Pole-Vaulting into Transcendence

When a young teen in P.E. one year, I ran and jumped the pole vault a few times. The anticipation for and mild fear of that run and leap, tensed us up. The vault didn’t rank with the sheer frighted fearfulness of the high dive in swimming, but it sure beat the boredom of doing pushups.

As difficult as it was to run and leap up balancing on the wobbly rise of the limber pole, in its back arch and then its swinging forward, up, and over the cross bar, I did manage to clear the bar at low levels.

The eventual goal was to set the cross bar higher and higher and yet still achieve the swinging leap up and over. But the higher the bar the more difficult the leap with the rise of the pole and the more dangerous the fall, even if one succeeded in clearing the bar.

Fortunately, pole vaulting lasted only a week for us P.E. students, was not required on a regular basis.

However, metaphorically I've been "pole vaulting" for at least 70 years (an unusual analogy similar to a poem by the metaphysical poet John Donne, the famous 17th century English writer).

Donne wrote very unusual analogies in his poems such as a romantic poem to his wife comparing his deep love for her to a geometric compass!.

In this case now, I'm comparing the all-pervasive meaning seeking action of humans of the last 200,000 years to the action of pole-vaulting--attempting to leap for hope in the mysterious cosmic reality.

Wikepedia photos

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In the actual sport of pole-vaulting, if one doesn't scratch or cheat, the bar keeps being raised higher and higher--eventually incredibly high. Similarly, in humans seeking answers to the Mystery of Life, trillions of stars in the cosmos, and troubling confusions about what is true, what is morally good, what is fair and just--this spiritual seeking has been increasingly difficult.

For instance, one of the most difficult high raisings of the bar came for Christians when Jesus didn’t return in the ‘soon’ time of Paul and John (I Thessalonians and Revelation), but Christians attempted to adjust the bar down and up at the same time! Biblical theologians reinterpreted the word ‘soon’ to mean ‘rapidly’ rather than in the common sense definition of ‘in the near future.’

They said the return of Christ could happen thousands of years in the future, but when it did it come, it would be ‘rapid’. This seems a very dishonest scratching of language and history. It is more than an accidental rule violation, but a situation of dishonesty and delusion--straining the gnat and swallowing the camel.

To be continued in 2 days,

In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

THE TRAGEDY OF MOST HUMAN WORLDVIEWS versus the HOPE of other ones

Nihilism of major LIFE STANCES versus Opposing Views

1. Hinduism: ALL that comes about in the cosmos was and is and will be is CAUSED by Brahman.

2. Buddhism: Many different views, some totally deterministic, some emphasizing human creativity and hopeful choice.

2. Greek and some Middle-eastern religions: FATE causes all that happens.

That’s why Oedipus must murder his father even though he doesn’t want to, tries to avoid doing so.

3. Orthodox Judaism: Divided views, depending which version of Judaism is asked.

“The Pharisees held that not all things are divinely predestined, but that some are dependent on the will of man; the Sadducees denied any interference of God in human affairs; while the Essenes ascribed everything to divine predestination ("B. J." ii. 8, § 14; "Ant." xiii. 5, § 9).”
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/.../12338-predestination.

“In an essay entitled "Iggeret ha-Gezerah," Abner of Burgos propounds the Ash'ariya doctrine of predestination, according to which every human act, both in the material and the spiritual life, is predestined. This doctrine, however, was combated by all Jewish thinkers, and especially by Maimonides, who pointed out all the absurdities to which the Ash'ariya were compelled to have recourse in order to sustain their views ("Moreh Nebukim," iii., ch. xvii.).”
“Talmud…asked…God how long he would suffer from his poverty.” [God[ answers “Eleazar's poverty could not be helped, he having been predestined to be poor.”

“…saying of Ḥanina's is, "A man does not hurt his finger in this world unless it has been decreed above" (Ḥul. 7b). https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/.../12338-predestination

4. Islam: Allah causes all /wills all—predestines all (Qadar).

(Like some versions of Judaism, and most versions of creedal Christianity, IF SOMETHING HAPPENS and EVERYTHING THAT HUMANS DO—all is predetermined by God.

However, there are a minority of Muslim leaders such as in some Shia branches of Islam in history and now who reject this total determinism.

“Naser Makarem Shirazi gives a similar example: They say, “Does God know that so and so at such and such an hour on such and such a day will kill someone or will drink an alcoholic beverage?” If we say, “He does not know,” we have denied God's knowledge. And if we say, “Yes, that person must do this, otherwise God's knowledge will be imperfect,” then, in order to preserve God's knowledge, a person is obliged to sin and obey God!” Shirazi, Naser Makarem (12 May 2015). "The Issue of Predestination and Free Will. God's Knowledge". The Justice of God. Al-Islam.org.

-
5. Augustinian Roman Catholicism, Reformed, Lutheran, Calvinistic, etc. (most creedal Christians):
They claim as a central doctrine of the Creeds and most theologians based in Augustine/Calvin/Luther that the Trinity predestined/foreordained/willed/caused all that happens.

For example,this is extremely claimed in Luther’s The Bondage of the Will. Luther had first been an Augustinian monk.

6. In contrast, Wesleyan, Quaker, Anabaptist, etc., and Eastern Orthodox Christianity take a very different view: They OPPOSE the hard DETERMINISM of the Augustinian West (Roman Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, etc.)

Eastern Orthodox-- “…these two principles can be at odds one with another. God may always will the salvation of man, but man may not always accept it. Such was the case in the Gospels, when it was said of the Pharisees and the lawyers that “they rejected the will of God for themselves.”
https://saintgeorgekearney.com/load.php?pageid=55

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7. Most of Atheism-Naturalism-Materialism very strangely strongly agrees with creedal Western Christianity such as famous leader R.C. Sproul who claimed that Not a single molecule moves in the cosmos but that God planned/willed/ caused it.

The HUGE difference, of course
is atheists claim, NOT that any god caused all of history going back over 14 billion years, But Nature-Cosmos COMPLETELY DETERMINED ALL at the beginning of the Cosmos,
determined at the microsecond of the Big Bang or the Laws of Physics.


For instance, the famous scientist and atheist Sam Harris claims that all actions of all humans, etc. even if the universe repeats a “trillion” times will happen exactly the same.

All humans are “puppets”--our sense of "I" is an illusion--according to Harris, that Reality is like gigantic “tumors all the way down” that force everything to happen in the past, present, and future, at least until the cosmos ceases to exist. Harris states that just like a guy in Texas was forced to commit mass murder from a university tower, so ALL humans are forced by the Cosmos/Big Bang to do what happens.

--
IN CONTRAST, some life stances OPPOSE DETERMINISM; INSTEAD they STATE that the Cosmos is OPEN to Hope, Creativity, etc.

While there are givens in the Cosmos, in nature and history, such as the Laws of Physics, and that one human can’t be everywhere at once, so is finite and limited, YET
Individual humans can creatively (and hopefully reasonably) make one choice out of many possible ones.

All humans do have moral responsibility and by their moral choices and discoveries can give new creative directions to themselves, and to a finite extent, even nature!

NO GOD, NO FATE, NO COSMOS HAS DERTERMINED EVERYTHING.

Despite all of the suffering, havoc, disasters, diseases, and destruction in the Cosmos, and many immoral and unjust choices of humans,
There is YET HOPE to counter the horrific tragedies.


--Dan Wilcox
6/4/23

For FB and Blog

The Strange Anomoly of Christian Doctrine Versus Most Christian Moral Affirmations

Strange how the theology and doctrine of the Christian religion and the Bible have been shown to be delusional, not based in reality, and have often led to persecution, oppression, slaughter, hate, rivalry, division, prejudice, theft, lying, and other immoral and unjust actions YET

many of the moral affirmations and prohibitions of the Christian religion and the New Testament have been shown to be true and trustworthy—exactly how all humans ought to think and act.

I wonder why that is?

Galatians 5:19-25

19 Now immoral ways are evident:
sexual immorality,
moral impurity,
lasciviousness,
idolatry,
sorcery,
enmity,
strife,
jealousy,
fits of anger,
rivalries,
dissensions,
divisions,
envy,
drunkenness,
orgies,
and things like these.

I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy,
peace,
patience,
kindness,
goodness,
faithfulness,
gentleness,
self-control;
against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

In the Light of what is True, Good, Kind, and Just,

Dan Wilcox

THE WAYS of a Philosophical Journeyer and Mariner...tacking into the Storm of Life

Many thousands of speeches have passed through my ears and countless millions of pages of writing into my eyes to be mentally swallowed, digested, and then later chewed like the proverbial cud of a skinny cow;-).

True some of all this ingestion, I couldn’t stomach, and spit out rapidly. Sometimes even metaphorically vomited. Other learning was so boring I forgot it before I heard it. But some writing/ideas/themes/worldviews/life-stances stuck inside me like the words of the speaker of Ecclesiastes spoke of over 2,500 years ago, that wisdom is like spikes hammered deep into one’s psyche, truths so powerful they keep inundating one’s mind.

One such speech* I heard online several years ago concerned how we humans hold to what we think is true, what levels describe our way of living. In the brilliant talk the speaker described the various levels of perception from the superficial to those inner bone deep commitments and convictions, to the deepest heart of convincement.

Here’s my own very different adaption of this:

Notions: I am very “low-church” when it comes to traditions. I get next to nothing out of ritual, liturgy, repetition, tradition, hierarchies, etc. IF it had been my choice, I would have gotten married on the beach or in the mountains with a few brief words of romantic love and a few attenders and would have skipped months of planning and a formal service. I was one of the early “Jesus people.” I find nothing meaningful in formal church services, following liturgies, religious holy days, orders of service, etc. Instead, I like creative Christian rock music, lots of unexpected action, change, dramatic sermons with visual illustrations, churches that meet in shopping malls, not in old traditional buildings, etc.

But all of these preferences are just notions, personal likes, enjoyments. I could easily leave them behind if need be. And I realize that multi-millions of other humans find great meaning in traditions, liturgies, and rituals.

Opinions: The liberal Friends-Quakers and some liberal Anabaptists seem the closest to what is true morally and spiritually. But if a moral leader could show me there was another human group or organization that was closer to the Truth, I would change immediately.

Speculations: Based on many years of studying philosophy, theology, religous and secular history, geology, anthropology, biology, cosmology, etc., I agree with some famous scientists and scholars who think that God is Ultimate PROCESS, not Ultimate Substance.

That makes the most sense to my understanding. But it’s all educated speculation. How can any human possibly know or understand the ONE who spangled the Cosmos into becoming before Time?

Beliefs: I believe theism is true, and atheism completely false, that democracy is the best form of government and that democratic capitalism (with restraints) is the best form of economy.

However, I am not a creedal person, am not a Republican or a Democrat, never believed in the Christian Creeds, even though I was a devout Christian for 55 years, serving at times as a Baptist youth minister, elder, Bible teacher, mission worker, etc.

I grew up in a non-creedal denomination: American Baptist. We were concerned primarily with accepting Jesus as our Leader and Deliverer, and then living for him daily, following his moral truths.

However, these are only beliefs, meaning that I hold them moderately.

Beliefs come and they go. As far as I can see, all of them or the vast majority of them have only moderate impact on day to day living.

Convictions: Those values one holds/trusts in/lives by/views so deep one would die for them.

For instance, I think and trust that Moral Realism is true—

that meticulous honesty in medicine, science, criminal justice, journalism, etc. is very important, that slavery, abuse, slaughter, prejudice, racism, etc. are always wrong.

That all humans have the capability to create and to choose among alternatives, to make (LFW) real choices by using their conscious awareness, their reason, their creativeness. That all humans are morally responsible and capable of seeking what is true, good, just, and beautiful.

If these convictions were proven wrong, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I wouldn’t know how to live at all. I suppose I would then say, “Even if Altruism, Mercy, Kindness, Cherishing, Generosity, Patience, Meekness, Humbleness, Honesty, Equality, aren't true, they SHOULD BE, OUGHT TO BE.

That’s how deep this conviction is within me.

SEEKING WHAT IS TRUE, GOOD, JUST, AND BEAUTIFUL is Life’s blood.

In the Light,

Dan Wilcox

*Allusion to the philosophical autobiography of the theist and skeptic Martin Gardner

"So many gods, so many creeds..."

Guest Post: Our Biggest Mistake by Neil Carter, former Calvinist Christian

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2017/04/04/our-biggest-mistake/

from OUR BIGGEST MISTAKE...

by Neil Carter, former Calvinist Christian leader

"1. We took the Bible seriously. We read the Bible.
This was a big mistake.

2. We prayed for the things the Bible told us to pray for.

3. We shared our faith with others. Boy was that a mistake.

4. We believed God was a person who wants to be known through an intimate, personal relationship.
What this miscalculation did for me was it set up an expectation that I should be able to sense, perceive, hear, and know this Person through direct, immediate contact, spirit to spirit.

5. We believed them when they said the Bible doesn’t contradict itself.

Related: “The Absurdity of Inerrancy.”

6. We landed in leadership positions and got to see how the sausage was made, so to speak.

7. We loved people the way our faith told us to, but soon found ourselves “on the outside,” kicked off the reservation for doing so.

Related: “Five Times When Jesus Sounded Like a Humanist“

It’s one of the great ironies of the Christian faith that if you really try to live the way Jesus taught us to live, you may very well find yourself put “outside the camp” just like he was, hung metaphorically on a cross of your own just as he said you’d be.*

Some of the honorable mentions I could have included:
We studied apologetics and defended our faith against its natural enemies until we realized we were on the losing side.
We tried to be “New Testament” in the way we did church and then discovered that doesn’t work.
We attended creation science conventions. That should pretty much do it.
We were told to follow the evidence wherever it led, and it led us right out the front door."

By Neil Carter, former Calvinist leader

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MY RESPONSE:
Neil, you make so many powerful points. And most of them are very similar to my own experiences of how my very serious efforts to be Christ-like is what led me to choose to leave the Christian religion.

While, I completely disagree with your choice to embrace atheism, I understand how that seemed like a strong possibility after your rejecting Calvinistic Christianity.

Instead, I chose the Enlightenment and the Society of Friends, Quakers.

There are a few other differences between us:
#1 You wrote, "We hear that we weren’t authentic enough, or we weren’t fully surrendered to the will of God, or we had some unconfessed sin in our lives, or whatever."

You and many former Christians get tagged with those accusations, but I don't remember hearing them much.

Rather, it was claimed that I was NEVER a Christian to begin with, not when
I was a Baptist youth minister, not when I was an elder, etc.

I wonder if you have been accused of "never having been a Christian," too?

#2 Then you wrote, "I felt God. I heard God. I knew God, in personal experience.

There’s just one problem. If you take this relationship too seriously, if you come to it with too much expectation that reality will match what you were told to expect, you will one day fall hard upon the cold ground of self-honesty whereupon you realize you have been conjuring this relationship through your own imagination your entire life."

That didn't happen to me.

I never could feel God, never heard God, never felt I knew God:-( On the contrary, I spent a whole lifetime wondering why I wasn't experiencing what our leaders, theologians, and most other Christians claimed was happening for them.

I still wonder why I felt like an outsider who doesn't experience what everyone else is talking about.

Sometimes at revival meetings, when the call came to come forward and be saved, I wanted to get up and go forward and experience this wonderful relationship,
BUT reminded myself, that I was already saved!

The very troubling question was then why didn't I feel all of the stuff the evangelist had just preached?

So I lived by faith, but my doubts were severe, sometime much worse than other times. I once even gave my testimony at our church in central California, admitting that I didn't "feel" God. The text I chose was the one from Isaiah, where the prophet says that God will give us "beauty for ashes,"
but
that what I had experienced all of my life (I was 38) was God had given me "ashes instead of beauty.":-(

I thought I might get a lot of counseling, and probably negative feedback from the other members, but it didn't happen. I don't know why. Maybe some of them also were talking the talk, but didn't really experience the Christian God either.

#3 I didn't have to deal with Calvinism, like you did, since I never believed in that god. In fact when I first encountered Calvinism, it was a new leader who claimed Divine Command Theory--that whatever "God" commands becomes moral.

The leader told everyone, and me specifically, especially that God was commanding me to go and kill people! Then he proceeded to "prove" this with the Old Testament.

That horrific experience was the death-knell, however it took me years because I thought I could disprove him and his claim. I still thought that there was a 'true christianity' different from Luther, Calvin, and Augustine.

But the more I studied church history, etc. the more I realized Christianity was on his side.

So I finally left.

Lastly, you wrote, "It’s one of the great ironies of the Christian faith that if you really try to live the way Jesus taught us to live, you may very well find yourself put “outside the camp."

That is your strongest, most convincing point!

Most of the other things you mentioned happened to me, also.

But this was a clincher. The more I worked and worked to be like Jesus, the less and less I fit in the churches my wife and I were members of.

In fact, most of the church members in their beliefs and actions were extremely NOT like Jesus.

Yet I met individuals who weren't part of "born again" creedal Christianity who did think and often act according to Jesus' ethic.

For a long time this confused me to no end! Why were "born again" Christians (like Trumpers now) so self-and-nation centered, so intolerant, so unjust, so for war, even nuclear war!??

Yet, people I knew personally who weren't "born again" worked for human rights, opposed war, were compassionate, emphasized honesty, etc.
And many of these "born again" Christians claimed that Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't a Christian, etc.
--
I don't agree with Neil's conclusion that atheism is true.

On the contrary, I am more intellectually convinced of theism now than sometimes when I was "born again" Christian.

But his article is honest, heart-searching, and lucid.

In the LIGHT, seeking for the GOOD, and the Truth,

Daniel Wilcox

My Philosophical Journey Across Brief Time

While lapping up long lengths of the swimming pool last night, another reflective project splashed (like the proverbial salmon or cod) into my consciousness.

Enclosed is the beginning of a philosophical timeline of my life--less than a quantum blink in cosmic time--which shows how I came to the place I am now, and the journeying and struggles and radiances. Hopefully, my own backwards reflection and chewing of life's cud will spark (to change metaphors midstream;-) your own musings and reflection of your lives.

One Philosophical Time Line:

1) From my earliest memories (maybe 4?), I recall that I badgered my folks (and later many other adults) with WHY questions. It appears that I was born with a 'why' caught in my throat and mind;-)

When I was still young, and about to meet a new person, my parent would remind me not to ask questions, or talk a lot.

2) At a small age, before first grade, my Aunt 'Barbrie' used to often child-sit me, because both of my parents worked late jobs. She was a wild (in an innocent sort of way) young woman who at bedtime told me incredibly creative science fiction stories she made up on the spur of the moment.

Great space ships left earth to other planets; the planets were strange and different. And she told me about a boy, just like myself, who built a space ship in his backyard. Maybe those early stories were a factor in my childhood--and life-long--love of science?

3) By the time I was 5 or 6, I began trying to figure out God, this mystery that everyone talked about, and my father, as a Baptist minister, preached about every Sunday morning. I did this, partially during the sermons, while I moved a little toy car about in my winter coat sleeves and on top of it; and remembering I mustn't say a word or ask questions until the end of the service.

Contrary to the caricature of what atheists claim all Christians and theists believe--that God is "Sky Father/Super Person,"
I never thought that.

Rather, in my little imagination and beginning of abstract reasoning, I thought God must be like gas:-), like the air, invisible but everywhere.

4) Then by 8 years of age, I became very aware of ethics and my own part in it. Consciousness and conscience met.

A dramatic conversion experience on the way home from Adams. I leaned forward and asked my dad to stop the Chevy. He pulled over on the shoulder of the gravel road in Southeast Nebraska on a Thursday night in 1955. Since I've told that life-changing story in past blogs, I won't repeat it here. (This is to be a short time line, not a tome;-)

5) In elementary school (3rd or 4th grade), a librarian used to lend me new books (beyond my years) and I learned about Neanderthals, the prehistoric, and more about dinosaurs, and science fiction.

My dad used to talk with me about prehistoric times, as well as space travel. He was a history teacher, Baptist preacher, carpenter, small town farmer, and handy-man.

As far as I know, no one in our family was ever "young creationist" in the sense that is meant by most conservative Christians and secularists now. While such labels may describe many or most fundamentalists and evangelicals, my own growing up years were very different.

I guess we would have fit in the "Old Earth" category, because we thought the world was very old as proven by dinosaur skeletons, and that prehistoric men had existed as evidenced by Neanderthals' remains found in excavations in Germany and elsewhere. We did believe in the Genesis Flood.

Categories:
--Naive Faith
--Adapted religion with budding reason and science
--Moral Realism (or Moral Objectivism)and Moral Universalism
--Theism
--Anabaptist Version of the Christian religion
--Infants innocent, no O.S.
--Free Will


6) But my devout naive faith and hope came crashing down at the fairly young age of 11 years. Our Sunday School teacher told us God sent bears to punish kids who were making fun of the prophet Elisha's bald head!

I immediately raised my hand, very upset. This chasm opened up severe doubt within me. How could the Bible and adult Christians believe such horrific things about God?

I refused to accept such stories. The God I hoped in wasn't at all like that.

7) About this time, or maybe a little later, I learned the Baptist view (at least of our church) that St. Augustine was a false teacher, that Original Sin and infant baptism were horrific wrong beliefs which Roman Catholics believed.

We Baptists didn't accept the Creeds of the Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, etc. We were non-creedal and humble of it;-).

8) Then as an early teen, I discovered the passages in Scripture which condoned, supported, and caused slavery!

If the Bible was God's Word, how could it be so wrong about this horrific evil?

This ethical contradiction bothered me deeply for years, as well as other horrific actions, stories, and demands in Scripture.

9) By the time I was 13 or 14, I quit thinking the Bible was inerrant. Too many wrong parts. It couldn't be, though, I continued to think that many key passages were inspired by God.

When I asked my dad and to other Christian leaders, and read books which explained problems in the Bible, their answers didn't satisfy, not in the least.

This controversial issue--and plenty of other wrongs and errors in the Bible--still troubles me.

And how is it possible that many bright, even brilliant, highly educated adults really think the Bible is "inerrant"?
Why do so many churches and denominations insist that Scripture is error-free, perfect?

Clearly, despite their irrational faith, the Bible is in error in many places. And, of course, later when I studied textural criticism, etc., I learned of the many thousands of other errors, of serious historical errors, of grievous scientific errors, copy errors, and so forth.

10) Summer camp! Ah, those exciting times. At 13 years old, I got to go. (Normally, my parents couldn't afford the cost.)

What a rousing time with campfires, games, Bible studies, exultant singing, and the fun of running through the night, knocking down the wood braces which kept the wood window covers open in the campers' cabins.

I don't remember if I actually ever did that, but rooted for those few who did; what fun:-)! Especially if it was one of the girls' cabins. By the time I had reached 12, I was completely girl-crazy.

There at that Baptist summer camp, philosophy showed up vividly and got personal, too.

I dedicated my life to God one inspirational night after a powerful sermon about how we need to choose to commit our lives totally to God and to change the world.

Strangely though when I got home and excitedly told my folks, they were dismissive of my experience. They told me I was already a Christian, and, basically, 'don't get carried away'!

I guess this shows how moderate--middle of the road-- my folks were in their fundamentalism, not extremists.

They had met those extreme "fundamentalists--the GARB ones in college, a very bad experience for them. Whenever I got "too religious," like the time I went around our small town putting evangelistic tracts on car windows, they cautioned me to be moderate.

My dad and mom were practical people, not given to dramatic religious experience. They also thought no miracles--like the ones in the Bible took place now. TV preachers, according to them, were con-artists, fakes.

Rather, what counted in life was being a strong Christian who lives right and good, succeeds, treats others equally, and helps those in need.

11) The older I got, the greater my questioning. I'm surprised I didn't turn into a question mark;-).

When I was 16 (15?) and asking and thinking deeply about philosophy and religion, and always involved in reading religious books, I came to view God as the "Ground of All Being."

And the more I studied and thought, I began to accept other such 'liberal' views. (This, of course, worried my parents, but they didn't normally speak of it.)

Categories:
--Skeptical faith
--Religion and Science together
--Moral Realism (or Moral Objectivism)and Moral Universalism
--Theism
--Liberal Baptist
--Ultimism
--Free Will
--Separation of Church and State


12) An added burst to my already questioning mind, came as a junior in high school, when I chose to sign up for an elective, Philosophy class. (Our high school was one of the few high schools in which philosophy was offered as a class.)

We read Plato's The Cave, and complex explanations of famous philosophers, and talked and talked, etc. My understanding of the world, life, existence, the universe kept expanding.

This exciting class was taught by my favorite teacher, who also taught history and debate.

He was an agnostic, had a dry sense of Mark Twainian humor, and made side comments against religion, politically correct ideas, and so forth. Later when I became an educator, I modeled my teaching on his methods and style.

And that year, we studied Transcendentalism in American literature. Emerson's and Thoreau's view of reality greatly influenced me, though I opposed some of their beliefs.

Additional Categories:
--Ideals, Essence, the Good
--Mysticism
--Civil Disobedience
--Questioning about relationship of Nature and Science and God

13) But then, at 17, another life-changing crisis blasted forth--one struggle which has lasted for 53 years!

I encountered Christian Calvinism, Reformed theology.

The Christian leader was our teen Bible study teacher in Lincoln, Nebraska.
(How did a 'free-will' Baptist like me, end up in a Christian group led by a Calvinist?
No idea.)

The Vietnam War had ignited and was raging. And I was struggling with whether or not to go into the military--
probably the Navy, like my dad, after high school as planned--
and go to Vietnam.

When I asked (questions, again) this Christian leader, he declared that Christians ought to kill for God.

Shocked at his certainty and the way he stated it, I responded, "I don't think God would ever command us to kill others."

He proceeded to quote passages from the Old Testament. According to him, God would sometimes command Christians to do what is "immoral."

Quickly, it got terrible. I learned the worst--Calvinists, Augustinians, and Lutherans think most of the billions of us humans are foreordained to hell, to eternal damnation, condemned before the whole cosmos began!

Calvinists claim that God doesn't love everyone, but only loves a limited number of humans.

What!!!!!:-( I've never gotten over the shocked horror of that.

The bears, even slavery, now seemed minor issues; this new horror was like falling from a 10-thousand-foot cliff.

:-((((((((

Other Christian leaders claimed that only the Creeds are true Christianity, not our Baptist beliefs--those are "heretical."

Whew...

So for the first time, I checked out these infamous "Creeds." Got a large tome from the public library.

To say I was devastated and baffled is an understatement.

These creedal statements were NOTHING like our Baptist faith, nothing like the Christianity that I deeply trusted in.

The creedal theology was so contrary to everything we believed about life and existence.

And the Creeds made very bizarre statements such as that Jesus is totally God and totally human, etc. They seemed irrational, ridiculous, and absurd.

How could any thinking human possibly believe that Jesus was God?!

14) Then at 18/19 years of age, I went off to university, first to the University of Nebraska, then transferred to Long Beach State in California. At the latter, most of the professors were outspoken atheists.

Very brilliant men, I looked up to. Two great profs were agnostics, the second one a Jewish agnostic. It was the fall of 1966, a very volatile time. The best of times, the worst.

I learned so much. But fairly quickly I came to see that Christianity probably isn't true, at least not what I had believed, and certainly not denominational religion.

At one point while crossing the university quad, I came to a marrow-deep crisis point, probably the central one of my entire life:
I was at a 50% versus 50%
'two roads'--

EITHER/OR:

Stay with liberal Baptist religion
(our Baptist campus minister said he leaned toward Deism)

OR

Change to Atheism
(like our profs and most of the students I knew).

The tipping point came in that dramatic crisis moment,
as I stood on the quad,
torn between 2 opposite directions,
2 opposite roads,
2 diametrically opposed lives.

While organized Christianity didn't seem to fit with some of the evidence we were learning in anthropology, geology, and philosophy,
on the opposite side
Atheism generally rejected the reality of objective ethics, and was in very serious error in claiming to know for sure about the ultimate nature of the cosmos, of Reality.

We often discussed philosophical, ethical, and political issues between classes, disagreeing, reflecting, and countering.

How could anyone know that the vast cosmos was "meaningless" and "purposeless"?!

True, as a liberal Baptist, I thought that existence was "meaningful," but I didn't "know" that; rather I had faith it did.

So though Christianity had deep problems, (and I strongly rejected the major Christian traditions of the Creeds), I knew that ethics are real, not "subjective" stuff humans make up. I could see that in the Civil Rights Movement, and other issues. My first protest march was against Apartheid in South Africa.

Another troubling factor was the unethical behavior of some of the professors and atheist students. When they defended unethical actions, and lived them, I realized, I didn't want to go down that river.

My two best friends were atheists. Worst of all, I saw how their nontheistic lifestance was harming them.

That was then...

But now--over 50 years later--I wish I could have a second chance at that drastic decision on the quad.

I wish I could live that crisis over again, now that I know there are far more than only those 2 extreme contrary options,
that Life isn't an
either/or--

EITHER

Baptist Christianity

OR

Atheism.

No, there are many different philosophical lifestances humans can consider, think about, and choose from.

There are at least 10 very different views of Reality. (See my other blog post for specifics.)

I do know I would reject Atheism again.

After over 50 more years of studying Atheism, reading lots of books by many famous atheists, talking with thousands of them, I am more intellectually convinced that Atheism is incorrect. Besides, I don't identify my central views by what I am not.

BUT what I would change, is that I would leave organized Christianity.

TO BE CONTINUED--

Would you like to share your own philosophical timeline?


In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox
lightwaveseeker@gmail.com

I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him.
Martin Luther King

again, the empty-bucket G- word!

Guest Post from Hemant Metha on the Dawkins Atheism-Theism Scale
and my extended reflections about the scale, and the G- question:

https://youtu.be/VMIe7eInGBU

Thanks to Richard Dawkins for creating this scale, and to Hemant Metha for doing a lucid video on it. In The God Delusion, Dawkins wrote, "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other."

Here’s the Dawkins Scale, again:
--
Richard Dawkins’ Belief Scale Scoring Rubric

1. Strong Theist: I do not question the existence of God, I KNOW he exists.
100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung: "I do not believe, I know."
-
2. De-facto Theist: Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. "I don't know for certain, but I strongly believe
in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there."
-
3. Weak Theist: Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. "I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God."
-
4. Pure Agnostic: Exactly 50%. "God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable."

-
5. Weak Atheist: Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. "I do not know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be skeptical."
-
6. De-facto Atheist: I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable
and I live my life under the assumption that he is not there.
[Dawkins states that he is a 6, though in another interview, he said, a 6.9.]
-
7. Strong Atheist: I am 100% sure that there is no God. I know there is no God, with the same conviction
as Carl Jung knows there is one"
--

If it's a matter of creeds, such as creedal Christianity (Augustian-Calvinism), orthodox Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, I suppose I am about a 6, strongly against such concepts of God.

But, generally, I am an intellectually convinced theist, about a 2.3 (about 74%) if the definition of "God" is the first one of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
god "1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality..."

I am a liberal Friend with UU-leanings.

Like so many of these tests/scales (Dawkins is the best though), the scale is affected by one's assumptions and presuppositions.

For instance, on a different website an atheist declares that Thomas Jefferson is a 4.2 even though many passages in Jefferson's works, including the Declaration of Independence opening, show his score is probably about 2.

When it comes to the particular gods of organized religion such as creedal Christianity, Jefferson was definitely on the atheistic side of the Belief Scale.

Take a look at another method of viewing atheism, theism, etc. There are many variations on the whole essential topic:

We are living in a universe about 27 billion light-years across, and about 13 billion years old and, according to cosmologists, the cosmos will last more billions of years. And there is also the possibility of a multiverse.

What is "ultimate reality":

#1 All reality came about by cosmic chance. Seemingly the view of the French biologist Jacques Monod in Chance and Necessity, a powerful book I read a few years back, and the view of the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould.

My take on this as an average person with a keen interest in science: I think this view is possible. I guess given cosmic time even the "laws" of nature, math, reason, life, ethics, consciousness could all blip into existence.

#2 All reality came about by a cosmic determinism of meaningless matter and energy which is eternal. Everything is lock step. There are no choices, not for what I supposedly ruminate on having for lunch or whether or not to commit murder or what to choose for my career.

Based on our studying this at university, and for many years since, and many times trying to imagine my "I" as an illusion who is only 'done to' by the cosmos, I think this is one of the least likely views of reality. But the view is very popular these days--sort of an atheistic version of Calvinism.

#3 All reality came about somehow by a temporary, finite, imperfect, even distorted, expression of the perfect eternal Ideal Forms of Platonism.
I've been influenced by Platonism.

#4 All reality came about by emergent possibilities in a quantum singularity vacuum or some unknown ultimate reality. But where did the quantum singularity vacuum come from? Here goes "turtles all the way down."

This view seems to posit an eternal physical reality with no "super" reality 'transcending' it.

Like in #1 humankind is a "fluke," an "accident," a "lucky" break.

#5 All reality came about by an impersonal ultimate reality of cosmic beauty. Scientists such as Albert Einstein stated this was his view, that he thought the impersonal god of Spinoza was true. But this seems similar to a combination of #3 and #4.

Unlike #2 and #4, the emergent-possibility cosmos isn't meaningless and purposeless, but filled with meaning.

Interesting, but I doubt it.

#6 All reality is coming about by the everlasting but limited cosmic reality that is becoming. This is the view of thinkers such as philosopher and mathematician Alfred Lord Whitehead, philosopher Charles Hartshorne, etc.

This cosmic but limited God, this limited ultimate reality, who is far beyond human understanding works toward changing matter and energy and conscious life such as homo sapiens into increasing patterns and forms of beauty, meaning, and purpose. This is also the view of some Reform Jews.

But where is the evidence for this?

Process thinkers explain that consciousness, reason, ethics, mathematics, natural law, creativity, aesthetics, life itself, etc. are the evidence.

This view is appealing, but most of the technical philosophical explanations are BEYOND me. I'm a relatively average literature teacher (who got born with a "why" in his throat;-)

#7 All reality came about as just one of an infinite number of universes of an infinite multi-verse, the view of some modern cosmologists. What is the ultimate of the multi-verse is unknown or maybe the multiverse itself is ultimate.

Intriguing, but seems too speculative for me. However, I'm not as skeptical as Martin Gardner, one of the co-founders of the modern skeptical movement who wrote a scathing dismissal of this view.

#8 All reality came about by the impersonal Brahma God of Hinduism and some modern New Age leaders such as Ken Wilber with his Integral Theory, and Deepak Chopra, etc. .

The impersonal God Brahma is conducting a cosmic dance in which it forgets its self and dreams into billions of separated forms including in one minor edge of the universes, thinking humans.

But all is illusion. And all events both good and evil are produced by Brahman. That is why Ken Wilber and other such leaders claim that Brahman caused 9//11, causes all murders, all rapes, etc.

Given that I am a human rights worker from way back, for about 55 years, obviously this isn't my cup of philosophical tea. Also, I still vividly remember as a Gandhi devotee being shocked when a Hindu priest in L.A. tried to persuade me to go to Vietnam to kill (when I was drafted), saying insects are killed all the time in reality.:-(

#9 All reality came about by unknowable factors. Everything beyond and before the Big Bang is such a complete unfathomable mystery that it will probably not ever be solved by finite humans at least not for a very long time.

Allegedly the view of the Mysterians such as skeptic Martin Gardner, physicist Roger Penrose, etc.

#10 All reality continually comes about by infinite impersonal reality which never had a beginning. No creator god exists. Some forms of Buddhism (though other forms are theistic).
--
At this point in my life, I lean toward some view of #3 and #6, though I am open to #1 as a real possibility.

Here's the main reason why I am a theist: Mathematics, natural law (as in the law of gravity and the theory of relativity, etc.) life, consciousness, reason, creativity, ethics, human rights, compassion, and aesthetics--ALL
are very meaningful and purposeful.

I don't think that existence/reality is "meaningless" and "purposeless," or that ethics are "subjective preferences," or "cultural constructs," or (to quote Dawkins on altruism) a "misfiring" of evolution.

But, maybe we finite humans don't have enough knowledge to even decide this question.

We choose one of many diametrically opposed mountain climbs.

And that makes all the difference, for good or bad, false or true, life or death.


In the Light,

Daniel

"so many creeds, so many deniers" while...

I am so very tired of the negaters,
naysayers, and nihilisters
of the Christian, Islamister,

and Hindu sects
and various natured
atheist sorts!

See you
never,
alligator.



Too many credos, too many deniers
dogmas galore, secular claimed tenets
and decreed horrors...

Instead, here's a good word
from Ella, the poet:

"So many gods, so many creeds,
so many paths that
wind
and
wind

while just the art of being kind
is all
the sad world
needs."


--Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(not related, except in thought)





In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Irony of Christianity

Isn't it ironic that in a number of recent studies and surveys--and in the ugly politcal and social discourse in the United States--Christians as a group are shown to be immoral, indeed less ethical in some cases than non-religious people? I am well aware studies and surveys can be skewed and that statistics are often misleading, however, these recent news reports are still troubling. Where in recent months do you see the Good News shared?

Must it not grieve Jesus (as he grieved outside of Jerusalem) to see his followers who are supposed to be known for their compassionate love, are instead known for their warring, their intolerance, their arrogance, their self-centered nationalism, ethnocentricism, divorce, hypocrisy, slander...The list seems endless.

Of course such dissonance between Christ's way of love, peacemaking, patience, mercy, compassion, purity, generosity, thankfulness, praise and Christians' immoral behavior is nothing new. But let us not dig up the awful past--the Inquisition, Crusades, Thirty Years War, English and American Civil Wars, slavery, colonialism, etc.

We can do nothing about the past. This generation--we are here and now--is called to live the Way of Christ, to share, to give, to help, to bring peace.

May God help us to live in the Center, not in the ways of the world.

Daniel Wilcox