An Atheist’s Journey

June 28, 2009

Day 1 of 40-Day Fast

Filed under: 40-Day Fast — admin @ 4:35 pm

It’s Sunday today, and I attended bible study. They had turned all the chairs to face outward, away from Rick the minister. They do stuff like that sometimes, to stir things up, to make us think. I’m feeling the need to stir things up in my life. During bible study I sat for an hour with my back to everyone, as the chairs told us to do, and I listened to Rick with my eyes closed as he talked about worship, and I gathered my courage for what I needed to do next.

It reached 102 degrees today in central Texas. Although Austin is not a desert, without rain it can feel like one in the summer. We’ve had a bunch of these 100+ days lately, and it’s only June. So it seems fitting that I enter the desert today, metaphorically.

I’ve wanted to do a 40-day fast for years. The number 40 is symbolic and appears often in the Judeo-Christian bible. The big ones: The flood, when it rained 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7:17); And after Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, when he goes into the desert for 40 days and is tempted by the devil (Mark 1:13). 40 days is longer than a month but shorter than a quarter. 40 is not a multiple of 7, the number of days in a week. Why 40?

This fast is not about losing weight. I’m only a little overweight. There are easier ways to get to my ideal weight. No, this is about something bigger than weight. In Matthew 4:4, Jesus tells the devil: “It is written, ‘Not by bread alone does man live…’”

I’m afraid. Embarking on a 40-day commitment to eat nothing is a big unknown. I won’t be going entirely without nutrition. I will be consuming 4 ounces of a mineral drink every day to keep my mineral balance in check. However, there will be nothing else except water. No fiber, no calories, no protein, no fat. Nothing to chew. I’m not sure why I’m afraid. I’ve gone 2 days without food before, but never more than that.

The idea to go without food for 40 days seemed so reasonable just yesterday. But today it seems a little crazy. I’ve read about 40-day fasting on the internet, so I know what to expect. I will not be consulting with a medical doctor before and during the fast. Perhaps I should, but I don’t want to be burdened with the tests and the concerns of someone who might not be entirely supportive of my goal. Again, this isn’t about health. It’s about being in the desert.

Why would an atheist want to live like Jesus for 40 days and nights? I don’t know. Maybe to burn away the irrelevant, the superfluous, the unnecessary. Maybe to focus the attention on something that matters.

I’ve read that someone fasting for 40 days and 40 nights will experience hunger for the first 3-5 days, but after 5 days there will be no hunger, after the body has made the adjustment to burning only fat for energy. When hunger comes again, sometime later, it will be a signal that the body should eat. If that warning is ignored, then the body will start burning its own muscle for protein.

But I’ve been hungry for something bigger for a long time. So hunger for food seems like a small thing to endure for what I truly want.

June 19, 2009

Judith Ann’s Baptism

Filed under: Traditions — admin @ 3:11 am

Judith Ann is not a young woman. As Rick the minister said, “You’re not a member of a youth group,” which got a laugh from her gathered friends and family. He hadn’t meant to call attention to her age, but just simply that she wasn’t doing this because of the usual peer pressure of a teen group. Judith Ann, late in life, had been “called” by God to be baptized into the Christian faith.

Judith Ann had been “thinking about this for years”. She’d had the Presbyterian “Sprinkles”, but now wanted something more. Or maybe she didn’t “want” it. She was being *called* to it. Is that the same thing?

It’s perhaps not often that an atheist finds himself in attendance at such a baptism. I was privileged to be a small part of it. As a member of a “Fred” group, a social group in our church, Journey Imperfect Faith Community, I had been invited to Judith Ann’s condo where she could use the public pool for the baptism. People brought food and we ate, laughed, talked, loved each other in friendship. There was joking about throwing her into the pool, about her fear that her neighbors, sitting around the pool, would get a sideshow of the rare baptism event, about just the oddity of an emersion baptism. Since being invited a couple of weeks earlier I had looked forward to being present, for reasons I couldn’t quite admit to myself.

The food eaten, it was time to move outside. Over the din of the conversation, Rick yelled, “Okay, let’s go!” The 22 of us meandered out the door and toward the condo pool nearby. Though it had been 100 degrees that day, not unusual in a Texas summer, only a few neighbors were using the pool, and they left when our rambunctious group arrived.

I hadn’t thought anybody but Judith Ann would actually get in the pool, but nearly everybody took off their shoes and socks, rolled up their pants, and waded into the shallow end. Rick and Judith Ann had dressed for the occasion, in swim trunks and teeshirts, and they waded into the deeper part of the pool. Only a very few of us, including myself, stood outside the water, perhaps protecting our dry clothes or perhaps resisting commitment.

Before performing the ceremony, as the two of them stood chest deep in the water, Rick said a few words. He talked of the history of baptism. He said that originally baptism had been a ceremonial cleansing, that in the desert water is scarce and precious, and that if you have some water you should do something special with it. But even before the time of Jesus, the ceremonial cleansing had, in the hands of the Jewish hierarchy, become “a dull religious experience”, corrupted by the need to pay for it at the Temple. And this was the reason that John The Baptist had borrowed the ceremonial cleansing ritual and taken it out of the Temple back to its origin at the Jordan river, where ordinary people could, without the corruption, engage in a “rebirth”. Rick talked of C.S. Lewis’s belief that baptism causes a literal transformation of the body, changing every cell of the baptized individual.

Rick then told Judith Ann he was going to ask her a few questions. “Do you believe in God?” She said she did. “Do you believe that God is at work in the world today?” She said she did. “Do you believe that God is at work in your life?” She said she did. Then he asked a couple of questions which I don’t remember exactly, but basically whether she freely accepted this calling to her rebirth as a Christian. She said she did.

Then he had her put one of her hands on her chest and use the other to squeeze her nostrils, for he was going to lean her backwards into the water. He said that allowing him to do this to her would be a sign of her submission to her faith. He reassured her that he would hold her and wouldn’t let her be submerged for more than a moment.

Judith Ann nodded, ready. Then Rick held her and leaned her backwards into the water, saying, “I baptize you, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

When he brought her head out of the water, they hugged. I’m not sure, but I thought she was crying, even as the baptismal water of the pool poured off her face.

It would be easy for me, an atheist, to criticize, to joke, to question. But in those moments immediately after the ceremonial cleansing, as Judith Ann dried herself off and received hugs of congratulations from her two dozen friends, I found myself wondering how long it would be before I, too, would be called to the ceremonial cleansing, and to the commitment of Chistian faith.

June 8, 2009

What does worship do for me that a rock concert cannot?

Filed under: Worship — admin @ 12:17 am

In bible study, Rick the minister has been deconstructing worship, “looking under the hood” as he says.

We’ve learned, for example, that people worship by gathering together in a particular kind of physical space, a “sanctuary” or “holy place”. Rick told of his childhood when he was not allowed to enter the sanctuary in bare feet, which he said is weird because, what’s the first thing that God told Moses? Take your shoes off, because now Moses was on holy ground. So culture clashes with religious ritual. “The way we’ve always done it becomes holy,” Rick said.

Mike, one of his congregation, observed that, if you don’t have something that’s holy, bigger than ourselves, then it’s just us, just a bunch of people. When he does communion, something that Christians have done for two thousand years, Mike says he feels connected to something larger than himself. And the meaning transcends the immediate.

How is that different from a rock concert? I saw the rock band Heart in 1977, and the experience was spiritual, transcendent. But if there is a God, I wasn’t aware of Him that night. I attended the concert because of a love of their music, because I *valued* it, valued the band and their contribution to my life. But it had nothing to do with God. That rock concert experience was not worship of God.

Rick went on: So the practice of worship connects the worshipers to something larger than the here and now, he said. When we ask, ‘What does that even mean?’ that can be a huge blessing or blasphemy. What is holy is when a group of people get together and say, here’s what’s of value to us, here’s what’s holy to us. They choose consciously, and are invested in it, and that makes it holy.

Also in about 1977, I saw the rock band Chicago in concert. I had second row seats. I knew all their music, and again it was a spiritual, transcendent experience. For one large stretch of the concert, they performed Side 2 of Chicago 2. It has the song “Color My World” on it, but also long jazz riffs that are amazing. The concert involved traditions, people, and was transcendent. Yet that experience was not worship of God.

Rick continued: If it’s not about veneration of God, if it begins to divide people, such as when the rich dress up to go to church, then it’s not holy. Paul even mentions this in the bible. Paul says, Why do the wealthy among you get to eat at the big table first? But as Rick observed, it had to be the wealthy first, because it was their food. And it was their house, because only the wealthy had houses big enough for worship in the early church. As Rick said, it was an exercise in missing the point.

Rick said, the traditions of worship developed in the same way as rituals in our culture. Then he asked as a challenge: What do you value enough in your life to create specific rituals around it? Those are the things you value. Another way of seeing worship is that the thing is not the thing itself, but is a tool that opens us to something bigger.

That’s all well and good. However, it’s not enough of an explanation. I understand that rituals make us comfortable. I understand that worship rituals developed in a societal context. I understand that verneration of God developed because the worshiper values God.

However, I still don’t understand, even if God exists or not, why should I, an atheist, worship Him? Why should I, an atheist, value Him? What does worship do for me that a rock concert cannot?

June 4, 2009

The Jesus Christ of my generation, David Carradine, has died

Filed under: Introductory — admin @ 5:51 pm

The Jesus Christ of my generation, David Carradine, died today of an apparent suicide. Maybe David Carradine himself wasn’t Jesus Christ, but his most famous character, Kwai Chang Caine, was one of the closest characters we’ve had to a Jesus in two thousand years. Kwai Chang Caine, an outcast from his own country of China, a half-breed born of a white American father and a Chinese mother, traveled the desert of the western United States of the 1800s carrying a message of peace, tolerance, and love of life and of one’s neighbor. Hunted and persecuted for his peaceful ways and his one mistake of defending his master from a brutal attack by the Chinese emperor’s nephew, Kwai Chang Caine had a lot in common with the more commonly known Jesus, the Jesus of Nazareth.

“Kung Fu” ran from 1972-1975, before DVDs, before cable, when living in the country meant suffering through poor television reception. Yet I watched as many episodes as I could. As a high school student during those years, I came of age watching his adventures and carefully paying attention to his message and his commitment to “The Tao”, the path he chose and did not forsake.

Caine was a Shaolin priest, a monk of high training in the teachings of his masters and the fighting style of kung fu. Every episode of the television program had its obligatory two fighting scenes, but Kwai Chang never wanted to fight and only did so to protect the rights of others, or to defend himself from evil men bent on killing him. A Shaolin priest could walk through walls, it was said, yet Caine was “just a man” as he insisted with unequaled humility. He was not familiar with the Christian Bible, as we learned in “The Tong”, my favorite episode from Season 2, but he recited quotes from famous Chinese Buddhists and other philosophers of his era. For example, Caine said, “Yield and overcome,” to the Christian woman who had quoted the passage from the Bible about turning the other cheek.

I dreamed of joining a Shaolin monastery and learning kung fu, but it wasn’t until years later that I realized that I *had* been trained in the monastery every week for the three years that the series ran. From Kwai Chang Caine I learned patience, determination, tolerance, and a philosophical world view.

David Carradine became a cult hero to a whole generation of boys like me. Martial arts schools exploded onto the scene in the 1970s, and are still a rage today. I studied martial arts for one year as an adult. Two of my brothers went further, one even competing at the national level in the 1980s. “Kung Fu” had a huge impact on me personally and on an entire generation.

If the Jesus of Nazareth was anything like the character of Kwai Chang Caine, in temperament, spirituality, strength of character, and the struggles he lived through, then it is no wonder that Christianity caught on. I mean no disrespect to Jesus of Nazareth to compare Him with Kwai Chang Caine, and I hope no offense will be taken by the reader.

The passing of David Carradine will be felt, quietly, privately, by many who will miss their own personal Jesus.

June 2, 2009

Grace, Gratitude, and Who should we thank for civilization?

Filed under: Religion and Language — admin @ 9:07 pm

I am grateful for so many things. A Christian thanks God for everything, but the atheist doesn’t know who to thank. In fact, there is no “who” to thank.

But in recent years I’ve been rethinking my attitude toward gratitude. All the self-help gurus tell us that we should have an attitude of gratitude. I first heard this from Anthony Robbins, on his Personal Power tapes, and later I read it in his book “Awaken The Giant Within”. But he will admit that many of his ideas come from others, and after reading dozens of self-help books, I’m convinced that the lineage of the attitude of gratitude idea can be traced back to “Think And Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, published early in the 20th century. And the ideas certainly go further back, probably all the way to the Bible.

When we say Grace at meal time, we are expressing our gratitude for the food, and often for other good things in our life. What is grace? The New World Dictionary (2nd Edition) says of grace: from the Latin, gratia, pleasing, quality, favor, thanks. I’m reminded of the Spanish “gracias” meaning “thanks”, which shares the same root.

As an atheist, I have refrained from saying Grace at meal time because of its religious connotations. “Bless us Oh Lord for these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive,” or something like that. An atheist doesn’t believe in God, and therefore it seems inappropriate to thank God for the food. Shouldn’t we be thanking the farmer, the grocer, the breadwinner, the cook? What’s all this about thanking God?

But who does the farmer thank? What if the weather is bad that year and the crops don’t grow or can’t be harvested? Should we just take the good weather for granted? You can’t thank the weather; that doesn’t make sense! The direct object of the verb “to thank” is a person, or being. Linguistically, then, and perhaps psychologically, we need God in order to have an object to thank, for at least some of those things that we are grateful for.

The hard-core atheist (of which I am one) argues that we shouldn’t be grateful for the good weather. Our gratitude can’t change the weather. For even if we are grateful, our gratitude will not increase the likelihood that the weather will be good in the future. I believe that’s true, but it doesn’t *feel* right. I *feel* that we should be grateful for the good in our lives, even if there is no scientific basis for thinking that the gratitude will keep the good weather coming.

What about the things that gratitude *can* facilitate? For example, when someone invites me to attend the Journey IFC social “FRED” group meeting and provides snacks, shouldn’t I be grateful for that? Of course! Absolutely! There is clearly an identifiable object of my gratitude, namely the person who hosted the meeting and the person who provided the snacks.

Sometimes, however, the object of our gratitude isn’t as obvious, or the chain of gratitude isn’t clear. For example, should I be grateful for the sewer system in our neighborhood? And who in society should I thank for the sewer system? The worker who dug the trenches, the worker who installed the pipes, the worker who mans the sewage processing plant, the vast organization that provides electricity to the sewage processing plant, the plumber who connected the sewer system to my house, the vast network of people who create metal pipes and PVC, the politician who created the legislation which begat the sewer system, the bond holders who bought the bonds that built the system, the tax payer who paid for it. And perhaps dozens of other individuals and groups or organizations that made all of these things possible.

It seems that just about everyone, all of civilization, is responsible for my sewer system.

Who should I thank for civilization?

May 31, 2009

Late-term abortion doctor murdered–How should we feel?

Filed under: Common Ground — admin @ 2:21 pm

The Associated Press is reporting that a late-term abortion doctor, George Tiller, has been shot to death at his church, Sunday, May 31, 2009.

See article.

The doctor was 67 years old and had survived at least one other attempt on his life. No suspect is yet in custody.

Wow! Where to start? Death and murder are all around us, so it shouldn’t be surprising that a controvertial doctor would be murdered, especially an abortion doctor who practices late-term abortions. The doctor obviously believed in the right of a woman to have an abortion and had the courage of his convictions. But the alleged assailant also had the courage of his convictions, and will be regarded as a hero by many.

This is one situation where the theists and the atheists might not necessarily agree or get along. The fundamentalist Christian believes in the sanctity of human life. Moreover, the fundamentalist Christian believes that human life begins at conception. The atheist doesn’t believe in the sanctity of human life, to the extent that something can only be sanctified by God.

That doesn’t mean that atheists don’t value human life. We do. And I can’t speak for all atheists, nor do I want to. But the atheist is maybe a little more willing to allow the woman the choice of whether to terminate her pregnancy at any stage, for any reason.

Both are strongly held beliefs, and when murder seems to be the only way to express one’s strongly held belief, then I think it’s the result of frustration, born of a lack of common ground.

Sure, we can mostly get along, maybe dine together, even call each other friend. But when it comes to the core of our beliefs, the sanctity of human life or the rights of a woman to choose, it seems that for some people there can be no common ground between these beliefs.

Maybe there is, in fact, no common ground between these beliefs. Maybe there is nothing good for each side to find in the other. Can the fundamentalist Christian find anything good in the aborting of late-term fetuses? Can the liberal atheist find anything good in restricting the freedoms of a woman’s choice?

I would like to make a personal comment here. Although I am an atheist, I am also strongly against abortion in almost all situations. My journey toward spirituality has taken me along the road toward believing more in the sanctity of human life. Yes, there is something sacred about it, sacred in the sense that it is special and rare, deserving of all our will to protect it. Human life, as is possibly all life, is mysterious. And while I’m not ready to attribute this mystery to God, I acknowledge its mystery.

Maybe the common ground is this: We should be able to do away with all abortions. As a society, we should be able to provide for the “unwanted” baby. The girl (and boy) who have sex and get pregnant should at least make the sacrifice to carry the baby to full term and deliver the baby. If at that point the baby is still “unwanted”, then the mother should have the right to give up the baby to someone who will love it and provide for it. That is the minimum we should expect regarding our behavior toward “unwanted” babies.

And I won’t apologize for believing this.

May 30, 2009

A Christian taught me the vacuum law of prosperity.

Filed under: Christianity and Prosperity — admin @ 3:47 pm

It’s strange how a dusty old 1962 edition of a book with its pages cracked and falling out of their binding can change your life. I still have the book on my shelf. It has a strange title, “The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity”, and it was written by a Christian woman, Catherine Ponder.

I first saw the book covered in dust in a garage belonging to the mother of my girlfriend Lynn in early 1992. Lynn’s mother had used the book to press flowers, and there were still petals between its stained pages. I was drawn by the title, at once appealing to my systems engineering background and my desire for prosperity. Lynn’s mother asked if I wanted the book and I took it and threw it into the back seat of my convertible. That night I began reading it.

Catherine Ponder told the story of how she turned poverty to riches by following the secrets she shared. There was no “science” among those secrets. She spouted a lot of scripture passages from the bible, and her interpretation of the bible passages seemed far fetched at best. For example, she talked about “gold dust in the air” waiting to be collected by anyone willing to believe as she believed. It was ridiculous!

But by the end of the third chapter, “The Vacuum Law of Prosperity”, I was hooked. In that chapter she was saying that you have to get rid of what you don’t want in order to attract what you do want. I know, I know, this sounds a lot like “The Secret”, and we now know that it is nothing more than the Law of Attraction. But keep in mind that I had discovered this 1962 edition of the book in a garage in 1992, many years before “The Secret” was published and the ideas in it became well known.

The first vaccum technique was to practice Forgiveness, an idea straight out of the bible. Though I was initially dismissive of the technique, reading that section gave me my first glimpse at why Christianity might have caught on, and why it might be of value to those who believe in it. It was the first time I had seen the technique of Forgiveness used for something other than overtly religious purposes. And I thought I would give it a try. We all have people in our lives we need to forgive, and so I tried it then. I don’t remember the details, and I might not share them now even if I did remember. But there I was, an atheist reading a book written by a Christian, performing a religious (or at least I had always thought of it as a religious) technique, and feeling better because of it.

My next step in the process of creating a vacuum in my life was to put my house up for sale. I had loved that house. It was costing me an arm and a leg at an interest rate from the early 1980s, 13+%, and I had been unable to refinance the loan because I had been underwater in the mortgage for years. I loved that house. However, after reading chapter 3 of the book, something inside me told me the house had to go, that it was holding me back. I called a realtor and got an appraisal. I was told that I was no longer under water. The house went on the market in April 1992 and sold within a month.

The next step was to forsake all other women. For all practical purposes, I was seeing only Lynn already. But by acknowledging the vacuum, Lynn was there to fill it, and it strengthened my commitment to her.

The final vacuum came when I informed my employer that I would be gone in a year to return to graduate school. I asked Lynn to join me, and together we applied to graduate schools and got accepted.

At the end of the next summer, 1993, with Lynn at my side, we moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to pursue graduate school.

May 28, 2009

Why should we find common ground?–reply to comment

Filed under: Introductory — admin @ 2:07 pm

In a comment on my last blog post on miracles, the commenter, Stephen Parrish, wrote the following:

What is the common ground between the occurrence and the impossibility of miracles?  If a religion were based on the flatness of the Earth, or the geocentric theory, would you seek common ground with its followers?

You’re trying to find a path to something you don’t believe exists.  I don’t get it.

The issue is important enough that I want to devote an entire blog post to it.

I want to emphasize that I appreciate Mr. Parrish’s comment.  Comments such as his are exactly the kind of comments I seek from readers.  If everyone agreed with me, then this blogging would get very boring very quickly.  And in the spirit of finding common ground, I want to avoid the temptation of engaging in counterattack.  So I will use a parable (something I’m borrowing from the bible, by the way).

Let’s assume that there are flat earth believers and that we disagree with them, in particular we believe in a spherical earth revolving around the sun.  (Call us the “copernicans”, after Copernicus the scientist who gave us the current heliocentric view of the solar system, which by the way isn’t exactly correct either, given our solar system’s trajectory about the galaxy; but anyway…)

I argue that we should want to find a common ground between the flat-earth believers and the copernicans.

What is the alternative to finding a common ground?  Well, we could kill them all, and that would solve the problem of our differences.  But maybe they outnumber us significantly and would fight back.  Okay, then maybe we can wait until they all die off, perhaps a generation or two.  But they teach their children that the earth is flat, and so, as a culture, they’re not likely to die off.  Okay, maybe we can educate them in our public schools, or unleash people like Carl Sagan on them.  But we find that that doesn’t work.  We’ve aimed our telescopes skyward and have “proven” that the earth isn’t flat, and we’ve written books detailing those proofs, and Carl Sagan said, “billions and billions,” so many times that he was hoarse, but still they believe that the earth is flat.  We can write a zillion books on the subject, teach the heliocentric theory in our schools, and the flat earth believers will simply home-school their children.  They congregate in their flat earth buildings with their steeples.  And then we learn that they are plotting to do away with the non-believers, the copernicans!

We have failed miserably.

Who wins in the end?  Some might say that the truth will win out, that whoever holds the correct view will emerge as the winner.  I wonder whether that is really true.  People believe what they want to believe, sometimes irrespective of the truth.  And in any case, it could take a thousand years.

I argue that we must find a common ground with the flat earth believers.  Maybe there’s something good about believing in a flat earth.  The earth is locally flat anyway, right?  Maybe there’s a value in seeing the earth as flat.  Maybe in finding a common ground, we can overlook the superficial differences between us and rejoice in something higher.  I’m not sure what that is right now, but maybe it’s LOVE.

How can we love each other if we are hating each other’s beliefs?  Maybe LOVE is a good enough reason to overlook the details of each other’s beliefs as we move toward that common ground.

Why attempt to find a common ground?  Ultimately, we must find a common ground because there is value in each side’s position, and because, as a civilization, we cannot survive if either side is erradicated.  Science serves a useful purpose, and so does religion.  So rather than continue sniping back and forth, let’s figure out how to come together.

May 26, 2009

Why are there no more miracles?

Filed under: Miracles — admin @ 1:48 pm

On my high school debate team we learned to argue both sides of an issue.  As an example, we once practiced arguing both sides of the proposition: “The federal government should pave all highways with bubble gum.”  It was a ridiculous proposition, to be sure, and we knew it would be wrong to use bubble gum to pave roads.  But it was a debating exercise that we took seriously.  Now I’m glad I learned to argue both sides.  It comes in handy when occupying the middle ground between theists and atheists.

Why are there no more miracles?

As an atheist, it is tempting to argue along the following lines: Miracles are impossible, by definition.  Therefore, there never were any miracles.  Any miracles described in the bible are there because of literary license taken by the all-too-human authors of the bible.  If someone is raised from the dead, then it is either a fictional event or the person raised was never really dead to begin with.  If a loaf of bread feeds five thousand people, then it must be a VERY large loaf or it is an exaggeration, or maybe someone miscounted.  If a statue sheds a tear in today’s world, then it must be a particularly humid day, or someone accidentally dropped some lemonade on the face of the statue.

But in arguing so, we risk alienating billions of followers of Jesus Christ.  In being dismissive of miracles, we scoff at the basis of Christianity and the other major religions of the world.  While it is tempting, we gain nothing from it, and lose an opportunity to find common ground.

I want to find that common ground.  I want to find the good in Faith, the truth in the Bible, the value in belief in God.  I think I’m not alone in this desire.  If you feel the same way, then join me in this quest.

Christians believe that Jesus performed miracles.  If the God that Christians believe in exists, if the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God of the bible really is somewhere out there or in here, then of course miracles are possible.  The all-powerful God can do anything.  If this God exists and created the universe in seven days (or even seven billion years), then this God can cause a few fishes and loaves of bread to feed five thousand people.  That seems like a simple enough logical conclusion which I can’t deny.

So atheist who say that miracles can’t happen are merely assuming that God doesn’t exist and are jumping to the conclusion that, without God, miracles are impossible.  This is not necessarily illogical, but it diverts attention away from questions about the existence of God to the existence of miracles, and only confuses the real issue.

By the way, I’ve never found anyone who could successfully prove that God doesn’t exist.  (To be fair, I’ve never found anyone who could successfully prove that God *does* exist, but that’s a conversation for another day.)

And if God *might* exist, then miracles are possible, even if we don’t see them on a daily basis anymore.

And I’m not talking about a liberal interpretation of “miracle”, like an ex-girlfriend contacting me out of the blue 31 years after our breakup.  That’s pretty amazing, but it doesn’t rise to the level of miracle.  Not like the feeding of five thousand people from a handful of food, or the raising of someone from the dead, who was actually, really, dead.

May 23, 2009

I have lost a friend

Filed under: The Afterlife — admin @ 10:11 pm

A man dies too young, unexpectedly.

His wife grieves.  His three daughters are without a father.  His parents wonder how he could have left this earth ahead of them.

And I have lost a friend.

Cold-hearted atheistic commentary: Man dies.  Population decreased by one.  There is no soul, so that’s the end.  There is no afterlife.  Get a grip and move on.

The reality: Friend and loved one passes away.  Tortured emotions.  Tears for him, for his wife, for his daughters and parents, … for his friends.  Not sure how to move on without closure because it was so sudden.  Couldn’t say goodbye.  Couldn’t reassure him that all would be well with everyone he’s leaving behind.

Makes me wonder about this whole atheist thing.  The cold-hearted approach works when it’s somebody else, when I don’t know him, when there is no emotional attachment.  It is emotions which give life its meaning, my emotions, other people’s emotions.  The meaning of life is in the joy of life, in the heart-felt hellos and goodbyes, in the shared meals, in the laughter, in a gentle touch.  The intellect is a tool to be used to advance the joy of life.  Life should NOT be a tool to advance intellect.  I can use my intellect to dispassionately analyze the passing of my friend, but that cannot bring anyone any joy.  I can remark upon the evolutionary necessity of death, but that is intellect talking.  If that is the sole extent of one’s reaction to a death, then it might as well be that of a robot’s, not of a living human being.

And how can someone such as myself, an avowed atheist with the reputation of being an atheist, bring peace to the wife of the dead man?  My words will ring hollow.  “He goes to a better place.”  The words are a lie and she knows it.  For the atheist believes that there is no heaven, nothing beyond the physical world, no soul, nothing to distinguish the living body from the dead body except biochemical function, the struggle of a living organism against thermodynamic heat death fought every second, until the fight is lost and the inevitable heat death finally occurs.

Or I could say, “He was a good man.” Was?  She’s thinking that he *is* a good man, that he still exists …  somewhere.  We play tricks with time, with tense.  To the atheist, he “was” and can never be again.  But how do I know for sure?  What of his essence survives forever?  Nothing?  I don’t believe that.  The atheist is a fool who does.

What would give his life meaning, even to an atheist?  That he lived, that he raised a family and made a woman happy for many years, that he influenced the world, that he taught students and helped to create a better future for everyone, that he will be remembered by everyone who ever came into contact with him, including me.

How does an atheist reconcile with those truths?  By believing that his “soul” is, was, and always will be within me and within every person he came into contact with.  Maybe there isn’t a God, and maybe there is.  I don’t want to argue about it now.  I just want to remember my friend, and wish for the best for his wife and children.  Some might call that prayer, but I resist use of that term.

His name is Nisim.  He is Jewish.  He lived in Israel.  He is my friend.

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