Danger of the Cliché, “to love”

Christians for many centuries, over and over, have stated, "God is love." Most famously, St. Augustine said, "Love God and do as you like." All this sounds so good, so pious, so wonderful,
but, tragically, like so many philosophical and moral assertions, the devil is in the details:-(--
not the God of Jesus.

The same St. Augustine of the famous "love" quote supported the persecution of other Christians, torture, killing, etc.
Augustine abandoned his common-law wife of 10 years, with plans to marry an aristocratic Roman lady instead.

From 300 A.D down through hundreds of years of cruelty, abuse, intolerance, injustice, and slaughter to the present, 2025, Christian denominations in the name of "love" have committed horrific actions.

Millions of humans have been slaughtered, burned, hanged, shot, bombed, and drowned--all in the name of Jesus and this religious ideal of Christian "love." A Roman Catholic leader. Bernard of Clairvaux, often called the apostle of love called forth the 2nd Crusade!

A more recent American case is that of devout Christian soldier Stonewall Jackson who ordered the death of many thousands during the American Civil War. And the chaplain of his army, the famous R. L. Dabney, not only strongly supported this ‘Christian’ war, but American slavery, even publishing a study after the Civil War defending enslavement!

They gave all thanks to Jesus Christ and God for their killing successes, and yet at the same time, emphasized the importance of love to God and others. Read the excellent and powerful biography, Stonewall Jackson: Portrait of a Soldier by John Bowers.

In a secular sense, General Jackson was a great war general! And what a devout believer and how personable and kind to those of his own kin and group.

But what a ruthless killer of others, and in his killing, he gave all the praise for his winning battles to the Christian God! He often prayed, worshiped, and read his Bible in the midst of lethal fighting!

Not that Christianity has a corner on these strange demonstrations of "love." When I lived in the Middle East, I visited a Palaestinian restaurant. On the wall was a sign which listed all the characteristics of love in Islam.

Yet, then (and in the past and now)multi-millions of Muslims quote the Qur'an and the Hadith to justify slaughtering enemy civilians.

“So it goes.”
(quoting the satirist, Kurtr Vonnegut).

And check out secular history. Humanists who reject religion for all its horrors, also, often define "love" as a worthy human goal, yet their actions are contrary to love, too.

Here’s a minor example of how “empty bucket” the word “love” is. Back during my university days (late 60's), Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlavsky came to the University of Nebraska to do a poetry reading. Allen kept emphasizing that "love" is the answer to the world's problems.

I, a naive, college student from a small village in southeast Nebraska was impressed,
but an older student and former beatnik told me, "Don't to be deceived."

Later I learned how deceptive these new age leaders' talk of "love" was. One of the young girls in our college group was, allegedly, left pregnant and alone by Orlavsky who moved on with Ginsberg to their next poetry readings.

Young men of other worldviews tried to persuade us that a man could have multiple relationships with women and it was "love."
Forget all the tragic results of these "love" affairs.

And since then, all manner of distortions continue to be put forth as "loving" up to 2025.
Thinkers have even claimed the intentional carpet bomb killing of hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians, including children, fire fighters, doctors, etc. is an action of love and justice!

And more and more, acts of euthanasia, abortion, lust, etc. are said to be expressions of love!
Indeed, the devil is in the details. Evil hogs them.

Why is it God always gets left holding the bag of evil?

Enough of the very bad news!

What is the nature of true caring--the kind that doesn't result in hell on earth?

The great Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh gives some very good clear examples if you wish a definition which isn't centered in the New Testament. However, since I am a Friend of Jesus, that is where I find my understanding of what love is.

Check out Luke 10:27. Jesus said, "YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF."

Well, the problem is still in the details again though, because most of the leaders, warriors, slave-owners,abusers, immoral and unjust individuals etc. of the last 2,000 years have claimed to believe Jesus' words, indeed have done their evil with this verse on their lips, praying to Jesus and reading the Bible as they did their horrific deeds.

So, we need to go deeper.

A lawyer questions Jesus--sounds legalistic doesn't it--asking exactly, "WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?"

(Remember, in Jewish culture, men wouldn't even eat with Gentiles!)

Jesus reverses the thinking of humans such as that lawyer by giving the Parable of the Good Samaritan, pointing out we should be loving like a heretic and national enemy and show active compassion and practical deeds of help including personal involvement, the giving of our money and our time.

This is a continuation of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5: 38-48) where he even contradicts such Jewish heroes as David and says that we should love our enemies.

And so his followers wouldn't get the wrong idea (like so many later would despite his very words), Jesus emphasizes that "loving one’s enemies" means practical actions on our part.

For instance, if an enemy nation conquers you and its soldiers abuse and execute your people and these killers demand you behave as a servant by carrying their military bags for a mile, then you are to offer to carry these enemy killers' things for another extra mile!

When enemies "HATE YOU, BLESS THOSE WHO CURSE YOU, PRAY FOR THOSE WHO MISTREAT YOU.."(Luke 6: 27-38).

Of course, for most of us (like Jesus' disciples who wanted to kill the Romans and call fire down to destroy the Samaritans, etc.), we need even more directions of what the word "love" actually means and so the N.T. provides many more definitions and examples. The best is 1 Corinthians 13:

Love is patient,
love is kind
and is not jealous;
love does not brag and is not arrogant,
does not act unbecomingly;
love does not seek its own,
is not provoked,
does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth;
bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. (NASB)

How can we possibly love individuals of HAMAS or Iran or Russia!?
Muslim jihadists?
Criminals who rape, abuse, kidnap, murder?
A co-worker who lied about us so that we lost our job?

One way is to remember as Martin Luther King cautioned, we aren't called to "like" evil doers, but are rather called to show them benevolence in order that they might turn from their evil ways.

This is Jesus' walk, what it means to be Friends.

To love everyone into the realm of the LIGHT--the GOOD, the TRUE, the Just:-)

In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

Prof. James F. McGrath: "Never lose site of the humanity of the oppressor..."

--

Part #2: From Baptist Warrior to Friendly Conscientious Objector

My Life Journey TimeLine--
Lifestance, Philosophies, and Spiritual Seeking

Age 17, 1964 Drastic Change #2

(For ages 4? to 17, see Part #1)

Gung-ho for Goldwater for president, promoting the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, Christian warrior-to-be. God and Country.

BUT then the conservative Baptist edifice of ethical and political understanding came crashing down one Saturday evening at Youth for Christ when an avid Christian girl strongly disagreed with my militant support of the war including the bombing of Hai Phong, Vietnam.

I don’t think I had ever considered enemy civilians as real live people like you and me. They were all our communist enemies who needed to be destroyed for God, for Christ.

She demanded, politely, that I face what I was really saying.

She asked, Would Jesus gun down other humans? Would Jesus push the button that dropped napalm and other heavy bombs?

(In Vietnam War, the U.S. would drop more bombs than all of WWII!! At least 1,450,000 (maybe 2 million) civilians would die in the war, and millions more would be wounded. About 1,250,000 Vietnamese soldiers would die, and over 58,000 American soldiers. Also, remember many people died in Laos and Cambodia, too.)

Stunned, I kept dialoguing with her, while she emphasized for me to go back and study the Sermon on the Mount more thoroughly.

Up to age 17, it had been my understanding that in the Matthew text, Jesus was talking about personal enemies, such as a grumpy relative or the malicious next-door neighbor.

But I soon discovered, that on the contrary, Jesus was saying we ought to love the Roman soldiers (or any other enemy soldiers) who’ve invaded our country, abused us, oppressed us, killed us!

Whew! NO one else, not a single other Christian was saying ethical stuff like this. I studied the Sermon on the Mount intensely. Read various opposing views.

And I struggled immensely for months. I had already invited the Navy, Army, and Air Force recruiters out months previously to decide which military branch to join after high school; probably, the Navy like my dad and 2 of my uncles, but wanted to make a wise choice.

Now all of that was shot-to-heaven;-) by the Sermon on the Mount.

Finally at 18, contrary to everyone I knew except this one Christian family, and one former missionary (who seemed to view war similar to Desmond Doss),
I registered for the Draft as a Conscientious Objector.

I was going against my parents, my relatives, our Baptist church, nearly everyone I knew. And I lost my best friend because of my anti-war stance.
Yet, I really did think this was the way of Jesus.

Then I had to go before my draft board and answer their difficult questions about my commitment to Jesus’ ethics, etc.

Before C-O service, I worked one summer as a mission volunteer on the Cheyenne Reservation in southern Montana, near the Little Bighorn Battlefield (Custer's Last Stand).

I did youth work for Mennonite Missions and talked with a new friend, a Friend, one of a Quaker family doing reconciliation work on the reservation.

The town hall, Brent Barksdale Community Center in Lame Deer, had been built years earlier by a young adult Quaker Work-Team.

After I was drafted in the spring of 1967, I got assigned to serve at mental hospital if I continued to refuse military service.

I did the C-O service at Eastern State School and Hospital in Pennsylvania, just a hop and jump of history from Washington’s infamous crossing, escaping from the British.

And also living for weeks in Haight-Asbury as a spiritual hippie who didn’t do drugs, had never tasted alcohol--but will skip all of that--
this is a philosophical timeline, not an autobiography:-)

Age 20, 1967 Here come the Quakers

Working at a mental hospital with schizophrenic, autistic, and sociopathic children and teens, (after driving my van—the Mystical Hippopotamus—across the nation to near Philadelphia).

When I visited a Baptist church there, it was shocking, and disconcerting to hear the minister claim that the King James Bible was the only Bible, etc.!

Having already long ago—when I was about 13—ceased to believe in inerrancy, and knowing that the KJB wasn’t even the most accurate Bible in translation from the Greek and Hebrew, I left early, may have even skipped out before the sermon finished. Delusionary.

Also, most Baptists were very pro-Vietnam War, and Mennonites while against the war, tended to be as literalistic as Baptists when it came to the Bible.
Where could I find liberal theists?

About then, I remembered the Quaker option, the Society of Friends came into view, me remembering the good times I had spent dialoguing with the Quakers on the Cheyenne Reservation a year earlier.

And from my first introduction to Quakerism back in 1960, at about 13, when I saw them on the TV news opposing nuclear weapons. Who were they?
They mystified me, that some Christians weren’t in favor of the atom bomb. But why? How idealistic.

Now I had the opportunity to find out more, maybe become a Friend.

One Sunday, I visited the local Friends Meetinghouse in Newtown, PA. This first experience was incredibly disappointing.

In a huge plain church, there was almost nobody there, maybe a several oldsters, and only one other young adult. I got acquainted with her by walking her part way home (coming back for my van later).

The Baptist church had been packed. Why so few Quakers?

Later I took the L-train into downtown Philly to Backbench Friends Meeting, a young adult gathering (on some of my weekends off; at the mental hospital, we worked a 10-days-on-4 days off schedule).

Then I was kicked out of my apartment because of the anti-war poster on the back window of my van, so I lived during the summer in it on a small island in a campground near Newtown, fording over
the concrete ramp, through the shallow stream morning and evening.

To be continued
ISRAELI KIBBUTZNIK
YOUTH MINISTER
HITCH-HIKER
TEACHER
AI MEMBER
ETC.

Learning to Listen--"Listening to the Other"

from MUSALAHA, a movement and organization working toward reconciliation
in Palestine/Israel

This also speaks to what we need in the U.S. now! between various political,
religious, and philosophical enemies.

"This weekend, June 17-18, 2016 was a highlight in my work in reconciliation. More often than not, recruiting for events is very challenging, and in our anything-can-change last-minute culture, it is difficult to get people to commit to a weekend-long meeting. Why would people take their precious weekends to stare into a mirror, and perhaps see things that need to change?"

"Listening to the Other"


"The Ahlan women’s group is different...We started the weekend with a barbeque, allowing families to join us for a few hours and be involved in what we are trying to accomplish..."

"Ronza, Musalaha’s West Bank Women’s Coordinator, and a facilitator in the Ahlan group, took us through a series of ice breaker games..it was her first time to lead one of Musalaha’s joint Israeli-Palestinian groups.
--

"Later, when the husbands left, our 28 women gathered and we started a teaching on “Listening to the Other,” which covered how to listen without preconceived notions or judgments...

"...on putting our thoughts on hold and being present in order to be able to hear the person in front of us. This conversation will only happen once. Be in the moment. You don’t get do-overs in life, so make the most of it and listen."

"Rula also taught us not to listen in order to answer."

"How many times do we sit on the edge of our chairs, hoping the other person takes a break to breathe so that we can start our rebuttal?"

"Toward the end of the conference, many of the women expressed their gratitude...Some women came from a small town outside of Ramallah – a place most Israelis have never heard of, let alone visited...."

-Hedva Haymov

"We seek to accomplish through the following:

To train women in leadership and reconciliation
To multiply our women’s Israeli and/or Palestinian groups in different regions
To impact our societies through community projects
To empower women through education, community development, democracy, networking, project management, and social change
To establish women’s groups in remote regions"

Read the whole story at
https://www.musalaha.org/articles/discovering-my-culture-by-learning-about-the-others-culture/
--



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Remix: Babbling On, Again, River

*Remix: Babbling On, Again, River

Down by the time-out-of-mind, parched riverbed of Babeled loss,
Endless deserts in the stream and all the oaks of Bashon felled;
Yes, we lay down and lamented, drowned in canyon-wasted grief.

By the rivers of Babylon we lay down and wept,
Down upon the wine-soaked, weeping streams,
Up on the willows there, we hung down our lamented lyres

We remembered childhood’s delightful savor, a songed psalm
There, despairing, amidst burned hulks of the cedars, gaunt, stickly,
Hanged like forsaken, wind-blown, broken guitars of skin and bones,

By the rivers of Babylon we lay down and wept,
Down upon the wine-soaked, weeping streams
Up on the willows there, we hung down our lamented lyres

Stringless, passed-over balladeers of rifting sorrow and regret;
Yet despite the worst woes, and the obscene curses of power
With no oaked help on to which to hang our emaciated hopes,

By the rivers of Babylon we lay down and wept,
Down upon the wine-soaked, weeping streams,
Up on the willows there, we hung down our lamented lyres

We still spoke--seraph-serenading a tender, riffed “Shalom,
Peace be on you,” amidst their ‘popular’ trees of derision,
Hates, and damns; yes, despite all to sheol, we blessed enemies;

By the rivers of Babylon we rose up and blessed,
Down upon the wine-soaked, redeeming streams,
Up on the willows there, we sung out our laurelled lyres

We chose to live transcendent, streaming in the River of Life,
And to ‘rock’ our foes’ crying infants to gentle, tender sleep,*
Cradled in the infinite love of God’s mighty-welling heart.

Up in that eternal river flowing out of the heart of God,
Up upon the milk and honey'd rejoicing stream of becoming,
Up on the eternal Tree of Life, we sang the glorious truth


*A Remix of Psalm 137:9

-Daniel Wilcox

First pub. in Eunoia Review
in different form


In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

Compassionate Listening and the Parliament of the World’s Religions

From a news clipping in my files concerning the Parliament of World Religions:

Allegedly, “it was a celebration of religious unity, but last week’s Parliament of the World’s Religions at times resembled a controlled brawl lurching from argument to argument with almost embarrassing regularity. Police had to break up a shouting and shoving match among Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim delegates.”

"The presence of pagans so offended Orthodox Christians that they left the gathering. Later four Jewish organizations followed them out of Chicago, objecting to the presence of...the Nation of Islam. Evangelical Christians boycotted.”
Chuck Lindell, Cox News Service

Hopefully, there was less rancor and more compassionate listening at this year's meeting.

However, “religious disagreement is inevitable...I think what most often blocks friendly disagreement is that we don’t know people of other religions, and we misunderstand them.”
Terry Muck

On the contrary, more often than not, the problem isn’t that we don’t "know people of other religions" and that we don't understand other religions or other ideologies, but that we, oh so tragically,
DO!

As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details.

Outwardly, on first glance, looking at their forward advertising, most religions and ideologies smile and pronounce the usual platitudes--follow the Golden Rule,
be nice,
kind,
and don’t step on others’ blue suede shoes;-)

Repeat--but the devil is in the details!

The horrors are in the very real twisted philosophy and theology of these various belief systems that cause and or lead to so much suffering and harm and destruction of others in our world.

Yes, there are distorted cliches. Once upon a time, before the hurricane of adulthood, most of us were children of hope and innocence, well, naivety.

But even then, there were the generic labeled bad guys--from the communists to the Catholics.

Raised in moderate Baptist fundamentalism, my parents and church taught my sister and I the usual Nebraska 1950 prejudices--that Catholics weren’t Christians, liberals were awful, hard fundamentalists mean, and Pentecostals (which included our dear uncle and aunt) confused.

But as kids my sister and I didn’t know the details. Later as we grew and encountered these enemies, we learned that other worldviews were sometimes much better than the bad descriptions but, too often, actually much worse.

The demon was in the details of the religions' central beliefs and destructive actions.

Real Examples:

God will call you to sometimes commit immoral actions because God is sovereign will and so decides what is good and what is evil.

God created evil.

Malaria and cancer aren’t wrong.

Those humans who criticize our God and our holy book, and our leaders ought to be arrested, jailed, and executed.

God planned the Jewish Holocaust and 9/11.

God is sovereign and before creation planned for the eternal damnation of most human beings. He creates every infant at conception, “in essence, evil.”

Murder and rape and molestation can easily be forgiven but not failure to believe in our creed.

Husbands can beat their wives and women must submit to men.

Women must wear coverings over all of their body and hair.

Little girls should have their private parts mutilated.

Every human is born totally depraved because of what Adam did.

The atom bomb is "God's gift to America."

There are many Gods; there are no Gods.

Killing others for God is good and makes us heroes and "martyrs."

God is both good and evil.

God is only concerned with his own glory and planned all evil to give him glory and "good pleasure."

All other religions are of the Devil.

Etc.

It is difficult to listen with compassionate and empathetic listening, when the person opposite from you spouts horrific beliefs and supports unjust actions which are leading to great suffering, harm, and tragedy for others.

Even seemingly caring religious leaders can disconcert and confuse. Consider this caring quote: “Compassionate Listening is a process rather than a product. It is healing precisely because it does not pretend to ‘have the answers.’ Rather, it engages the participants in processes that have each side seeing the humanity of the other, even when they disagree.”
Rabbi David Zaslow, Ashland Oregon

Sounds so good. But then consider what the Rabbi also wrote! In his book, Jesus, First Century Rabbi, he states that God created evil and is also the opposite of love and the opposite of light!

Then Zaslow quotes “God says, ‘I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the LORD do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7 in the Jewish Bible). According to him, “...and always the satan is sent by God for us to overcome.”

Now, Zaslow does backtrack and contradict himself in later pages, but such initial statements are still troubling and confusing—definitely not helpful toward compassion or good listening.

Evidently, he emphasizes the extreme statements to shock the reader, but he also really believes them!

How so unlike other modern American Jewish leaders such as the endearing, caring Rabbi Albert L. Lewis, in Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom or the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who focused on the positive and abhorred what is wrong.

Declaring God started evil and sends evil! That is very troubling.

However:

“Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.”
Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation
--

And:

A January 2002 Interview with Gene Knudsen Hoffman
(1919-2010)
Gene Knudsen Hoffman, founder of Compassionate Listening, after being influenced by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for his work with opposite sides in the Vietnam War.

Interviewer: "What is the nature of nonviolence?"

Hoffoman: "I don't like the term nonviolence any more. I feel closer to Gandhi when he says truth force, God. I'm a Quaker and I've been involved with peace for fifty years."

Interviewer: "What makes peacemaking so slow a process?"

"First of all, people don't believe in peace, in my opinion. We have never known peace. We don't even admit that we have been in many wars, so why should we make peace? We have talked about ourselves, at least Americans, as being a peaceful people until we believe it no matter what we do. It's a shocking thing. It's a practice of denial."

"Just not facing the reality. We are always calling other people war criminals, yet we're the ones who dropped the first atom bomb."

"We don't live with that reality. It is always the other person, like an untutored child who is always blaming someone else. We're in great denial about it."

"I discovered something in 1985 as I was going around the world looking for new peace initiatives and touring peace centers. I went to a Quaker meeting in London and outside the meeting was a huge sign, 'Meeting For Worship For The Torturers And The Tortured.'"

"I'd never heard of anything like that; I mean, listen to the torturers? Then I decided that I was going to listen to everyone and everything. I started listening to both sides. We can never make peace until we can listen to both sides. No matter who is the enemy."

Interviewer: "If then peacemaking is such slow work because it is the continual struggle to face reality, and also a continual struggle with self-interest, how do you get opposing people to listen to each other?"

Hoffman: "I maintain that we must listen to the oppressor as a human being. The oppressor has grievances, suffering, and we have to listen to both sides. An enemy is a person whose story we have not heard."

"In the beginning you have them listen separately. They get their anger out. They get out everything they feel. They talk about it for a year before they do anything."

"What happens is that as you listen, you change. It's a transformation. People are never listened to as much as they need to be, [especially] children and certain criminal types. It doesn't mean the oppressors are right."

"It doesn't mean you agree with them, and the people have to know this before you go in. It doesn't mean you agree with them, but you look for the truth. You have to discern the truth. It's a process of discernment and intuition and listening."
http://www.peaceheroes.com/PeaceHeroes/jeanknudsenhoffman.htm

So am I willing to listen to those who claim God wills evil, who predestines most humans to eternal torture, who consider little infants, "in essence, evil," who are prejudiced against women, minorities, and other humans as inferior, who advocate that nuclear weapons are good, that life is meaningless and purposeless, that ethics are only "personal preference," etc.?

I try. But it's difficult!

Because I've lived where Muslim jihadists shot up innocent people, personally known many individuals who tragically suffer and are allegedly eternally damned by others, have seen the destructive results of prejudice, injustice, and human rights violations and saw the destructive results of determinism and of the denial of objective ethics by various religious and ideological groups.

But we do need to listen, or we become in our own way, like our enemies.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Are Science and Religion Best Friends, Sworn Enemies, Unknown Strangers?

Do science and religion conflict?

If so, how much--partially, or completely?

Are many scientists who are also theists, (about 51% according to Pew), being dishonest as atheist thinkers claim?

Why do such scientists say they think religion as well as science is true?

Or do science and religion coexist as friends, not always getting along, but complementing each other, even existing in "harmony"?

Or are science and religion completely separate ways of understanding within human thinking?

Let's start with antagonism:

#1 The SWORN ENEMIES VIEW
(of Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and other contemporary atheists):

TIME MAGAZINE: "Professor Dawkins, if one truly understands science, is God then a delusion, as your book title suggests?"

RICHARD DAWKINS: "The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no."

"I think that's the mother and father of all cop-outs. It's an honest scientific quest to discover where this apparent improbability comes from. Now Dr. Collins says, 'Well, God did it. And God needs no explanation because God is outside all this."

"Well, what an incredible evasion of the responsibility to explain. Scientists don't do that. Scientists say, 'We're working on it. We're struggling to understand.'
You're shooting yourself in the foot by postulating something just as improbable, magicking into existence the word God."

"People who believe in God conclude there must have been a divine knob twiddler who twiddled the knobs of these half-dozen constants to get them exactly right. The problem is that this says, because something is vastly improbable, we need a God to explain it. But that God himself would be even more improbable."

[OPPOSED TO DAWKINS]:
TIME: "Dr. Collins, do you believe that science is compatible with Christian faith?"

FRANCIS COLLINS: "Yes. God's existence is either true or not. But calling it a scientific question implies that the tools of science can provide the answer. From my perspective, God cannot be completely contained within nature, and therefore God's existence is outside of science's ability to really weigh in."
Time International, 2006
--

DR. JERRY COYNE:
"...had there been no Christianity, if after the fall of Rome atheism had pervaded the Western world, science would have developed earlier and be far more advanced than it is now."

"The different methods that science and religion use to ascertain their “truths” couldn’t be clearer. Science comprises an exquisitely refined set of tools designed to find out what is real and to prevent confirmation bias."

"Science prizes doubt and iconoclasm, rejects absolute authority, and relies on testing one’s ideas with experiments and observations of nature. Its sine qua non is evidence — evidence that can be inspected and adjudicated by any trained and rational observer. And it depends largely on falsification."

"Religion begins with beliefs based not on observation, but on revelation, authority (often that of scripture), and dogma. Most people acquire their faith when young via indoctrination by parents, teachers, or peers, so that religious 'truths' depend heavily on who spawned you and where you grew up."

"Beliefs instilled in this way are then undergirded with defenses that make them resistant to falsification. While some religious people do struggle with their beliefs, doubt is not an inherent part of belief, not is it especially prized. No honors accrue to the Southern Baptist who points out that while there is plenty of evidence for evolution, there is none for the creation story of Genesis."

"Some religious claims are untestable because they involve knowing about the irrevocable past. There is almost no way to show, for instance, that Jesus was the son of God, that Allah dictated the Quran to Muhammad, or that the souls of Buddhists are reincarnated in other humans or animals."

"(There could, however be at least some evidence for such claims, such as concordant eyewitness accounts of the miracles that supposedly accompanied Jesus’s Crucifixion, including the darkness at noon, the rending of the Temple’s curtain, the earthquakes, and the rising of saints from their graves. Unfortunately, the many historians of the time have failed to report these phenomena.)"

"What science can do is point out the absence of evidence for such claims, taking them off the table until some hint of evidence arrives.now what it is until we have hard evidence. That is precisely the opposite of how the faithful approach their own claims of truth."

"In the end, religious investigations of “truth,” unlike those of science, are deeply dependent on confirmation bias."

Faith Vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible
by Jerry Coyne,
Viking, 2015

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, SIMON WORRALL: "You are now an evolutionary genticist. How does your day job inform your views on religion?"

"If you teach evolution, you’re teaching the one form of science that hits Abrahamic religions in the solar plexus. There’s no evidence that there’s any qualitatively different feature about humans from other species...We’re not special products of God’s creation."

"Religion doesn’t have a methodology to weed out what’s false. In fact, it’s a way of fooling yourself."

NAT. GEO. SIMON W.: "You call religion "the most widespread and harmful form of superstition.” Make your case.

COYNE: "Since I see all religious belief as unfounded and irrational, I consider religion to be superstition. It’s certainly the most widespread form of superstition because the vast majority of people on Earth are believers."

NAT.GEO.: "How have new developments in science like neurobiology or cosmology affected our understanding of the universe and our place in it?"

COYNE: "They support what Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate in physics said, 'The more we learn about the universe, the more we realize how pointless it is.' We're learning a lot about the unierse and what we are seeing is that it's all a naturalistic process."

NAT.GEO.: "Are all religious as bad as each other?"

COYNE: "Oh, no. I think anybody that says that is on some tendentious gambit to discredit religion. Clearly, religions differ in how harmful they are and that’s proportional to how much they proselytize and how perfidious their beliefs are.

"There are religions that I would consider either harmless or maybe even beneficial. Quakers barely believe in God at all and are dedicated to social justice."
--

MY RESPONSE: LOL. While it is true, some modern Quakers are non-theists, it is incorrect to state that "Quakers barely believe in God at all."
Actually, most Quakers now, and in the past, are devout theists.

And "they are dedicated to social justice," (Coyne's statement) because of their deep faith in God, not contrary to it.
Examples include John Woolman, William Penn, Elizabeth Fry, Levi Coffin, etc.

from Wikipedia:
"The first anti-slavery statement was written by Dutch and German Quakers, who met at Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1688. English Quakers began to express their official disapproval of the slave trade in 1727 and promote reforms."

"From the 1750s, a number of Quakers in Britain's American colonies also began to oppose slavery, and called on English Quakers to take action with parliament. They encouraged their fellow citizens, including Quaker slave owners, to improve conditions for slaves, educate their slaves in Christianity, reading and writing, and gradually emancipate (free) them."

"An informal group of six Quakers pioneered the British abolitionist movement in 1783 when the London Society of Friends' yearly meeting presented its petition against the slave trade to Parliament, signed by over 300 Quakers. They were also influenced by publicity that year about the Zong massacre, as the ship owners were litigating a claim for insurance against losses due to more than 132 slaves having been killed on their ship."

"The Quakers decided to form a small, committed, non-denominational group so as to gain greater Anglican and Parliamentary support. The new, non-denominational committee formed in 1787 had nine Quaker members and three Anglicans. As Quakers were non-conformists and were debarred from standing for Parliament), having Anglican members strengthened the committee's likelihood of influencing Parliament."

"Nine of the twelve founding members of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade were Quakers:
John Barton (1755–1789);
William Dillwyn (1743–1824);
George Harrison (1747–1827);
Samuel Hoare Jr (1751–1825);
Joseph Hooper (1732–1789);
John Lloyd;
Joseph Woods Sr (1738–1812);
James Phillips (1745–1799);
and Richard Phillips."

"Five of the Quakers had been amongst the informal group of six Quakers who had pioneered the movement in 1783, when the first petition against the slave trade was presented to parliament."

"Three Anglicans were founding members:
Thomas Clarkson, campaigner and author of an influential essay against the slave trade;
Granville Sharp who, as a lawyer, had long been involved in the support and prosecution
of cases on behalf of enslaved Africans;
and Philip Sansom."

Despite such clear historical evidence, strangely, Coyne asserts, "The less a religion has to do with a tangible God, the less it hands out moral dictates and the better it is. Once you believe in an absolute authority that tells you what to do, you’re heading down the road to perdition, I think."

But that is the exact opposite of the Quakers' dedication to "social justice"!

In fact, Quaker abolitionists did give out very strong, absolute moral dictates against slavery, and for women's rights, human rights, etc.

And it didn't lead "down the road to perdition" as Coyne claims.

On the contrary, Quakers' belief in a God of social justice was part of the Enlightenment. According to some historians, Thomas Paine was influenced to so actively oppose slavery because of his Quaker parent.
--

NAT. GEO. SIMON WORRALL: "The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould developed a theory known as NOMA...religion deals with the realm of meaning and moral values. Isn’t that a compromise you accept?"

COYNE: "Well, no! [Laughs] It’s not only a compromise I can’t accept...Philosophers have also rejected Gould’s idea that meaning, morals and values are the purview of religion. There’s a long tradition of secular humanism in philosophy beginning with the ancient Greeks and passing through Kant, John Stewart Mill and Hume to contemporary thinkers like Peter Singer."
--

MY VIEW: Hmm...Immanuel Kant was a theist, not an atheist.

Quite a bit of secular humanism, while rejecting the dogmas of religion, actually comes out of the philosophical views of theism.

Besides how can we humans get ethics from what "is" in nature, in natural selection?

How do we get from "is" to what "ought" to be?

Here, Coyne seems to be disagreeing with David Hume, which, of course, is his perfect right to do.

But his disagreement is unlikely to find any support in science.
How could science possibly tell us whether or not it is right or wrong to drop atomic bombs on enemy civilians?

Lastly, Coyne says human consciousness is "a neuronal illusion."

If human consciousness is "a nueronal illusion," then how is it possible for our consciousness to use reason, the scientific method, etc. to find out the complexities of the real universe?

Jerry Coyne was interviewed by Simon Worrall, National Geographic
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/150531-religion-science-faith-healing-atheism-people-ngbooktalk/
--


#2 The COMPARTMENTALIZATION VIEW:

These scientists don't reject "reason and science," aren't "being dishonest."

They use reason and science to figure out matter and energy issues, but
use philosophy and non-scientific thinking to figure out issues of "ought," and "meaning."

It would seem that the famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky holds to this view. Dobzhansky wrote that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

How does he reconcile being an Orthodox Christian with evolution?

He doesn't. No more than he tries to love his wife by cutting a tiny piece of her skin out to put under a microscope to figure out if she's his soul friend, and if he loves her and she loves him;-)

In compartmentalization, science and religion are opposed, not in harmony.

For how can Dobzhansky reconcile natural selection with benevolence to all of creation?

I don't think he can. Or how can he reconcile the regularities of the cosmos with the miraculous?

It seems that he can't.

But, my guess, also, is that he doesn't try.

Never the twain shall meet. Opposed from the get-go. But held instead as separate parts of his mind for different purposes.

However, notice that hard naturalists have this problem, too, assuming, of course, they agree with Hume's claim that humans can't get "ought" from what "is."

Various atheists try to explain altruism, and some do interestingly such as Richard Dawkins' idea that altruism is a "misfiring" of evolution. Intriguing.

But
that doesn't explain why humans "ought" to be altruistic.

Since by scientists' definition, evolution has no purpose and no meaning, then obviously, too, "altruism" isn't true, it's just another possibility along with other successful developments of evolution including ruthlessness, deception, slaughter, etc.

There are the 'negatives' of natural selection as well. Natural selection isn't concerned with what "ought" to be, but only with survival.

Think what a long active life--for hundreds of thousands of years--various evil actions have had including millions of cases of
deception, slaughter, rape, polygamy, theft, torture, persecution, inequality, etc.

Such immoral actions have dominated human history. They are very natural, but NOT right, not good, not true.

Even in the last 200 years, in most wars, both sides of humans regularly engage in most of those behaviors, and almost never in altruism.

Lastly, some atheists say, well, the reason for humans to be altruistic is (they argue)
it will somehow increase the chance that human social groups will survive.

But why "ought" homo sapiens to survive?

That is a philosophical question, not a scientific one.

In the end, as even some secular philosophers have emphasized, NOT everything can be solved by science.

Should I forgive a person who has harmed my family or my kin or my country?

A. Ought nations to create, store, even use atomic weapons, as did the United States to slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians?

B. Should infants developing in the womb be executed as worthless tissue or be considered worthy of protection as tiny human beings?

c. Ought all humans to have rights and to be treated equally?

D. Should everyone be honest in their studies and reports?

Etc.

None of those deep, in-your-face-daily questions which fill the media can be answered by science.
--

#3 For others, it's a case of differences in EDUCATIONAL LEARNING.

It isn't that science and religion disagree or are sworn enemies, rather, the difficulty is that one area of humans' lives hasn't caught up with the other area.

A person can be very well-informed about physics, but not really know much about philosophy, literature, aesthetics, personal relationships or culture.

Or in my case, one can grow up knowing a lot about literature and religion and plenty of "oughts." And learn a lot about philosophy--the great thinkers of history--in high school, (Lincoln Southeast in Nebraska being one of the few high schools which taught a subject not usually dealt with until university).

But he may not know much yet about scientific subjects such as evolutionary biology. I loved science, but knew only physics in high school.

Finally, I started to catch up in the technical field when I took complex science classes at university--geology and anthropology. And after graduation with a B.A. in Creative Writing, I read many popular biology books. Then my scientific understanding caught up with my literary and philosophical self.
--

#4 THE NOMA VIEW of Stephen Jay Gould:

TIME: "Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard paleontologist, famously argued that religion and science can coexist, because they occupy separate, airtight boxes. You both seem to disagree."

FRANCIS COLLINS: "Gould sets up an artificial wall between the two worldviews that doesn't exist in my life. Because I do believe in God's creative power in having brought it all into being in the first place, I find that studying the natural world is an opportunity to observe the majesty, the elegance, the intricacy of God's creation."

Time International, 2006

STEPHEN JAY GOULD: "...creationism based on biblical literalism makes little sense in either Catholicism or Judaism for neither religion maintains any extensive tradition for reading the Bible as literal truth rather than illuminating literature, based partly on metaphor and allegory (essential components of all good writing) and demanding interpretation for proper understanding. Most Protestant groups, of course, take the same position—the fundamentalist fringe notwithstanding."

“The position that I have just outlined by personal stories and general statements represents the standard attitude of all major Western religions (and of Western science) today. (I cannot, through ignorance, speak of Eastern religions, although I suspect that the same position would prevail in most cases.)”

“The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives."

"The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains—for a great book tells us that the truth can make us free and that we will live in optimal harmony with our fellows when we learn to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly."

"I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving concordat between our magisteria—the NOMA solution. NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectua] grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance. NOMA also cuts both ways."

"If religion can no longer dictate the nature of factual conclusions properly under the magisterium of science, then scientists cannot claim higher insight into moral truth from any superior knowledge of the world's empirical constitution. This mutual humility has important practical consequences in a world of such diverse passions."
--

"Here, I believe, lies the greatest strength and necessity of NOMA, the nonoverlapping magisteria of science and religion. NOMA permits—indeed enjoins—the prospect of respectful discourse, of constant input from both magisteria toward the common goal of wisdom. If human beings are anything special, we are the creatures that must ponder and talk."

From Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," Natural History 106 (March 1997): 16-22; and Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, New York: Harmony Books, 1998, pp. 269-283.
--

#5 THE BROAD DEFINITION OF RELIGION VIEW,
(instead of the narrow religious dogmatism to which Jerry Coyne refers):

Albert Einstein: "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

From Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer, Princeton University Press:
"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written."

"The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."

from The Quotable Einstein:
"I don't try to imagine a God; it suffices to stand in awe of the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it."

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own - a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty."

"It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in Nature."

"The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that , compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."

"Where dull-witted clansmen of our tribe were praying aloud, their faces turned to the wall, their bodies swaying to and fro. A pathetic sight of men with a past but without a future." (Regarding his visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, February 3, 1923)

"Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us."

"I appeal to all men and women, whether they be eminent or humble, to declare that they will refuse to give any further assistance to war or the preparation of war."

"It is my belief that the problem of bringing peace to the world on a supranational basis will be solved only by employing Gandhi's method on a larger scale."

--

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written."

"The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."
--

The above quote from Einstein gives credence to biographer Walter Isaacson who stated that Einstein "held to a deistic concept of God."
page 385, Einstein: His Life and Universe

Translated Transcript: Princeton, 3. 1. 1954

"Dear Mr Gutkind,

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition."

"And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong ... have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them."
--

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly,” he wrote in another letter in 1954. "If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
--

"I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."
--

What are other views of the relationship between science and religion?

Please add to the discussion.


#6

#7

#8

To be continued--



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Green Prince--Two Rights Make Many Horrific Wrongs

If you would like to get past the confusing news bites and sensational headlines...seek to understand more deeply the Palestine/Israel Conflict, then take a look at The Green Prince, a new documentary concerning Mosab Hassan Yousef, the oldest son of a leader of HAMAS.

This new film is riveting--Palestinian versus Israeli, Muslim versus Jew, HAMAS versus Shin Bet.

Tragically there in that land, two Rights make many horrific wrongs.

"Set against the chaotic backdrop of recent events in the Middle East, Nadav Schirman’s THE GREEN PRINCE retraces the details of a highly unprecedented partnership that developed between sworn enemies. In the style of a tense psychological thriller, this extraordinary documentary recounts the true story of the son of a Hamas leader who emerged as one of Israel’s prized informants, and the Shin Bet agent who risked his career to protect him."
Music Box Films http://www.musicboxfilms.com/the-green-prince-movies-107.php

Don't miss The Green Prince.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

SAVE THE CHILDREN!

SAVE THE CHILDREN!

"...we must begin again by trying to imagine our enemies' children who, like our children, are in mortal danger because of enmity that they did not cause.

It is useless to try to adjudicate a long-standing animosity by asking who started it or who is the most wrong. The only sufficient answer is to give up the animosity and try forgiveness, to try to love our enemies and to talk to them and (if we pray) to pray for them."
Wendell Berry

Jews and Arabs Who Refuse To Be Enemies