Trust and Control Issues

I finally have a new washing machine.  Yippee!!

It has an auto-sensor feature which determines how much water is needed for the load and dispenses it accordingly.

  

Ever the doubter, I keep opening the lid to make sure that the washing machine actually knows what it's doing.

Opening the lid cancels the auto-sensor mode and makes the tub fill all the way to the top.

If I look, I mess it up.

If I don't look...it could be doing my laundry the wrong way.

I'm not sure what it says about me that I'm critical of my appliances and their job qualifications.

Laugh Instead of Cry

This is funny and sad all at the same time.  If only there were no original screed to parody.

Body and Soul, Part 1

I still have yet to order this book, but plan on doing it soon.  It addresses some of the things I have been thinking about for several years now, and I am curious to read what the author has to say.

For some time now, I've been considering several ideas which are connected to each other in Christian theology. 

The first idea I've been contemplating concerns whether or not human beings have souls/spirits apart from their physical bodies. We always act and speak as if they do.  Even outside of religious circles, the general public frequently conceives of a human being as a body with some inner, alive essence which departs when someone passes away.  The body is a shell; the soul is the creamy immortal filling. 

Dualism is the official name of this concept, the dividing of the material world from the spiritual world.  It comes in many forms and varies from belief system to belief system, but in essence results in dividing the world and it's experiences into two separate categories which are linked, but which exist separately.

Although this is the widely accepted view of most Christians, I have had my doubts about the basis for it. Many Christians assume that a human being is immortal, that their soul is imperishable. Where that immortal soul resides for all eternity is the single most important question of their faith. Heaven or Hell? Will we rest in God's presence or be tormented, forever apart from Him?

What is curious about this is that, biblically speaking, human beings are hardly ever spoken of in this way. In the Genesis narration, Adam and Eve are depicted as living in the Garden of Eden with two very special trees; the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life. Of course, we know the story. They eat the forbidden fruit, are cursed and banished from the Garden.

In all my years of studying the Bible, following Christ, attending church..etc., I can't recall a single pastor or study addressing a very important part of the story and the whole motivation for removing Adam and Eve from the Garden...Genesis 3:22-24:

And the Lord GOD said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.  He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever." So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.  After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

A very simple reading of the text implies that man does not live forever. Not only does man not live forever, but God seems to be concerned that man might live forever in his now-corrupted state. Sending him away from the source of life is damage control.  Without immortality, there will be a limit to the destructiveness unleashed  by the young humans' choices.

This raises a few questions, if God is concerned that man might live forever and goes to extreme lengths to prevent him from living forever in his current state, why does Christian theology contain the doctrine of Hell? Hell would seem to be the very embodiment of what God is fighting against in Genesis; the eternal existence of people who are marred and stained by sin and evil.  I plan to get into that a little more in another post.

The Old Testament says very little about an after-life.  In fact the idea that the dead exist consciously in some other dimension can hardly be found in the entire Old Testament. The only example I can find of such a concept even being broached is when Saul asks a medium to contact Samuel, God's judge and prophet, who has died.   Other than that, there seem to be no clear examples found in the Old Testament.

That is not to say that the Old testament does not use the word "soul" when speaking of humans.  It is frequently used, but very often in combinations with other words to describe human nature, such as body, soul and spirit, or one's whole heart, mind and soul.  It is a description of the consciousness of the human being, a representation of the entire total of a human's feeling, desires, and emotions.  It is not usually used when discussing death and what happens afterward.  

In contrast, an idea which is touched upon briefly in the Old Testament is resurrection.  In the book of Daniel, after he has seen visions of the end of time, Daniel is left with this message from an angel:

Daniel 12:13

As for you, go your way till the end.  You will rest and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.

The angel says nothing about Heaven, but only reassures Daniel of a future resurrection.

In the New Testament things become even more intriguing.  If we read the New Testament with the belief that man has an immortal soul, we will assume that each time the term "eternal life" is used, it's referring to our existence in Heaven and possibly our eventual bodily resurrection. In that reading, eternal life=salvation=not being in Hell.

However, if we assume that man does not have an immortal soul already, then the Scriptures take on a different meaning. Eternal life means just that, physical life without end.  Existence forever. This would also mean that those who do not have eternal life are no longer living in any sense of the word. Instead, they simply cease to be and do not continue on even in Hell. The term for this theory is annihilationalism. Once again, I'm coming back to that in a future post.

The term eternal life is used extensively, and almost exclusively in place of "salvation", by Jesus and usually tied to the physical resurrection of his followers.

John 6:38-40

"For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day."

Thinking about salvation in these terms impacts common interpretations familiar with most evangelical Christians.  For instance, when speaking with Nicodemus in John 3, Jesus declares that no one could see the kingdom of God unless he was born again.  Nicodemus takes the term literally, asking how a man can re-enter his mother's womb and Jesus says that a person must be born from above, born of the Spirit.  At first glance this seems to work against the idea that Man is not both a material being and a spiritual being.  Yet, If we think about what Jesus is saying in the context of man's mortality, it could be interpreted that God grants immortality to believers.  They are being born again by being given another chance at eternal existence.  He is birthing immortality into a perishable being.

Further on, in one of the most famous passages of Scripture, Jesus says:

John 3:13-17

No one has ever gone into Heaven except for the one who came from Heaven--the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him.

If eternal life is interpreted as everlasting physical existence, then perish means die.  In every other context we use the word perish to portray a tragic death, not to portray a continual state of suffering.  If I say my neighbor perished at sea, I am clearly saying they died at sea, not that they are still being tossed upon the foamy waves, conscious and suffering from hypothermia.

I have much more to delve into with regard to this. I hate to cut this short, so hopefully I'll get back to it in a few days.

Jon Stewart takes on CNBC

Quote

One of the quotes I underlined in There Is No A God, comes from Frederick Copleston:

God becomes a reality for the human mind in the personal movement of transcendence. In this movement, God appears as the unseen goal of the movement. And inasmuch as the Transcendent cannot be grasped in itself and overflows, so to speak, our conceptual web, doubt inevitably tends to arise. But, within the movement of transcendence, doubt is at once counterbalanced by the affirmation involved in the movement itself. It is within the context of this personal movement of the human spirit that God becomes a reality for man.

Lots to think about in those few sentences.

Forgotten Voices

In preparation for re-piping our house, we had to remove everything from under all of our sinks and empty out our bedroom closet to provide unfettered access to all the sinks and showers. Stacks of boxes and miscellaneous junk lie scattered in piles throughout the house. I haven't shoved it all back into place because I mistakenly convinced myself that this would be a perfect time to go through everything and thoroughly organize our house.

One of the boxes from the closet contained several of my journals from my college days. Just for kicks, I decided to look through them and relive my youth.  

Leafing through page after page, I was struck by two things; how much I have changed, and how much I haven't.  If I sit quietly and mentally travel back to that period in my life, I can resuscitate the thoughts and feelings so prevalent in my entries. I remember the uncertainty with which I regarded the future. I recall the unsettled emotion of not quite fitting into my surroundings.  "Almost perfect, but not quite..." rings through my head, a line from a childhood poem by Shel Silverstein.

Now, I know that many of the problems I faced during that period in my life, were not wholly a result of my own deficiencies. I recognize that by moving to the South, I had thrown myself into a culture into which I could never really fit. I could appreciate it. I could be comfortable in it. I could make friends with others who lived there.....but it would always be like wearing beautiful shoes that were two sizes too small for my feet. At the time I assumed that it must have been my feet which were the problem; too big, too strong, too used to traveling on their own. 

I tried everything to make those feet fit into those shoes. I painted the toe nails. I walked tippy-toed, heels hanging out of the backs of those infernal shoes. When my feet hurt, it wasn't because the shoes didn't fit, but because I had worn them incorrectly.  

This was complicated by the fact that my relationship with God had become melded to a specific, cultural incarnation of Him. When certain aspects of my surroundings were uncomfortable or I felt particularly on the outside, it was hard for me to distinguish between the cause of my struggles. Was it me, or my environment? Did I feel distant from God because of something I had done, or because those around me were certain that He moved in ways A, B, and C, whereas I thought it was more like D.?

Some lessons I have learned. Others....I still haven't quite figured out.  

I still struggle with some of the same emotions. I have recognized that we all have certain issues which will always be with us. We can make a little headway now and then, but we can't change our personalities or the vulnerable spots in our psyche. An awareness of the troubled waters in our soul won't calm them, but can help us navigate through them.

I was taken aback when I came across entries written at the beginning of my relationship with DH. Having been married for over 11 years, relatively happy and content, I had forgotten any turmoil I had felt beforehand:

I'm so scared sometimes...not so much about J---, but more about myself.  I'm scared that I can't commit, or that somehow I'll fail in marriage. Right now in my life, If I screw up or get depressed, or falter in my relationship with God, the effects are mine, and mine alone, to bear. What will I do if I start hurting other people?...my husband and children?  That scares me.  I know that I can't let that fear dominate my life.  What options would I have?  Never get married?  Never have kids?  

I can't run all my life.  I know that, and yet I have such a fear of failure.  It is going to be difficult to stand and do battle with myself and my fears.

It's funny to read that now. At the time marriage was frightening to me. My mother had been married four times. My father had lived alone for many years, not even dating anyone. I had no idea what a healthy relationship would look like, other than my own idealistic notions of what it should look like.

Making matters worse, I had experienced some personal failures which stung me, causing me to question my own suitability for relationships and commitment.

I have come very far, indeed. To say that I had forgotten those feelings is inadequate.  They have been excised from me, and my soul has filled in the spaces left behind by their removal.

If anything, my marriage and the family springing forth from it, has firmly grounded confidence within me.  I have seen the fruits of commitment and love.  I have felt the reassurance of stability in relationships.  It has been transformative for me and I could never imagine feeling as I did before.

Age really does bring wisdom.....may even more come to me as I grow older

A Daily Occurrence At My House

"I could be arguing in my spare time...."says The Rationalist.

Twittering

Joined Twitter.  Apparently, I don't waste enough time online.  I had to put more effort into it.

http://twitter.com/terri987

Let me know if you want to be my friend...or a follower. 

 I'm trying to amass enough followers to start my own cult.

I'm already scoping out compounds and trying to pick cool outfits for us to wear.

There Is A God--some thoughts.

First off, I enjoyed the book overall.  My favorite part was the preface, and I am intrigued enough by Roy Abraham Varghese's writing to consider picking up some of his books.

The first chapter or so was somewhat dry as Antony Flew recounts his many contributions to philosophy and his role in promoting atheism. He's setting the stage to pre-emptively disarm those who doubt his former sincerity as an atheistic philosopher, or think he hasn't fully considered the philosophical options.  

The most striking thing about Flew's "conversion" to acknowledging the existence of God is his complete honesty and the humility he is willing to show in "following the argument wherever it leads." I dare say most atheists, and many Christians, wouldn't be so open and humble in re-evaluating some of their longstanding assumptions/presumptions about the existence/non-existence of God.

I'd recommend the book to anyone who has begun exploring the common philosophical arguments between atheists and theists, and who is familiar with the basic ideas involved in such arguments.

So...what led Flew to this reversal?

Flew's primary motivation can be partly categorized as a recognition of the Argument from Design; the complexity of the universe, DNA, and the immutable laws of Nature communicate a rationality which springs forth from a superior Mind, as he calls it. He quotes several scientists in this area, such as Einstein, Schrodinger, Planck and even Stephen Hawking, revealing their sense of the ultimate guiding force of the universe as one of rationality and purpose.

He has several good quotes from Einstein, who while not "religious" in the sense that most people would understand the word, possessed a definite sense of mystery and wonder attributable to this "superior Mind" which seemed to form the laws of Nature.

One of the Einstein quotes:

Everyone who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the experience of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.

another one:

My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely 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.

Flew makes an important distinction between science and philosophy and the ability to come to conclusions about the existence of God.  This is significant because it pinpoints the Achilles heel in the arguments made by someone like Dawkins, or PZ Meyers, who attempt to use scientific advancements as refutations of the existence of God. Ultimately they are using data and interpreting the results into a philosophical argument, not a scientific argument.

Flew says it best:

You might ask how I, a philosopher, could speak to issues treated by scientists.  The best way to answer this is with another question. Are we engaging in science or philosophy here? When you study the interaction of two physical bodies, for instance, two subatomic particles, you are engaged in science. When you ask how it is that those subatomic particles--or anything physical--could exist and why, you are engaged in philosophy. When you draw philosophical conclusions from scientific data, then you are thinking like a philosopher.

He goes further:

Of course, scientists are just as free to think as philosophers as anyone else. And, of course, not all scientists will agree with my particular interpretation of the facts they generate. But their disagreements will have to stand on their own two philosophical feet. In other words, neither their authority nor their expertise as scientists is of any relevance. This should be easy to see. If they present their views on the economics of science, such as making claims about the number of jobs created by science and technology, they will have to make their case in the court of economic analysis. Likewise, a scientist who speaks as a philosopher will have to furnish a philosophical case.  As Albert Einstein himself said, "The man of science is a poor philosopher."

I was surprised that some of Flew's reasons for believing in the existence of God were already intimately known by me, and are perhaps the strongest cases that I myself have made to people when discussing this subject. The main points of contention lay in three important areas: First Cause--from where did the universe come?; Life itself--how does matter suddenly become alive, self-replicating and purpose-driven towards survival and consciousness?; the complexity and organization of Nature--one can't break nature's laws.

The book didn't cover any new ground for me.  I didn't discover a new way of thinking about God's existence, but I have read several books in this vein, so that wasn't surprising. However, I think the most enlightening points in the book are rooted in Flew's  case that philosophically speaking, many atheistic scientists are deficient in their refutation of God's existence.

There's still more rolling around in my head...so I might come back to this in a few days.

Plumbing Drama, Day 2 and 3

Yesterday, the plumbers arrived at 7 am and didn't leave until 10:30 pm.  It was an exhausting day and I wasn't even the one doing the manual labor.

Apparently, the plumbing company hired the three stooges to work for them, minus one stooge. That is not to say that they were incompetent, but that I swore that at any moment a fist fight was going to break out.  Lots of yelling.  Lots of name-calling.  Lots of mumbling under their breath at one another.  All that was missing was Curly's "woo..woo..woo" and "nyuck...nyuck...nyuck" and Moe's signature slap to the head of whomever was closest to him.

The senior plumber kept taunting the younger one calling him a little girl, stupid, idiot...etc.  It was breathtaking how much of a jerk he was being.  What made it funnier/worse is that the younger one would let the curse words fly when he became frustrated.  The senior, emotionally abusive, plumber would then tell the younger one to watch his language.  I guess in his economy yelling, "F@ck" at a pipe is worse than insulting another's manhood and constantly berating him throughout the day.

Most of these tantrums took place when the plumbers thought I wasn't around or couldn't hear them, but sound carries through the ventilation shafts when you're in the attic yelling at the top of your lungs.  By the end of the day I was happy to see them go.  They were always very nice when speaking to me, but the tension between the two of them had me frazzled.

My reward for listening to their bickering for 2 days was a hot shower after they left.  

We now have water!  Not only do we have water, but it is actually contained in pipes and not running out all over the floor or inside walls.  It's a joyous occasion

The plumbing inspector is supposed to swing by today to check everything out and make sure it's up to code. After that, we have to repair several holes in the drywall. 

We have vaulted ceilings and when the house was built, at the normal ceiling height, two 2 x 4 boards were laid horizontally from which the vaulted part of the house was built upwards.  This meant that the plumbers couldn't slide pipes down the walls, because the walls were blocked off.  They had to open the walls, drill holes through the 2 x 4's and then slide the pipes through the holes. This contributed to the already foul mood between them as they tried to snake a pipe with a diameter about the size of a quarter down several feet from the attic and through a similarly sized hole.  It was a two-person job, requiring teamwork, so you can imagine how that went.

Here's hoping I never have to call another plumber for a very long time.

Mel Gibson Embarks on a New Career

He won't say much about it but sources close to the actor/director say he has been investing in  "special" herbs and spices....eleven by last count.

Stranger still, are the reports that he is forming some sort of competitive racing league

Spokespeople for the actor declined to comment.

Breaking News..we missed the apocalypse!!

But don't worry....we'll have more chances to die in a fiery asteroid/earth collision in the future.

Have a nice day.

There Is A God

While wandering through Barnes and Noble this morning, trying to see if they had this book (which I am going to order soon) in stock, I found another one of interest to me; There Is No A God; how the world's most notorious atheist changed his mind.   It's written by Antony Flew who apparently was the world's most notorious atheist.  

It must be true; the cover of the book says so itself.

Actually, I had already heard of Antony Flew, and his supposed change of mind about the existence of God, several years ago.  I filed it away in my head just in case I might need to retrieve it someday, like when I go on Jeopardy and astound the world with my incredible trivia skills.

I picked up the book and used my arbitrary selection method of reading material.  I open halfway through the book, read a few paragraphs and if it's interesting and engaging, I'll read it.

I opened the book to Chapter 4, A Pilgrimage of Reason, pages 85-86...and this is what I read:

Let us begin with a parable. Imagine that a satellite phone is washed ashore on a remote island inhabited by a tribe that has never had contact with modern civilization. The natives play with the numbers on the dial pad and hear different voices upon hitting certain sequences. They assume first that it's the device that makes the noises. Some of the cleverer natives, the scientists of the tribe, assemble an exact replica and hit the numbers again. They hear the voices again. The conclusion seem obvious to them. This particular combination of crystals and metals and chemicals produces what seems like human voices and this means that the voices are simply properties of the device

But the tribal sage summons the scientists for a discussion. He has thought long and hard on the matter and has reached the following conclusion: the voices coming through the instrument must be coming from people like themselves, people who are living and conscious although speaking in another language. Instead of assuming that the voices are simply properties  of the handset, they should investigate the possibility  that through some mysterious communication network they are in touch with other humans. Perhaps further study  along these lines could lead to a greater understanding of the world beyond their island. But the scientists simply laugh at the sage and say: "Look, when we damage the instrument, the voices stop coming.  So they're obviously nothing more than the sounds produced  by a unique combination of lithium and printed circuit boards and light-emitting diodes."

I was hooked.

Having some spare time before I had to leave for an appointment, I plunked myself into an overstuffed chair, flipped to the beginning of the book and read the preface written by Roy Abraham Varghese.  It was a delight! He hit so many points square on the head in reference to the "New Atheism", which has become so prevalent in the last few years.  I silently nodded my head while reading, yelling inside my head,"Yes!  That's exactly right!"  He addresses, in those few pages, several deficiencies in Richard Dawkins's, The God Delusion, which the disappointingly anemic The Dawkins Delusion, by Alistar McGrath, never touches upon.

My two very brief readings compelled me to buy the book, rather than merely borrow it from the library. I'm looking forward to reading more of it in the next few days.

Expect to hear more about it soon.

Plumbing Drama, Day One

Right now there are two grown men crawling through my attic, trying to snake PVC pipes down through our walls in order to bring an end to the tyranny wielded over us by our copper pipes.

Earlier, an hour into the project, we heard the word no homeowner ever wants to hear..."Oops!"

Um, yeah.  That's not where that pipe was supposed to go.

Overheard

Two boys wrestle and giggle under the covers of Mom and Dad's bed, hiding in their superhero fortress.

"Stop!  What are you doing?"

"I'm just hugging you."

"Batman does not hug Superman!!"