Ego Te Provoco

I'm not sure what to think about this, from an article in Newsweek:

In a paper last month in the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, Gregory Paul finds that countries with the lowest rates of social dysfunction—based on 25 measures, including rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, unemployment, and poverty—have become the most secular. Those with the most dysfunction, such as Portugal and the U.S., are the most religious, as measured by self-professed belief, church attendance, habits of prayer, and the like.

Begley's article and Paul's paper are more about whether religion is hard-wired, genetic, and instinctive, but they raise an important issue for people like me, who grew up singing "Jesus is the answer for the world today." The question, I think, is one of cause and effect. Specifically, which is the cause, the functionality or the secularism, and which is the effect? Maybe more importantly, what is the causal relationship between religion and a dysfunctional society?

And, because I like Latin, let's not forget that great logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Moving Time

Yesterday in class, someone announced that one of our (Mormon) classmates needed help moving.  The classmate needed help moving beyond just the fact that he was moving, so I felt moved to help him move.*  I showed up this morning at his apartment, and I was only a little surprised to see that I was the only non-Mormon around.  What did surprise me, however, was that every single Mormon currently enjoying PC was there.

Spending five hours with these guys provided an interesting comparison to the Baptists I grew up around.  First (and maybe just because I was there), they didn't complain.  They rolled their sleeves up, picked up stuff, and took it to (and from) the U-Haul truck.  Second, although Mormons have a pretty strict behavioral code, they didn't act as if they can't do those things; they acted as if they don't do those things.  Finally, while these guys clearly know each other, I don't see them hanging out with each other all over the law school.  I mean to say that they're not a tight social clique.  They weren't helping him move because that's what friends do for each other; they were helping him move because that's what families do for each other.  That sounds cheesy, but they interacted more like cousins than like a tight social clique.

Regardless of whatever doctrinal disagreements we may have, I'd say that Mormons are way ahead of Baptists in the family-of-God department.

 

 

*Every once in a while it's good to have a sentence that is the model of clarity.

Chemical Religiosity

In the interest of being fair-minded, I thought I'd point you toward this interesting article, which suggests that one's "capacity for transcendence" depends on the level of one's "concentration of serotonin receptors."  I don't really know what that means, but the last paragraph explains it, I hope:

[T]he researchers see the evidence as contradicting the common belief that religious behavior is determined strictly by environmental and cultural factors. They see a biological underpinning for religiosity, and it is related to the neurotransmitter serotonin.

So there you have it.  Science trying to explain Religion.  Interesting, if nothing else.

I Don't Understand the World

But neither do you, so let's be friends.

I just finished reading Michael Crichton's travelogue Travels.  During the first hundred pages or so, I loved it.  He talked about the trials and tribulations of medical school and his own issues with being a doctor.  These are not dissimilar to the qualms I've experienced about being a lawyer.  And I could also relate to his feelings of isolation for appreciating a broader spectrum of life than did his classmates.  Not "better"---just broader.

The next hundred pages or so were equally interesting: they dealt with his experiences traveling throughout the world.  Climbing Kilimanjaro, visiting Shangri-La, smoking pot in Thailand.  I found it fascinating and thrilling, inspiring even.  I wanted to go out and experience this city, my temporary home.  Just find some random place to stick my head in and taste the life blood of Federal City.

Then I got bogged down in the last hundred pages or so.  He shifted from talking about his physical travels to talking about his metaphysical travels.  He learned how to see auras, travel on the astral plane, and channel some higher level of himself.  He even experienced an exorcism.  These are phenomena with which I am distinctly uncomfortable, and so the reading was very slow and difficult.  But I slogged through it, and I'm glad I did.

The last chapter of the book is called "Postscript: Skeptics at Cal Tech."  In it, he defends his belief in and experience with the paranormal.  He essentially argues that Science and Faith are not opposed in some epistemological battle for explanation and power;  rather, Science and Faith are opposed in much the same way that Christianity and Roman Paganism were opposed in the first century C.E.  It's not a difference in a way of thinking; it's a difference in what you think.  He notes:

Science offers a picture of the world, but its picture is not to be confused with the underlying reality itself.

And later:

This, in essence, is the problem with the scientific view of reality.  Science is a kind of glorified tailoring enterprise, a method for taking measurements that describe something---reality---that may not be understood at all.

Science is very good as far as it goes.  It has certainly produced powerful benefits.  It would be crazy to abandon science or to deny its validity.

But it would be equally crazy to think that reality is a forty-four long.

Before you start thinking that Dr. Crichton, a Harvard-trained physician, has gone all crazy Left Coast on you, he concludes the essay:

The fact is that we need the insights of the mystic [or theologian or philosopher or psychologist] every bit as much as we need the insights of the scientist.  Mankind is diminished when either is missing.

Many scientists and "rational" thinkers deny the value of religion except as a safety blanket.  "Where is the evidence?!" they demand, often adamantly.  But the uncomfortable truth is that we only need as much evidence as we think we need.  We accept the Pythagorean theorem because our eighth grade math teacher told us about it.  Sure, there's evidence out there to prove it, but have you looked it up?  Have you read Pythagoras's notes?  How do you know there isn't some vast conspiracy of math teachers with some strange goal?  Because you've decided---consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously---that your eighth grade teacher's word is enough.

And non-religious thinkers decide---consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously---that their Sunday school teacher's word is not.

The merits of your position and mine may never be "known" while we're living on earth.  But that's OK.  I'll try to convince you that I'm right and you try to convince me that you're right.  Why can't we still be friends?

Grim Reaper Wins Double Header

I don't like to make light of death, but this weekend was rather . . . productive . . . for the Grim Reaper.  Yesterday, two of the highest ranking religious leaders in the world died: President Gordon B. Hinckley of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and Archbishop Christodoulos of the Eastern Orthodox Church.  How very odd that the leaders of two of the largest denominations of Christianity should die on the same day.  As far as I know, Benedict is still with us.

Is it just me, or is the Grim Reaper being really productive lately?

No. 98 . . . !

The Baptist church is full of strife right now, in large part because of what I think are dumb issues, like whether women can be ministers, whether Jesus is the focal point of all exegesis, and whether Disney should be boycotted. I'd post links, but I'm too lazy. Instead, I'll just point you to this post by an old professor of mine, one of the smartest people I've ever known. He's viewed as rather a heretic in many "traditional" and "conservative" circles, but I say open your mind. As Ravi Zacharias said, "The more I understand of what others have claimed and thought, the more beautiful Jesus Christ looks to me." So if nothing else, read this post to make your own religion more beautiful to you.

Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?

I've been there...

I used to moderate business meetings for my church. If only we'd had somebody like Alice:

Just for the Big CP

One of my fellow B(L)Sers has posited this question: What do you believe? What a loaded question. Here's my attempt to break down my beliefs into discussable nuggets:

Tenet 1 - Nobody is absolutely right. God is too great a mystery to be understood completely by anyone or by any conglomerate of people. Even if you put every single person who ever lived in the same room and held a stinkin huge debate, you would still never get to the absolute bottom of who/what God is and who/what we are.

Tenet 2 - God is. It is more illogical to claim that there is no god than to claim that there is. Consider Descartes's logic, or what is sometimes called the "prime mover" argument (or something like that). Essentially, it argues that everything comes from something else. But if that's true (and almost undeniably it is), then the world cannot exist. Somewhere back in the shrouds of the past (4.6 billion years ago?) the Universe began. If the Universe began, then it had to come from something else. But what? The easiest and best answer is God, or at least some greater power.

Tenet 3 - God is not subject to logic. We see in the Christian Bible and most religious traditions that God/gods are not subject to physical laws. By analogy then, God/gods is not subject to the laws of logic.* For example, it is claimed that in certain situations, A cannot be both A and B at the same time. A dog cannot be a cat, say. But the Gospels claim (and many, many Christians believe) that Jesus is God and that Jesus is the Word of God. How can Jesus (person A) be God (person B) and the "word" of person B all at the same time? It's illogical! Precisely. It is absolutely futile to defend religion on logical grounds. It would be just as futile to defend the law of conservation of energy by referring to your experience driving. It doesn't work because science is not** subject to the laws of faith, just as religion is not subject to the laws of logic. Different realms, different ways of thinking.

Tenet 4 - Religion is nothing more or less than a way of explaining things we collectively don't understand. Religion in this sense includes science. For example, I don't understand why my television lights up when I press the power button on my remote. The answer--well it has something to do with the emission of light waves, the transfer of electrons, and the transmission of messages by pulses. I don't get it (nor, incidentally, does any scientist I know of), but I could explain it by reference to physical laws we've developed as explanations of how things work. I could just as easily claim that by pressing the power button, I am praying to God to turn my TV on and that each time he answers me because of my faith. Both answers are logically irrefutable by a third party.

At this point, we start getting into my specific beliefs. I was raised the Baptist son of a confused feminist. So here goes: I believe that there is a god, that the Judeo-Christian God most closely approximates the true God. I believe that all of us have sinned (forgotten who God is and who we are in relation to that) and deserve the worst punishment possible. I believe that the only way out of that punishment is God's grace and forgiveness in accepting our faith.*** I also believe that the fundamental commands of Christianity are love of God and love of neighbor. Once you get past that, you start getting into controversy that I am unprepared to discuss. But I'll gladly do it anyway. (:

Any questions?




* NOTE--Tenet 2 follows a syllogism not because God is bound by it but because we as humans are, just like we are bound by physical laws.

**But it actually is. Descartes himself (yes, the progenitor of numerous math things that begin with "Cartesian" or "Descartes's") asked how we really know that 2+2=4. He referred to it as "prima facie knowledge." That is, we know it because we know it. Do you buy that? Do you trust anything else just on intuition? You should: there's not enough information in the world to be satisfied of any proposition on empirical evidence alone.

***Faith in what? I think it's faith that God exists, that I can't do anything worthwhile on my own, and that I can't set things right with him on my own. It's faith that I'm not enough even though it seems like I might be.