• 27 SEP 07
  A year of following all the rules in the Bible – Boing Boing
  “I did everything the Bible says! Even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff!!” (Ned Flanders). An agnostic decided to follow “all the rules in the Bible” for a year. It got him a book deal. He believes in sacredness, whether or not there is a God.

• 29 SEP 07
  Friendly Atheist » The Year of Living Biblically
  Ooh, Stephen Colbert’s book is coming out soon. I gotta get that one. Of course, this post is really mostly about “The Year of Living Biblically”. That also looks good, it doesn’t pique my interest as much though.

• 15 OCT 07
  » What Happens When an Agnostic Follows the Bible Literally for One Year?
  I’ve miniblogged this on boingboing before. This post has more info though, and is very interesting. Sacredness has value, y’know, as does rituals.

• 17 OCT 07
  Debating The Year of Living Biblically. – By A.J. Jacobs and Matt Labash – Slate Magazine
  A nice letter from the author of “The Year of Living Biblically”

Those last two links are probably the most interesting.

So now I own both the Stephen Colbert book and The Year of Living Biblically. I have read a little bit of each, but I read the little bit of the Colbert a year and a half ago, and I’ve only just begun with Jacobs’. And I love it.

I think one remarkable and unique thing about this book is that despite it being a book on religion, it should be accessible to everyone. Whether you’re a conservative American Evangelical or similar, or a “moderate” or “liberal” Christian, or you are completely non-religious or from another religion, this book should still be able to educate and entertain. I’d give it a “bridge building” prize, if I had one to give.

The front pages have many, many positive testimonials, coming from Jewish sources, Christian sources (conservative and liberal), entertainment sources… here’s two:

In the twenty-first century few, if any, Christians truly attempt to follow the Bible in its literal entirety, even us evangelicals. In this year-long experiment A.J. Jacobs attempts just that, with disarmingly sincere, refreshingly humorous and unexpectedly insightful results. I commend this inspired narrative to anyone actively exploring the continued relevance of biblical living, religion’s need for critical self-reflection and the timelessness of authentic faith.
– Reverend Jim Wallis, author of God’s Politics and president of Sojourners/Call to Renewal

A book that is at one and the same time delightfully readable and profoundly memorable is a wonder! The Year of Living Biblically is exactly that. A.J. Jacobs has perceived the distinction between the wisdom of the Bible and its absurdities. It is a shame that so many of both our clergy and our politicians seem incapable of making that distinction.
– John Shelby Spong, author of Jesus for the Non-Religious and former Episcopal bishop

For more, check the links above, or the TED talk embedded below. The TED talk also briefly connects to my previous blog post when he mentions Radical Honesty (and certainly does not recommend it). This talk may be better framed for a TED audience than a certain subset of American evangelicals, but hopefully not stop them from appreciating it, or reading the book for that matter.

You change your behaviour and that changes your mind, rather than the other way round.

And I should probably review a book only once I’m actually finished reading it, but oh well. I thought I’d mention it now because I will be using a short extract in my next post.

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.)

So what is the problem with this hypothesis? The evidence contradicting the young earth view is everywhere. It is in the fossil record, in the cosmic background radiation, in our understanding of globular clusters and nuclear physics, in the speed of light, and the distances between galaxies… If all of creation is deceptive in that regard, and all deception is the work of Satan, this seems to indicate Satan is the creator. That would be in direct contradiction to the primary message of Genesis 1, the affirmation of Israel’s God as creator, author of fossils and stars. That is the primary message according to both literal and poetical readings.

(Scholarship indicates [citation needed] Genesis 1 was probably written during Israel’s exile in Babylon. During such times, when a tribe was defeated by another, the tribe’s identity, religion, faith in their deity, typically suffers. In that context, Genesis 1 is a defiant call to maintain tribal unity, religious identity, faith, through radical monotheism.)

Hypothesis: (a) the fossils are just there to Test Ya Faith! *or* (b) fossils et al provide an interesting back story

(a) Um, what’s with this hypothesis? Doesn’t this make God a liar, another thing that is explicitly contradictory with Christian theology? (Who can provide a reference to the verse that says God cannot lie?)

(b) Also known as “Last-Thursdayism”, there is nothing logically inconsistent with believing the world was created as-is last Thursday. The question, though, is why, if the universe has this interesting and consistent 14 billion year back story, should it be treated any differently to something that really is 14 billion years old? If you were created last Thursday with all your memories intact, does that really make any difference to your life, which you would live as though you are many years old?

The Wikipedia page on this, the Omphalos hypothesis, has some very interesting insights. I love controversial Rabbi Natan Slifkin’s response:

God essentially created two conflicting accounts of Creation: one in nature, and one in the Torah. How can it be determined which is the real story, and which is the fake designed to mislead us? One could equally propose that it is nature which presents the real story, and that the Torah was devised by God to test us with a fake history! One has to be able to rely on God’s truthfulness if religion is to function. Or, to put it another way—if God went to enormous lengths to convince us that the world is billions of years old, who are we to disagree?

Strategy: “there is no evidence of an old-earth!”

I’m not calling this one a hypothesis. This is a strategy, a choice for ignorance. For many stuck in conflict, this is actually the strategy I’d propose! If your religion is important to you, if you find real value in your religion, what difference does it make how old the earth is? Could you not choose ignorance, explicitly? Accept that you don’t know, and don’t care, and aren’t interested in discussing it? This may be a controversial statement for me to make, amongst my scientist friends, but there is of course an important side-effect I’m also aiming for: leave the debates and arguments to those that study these things.

Not that many strongly-convicted evangelicals would take me up on that offer, since they often perceive science as a threat to their belief system and detrimental to their evangelising. Of course, there is an opposite argument using the same rationale. Quoting the church father, St Augustine, whose theology laid foundations used by most Christians today, explained it as follows:

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.

– De Genesi ad literam 1:19–20, Chapt. 19 [AD 408]

(Taken from Wikipedia, here’s another translation.)

The much uglier version of the “choosing ignorance” path, in my opinion, is where the ignorance is outsourced to authority figures (like Adam blaming Eve for the apple ). This is the business model on which creationist organisations and websites like Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International (now creation.com, used to be creationontheweb.com) operate: they use “claims of authority” to win the trust of those with a strong authoritarian style of deciding what to believe. Deferring to authority lets you “escape” responsibility… Is it that much harder to simply say “I don’t know” and leave it be?

Alternatively, take the non-literal stance on Genesis 1-11

This makes most sense to me. (Naturally, I don’t read Genesis literally, that much should be clear. ) Of course, if the only thing that keeps you “believing” is the lack of acceptance of evolutionary theory, you will starting on a path to de-conversion. (Is it worthwhile to believe in a God that only exists on condition that evolution is impossible? Is that your God?) However, don’t let the Christian fundies or the atheists fool you, de-conversion is most certainly not your only choice!

You could read up on Theistic evolution. You could buy e.g. The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth, a book by evangelicals, maybe after reading the wonderful review on Exploring Our Matrix. Or you could go for some free ebooks by an online evangelical community — (1-4, 5).

Have an interesting conversation!

And feel free to ask! If you need some help or conversations to help you embrace more science in your worldview, I have a couple more references up my sleeve which I’ll customise to your needs as best I can, there are more “theistic evolutionists” hanging out here, and there’s my little network of friends, pastors and theologians that I could consult for advice on your behalf. We also have humanists, with varying amounts of secularity, if you find yourself or your worldview drowning in all the new info and need to chat to some people to help you find something to hold onto while the dust settles. (Dust and water, mixing my metaphors here? )

(There’s even one or two “Real Live PhD Scientists” that occasionally take part in discussions, to the detriment of their research!… because they also have a passion for education, for sharing knowledge. Of course, that doesn’t make them the authority figures to be obeyed, it just makes them the knowledgeable bunch that know what’s cutting: within their fields of study, they’re experts on the evidence and the tentative conclusions drawn from that evidence, by the process known as science…)

Additionally, I (we) will be starting our first attempt at a thinktoomuch.net book club in July. I (we) will be reading (and blogging and commenting on) Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened — this is much thinner than “The Bible, Rocks and Time”, but sticks to science and doesn’t cover Christian theological concerns.

Please watch this video clip, especially if you are religious. It contains the food for thought that we need to think carefully about the dangers of certain ideological strains in our religions. My utmost respect for how Crossan expresses himself, in this video, and in the book I’m reading right now (The Last Week, co-authored by Crossan and Marcus Borg, which I so far extremely highly recommend to any Christian, or Christian-curious — as too many Christians focus only on the last day, ala Mel Gibson’s gorefest, while having no clue about the importance and significance of the week that lead up to it).

I like to distinguish between literalism and fundamentalism. [...] A literalist is someone who takes everything in the Bible that could be taken literally, literally. [...] A fundamentalist says “and if you don’t take it literally, you’re not a Christian. And if you say it shouldn’t be taken literally, you’re an anti-Christian.” [...] Every religion today, must take responsibility for its own fundamentalism. Because religious fundamentalism is probably the most dangerous thing in the world at the moment.

In the future, I will stick to his definitions for everyday use.

Two things to look out for in the video clip:

• Irrespective of whether you take the texts literally or metaphorically, they still mean the same thing.
• There is a path from ideological fundamentalism through rhetorical fundamentalism to physical fundamentalism, a path capable of escalating ideology to the point of violence or genocide. Crossan illustrates such escalation through the example of Mein Kampf and the Nazis.

As the commenter hardheadjarhead wrote on YouTube about three weeks ago:

History bears out what he claims about fundamentalism, whether it be Christian or Muslim. Martin Luther in his work “The Jews and their Lies” was a classic example of the religious intolerance Crossan is talking about.

If you have not heard of Luther’s darker side, it’s certainly worthwhile to recognise the evils inadvertently produced and propagated even by your favourite heroes.

From the Other Side, Yet Again

Bear with me while I ponder the potential of a similar understanding on the other side… also in another attempt to understand why some people suggest the “fundamentalism” label can also apply to Dawkins et al (the so-called New Atheist Movement). I know I may bore some of you to death with rehashing this over and over… but…

Could the ideological framework of well-meaning atheists escalate from “religion is implicated in most of modern terrorism and violence” via “if we are able to eradicate religion, we will have a better society” to “in what ways might we successfully eradicate religion?”

This is not to debate the point, it is to provoke thought. Is it necessary for atheists to take responsibility for the results of their thoughts and ideas? Is being “factually and rationally correct”, as they claim they are, sufficient defence against any evils that might result from the eventual abuse of their ideas? Maybe. Who can judge? It may really be. I just know I’d personally rather focus on understanding the value of anything I deconstruct or challenge, and figure out ways to protect the good while hacking at the bad, replacing rotten or sandy foundations by foundations built on rock, or if renovation is not possible, putting much effort and energy into constructing a new house, built on rock, that provides all the essentials and as many of the benefits of the prior dwelling as possible, before indiscriminately bulldozing every sand-built shack I come across.

Enough melodrama and propaganda for now: it’s the thought that counts, and the thereby inspired thinking/reflection that helps.

(Besides, there are more than enough defenders-of-religion hammering incessantly on this very same thought, whether legitimately or illegitimately, which is why many are sick of hearing it. May that, together with this section of this post, my latest attempt at expressing the idea in the best way I can come up with, be adequate in letting me put the issue to rest.)

ps. He talks about something sounding like “the story of Ah-mey-us” — can anyone tell me what that last word is?