Barriers to belief

From Jay Michaelson at the Huffington Post, "A Better Way to Believe in God":

How not to believe in God? By confusing the Mystery with our all-too-human attempts to explain it. By confusing the finger that points at the Moon with the Moon itself. And by confusing the reasons why we believe with the content of our belief systems -- by thinking that it was ever about "belief" in the first place.

He makes a sort of rambling argument, but it boils down to this ... atheists attack humanity's relationship to God (i.e. religion) and confuse it with God.  Much of Michaelson's column discusses why we have a need for religion and how easy it is to attack religion, but it comes down to my general belief:  God doesn't need us, and the more we use God to make ourselves feel special, the more we take ourselves out of harmony with his creation.

Zero Sum

In Texas, Joseph Reyes' and Rebecca Shapiro' child custody battles puts religion and children at the forefront.  I would never touch the legal aspects of it.  Where a family court rules has no bearing on me and probably needs to be tailored to the needs of each circumstance.  But I'm no lawyer.

On Slate, Dahlia Lithwick zeroes in on the issue a the crux of the debate, and once again it's pluralism.

The tricky question in the Reyes case—the one the courts do not want to touch—is whether religion is a zero-sum proposition or a cultural buffet table. Is it harmful to raise a child in two different faiths? Does exposing a child to two religions differ from exposing her to two languages or teaching her to play two instruments?

Well stated and to the point!  For those unfamiliar to the term, "zero sum" is an circumstance where for one to win, another party must lose, and that the degree of benefit and loss will be equal.  -1+1=0.  The term doesn't translate well to this circumstance, but of course that is where the conflict is.  One party in this legal conflict is trying to apply winning and losing to issues of learning, experience and faith. 

Of course, I am raising my children in two religions and hope to expose them to more.  I like comparing the experience to language or music.   To build on Lithwick's proposition, to expose a child to one religion is to teach them a melody.  To teach them two is to create harmony, and many is to have a symphony.

Language

"A man from China offered me shouei to drink, but I refused and said I'd rather have water.

"I then traveled to Japan and they put mizu before me. I turned up my nose at it and insisted they bring me water.

"Wherever I went they drank something different, but nobody seemed to know of the glorious water I drank at home: in Israel, maima; in Zimbabwe, mvura; and in Turkey, su. Even in Spain, which I thought was civilized, they seemed to drink an awful lot of agua.

"Wouldn't the world be a better place if they all drank water as I do?"

The words we give things do not change their character or their identity. Just because there are many names for the Creator, does not mean that the world believes in different creators. To have peace in the world, we must overcome the limitations of language and understand the true concepts behind the words.

On a license plate

"God is one, though the wise may call him by many names."

Creation

Reposted from a friend in the seminary:

“Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sunlight of the Spirit Books & Gifts

For anyone in the Sacramento area looking for a place to shop for their friends of any faith, I can recommend this nice little shop on J Street in Midtown Sacramento. Operated in support of addiction recovery efforts, Sunlight of the Spirit's stock includes Christian, Buddhist, Islamic and panreligious books, jewelry, music and statuary.

Arguing Atheism

Another Kent Leslie post, based on his column titled "Atheists are jerks. So are we when we adopt their tactics."

The headline is quite a bit misleading, but it is a common technique of his to overly provoke, but be a little bit more reasonable. The scope of the blog entry is that one cannot apply logic to questions of faith, whether it is atheism or Christianity. There is much that is highly arguable in the whole thing, the largest one being that Christians inevitably argue God as being equitable with the entire Christian theology; and that atheists do the same thing.

Christian (Kent): Jesus healed the sick, therefore God exists.
Atheist (not Kent): Thor doesn't exist, therefore Jesus didn't heal the sick.

Kent's point is that faith is experiential and not logical, and that any logical attack on religion or atheism would be fruitless. I mostly agree.

But ... My response: Isn't it possible that the question of a divine source of morality and creation is independent from human theology -- that our understanding of the nature of God is a separate issue from the existence of God.

My more controversial point (beware!) is that the existence of Jesus is dependent on the existence of God, and not the other way around.

On the issue of logic, it is actually possible to apply pure logic to questions of faith using Socratic techniques. Unfortunately for atheists, the result is never that the absence of an effect disproves the cause; it only disproves the effect. Godless philosophy is fascinating, but in the end is based on a faith-based premise: if there is no creator, then ...