Methods Of Inquiry

Of course you can use language to attempt to justify belief to the exclusion of other possibilities but this distorts the purpose of language which is communication. People end up talking past one another. Language is suited to supporting mutually definable conclusions or imparting understanding.

 

The bets are used to interpret experience and to act on the basis of it. Of course we seek, and use all the means at our disposal to narrow the odds, but in the absence of oracular gnosis, life is a matter of risk-taking in the face of uncertainty. Existentialism is the only route available for fallible seekers.

 

No bets are used to try and anticipate action, not to interpret experience. There is no risk of uncertainty in reality but uncertain perception makes one feel vulnerable.

 

Life is a matter of being alive. The appearance of risk taking is self deception, reality is not at risk of becoming unreal. In your idiomatic terms if god is for you who can be against you. Why worry about what you shall eat or wear god knows you need these things. In more expanded terms you will do what is necessary to survive to the extent you are able. To see what is before you with clarity makes you more able. To conceive that there is risk is to be concerned for results but there is no result to life, life is ongoing.

 

It's all a matter of attitude. Hell is a bad attitude. What we believe about reality is fundamentally important, but reality is thoroughly ambiguous. Choosing a God that is Ultimate Meaning is useful in orienting myself to reality in a positive, life-affirming way. Such a deity is not contrary to logic and science, and is supported by a certain amount of evidence from my personal experience and the remarkable beauty that I see around me. Choosing a reality that is ultimately pointless is life-defeating.

Every tradition is flawed, because it is human. I agree with Rama Krishna that "religion is like a cow. It kicks, but it gives milk." Biblical scripture, like the sacred writings of other traditions, is a compendium of human wisdom and folly. The Tanakh, in particular, presents some of the most eloquent passages on justice that I've encountered. We can't expect truth to be handed to us in a package tied up with a ribbon and bow. We have to dig for it, using our judgment, based on experience, reason, intuition and the will to take a chance. That's why I reject the anthropomorphic depictions of Yahweh, as do many leading theologians from antiquity to the present, but embrace what I perceive to be the wisdom underlying scripture. God is ineffable. All religious traditions agree on that. Yahweh is our human rendering of YHWH, the tetragramaton for the phrase אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh), I Am That I Am. One could say that God is a tautology or, as I prefer, a Great Mystery. Which of these alternatives we choose can make a big difference in orienting ourselves to reality. Is only that which is accessible to our senses, amplified by our instruments, reality, or is there something more?

 

There you go again with the Abrahamic fundamentalism. Neither Love nor God did all those terrible things. They're just stories told by men for reasons that are rooted in the history of the Jewish people, much as Zeus binding Prometheus for bringing fire to earth or Pandora opening the jar of troubles were just stories rooted in the religious traditions of the ancient Greeks. Read allegorically or metaphorically, these stories often contain insights into human nature, or make us aware of values in the past that we reject. The flood myth is most likely a reworking of the Babylonian tale of Gligamesh, which was a re-working of an earlier Sumerian tale. The biblical version is, in my opinion, an improvement because God is at least motivated by knowledge that humans were depraved. The Babylonian and Sumerian gods were annoyed by the noisiness of their creations. Of course we could pick at the stories. Why would an omniscient, omnipotent God change his mind about his creations? My answer would be that God isn't omniscient and omnipotent, and anyhow, it's only a story. It never happened. The moral of the story is that humans are messed up, but redeemable. As for destroying two cities because of their sexual practices, that is, in my opinion, a fundamental misinterpretation of the Sodom and Gomorah story. "'Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." (Ezekiel 16:49) If sex was involved, it was gang rape by a mob bent on domination and intimidation. The inhospitality of the Sodomites toward strangers, not their sexuality, did them in. A good example of latter-day Sodomites are the Westboro Baptists, who picket the funerals of gays and veterans without regard to the effect on the grieving families. The souls of the Westboroites are in great danger.

So how can I reconcile all this with a God of Love. Easy. I'm a follower of Jesus, who taught us that the whole of the Law and the Prophets could be summed up in the first two commandments; Love of God and Love of Neighbor as ourselves. The two go together, which is why we say "God is Love." How does Love speak or act? through the medium of human beings who are inspired by that ideal. God is, inter alia, the summation of human idealism, or as we say, the Holy Spirit. Throughout history, humans have shown a willingness to live and die for their ideals, and Love is, as Saint Paul told us, "the greatest of these". I came to my faith as a result of a life changing experience in which I came to read a passage in Genesis in a new way--the one that says humans were created in the image and likeness of God. Since then, I regard every human encounter as an encounter with an aspect of God. I can't prove that of course, any more than I can say my moment of clarity wasn't a psychotic break. I accept it as self-evident--a postulate or axiom on which I base my life. Try it out. It might give you a new outlook on life.

 

How so if god's punishment didn't happen?

 

They are there own punishment. I suspect that people who think like that and act like that will ultimately lead miserable lives. I have some confirmation of that from listening to ex-members of the family: one an atheist, the other a homosexual. The abusive nature of the church not only scarred them but subjected other members to tyranny and mind-crippling ignorance.