic took 25 years. It began, he said, with the idea of hell. How could it be, as he had been taught and preached, that a loving God would damn most people to eternal fire? “This thing called hell, it began to rock my world,” he said.
Instead of daring to find solace by the non-trinitan Biblestudents, who do not believe in hell as a plac of torture, because it is not according to the Holy Scriptures, he did not dare, like the other clergy men are afraid, to go to such a group of believers where he fought against for so many years. and that is the proble we see by so many clergy men. Once they go and read more in the Holy Scriptures they find other ‘Truths’ than they have learned. They hear the same things as the Jehovah Witnesses, Abrahamic Church or Christadelphians are saying. And this confronts them with theological teaching and boundaries to their institutions.
DeWitt found that there were more people wrestling with the same issues he was.
In The Clergy Project he could find as so many others, a confidential online community for active and former clergy who do not hold supernatural beliefs.
Currently, the community’s 300 plus members use it to network and discuss what it’s like being an unbelieving leader in a religious community. The Clergy Project’s goal is to support members as they move beyond faith. Members freely discuss issues related to their transition from believer to unbeliever including:
- Wrestling with intellectual, ethical, philosophical and theological issues
- Coping with cognitive dissonance
- Addressing feelings of being stuck and fearing the future
- Looking for new careers
- Telling their families
- Sharing useful resources
- Living as a nonbeliever with religious spouses and family
- Using humor to soften the pain
- Finding a way out of the ministry
- Adjusting to life after the ministry
Richard Dawkins says: “If a farmer tires of the outdoor life and wants to become an accountant or a teacher or a shopkeeper, he faces difficulties, to be sure. He must learn new skills, raise money, move to another area perhaps. But he doesn’t risk losing all his friends, being cast out by his family, being ostracized by his whole community. Clergy who lose their faith suffer double jeopardy. It’s as though they lose their job and their marriage and their children on the same day. It is an aspect of the vicious intolerance of religion that a mere change of mind can redound so cruelly on those honest enough to acknowledge it.”
“The Clergy Project exists to provide a safe haven, a forum where clergy who have lost their faith can meet each other, exchange views, swap problems, counsel each other – for, whatever they may have lost, clergy know how to counsel and comfort. Here you will find confidentiality, sympathy, and a friendly place where you can take your time before deciding how to extricate yourself and when you will feel yourself ready to stand up and face the cool, refreshing wind of truth.”
It is a pity so many keep in the handcuffs of the trinitarian ideologist who damn the non-trinitarians, so that they do not dare to tackle the idea of those bible students who tke the Word of God for what it says, and not for what people in history have made the so called Bible saying.
We can only hope and pray,that one day their eyes may go open again and they shall find the peace again in the Bible, which can reveal everything, when people are willing to open their heart and mind to it.
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Dutch article: Project voor afvallige kerkleiders
Find:
“Preachers Who Are Not Believers” (PDF)
Read:
Pastor’s loss of faith started with loss of hell
Biggest Threat to Religion? Clergy People Coming Out as Atheists
Moody Bible Radio Discovers ‘The Clergy Project’ – interview with Teresa MacBain
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Related articles
- Biggest Threat to Religion? Clergy People Coming Out as Atheists (alternet.org)
A burst of media attention has been focused on atheists of an unexpected stripe — clergy members. Could non-believing clergy change how we see religion?
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The project was inspired by the 2010 pilot study by Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola, “Preachers Who Are Not Believers” (PDF), which exposed and explored the surprisingly common phenomenon of non-believing clergy. The need to give these people support — and if possible, an exit strategy — was immediately recognized in the atheist community, and starter funding for the Clergy Project was quickly provided by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. - 6 Benefits of a Clergy Sabbatical Leave Program (smartchurchmanagement.com)
It is common for churches to offer sabbaticals for clergy to provide a time for refreshing, recharging and continuing education. Church leaders have great responsibilities and the many challenges that come with working in the ministry can take its toll on clergy. Many churches have discovered that providing a time to retreat from the day-to-day responsibilities can provide a benefit for both the employee as well as the church. When pastors are allowed to take an extended break from ministry they can refocus and recharge their passion and call to lead the congregation. - Administration and Spirituality: A False Dichotomy (barefootpreachr.org)
How can being a good and effective administrator be de-coupled from the type of mature Christian leadership needed as an effective Episcopal servant of the church?
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to go back to Richard Hearn’s comment about losing the clergy: It was my sense and my experience that clergy morale sank to a deep low under Bishop Bledsoe’s leadership. Bishop Bledsoe acknowledged that fact himself in a video put out a couple of weeks before the North Texas Annual Conference. He invited clergy to respond. I don’t know how many did, but I heard (and I could be wrong) that it was somewhere around forty.
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It involves speaking our own difficult truths, seeking to help one another move to perfection in love, moving to deep repentance when sin is exposed, and offering the fullness of forgiveness to one another. - Rev. Frederick Schmidt Has No Idea Why Clergy Members Leave the Faith… but He’s Going to Write An Article About It, Anyway (patheos.com)
Reverend Dr. Frederick W. Schmidt, Jr. cannot believe there’s so much press about the Clergy Project.First, he blows off the numbers like they’re no big deal
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Check out his grossly misguided reasons for why clergy members leave the faith
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There are probably a lot of reasons for the media’s interest in the subject: Even with a global economic crisis, a few wars, and a presidential election, there are always a few slow news days. “The Clergy Project” probably has a fabulous PR department, supported as it is by The Richard Dawkins Foundation, Freedom from Religion Foundation, American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, The Appignani Foundation, The Center for Inquiry, The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, and Recovering from Religion.org. And beyond garden variety religious fervor, there is no religious fervor like that of a former believer. So, it’s the kind of story that always draws a crowd.There are probably a lot of reasons for the media’s interest in the subject: Even with a global economic crisis, a few wars, and a presidential election, there are always a few slow news days. “The Clergy Project” probably has a fabulous PR department, supported as it is by The Richard Dawkins Foundation, Freedom from Religion Foundation, American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, The Appignani Foundation, The Center for Inquiry, The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, and Recovering from Religion.org. And beyond garden variety religious fervor, there is no religious fervor like that of a former believer. So, it’s the kind of story that always draws a crowd.
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It is one thing to study theology, church history, and Scripture. It is another thing to integrate that learning with our faith journeys. Not all seminary programs (and very few churches) make the effort to help students with that process. But in some ways it is both more demanding and critical to the well being of clergy than is the acquisition of knowledge about the subject. - REAL NEWS June 17, 2012 (danimartextras.wordpress.com)
“Things such as theodicy [the problem of suffering and evil], the question of hell, God’s omnipotence yet lack of intervention in heinous events, the historicity of Jesus… all these bubbled to the surface and demanded to be answered,” she said. “My work to answer these questions began with the thought that as I discovered the truth, it would create a stronger faith and give me comforting answers to those in my church who were dealing with the same issues. Instead, the truth I found led me away from faith.”This experience is common among members of the Clergy Project. - The Necessity for Daily Practice…?!? (aediculaantinoi.wordpress.com)
Something that I see an increasing number of pagans and polytheists attempting, and struggling with, is daily practice. I’ve talked on previous occasions on “not being afraid to get bored” and so forth with daily practices. However, I’m also asking another question at present: is daily practice really a necessity for many people? And, I’ve come to a conclusion on the matter: no.In reconstructionist religions, one of the great advantages that has emerged over more general forms of paganism is that there are a variety of possible roles: not everyone is “clergy” or “a priest,” necessarily, in a recon context.
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The notion in many sorts of paganism that everyone is “their own clergy” and thus has clergy status, and therefore must in a variety of ways perform as if they are clergy, is rather erroneous in my view. As much as certain teachers and practitioners would suggest all of the modern pagan/polytheist population have some sort of daily practice (which usually looks like “daily meditation” in most forms I’ve seen it), I can’t really support that necessity from a general viewpoint, either as a reconstructionist or as a general spiritual practitioner who has many strong deity devotions, including Antinous. - Major Threat to Religion? Clergy People Coming Out as Atheists (alternet.org)
Unlike many believers, they actually read the Bible, or Torah, or Koran, or whatever the sacred text of their religion is. They think hard about questions that more casual believers are willing to let slide. After all — that’s their job. - The New Atheism: Its Virtues and its Vices (areycorneja.wordpress.com)
What follows is the text of the 2010 Aquinas Lecture delivered at the church of St Vincent Ferrer, New York. The lecture indicates what makes the so-called new atheism new. It then offers some defense and critique of three authors: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. The chief criticism leveled against them is that their dismissal of theism is based on an ignorance of classical theistic thinking and the mistaken impression that ‘theism’ and ‘creationism’ are equivalent.
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the new ones tend to lay stress on science as positively disproving what theists believe.
+New Atheism seems to have a political dimension lacking in the writings of old atheists. The old atheists were all basically what we might think of as ‘armchair philosophers’. They tended to be happy to argue that there is no God and to leave matters at that. By contrast, new atheists appear to have a strong political agenda.
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They often talk about something called ‘religion’ and (especially in the case of Dawkins and Hitchens), they focus on what they call ‘belief in God’. But, we might ask, ‘Which religion?’ and ‘Whose God?’ My impression is that the fathers of New Atheism have not much studied the fathers of Old Atheism or the fathers of theism in its classical Christian form. New atheists (Dawkins and Hitchens anyway) seem to identify belief in God with what is commonly called ‘creationism’.
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In short, much of the ridicule poured on belief in God by the new atheists is one that can be taken on board by someone who believes in God. Unaware of it though they seem to be, in some of their critiques of belief in God (or on forms that this has taken), the new atheists can actually claim support from some serious theologians (Aquinas being a notable example). - Facebook, Biblically Speaking (modtheology.wordpress.com)
Millennials (18-29 year olds) are becoming unaffiliated with their faith* as shown in this article by Robert P Jones on the Huffington Post Blog. What his post made me think of is: does faith truly need to have an affiliation? I think yes. But the reason that kids are leaving their parents church is because a new idea of church is being created. They are communicating their faith and beliefs in different ways. Our classical notion of ‘Church’ is in a state of transformation. Church denomination are shrinking because denominations don’t appeal to the rapid evolution of human morality. Let’s face it, churches are becoming spiritually stale.
