Friday, December 21, 2012


Journal says psychotic symptoms in Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and St. Paul

The Role of Psychotic Disorders in Religious History Considered
Evan D. Murray, M.D.; Miles G. Cunningham, M.D., Ph.D.; Bruce H. Price, M.D.

The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 2012;24:410-426.10.1176/appi.neuropsych.11090214


The authors have analyzed the religious figures Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and St. Paul from a behavioral, neurologic, and neuropsychiatric perspective to determine whether new insights can be achieved about the nature of their revelations. Analysis reveals that these individuals had experiences that resemble those now defined as psychotic symptoms, suggesting that their experiences may have been manifestations of primary or mood disorder-associated psychotic disorders. The rationale for this proposal is discussed in each case with a differential diagnosis. Limitations inherent to a retrospective diagnostic examination are assessed. Social models of psychopathology and group dynamics are proposed as explanations for how followers were attracted and new belief systems emerged and were perpetuated. The authors suggest a new DSM diagnostic subcategory as a way to distinguish this type of psychiatric presentation. These findings support the possibility that persons with primary and mood disorder-associated psychotic symptoms have had a monumental influence on the shaping of Western civilization. It is hoped that these findings will translate into increased compassion and understanding for persons living with mental illness.

http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=1476850

Sunday, November 11, 2012

The Ten Commandments Put to Chisel


The book of Exodus is a commandment-rich environment, with fierce orders to slay people for committing any of several minor offenses.  The Ten Commandments stand apart from all others as they have a special place ... on stone tablets.

Christian apologists insist that objective morality is possible only with God as the law-giver.  They cite Bible's Ten Commandments, besides others, as absolute objective moral laws given to us by God, the law-giver.

The Christian view is that God given moral laws in the Bible are:
(1) absolute -i.e., universally applicable to all situations at all times.
(2) objective - I.e., not dependent on subjective views.

Christians most often cite the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament and Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament as the essential moral teachings of God documented in the Bible.  Jesus himself asserts in the New Testament that he is not here on Earth to replace old laws with new laws but to uphold old laws.. Ten commandments, then, are central to Christian teachings.

Let us put the ten commandments on stone tablets  to the test of Dharmic Gaze and see if they are absolute and objective or if they could use the help of chisel.

Following are two major points that chisel away the claim that ten commandments are absolute:
  1. Failure to provide exceptions to moral laws makes all the moral commandments vulnerable to criticism arising from rational thought.  Absolute moral laws simply fail to account for exceptions. The only practical remedy is to replace absolute morals with situational ethics.
  2. Ten Commandments were addressed to a specific group in the Bible - a nomadic tribe whose main economy is primitive agriculture and whose wealth is sometimes counted in people as well as animals. 

 Commandment I and II:   
  • I am the lord thy God.… Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Is God implying by this command that there are indeed other gods?  Since the Biblical God is one and only one, those other gods must be imaginary gods imagined by humans.  God is simply asserting his authentic self over those fictional gods.  Play on upper case and lower case letters suggests that "God" with an upper "G" has an upper hand over "other gods" with a lower "g". 
  • Very troubling that an omnipotent God, who created this gigantic Universe in which the Earth is less than a spec of dust, is threatening humans for worshiping other fictional gods.   God wants humans to worship Him alone as their God.  However, God without form or attributes is inaccessible to human mind.  Any attempts to worship Him are bound to give some form or attributes.  What complicates the matter, nay makes it impossible, is when humans are forbidden worship via the symbolical idea of Him.  Case in point are the various "icons" used in the Church and by Christians of the biblical God.  
  • I the lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Firstly, it is downright silly for the omnipotent and omniscient God to be jealous of fictional gods.  Secondly, the collective punishment of future children, for the sin of angering the jealous God, may not go down well for the rational-minded.  After all, how can one see justice in making someone pay for the sin of their ancestors, a silly sin of worshiping fictional gods, which in reality is a symbolic worship of one and only one God?
  • Of course, it is possible that these are not commandments of God at all but those created to assert superiority over gods of other established religions.  Perhaps, Moses is telling his people to break lose of the cultural influence of Egyptian gods by offering the commandments of their god? Perhaps, to break their reverie and make them fall in line with him, Moses needed commandments of a god, their god, expressed in stern, threatening words?
  • In any event, as expressed by these two commandments, Biblical god seems to have misunderstood symbolic worship as the worship of competing gods and taken a rather unfatherly attitude towards symbolic worship.  Since the omniscient God cannot be wrong, the commandment really cannot be his.  Conversely, his commandment would have been worded differently. In fact, there is really no need for these commandments.  
  • Monotheistic God simply must have given the following advice: "I am the one and only God.  No matter what form you worship, you are still worshiping me.  Do not lose sight of that as you engage in symbolic worship."
  • Panentheistic God of Dharma traditions does not threaten with commandments.  An advice from Panentheistic God could be imagined as: "I am everything, both transcendental and immanent.  All your material objects, even symbols you worship are ultimately me.  Do not lose sight of this Ultimate Reality as you contemplate on me through symbolic worship."

Commandment III:
  • Thou shalt not take the name of the lord thy God in vain, for the lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. A slightly querulous and repetitive note is struck here, as if of injured vanity. Nobody knows how to obey this commandment, or how to avoid blasphemy or profanity. For example, I say “God alone knows” when I sincerely intend to say “Nobody knows.” Is this ontologically dangerous? Ought not unalterable laws to be plain and unambiguous? 
  • Seems command III is better worded as follows: "Do not portray me as favoring some of you over others for I am not a partial God and I do not like to take sides.  Do not play politics using my name suggesting that I favor some of you over others.  Such parochial usages of my name are in vain and they will anger me."

Commandment IV:
  • Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. This ostensibly brief commandment goes on for a long time—for four verses in fact—and stresses the importance of a day dedicated to the lord, during which neither one’s children nor one’s servants or animals should be allowed to perform any tasks.
  • In Exodus 20:8–11, the reason given for the day off is that “in six days the lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.” 
  • In Deuteronomy 5:15 a different reason for the Sabbath observance is offered: “Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.”
  • Very different reasons offered in Exodus and Deuteronomy.  Why can’t the infallible and omniscient and omnipotent one make up his mind what the real reason is?
  • Also, why can't rest be recommended for its own sake?   It is surprising that it should make the top 10 things that God wants to tell us Humans in the form of inviolable moral laws.
  • This commandment made sense when slavery was prevalent.  As an absolute law, it has lost its shine without the outmoded practice of slavery.  What is the purpose of an absolute law that made sense as a law only in the context of an evil social practice that is now outmoded?  
  • On that note, this commandment would have served humanity far better, and would have eliminated untold miseries for centuries, had it been worded as follows: "Slavery is an unacceptable practice.  No human can be owned by any other for they are all the same in my eyes.  Let humans be free and choose what they want to do with their time - work hard, take it easy, or rest all together."

Commandments I to IV are not moral laws.  They are Biblical god's (arbitrary) injunctions. 

Commandment V is the first moral.  A quick read of it makes us wonder if we need the Biblical god to tell us that.

Commandment V: 
  • Honor thy father and thy mother. Both the Exodus and Deuteronomy versions urge it for the same reason: “that thy days may be long upon the land which the lord thy God giveth thee.” This perhaps has the slight suggestion of being respectful to Father and Mother in order to come into an inheritance—the Israelites have already been promised the Canaanite territory that is currently occupied by other people, so the prospective legacy pickings are rather rich. 
  • As a general purpose absolute law, ... do we really need such a law demanded of humans by God? Why not propose filial piety as a nice thing in itself?
  • Non-Abrahamic civilizations have developed a deep sense of respect for parents without God interfering and mandating love and respect for one's own parents.   In Dharma traditions, the saying goes, "Mathru Devobhava, Pithru Devobhava, ...".  In other words, children are encouraged to see God in their own parents.  Makes immense cultural sense.  Who cares more for children than their own parents?  
  • As a command, and implemented as a forced behavior, at best it brings indifferent formality, and at worst brings resentment towards parents.  As a cultural trait, it has resulted in a very stable family-centric civilization.   Makes much more sense as a cultural trait than an absolute law from a moral-giver.  
  • There are other pathological problems: If you have pathological parents, moral law-giver has not specified exceptions.

 Commandment VI:  
  • Thou shalt not kill. This very celebrated commandment quite obviously cannot mean what it seems to say in English translation. In the original Hebrew it comes across as something more equivalent to “Thou shalt do no murder.” 
  • We can be fairly sure that the “original intent” is not in any way pacifistic, because immediately after he breaks the original tablets in a fit of rage, Moses summons his Levite faction and says (Exodus 32:27–28): Thus saith the lord God of Israel, put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.
  • St. Augustine took the bait of this commandment when he lamented: "But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. As if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wars, if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would therefore be delivered from all wars." Not a very useful quote when you are up against the threat of war or in need of war to establish justice.
  • 900 hundred years after St. Augustine, St. Aquinas rectified this by stating the following criteria for Just War:
  • First, war must occur for a good and just purpose rather than for self-gain or as an exercise of power.
  • Second, just war must be waged by a properly instituted authority such as the state.
  • Third, peace must be a central motive even in the midst of violence.
  • Anyone who understands the role of a soldier in war understands that a soldier cannot perform his duty with the absolute moral law that "You shall not murder or kill."  The Catholic Church recognized the failure of the Universal application of this absolute moral-law from the moral law-giver.  Accordingly, Christian theology has come up with situational ethics in the name of "Just War".
  • Long before Aquinas came up with Just War theory, the Mahabharata Epic spoke of "Dharma Yuddh" meaning "Just War" and discussed the need for a soldier to be unselfish and duty-minded when in war.  
  • Dharma traditions do not have absolute moral laws or absolute moral law-giver.  There are epics or Ithihasa that gently teach the reader through stories of great virtues and selfless service.  There is a fine idea for an absolute moral law, if there is ever a need for one: "Do your duty guided by an elevated sense of justice and selfless attitude.  Gain an understanding of human nature and foibles so that you do not get trapped into harming others for selfish reasons."

Commandment VII:   
  • Thou shalt not commit adultery. For some reason, “the seventh” is the only one of the commandments that is still widely known by its actual number. Extramarital carnal knowledge was probably more of a threat to society when families and tribes were closer-knit, and more bound by stern codes of honor. 
  • Adultery continues to be a great source of misery, joy, and fascination even in our current times.  Prevalence of adultery is a clear example of how much respect and following ten commandments have among Christians.
  • Success of controlling adultery is higher in societies that do not follow the Bible.  Perhaps, such social injunctions are less effective, even if coming from the God himself. 


 Commandment VIII:   
  • Thou shalt not steal. 
  • Most civilized society will agree with this without God's injunction.
  • Those who have worked hard to acquire a bit of property are entitled to resent those who would rather steal than work, and when society evolves to the point where there is wealth that belongs to nobody—public or social property—those who plunder it for private gain are rightly regarded with hatred and contempt. Admittedly, the prosperity of some families and some states is also founded on original theft, but in that case the same principle of disapproval can apply.


 Commandment IX:       
  • Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. This is possibly the most sophisticated ruling in the whole Decalogue. Human society is inconceivable unless words are to some extent bonds, and in legal disputes we righteously demand the swearing of oaths that entail severe penalties for perjury. 
  • If you consciously lie in order to indict someone who is not guilty, you have done something irretrievably foul.


 Commandment X:   
  • Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.  
  • It lumps the wife in with the rest of the chattel.  Clearly, it is addressed to the servant-owning and property-owning class.
  • Notice also that no specific act is being pronounced as either compulsory or forbidden. Instead, it is the totalitarian concept of “thought crime.” You are being told, in effect, not even to think about it. [Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament takes this a step further, announcing that those with lust in their heart have already committed the sin of adultery.]
  • From the “left” point of view, how is it moral to prohibit people from regarding the gains of the rich as ill-gotten, or from demanding a fairer distribution of wealth? From the “right” point of view, why is it wicked to be ambitious and acquisitive? And is not envy a great spur to emulation and competition?
  • Where is the freedom of thought?  Such scary totalitarian injunctions are against the most basic of all human rights - freedom of conscience.

Summary:
  • What emerges from the review is this: The Ten Commandments were derived from situational ethics. They show every symptom of having been man-made and improvised under pressure. And there is nothing wrong in doing this - ethics are often situation specific.  What is wrong is taking these situation specific commandments from the Bible, separate them from context, and offer them to public as absolute objective moral laws of the moral law-giver.
  • Ten Commandments are addressed to a nomadic tribe whose main economy is primitive agriculture and whose wealth is sometimes counted in people as well as animals. 
  • Ten Commandments are addressed to a group that has been promised the land and flocks of other people: the Amalekites and Midianites and others whom the god of Israel orders his chosen people to kill, rape, enslave, or exterminate.   Let us not get carried away and attribute them to the true God.

Attribution:
Above article is largely inspired by Christopher Hitchens' article in Vanity Fair to take a fresh look at Ten Commandments.  Jump here to read the article by Christopher Hitchens in its entirety:  Christopher Hitchens' The New Commandments


Saturday, November 10, 2012

Christianity that Jesus would not care for


From his childhood days, Mahatma Gandhi remembered Christian missionaries standing on the corner of his grade school loudly deriding the gods and beliefs of Hindus. Converts to Christianity were de-Indianized and Europeanized. Christianity was “beef and brandy” (most Hindus are vegetarians).


Mahatma Gandhi was greatly disturbed when he heard Christians put aside the Sermon on the Mount as impractical or a dreamy idealism. He believes that, what is lived as Christianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount. He criticized Christianity as practiced. He criticized Christianity’s cultural imperialism.

Gandhi perceived this phenomenon to be a destroyer of the Indian culture with its aggressive missionary work.  

After such a well-founded doctrine on Christ [Sermon on the Mount], Gandhi expected Christians to be like Christ. Unfortunately, he never saw a trace of it.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “I love your Christ but I hate your Christians because your Christians are unlike your Christ.”

The bone of contention here is to get the hermeneutics of what Gandhi meant. It is necessary to have faith to be saved but following Christ cannot be theoretical. It must be shown in action and in deeds. Before continuing, it is worth noting that Jesus had warned in Mt 7: 21-23 that: “Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, `I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers”.

Gandhi often affirmed: “It is that sermon which has endeared Jesus to me. But what does Jesus mean to Gandhi? He revealed this to us in these words: “I regard Jesus as a great teacher of humanity."
 
Gandhi essentially came to view Christianity, especially Western Christianity, as a betrayal of everything that Christ stood for.  He saw someone such as Tolstoy as embodying what he understood to be the teachings of Christ; after Constantine, it is Gandhi's view, the institutionalization of Christianity delivered a death blow to Christ's teachings.

http://www.mkgandhi.org/africaneedsgandhi/gandhi%27s_message_to_christians.htm


At first glance, what more is necessary for a Christian than to follow the teachings of Jesus? Even after many glances, it is difficult to see why anything more is needed.  Christianity as an institution does not see this as anywhere near sufficient.  For the institution, it is all about growth, control, and dominant power.

The Christian Church as an institution has devised Dogma that drew people to it and then lay bound by its power. Much of the history of Christian Church is really about power and politics and very little about teachings of Jesus.

Friday, September 21, 2012


Mysticism - East versus West


Mystic experiences in the East are always experiences are bliss.  People who witnessed mystics in India speak for this.  Reported mystical experiences in the West were dark and painful, often empty with no divine experiences.  Could it be a struggle between the Christian scriptural conditioning that does not allow direct experiences of the divine and unconditioned mystical experiences?

Toward the end of his life, Eckhart was charged (and found guilty after his death in 1327), with heresy for his mystical assertions which the Catholic Church determined had bled over into pantheism. 

Eckhart “believed that in every human soul there is something of the very nature of God. Here it is that the human soul meets God…. [His] doctrine of the human soul has lasted to the present, and is reaffirmed whenever one speaks of a Divine Spark within each of us.”  

 Eckhart made statements such as these: "Henceforth I shall not speak about the soul, for she has lost her name yonder in the oneness of divine essence. There she is no more called soul: she is called infinite being. And, She plunges into the bottomless well of the divine nature and becomes one with God that she herself would say that she is God." Such statements not only bothered the Medieval Church but some more modern researchers have found agreements in Eckhart's philosophy with all the major points of Hindu mystics.


http://www.inplainsite.org/html/mysticism.html

Echhart's comments and mystical experiences align with the Eastern traditions.  No doubt the Catholic church charged him with heresy.  How do mystical experiences of Christian believers differ from the mystical experiences of Eastern traditions?

 Dark Experiences in Western Mysticism vs. Blissful Experiences in Eastern Mysticism


In a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, mother Theresa wrote "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have free hand."


In the booktitled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist".


That absence seems to have started at almost precisely the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and — except for a five-week break in 1959 — never abated. Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'" Says the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and the author of My Life with the Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa's doubts: "I've never read a saint's life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented." Recalls Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light's editor: "I read one letter to the Sisters [of Teresa's Missionaries of Charity], and their mouths just dropped open. It will give a whole new dimension to the way people understand her."
Mother Teresa had visions, including one of herself conversing with Christ on the Cross. Her confessor, Father Celeste Van Exem, was convinced that her mystical experiences were genuine.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1655720,00.html

Dominican Fr. Paul Murrary, meanwhile, argued that on the basis of Mother Teresa’s private writings, published only after her death, she now ranks not only as a friend of the poor, but as one of the great mystics of the Catholic tradition, with an interior life “comparable in depth and intensity to St. John of the Cross.”


Those private writings were collected as part of the beatification process, and had previously been known only to a handful of spiritual directors and church authorities. They spoke not only of mystical visions and revelations in the 1940s, but an inner darkness stretching over most of the rest of her life and which led her even to question the existence of God.
We now know that Mother Teresa’s spiritual journey, Murray said, “was not one long unbroken experience of bliss, with roses of consolation strewn along the way.” Instead, she lived with a sense of “bewildering rejection and even complete abandonment,” as “her prayers were not heard and God remained silent.”

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/mother-teresa-mystic-and-apostle-ordinary

John of the Cross

When the sixteenth-century mystic John of the Cross identified a similar phenomenon—this spiritual desolation called the "dark night of the soul"—he insisted that it is an important spiritual discipline. The dark night, said John, is a tortuous but fruitful path to union with God. For the great Carmelite, the dark night was just one part of an elaborate theology that penetrated beyond the realm of our senses and reason to come before God as The Awesome Unknown.

C.S. Lewis

In his late 50s, C. S. Lewis finally found and married his true love: American writer Joy Davidman Gresham. But four years later, after an agonizing battle with cancer, Joy died. During the period of intense grieving, Lewis filled four notebooks—first, with words of anguish and rage, then with an introspective record of the changes that this loss worked in his character. The notebooks were published one year after Joy's death as A Grief Observed, at first under a pseudonym.  Some have guessed that Lewis resorted to an assumed name because his grief took him to the precipice of doubt. He asked the same sorts of questions that the grieving often ask: Was God, after all, a cosmic sadist? Did he even exist?





Sunday, September 9, 2012



The God of genome and the God of Bible


The World renowned Geneticist Francis Collins once said: 
"The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshiped in the cathedral or the laboratory."
Let us grant to Francis Collins the premise that indeed there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent transcendental God who created the genome.  

With this premise in our hand, let us revisit the conclusion provided above by Francis Collins and ask two questions:
  • Is Yahweh, the god of the Bible, same as the transcendental God who created the genome?   
  • If experiments in the laboratory constitute a form of worshiping the transcendental God, is that similar to worshiping Yahweh in the cathedral?

Difference between Yahweh and the transcendental God of genome:
God of the genome that Francis Collins is talking about is the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent transcendental God. We can praise Him, worship Him, or experience Him in our own ways.  We can ascribe anything true to such an abstract notion of God.  If we do, it is no different than ascribing such qualities to an abstract ideal.  In that sense, both theists and agnostics can agree at this level that this God is the same one granted in the premise. 
Trouble comes when we layer other characteristics, when we ascribe attitudes and behaviors to such a transcendental God.
Many things we ascribe to Yahweh in the Bible cannot be ascribed to the transcendental God.  Yahweh is characterized elsewhere (in the Bible) with His interest in intervening in matters of human life.  Yahweh says that He is a jealous God, sets rules, and punishes for violating rules.  Through historical interventions in human matters,  Yahweh picks sides and seems to favor some people over others.  For example, see  Morality and the Bible
We cannot say with any degree of confidence that the transcendental God, to who we granted the creation of genome, is same as Yahweh.
"Now, if you say God is love, for example.  Then you cannot say love is only from Israel, or love is only from France, or love is only from ... Love is in every being, love is all over the world, love is everywhere.  Love is logos, it is in the atoms of the Universe.  So people who try to grab it and own it and see that nobody else has it are the problem."
Professor Robert Thurman, Department of Religion, Columbia University

Difference between worshiping the God of genome in laboratory and worshiping Yahweh in Cathedral:
Transcendental God of the genome did not have miraculous interventions in history to share knowledge of genome with us.  Thankfully, we are endowed with faculties of intuition, reasoning, and inquisitiveness to empirically study in the laboratory and discover knowledge directly.  We are also endowed with the freedom to make mistakes in our understanding as we continue our quest of discovery.   
Yahweh likes to communicate with us through historical interventions which are pitifully rare. To make matters worse, Yahweh does not like to communicate with humans directly but only through a chosen prophet. Yahweh also communicates on all matters of his creative genius through the mediating prophets. For all his unlimited powers, Yahweh's communications are very limited, simplistic relative to the creation or the complexities of human problems, often allegorical and, in the imprecise human language.  We are destined in the Cathedral to a life of desperately deciphering his given word delivered to us through prophets, written down by his disciples, and given to us through scriptures.  If you do not believe me, look at the size of the Bible and compare that to volumes of theology that are written each year. 
Yahweh of the Bible does not allow direct experience of his Divine Self either in the lab or in the Cathedral.  Since transcendental God is not immanent i.e., not present in the physical world, lab experiments related to the physical aspects of Universe cannot constitute worship of the transcendental God who is outside the physical world.
Bible, and the various large denominations of Christianity that follow the Bible, will not accept lab work as worship.  Bible is the inerrant word of Yahweh.  Followers of Yahweh have to submit themselves to his lordship - they are not allowed to question or have doubts as scientists do.  Those who are not followers of Yahweh need to convert and become followers - no dissension or doubt is allowed (for Yahweh is a self-proclaimed jealous God per ten commandments).  They are not allowed to have varying Worldviews just because we Humans are not sure which is the true one.  If you do not believe me, look at how Christians push Creationism as the only truth and that natural biological evolution is false.  In spite of all the evidence to support natural evolution, Christians cannot even accept evolution an alternative plausible Worldview because Yahweh would be upset.  We know from history how Christianity ill-treated scientists like Galileo.
Accepting that Jesus is the only way to salvation is the only form of worship that Bible tells us is acceptable to Yahweh.  Lab experiments are not worship.  Seeking understanding of ultimate reality or serving other people are not spiritual pursuits in Judeo-Christian faith.  In fact, many Christians are quite sure that Gandhi did not go to heaven after death because he was not Christian.  It is just that simple.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Morality in the Bible


According to Bible 
...

Man has to obey God's  laws
The LORD your God commands you this day to follow these decrees and laws; carefully observe them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have declared this day that the LORD is your God and that you will walk in obedience to him, that you will keep his decrees, commands and laws—that you will listen to him.  Deuteronomy 26:16-17
Violating God's laws is a sin.  
Sin is nothing but violating God's law.  
In fact, if there is no law, there is no sin.
Breaking a law brings God's wrath.
Anyone who sins breaks God’s law. Yes, sinning is the same as living against God’s law1 John 3:4
because the law can only bring God’s anger on those who disobey it. But if there is no law, then there is nothing to disobey. . Romans 4:15
You might think I am saying that sin and the law are the same. That is not true. But the law was the only way I could learn what sin means. I would never have known it is wrong to want something that is not mine. But the law said, “You must not want what belongs to someone else.”  And sin found a way to use that command and make me want all kinds of things that weren’t mine. So sin came to me because of the command. But without the law, sin has no power.   Romans 7:7-8
In my mind I am happy with God’s law. But I see another law working in my body. That law makes war against the law that my mind accepts. That other law working in my body is the law of sin, and that law makes me its prisoner.  Romans 7:22-23

Punishment for Not Obeying God


"But if you don’t obey me and all my commands, bad things will happen to you. If you refuse to obey my laws and commands, you have broken my agreement. If you do that, I will cause terrible things to happen to you. I will cause you to have disease and fever. They will destroy your eyes and take away your life. You will not have success when you plant your seed. And your enemies will eat your crops. I will be against you, so your enemies will defeat you. These enemies will hate you and rule over you. You will run away even when no one is chasing you."  Leviticus 26:14-17


Let us look at the story in the Bible of Prophet Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal   1 Kings 18

  • Elijah's God was Yahweh.  Elijah is insistent that people of Israel quit believing in Baal and switch their belief to Yahweh once and for all.
  • Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to a contest
  • Contest was to kill a bull, one for Baal another for Yahweh and invoke them to light fire for the sacrifice.  Which ever God lights the fire is the true God.
  • Priests of Baal make sacrifices, even hurt themselves, to get Baal's attention.  Nothing happens after several hours.
  • Elijah prepares his sacrifice.  He pours water on it three times, and prepares a moat to keep the water in.  This makes the offering difficult to set fire to.
  • Elijah calls on Yahweh once.
  • Yahweh sends fire which consumes the wet offering!
  • The people recognize Yahweh as true God and bow down in prayer.
  • Then Elijah says, “Get the prophets of Baal! Don’t let any of them escape!” So the people captured  all the prophets. Then Elijah leads them down to Kishon Creek and killed them all - all the 450 prophets of Baal.

Here is Prophet Elijah killing 450 prophets of Baal for believing in Baal instead of Yahweh.  (In case you are not familiar with the Bible, Prophet Elijah is one of the major Prophets mentioned alongside Moses and Jesus. Matthew 17:1-3)

What does Yahweh think of this mass murder?  
  • As the Bible tells us later, Elijah goes to Heaven.  2 Kings 2:11
  •  In other words, Elijah committed no sin in murdering 450 prophets of Baal.
    • What is the justification?  
    • One of the ten commandments that says "You shall have no other Gods before me." By violating that command of Yahweh, those prophets of Baal sinned.  
    • For that sin, their punishment was death. 
    • Yahweh does not seem to mind very much that Elijah chose to execute this punishment on his behalf.
    Is morality just a violation of Yahweh's law?  
      • It is one thing to say that the Universe is governed by God's laws.  It is entirely another to say that what is in the Bible is God's laws.  Given stories such as the above, can we accept that Biblical laws are God's absolute laws for all humanity?
        •  Can you understand why it is offensive when I am told that it is immoral to harm me only because God, or in the Bible Yahweh, (allegedly) says so?   
        • Can you see the danger in such a position where now we are giving the extreme power over humanity's fate to someone who claims to have in his hand the word of God?   
        • Conversely, can you see why someone who claims to have the word of God in his hand want you to believe that morality is what God says it is?





          Euthyphro Dilemma & Christian apologetics



          The Euthyphro dilemma is the following:
          Socrates asks Euthyphro "Do the Gods will something because it is good or is something good because gods will it?"
          Stated differently "Is something moral because God say so or did God say something because it is moral?"  If God says something is moral only because it is moral by a standard independent of God then God has not say in what is moral.  If something is moral only because God said so, then it is a case of "might makes right" and independent of any standards (if God says murder or hatred or rape is OK, then is it?).  

          Bertrand Russell formulated the problem this way in his polemic Why I Am Not a Christian:

          If you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, you are then in this situation: Is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God Himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not good independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God.

          Both these arguments are against those who believe that goodness and moral values are grounded by God.  Abrahamic faiths are explicit in this regard:


          • Man has to obey God's  laws


          The LORD your God commands you this day to follow these decrees and laws; carefully observe them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have declared this day that the LORD is your God and that you will walk in obedience to him, that you will keep his decrees, commands and laws—that you will listen to him.  Deuteronomy 26:16-17


          • Violating God's laws is a sin.  
          • Sin is nothing but violating God's law.  
          • In fact, if there is no law, there is no sin.
          • Breaking a law brings God's wrath.


          Anyone who sins breaks God’s law. Yes, sinning is the same as living against God’s law1 John 3:4
          because the law can only bring God’s anger on those who disobey it. But if there is no law, then there is nothing to disobey. . Romans 4:15
          You might think I am saying that sin and the law are the same. That is not true. But the law was the only way I could learn what sin means. I would never have known it is wrong to want something that is not mine. But the law said, “You must not want what belongs to someone else.”  And sin found a way to use that command and make me want all kinds of things that weren’t mine. So sin came to me because of the command. But without the law, sin has no power.   Romans 7:7-8
          In my mind I am happy with God’s law. But I see another law working in my body. That law makes war against the law that my mind accepts. That other law working in my body is the law of sin, and that law makes me its prisoner.  Romans 7:22-23 

          Judeo-Christian belief is that morality has to be grounded by God (via his command).  Otherwise, morality goes into infinite regress and ends up in nihilism.  While it is possible to have some morals objectively without reliance on God, in the end, one cannot provide an ontological basis for morality without God.


          Euthyphro's dilemma stands in opposition to this Judeo-Christian belief that morality has to be necessarily grounded by God's command.  Is something good because God wills it to be good or God wills good because it is already good i.e., God recognize good whose goodness is knowable by independent criteria and by recognizing the good God is merely reaffirming the good?

          Now, any other stopping point based in some finite creature like humanity or rational consciousness or something like that seems arbitrary and one wonders why that is the stopping point.  To overcome this arbitrariness problem, one could offer a platonic abstract object called "the Good" that exists independently as the standard.  Plato proposed that transcendent concept as a solution to Euthyphro dilemma.  Plato had the right idea - that the "Good" has to be independent of the human conception of personal God (Greeks had such Gods during Plato's time) to avoid the dilemma.  However, there is still the ontological problem.  Can abstract objects be the source of moral value?  Is morality objective in the sense of being beyond humans and universal?

          What if God willed rape or murder to be Good?  Would it be Good?  The idea that God's nature is goodness says not so.  William of Occam offers a voluntarist view which states that good is simply determined by God's fiat.  This aligns with the idea that goodness or morality is arbitrary as it is simply what is willed by God.  This is problematic to many because it gives the sense of "might is right".  William of Occam overcomes this by saying that God's judgment of good and bad is not arbitrary and it aligns with our own sense of good and bad.  We think along those lines simply because God has built that thinking in us.  Thus, we think of rape and murder as bad simply because God has willed them to be bad. The problem with this argument for the theist is that it makes their scriptures and religion non-essential for ethical living. Current theistic position moved away from this argument.  It says that the essential nature of goodness of God is that it makes it impossible for rape, murder, or hate to become good.  

          Modern day Christian apologists (such as William Lane Craig) propose that goodness is nothing but God's nature.  Hence there is no possibility of conflict between God's decree and whether that decree is good.  God's very nature is the good.  In other words, God's nature defines or determines what goodness is.  By God's nature, we mean his essential properties.  Without God's nature as the standard of Goodness, one goes into an infinite regress.  The way to end the regress is to provide a stopping point or a standard of good whether it is theists or atheists.  Unless one is a moral nihilist, one cannot escape the need for such a standard.  If one is not a moral nihilist, then they believe that an objective standard of goodness exists and we have to ask where this standard originates from.  That is where the infinite regress arrives from.


          Does the God of Judeo-Christian theism fit the bill where the finite Greek Gods failed?  

          In the Judeo-Christian faith, Theonomy teaches what that rule is: God’s revealed laws in the Old Testament, which are absolute, immutable, objective, and universal. This means that every one of the 613 laws given to Moses and recorded in the Pentateuch remains binding on every human being and must be enacted into law.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_commandments



          If these commandments come from the Bible and Bible is the source of knowledge of God, surely the Biblical commandments have to the closest knowledge we have of the good nature of Judeau-Christian God.  Which of these 613 commandments are part of the definition of God's nature as goodness?  Why not all of them?  On what basis do Christians pick and choose from the 613?  Clearly, Christians are using an independent standard to pick and choose some and reject others.  There is an additional problem: Humans accept morals not explicitly mentioned in the Bible.  Where do these morals come from?  Are they arbitrary compared to morals explicitly specified in the Bible?  

          Thus,  Bible as the sole source of morals faces two problems: (a) All morals in the Bible are not accepted by modern society;  Thus, there seems to be an independent standard that ultimately judges morals, whether those morals come from the Bible or not; (b) There are morals missing in the Bible.  Should one consider them arbitrary?



          In the final analysis, it is not sufficient even to have a standard for moral behavior.  We also need a basis for moral obligation or moral duty.  An abstract Good does not lay any moral obligation or duty upon me.  Why should I align my life with this abstract object of Good?  Standing in contrast o this objective Good are moral vices or abstract Bad?  What is to keep me from aligning with these vices?  Thus Plato's idealism doesn't provide a basis for moral duty or obligation.  Bible seems to offer a reason for the obligation of moral duty - Surely, Biblical God's commands are a force with a threat of sin and punishment.  They are an obligation with a threat of punishment for non-compliance.  But can a threat be an independent standard for moral behavior?  How many Christians really accept and follow that?