On the way home today, riding the bus for 3 minutes due to a downpour, I was running through possible wordings, phrases, ways of expressing myself, for the purpose of the “next” blog post, whenever that would be. Probably titled “The Lie”. During said ponderings, I decided to reduce my use of the word “science” when writing certain kinds of blog posts, for certain audiences.
To some, science seems like “the new Authority”, the new self-sustaining system perpetuated by clergy named “scientists” and to be dogmatically obeyed by the rest of us in the pews. (Heh. Not even church is like that, assuming you choose a nice progressive community.) The problem is “science” is pigeonholed into something it isn’t, and this is helped by the fact that it has such a handy pre-existing label. Develop a pigeonholed understanding of the label, then the job is done!
So instead of saying “I care too much about science”, I’m going to talk about… “I care too much about understanding reality/creation as best I can”, “I’m too interested in the evidence about the past that surrounds us”, or something similar.
And so my quest for maximizing understandability continues down the road of ever-increasing verbosity. *sigh*.
By decree, we decided on Bones, Rocks and Stars by Chris Turney. I propose we start with this book on 13 July. Hopefully I’m not busy referring to myself in the plural.
[This post represents my personal views, strongly stated, unmediated. Details, nuances, rationales, they can be explored in the comments. I appreciate that others differ from me: I explicitly do not expect others to come to my way of seeing things. Take this in whatever way you like.]
Humans are selfish and egocentric. I call this characteristic a “sin”, in the sense of “missing the (divine) mark”.
Lo-and-behold, our sinful nature is such, that it often even becomes the core of our religion. “Getting saved.” What does that mean? It can mean different things to different people — some meanings are beautiful, some meanings are ugly. For many, “being saved” effectively means “I believe I’m going to heaven after I die”. Their most important drive or focus in their religion is then to achieve that state, selfishly getting what they want, for their own benefit. It becomes the biggest purpose of their religious/spiritual life, and once they feel they’ve achieved that goal, they are satisfied.
…when there are so many other things that is so much more important to our community and the world around us, so many more important things to be concerned about.
Contemporary Conservative Christianity is all too often like that, selfish and ego-centric. Sinful. Concerns about the afterlife is not a divine concern. From what I understand, the ancients (of Hebrew Bible fame) had a more communal understanding of what salvation was about: it was more about the tribe, as a whole, as a community, and less about the selfish individual. Salvation for the tribe: divine.
This is just a quickie. My post on what I call “the divine” is coming soon. On top of that, I will (eventually) try to explain my understanding of “sin” and “salvation”.
Since I don’t have enough pending posts and series-in-progress (irony intended), I’ve decided to tackle another: sketch out my philosophical-theological framework/worldview/language with which I approach all things religion. My intention is to be as clear as I can, and paint the picture “from first principles”.
In this series, I will sketch out my views, not seek some balanced “there are many perspectives, for example, such-and-such”. When I do touch on other views in this series, it will be for the purpose of explaining how it fits into my view.
I’ll try to keep posts short and to the point, after all, details can be explored in conversations in the comments. I’m not going to rush it, it will probably take months. But I’ll try to put out my first post within the next seven days. It will be on the divine.
So a literal reading of Genesis (first book of the Torah) brings many people under the impression that the world/universe was created in six days, is less than 10,000 years old, and that there was a global catastrophic flood. Science teaches us that the universe is about 14 billion years old, that the earth and our solar system dates back about 4.5 billion years (based on ample evidence). How does one resolve these two conflicting theories?
Below are the strategies I could think of. Note that while Genesis (by names in various languages) forms part of many of the Abrahamic religions’ sacred texts, I am coming from a Christian angle, addressing primarily the Young-Earth Creationist strains.
Hypothesis: Satan Deceives!
Many that subscribe to a strong deity-dualism (namely God and Satan as two supernatural entities duking it out) consider lies as “belonging to Satan”. (Traditions with a more poetic understanding could say the same thing, but without a conscious entity actively bringing about deception, and a non-literal appreciation of the “poetry” in Genesis, will not have a problem anyway.)
‘n “Internet-vriend” van my wat dikwels bietjie godsdiens-joernalisme doen, het die Mighty Men konferensie gaan bywoon. Sy artikel verskyn in die Rapport: ‘n Magtige dreuning. Dit is ‘n heel rustige artikel, veel meer interessant (vir my) is die soort reaksies wat dit blykbaar ontlok. Hier is een van die “highlights”, maar gaan loer gerus vir meer gebalanseerde en/of rustige opmerkings:
Magtige Dreuning, 26/04/2009, Gerrie Lombaard
Johannes de Villiers ek hoop nie jy is vir die artikel betaal nie as jy ‘n vryskut joernalis is nie. Jy kan ook nie ‘n permanente pos beklee nie. ek gaan my nie verwerdig om kommentaar op jou patetiese, eenogige artikel te lewer nie. Jy kan nie ‘n Afrikaanse De Villiers wees nie want ek het familie wat dit is. Moet asb nie weer MMC toe kom nie jy het nie jou werk gedoen nie!!!!!!!. JY IS ‘N PATEET VAN ‘N SUID AFRIKANER. GAAN SKRYF JOU STROOI IN N. ZEELAND WAAR JY EN SOORTGELYKE PATETE HOORT!!!!!!!1
Ek wonder selfs of hierdie soort opmerking “genuine” is? (Ek meen, kan dit nie dalk satiere wees nie? Of het die “Afrikaanse Internet” nog nie daardie punt bereik nie?)
This brilliant TED talk by Jonathan Haidt talks about five human moral foundations. Pointing out how these foundations are emphasized differently by conservatives, he invites liberals to take the blue pill, to step outside of their “moral matrix”, and learn to understand the bigger picture of human morality from an anthropological perspective. And it also contains one little snippet about a study “proving” the meme that I turned into my post title.
(This was going to be at the bottom of the previous post, but that one grew into a monster and I didn’t want to bury this *that* deep.)
Ikon’s Easter Sunday gathering gave me goose bumps.
You will need some time if you want to work your way through it, you have to listen to four audio clips, and maybe prime yourself by first experiencing U2’s “Until the End of the World” linked to (it worked for me) — the description on that YouTube clip contains the lyrics, so you can follow and think about it. Basically, I’d say you need to click on each link, in order, except maybe the very first and the very last. And you’ll need to have an ear adequately tuned to the Irish accent.
(This blog post is mostly me chatting away, the real meat of the matter is in a post I’m linking to at the end in the next post, to be experienced by those that choose to, at a time that is appropriate — though I’m a bit late…)
It was never my intention to not write a blog post this Easter weekend, but I have “procrastinated” up to the point where I have to say “well, I haven’t gone back to work yet, it is still Easter weekend for me”. My plans changed a couple of times, as better ideas came along. In the end, I found the best elsewhere, and will just point there.
This isn’t an April fool’s joke, The Philosopher (a good friend of mine’s nickname for Prof Daniel Dennett) is visiting Stellenbosch on Wednesday! I’m not duplicating the info here, see the Renowned philosopher to speak at Stellenbosch University news item on Stellenbosch University’s website.
on 
Reducing Reliance on the Label "Science":
TTM Book Club: Starting with "Bones, Rocks and Stars" in Mid-July:
The Sin in "Getting Saved":
Any interest in a "Book Club" of sorts?: