The narrative of evolution is compelling, although I keep smelling gaps in it. Far above my pay grade to say more than that.
I continue to think that Christianity has not really confronted the psychological, much less theological, challenge of the virtually universal embrace of evolution as a meta-narrative in the West.
What kind of Godhead is reflected in the 14+ billion year history that precedes the merely 3000 year old tradition of Jewish and Christian religion?
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The Mormons continue to fascinate me. The internet and YouTube are full of all kinds of interesting stuff. The audio re-enactment of Joseph Smith's King Follett sermon makes it plain what an original mind he had: God as an evolved man, and only one among many. The official Mormon PR campaign to gloss over all the distinctive divergences they have from standard Christianity seems pusillanimous to me.
After all, the whole business is founded on Smith's assertion of The Great Apostasy. He took to its logical conclusion the Protestant stance that the Church had fallen from its pristine purity since the days of the Apostles. He asserted that the Church had completely disappeared --all its baptisms had been pointless and empty for 2000 years--and needed, not to be reformed, but to be restored, started all over again from scratch.
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Been doing the Paleo thing for 3+ weeks now. I may have lost some weight, but I am noticing a real drop in energy, though I am sleeping really well. Makes going to the gym less appealing and less engaging. Once Mr B is back --I promised him I'd do it til then-- I may revert to my earlier 4 Hour Body eating pattern. I had good results with that, found it easy to do and it had carbs in it. Apparently my body misses them. (I know it misses him.)
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4 comments:
It is just too damn bad that NatGeo and History channel(a.k.a JESUS WAS AN ALIEN channel) are not at all capable of anything nearly as good as the relatively inexpensive videos on Youtube. The decline was here a long time ago.
* -A ^
I know that I've sworn off politics and theology for the time being, but I think a brief dose every know and again isn't too bad. And this is too tempting.
If we accept the current understanding of the universe as an ever-expanding, 14+ billion year old planet, then I think we step much closer to the Deists' Watchmaker God, or Einstein's Grand Design (or Grand Designer, depending on how you interpret his statements on God) than the personal God espoused by Christians. Of course, this would completely destroy Christianity as we know it- a Scientist God or Spectator God doesn't sound inclined to do something as proactive as impose codes of behavior on humans, except perhaps as an experiment or diversion. And that's a disquieting thought.
However, I think that any attempt to argue that there is a constant moral code that ought to be applied universally, inherit to the universe, is perhaps more absurd than believing in a Deity that wrote these rules, as logical or arbitrary as they may seem. This line of thinking betrays an obvious theistic impulse that tries to masquerade as materialistic empiricism- a friend of mine who was Catholic until about a year ago claims to have seen no evidence to support the existence of God, but takes universal morality as a given. I've yet to point out that he has essentially pulled a word-swap with "God" and "morality."
But here's the catch: there is no modern religion that I have seen that accounts for the theological implications of evolution. The massive amount of religious ambivalence in the world today, and growing dissatisfaction within many religions, I think speaks to that. So here is the question for you, Ex: what must the next great religion teach and profess?
-Sean
Sorry, Sean, but I ain't no prognosticator. Jung said it would take 600 years to emerge. Who knows? Only religious geniuses can create religions and you just have to wait til they show up. The two genius founders that come to mind in the last 500 years are Nanak, who founded the Sikhs, and Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet. Maybe a mix of those two!
If Catholicism had not betrayed its own people, The Europeans, I would still have hope for it.
You make a good point: what religion has really faced the incomprehensibly overwhelming nature of space and time as asserted by modern Western science?
As for your newly atheist friend who clings to "morality", that's a well-worn path that, IMHO, goes nowhere. So much of atheist morality is either the warmed-over remnants of a rejected religion --Jewish liberals are the paradigm here-- or people who raise the moral ante in order to defeat their enemies in the who's more moral status game.
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