"Reading through your posts, I have a thought forming in the back of my mind that I cannot seem to articulate well yet.  However, it's something along the lines of this: Certainly, questioning religion and faith, discussing it, debating it are all fair game.  However, would you find questioning someone else's strong faith to be as disturbing as their questioning your right to have a lack of faith and religion?  Just because someone has faith in his or her religion of choice doesn't make him or her any more right or wrong than the one without faith or religion, does it?  All religions are right, and at the same time they are all wrong.  Lack of religion is equally right and equally wrong.  It is for each person to decide his or her beliefs or lack thereof without being judged about that decision?"

Oh, no, I thought. My friend is becoming a moral relativist. (Don't worry, Sherry, I know you better than that and I love you just the way you are!)

I have to admit that until about a year ago, I would have been defending my faith as rigorously as I could have. However, at the same time, I was never bothered by the idea of someone not believing. It seemed as legitimate an approach to life as any other. Which, I realized, said something about my faith in Christianity and its tenets that I hadn't really bothered to consider all that closely.

I have come to believe that there are certain forms of belief that are simply dangerous. I'm still coming to terms with how I feel about this. Partly because I haven't been able to simply let go of my sense of the sacred, but, like Julia Sweeney in Letting Go Of God, I'm not quite sure that I believe what I feel when I'm overcome by that sense.

I think my atheistic leanings started to crystallize with the stem cell debate. I recall reading somewhere that stem cell research had great potential to help cure, or at least ameliorate the symptoms of, diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, to name but a couple. Yet, is spite of the potential to relieve the suffering of the living, many faithful opposed stem cell research on the grounds that it involved terminating a fetus, which many consider to be an unborn child.

I learned recently that the the scientists who engage in stem cell research generally harvest the materials they use from a cluster of approximately 150 cells. This clusters of cells has the potential to become a living, breathing child, I know. However, how many of us can conceive our own  construction at the cellular level? Unless you're a biologist, or some kind of life scientist, it's unlikely that you can conceive of yourself in such a fashion. And yet we're willing to make that leap for a cluster of cells that may or may not have ever reached maturity enough to become a child.

It bothers me that people of faith feel that it is right to value the existence of a cluster of cells more than a living, breathing human being. So when they rail about murdering an unborn child, I feel they are the worst kind of hypocrites - aren't they just as surely allowing pain and frailty to slowly and much more painfully murder another human being, one whose cluster of cells just happens to be more fully developed?

It seems to me that some believers place such a value on the time before and the time after life that they disregard the quality of the life we're living right now - in this time and place. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins said something about needing to be a fetus in order to have your life valued by the religious. I think he was a little offhand in his remark, but I appreciate the underlying frustration, because I feel it, too.

So, do I feel justified in questioning faith? Yes, I do. Would I feel bothered by someone questioning my non-belief? Perhaps not, but I would have a more difficult time accepting theological explanations for faith than I ever have before - because I think most of those arguments de-value life - and that just seems wrong to me.

          The political commentator from Fox News, Bill O'Reilly has to be one of the most evil men I have ever watched on TV. His interview style is identical to Steve Wilkos- yes Jerry Springer's old chief of security, "the bald guy", got his own tv show- on the Steve Wilkos show. I actually think I respect Steve more...

          Here's why!

          In this first clip you see Bill talking to Barney Frank. The topic is the $700 billion dollar financial collapse of several companies the government is now having to bail out. Do I disagree with Bill? No. But his tone and speaking style make me lose all respect for him and his message.

          The second clip is even more terrifying to me because he is not just representing conservatives, he is also representing Christians. Watching this makes me shake... Is it not possible to let people talk on your show Bill? YUK! Once again this is an example of me agreeing with most of what he says but upset by how it's said.

          What do you think? Did Bill overstep his bounds or did he just vocalize what you are thinking? Let me know...

In order to be certain that God doesn’t exist, you have to possess a godlike mental capacity – the ability to be 100% certain. A human can’t be 100% certain about anything. Our brains aren’t that reliable. Therefore, to be a true atheist, you have to believe you are the very thing that you argue doesn’t exist: God.

Why should this induce such an emotional response? It's a very common, done-to-death argument against atheism. It should be rolling off my back by now, shouldn't it? And it does when it comes from random theists on the internet. But do you know who said it this time?

Scott Adams!

That's right! Scott Adams, creator and writer of the comic strip, Dilbert. You can read Scott's blasphemous words here.

I'm not sure where to go from here. Can I carry on liking Dilbert? Do I renounce my love and admiration for him and his creator? Can I keep my copy of The Dilbert Principle? If not, can I just sell it in a yard sale or donate it to the public library, or do I have to destroy it to avoid being complicit in the advancement of this evil-doer's comic strips?

Dilemmas, dilemmas...

Well, I suppose if I'm still willing to see Religulous after hearing Bill Maher blathering like he's deranged (thanks Postman!), surely I can keep a book that I already have, and read a comic strip that doesn't cost me anything.

I'm a little worried about what Richard Dawkins will think of my decision because I don't know if he has the authority to excommunicate people. Now, I know what you're thinking: What self-respecting atheist doesn't know something like that, right? And I haven't even read The God Delusion!

I know...

But more importantly, I hope Charles Darwin isn't turning in his grave (he is still dead, right?). I'd hate to disturb the rest of such a great prophet. I mean, what if he can turn me into a chimp or a lemur or something? Would I have to move to Madagascar?

Well, these are all risks I'm willing to take. Please keep me in your prayers labs... no. Dream about me? Shit. Just keep reading my blog (and try to bring a four-leaf clover or rabbit's foot with you, just in case) as I embark on the courageous journey of testing the powers of high-ranking atheists and the Father of Evolution (Call me a maverick).

Posted by Lottie -- Copyright © 2008 Rambling On

First, as a Christian, I find Christianity very well defended and represented by the myriad of evidence.  Looking at the ancient scrolls from which we have translated the Bible, we're doing pretty good.  My favorite of which would be the scroll of Isaiah found at Qumran with the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Here we have our modern day Bible, translated to English, from the scrolls we have.  When they discover these scrolls, the text of Isaiah is found, and is dated 1000 years before the previously oldest scroll.  Interesting to say the least, as the text of Isaiah we have in our Bible matches what was found on the scroll.  

That is just one of numerous examples of evidence defending the Bible.  We can look at the historical evidence of Jesus.  This offers me great joy, as it humors me because non-believers look at it and say, "There is no proof that Jesus ever existed!  People wrote about him some 70 years after his death.  There are no eye-witness accounts.  There is this and that and that and this and I don't want to believe..."  Skeptics will be skeptics as long as they choose to be.  Looking at the Gospels and the writings of Paul though, its easy to see how the historicity of Jesus can be defended.  And the list can go on and on and on. 

So, do we really have faith without evidence?  No.  I have faith with evidence.  I know there is a God, without a shadow of a doubt from the evidence that I can see through texts and history.  And to use my favorite argument, I can see the working of God in my life and the world.  Why is this my favorite?  Because Bill Maher would consider me crazy...the fact that I believe in God and believe that He works in my life makes me crazy according to Maher.  Yet, I don't know how you would explain some of the people who I know who have had cancer, and been healed completely.  I don't know how they would explain some of the evil presences that my Haitian friends have witnessed, as well as many of the Americans.  I'm sure psychoanalysis would lead to some load of bologna.  When they choose to be skeptics, they will remain skeptics.

But now, I close with this...what person in this world doesn't have faith - whether it be in a deity, or whether it be in the concept of faith that they will go to sleep and wake up in the morning.  I mean, if you make plans for tomorrow, then tonight when you go to bed and think about those plans, you are simply using faith, are you not?  Call it what you may - speculation, assumption, faith...

Thoughts on this?  I'd love to get some more people thinking on this blog and talking.  I am very glad to have who we do have discussing though.  Very special thanks to morsecode for sticking around and discussing, and not just discussing, but doing so in a very polite manner.  In my limited dealings with atheists, he is by far one of the nicest and open-minded.  I believe that Bob has poked his head in here a time or two, to which I also say thanks.  I realize there are a lot of objections that you as well as others have to Christianity.  Oh to be able to answer them all in one post, but stick around and be patient, and I'll discuss with you any time.  Lastly, if you ever want to discuss with me, and not on this board, feel free to email me.

Of course, being popular is not always a guide to quality in publishing. Some books flourish in a triumph of style over substance, and that might well be a valid criticism of The God Delusion. The carefully crafted scientific explorations of Dawkins’ earlier works have a tendency to be replaced by atheistic ‘argument by rant’. The implicit dislike of all things religious in early writings, here becomes as explicit as the drunken vulgarity of a stag weekend in Blackpool… Dawkins doesn’t do God. He really doesn’t.

In case you might think that I have overstated my case, consider the following quote from page 31 (indexed as Yahweh (God of the Old Testament): deplorable character of), “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Richard Dawkins really doesn’t do God.

Perhaps his own upbringing leaves him particularly disillusioned with the God of Christianity, but he is critical of all religions in reasonably equal measure. Much of his argument focuses on the excesses of fundamentalists, but he doesn’t let moderates off the hook. Even moderate, mainstream, respectable religion gives rise to (and in a sense legitimates) violent extremists, for “Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.”

The main atheistic thrust of The God Delusion has been welcomed by many, but has also, of course, received a huge amount of criticism. Amazon.co.uk (which incidentally continues to offer both these featured books at around half price, at time of writing) has well over 300 reviews available, highlighting in their variety the polarising effect of this book. And now we have a steady flow of Christian ‘responses’ to Dawkins being published, including what is probably the pick of the crop, The Dawkins Delusion? by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath.

Subtitled Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine, the McGraths’ book is brief and lucid, not attempting to challenge Dawkins’ every argument, but rather highlighting his uncharacteristically subjective and selective use of the data. It really does appear that the scientist has let his emotions run away with him, and they do a good job of helping us to see certain flaws in his arguments. They demonstrate admirably why they are theologians and he is not.

So which book should you buy and read? There is little point to reading The Dawkins Delusion? except in conjunction with The God Delusion. But if you’ve read Dawkins and want to reflect critically on what you encountered then this is a good place to begin. If you are looking for a more detailed critique of Dawkins’ scientific atheism then you should probably also seek out Alister McGrath’s earlier work, Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life.

And should you read The God Delusion? I would say yes, for a number of reasons. This is a readable, accessible engagement with religious belief from one of the world’s foremost thinkers. His arguments will become common currency for atheists in dispute with believers for years to come. We have much to learn from this book, and much to repent of. I would almost go so far as to say that it should be essential reading for churches as we seek to understand ourselves and our world. We will not agree with everything, but we might find more wisdom and challenge here than we expect.

For me, the irony of this book is in contrast to my experience of his earlier work. The Blind Watchmaker was no less certain of the sufficiency of natural selection as an explanation for our world’s wondrous diversity, but left me amazed at God’s incredible work in creation. I remember having a similar reaction to Dawkins’ great friend’s atheistic novels, The Northern Lights trilogy by Philip Pullman. They set out to make me an atheist, but God just seemed bigger and brighter as a result. The God Delusion in contrast left me painfully aware of the poverty of humanity. We are able to take something as remarkable as a relationship with our creator and turn it into an excuse for hatred, prejudice, violence, manipulation, and delusion. If it wasn’t for God, the generous God amazingly revealed in Jesus the Christ, I might think about being an atheist too.

Originally posted elsewhere on 23 May 2007.

• Christian
• church
• faith
• god
• religion

There wasn’t a single occurrence of any of these terms. You would have thought that the founding fathers would have incorporated at least the word “Christian” in a document intended to create a Christian nation, wouldn’t you?
This sense of entitlement knows no bounds. Apparently, a group of Christians are objecting to the contruction/displays in the new Capital Visitor Center scheduled to open later this year because is fails to illustrate America’s heritage as a Christian nation. So much for the melting pot.
The sense of entitlement such organizations feel frustrates me to no end. And the “hands-off” approach that governmental bodies take seems completely unjustified. If churches wants a role in the public discourse, they should be willing to subject themselves to the same rules as everyone else.

In the new Family Guy episode, Brian gets an atheist girlfriend who cheats on him with Cleveland because Stewie convinces him not to make a move for a while. The actual story isn't as great as some in the past, but the lulz that the episode brings is abundant. ( haw haw)

Ahh... you just need to see it.

And I really can't be arsed to type any more, so good day.

Update: Unfortunately it turns out that this is a clergy only special event, as per this comment from Elizabeth Foy. My apologies for any inconvenience or misunderstanding...

It seems a long time since I posted my review of Alister McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion but the issues raised by Dawkins still seem to be something of a hot potato. Unfortunately I've been unable to ascertain whether hot potatoes are on the lunchtime menu at the St Paul's Institute (St Paul's Cathedral, London) tomorrow, Friday 26th September, for this Bishop's Study Day, but I'm sure there will be plenty of mental hot potatoes being thrown around.

The full title of the day is Beyond The God Delusion: Theological resources for a sceptical age and it brings together an interesting line up of speakers including John Cornwell, author of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion, described by Sally Vickers in the Times Online as:

A PIECE of sheer heaven. It kicks Richard Dawkins’s self-aggrandising polemic, The God Delusion, into touch with featherlight footwork and is deliciously wise, witty and intellectually sharp into the bargain.

The day kicks off with registration and coffee at 9.15am followed by a welcome and introduction from Edmund Newell, Director of the St Paul's Institute, at 9.45am.

You'll find the rest of the day's programme and information about the other speakers on this flyer: Beyond The God Delusion (pdf, 124kb). If you're in London and you've got the day free, it promises to be a good opportunity to get up to speed with the questions and perhaps even come up with some answers... Sorry: clergy only and fully booked; but hopefully we'll see some enlightened clergy wandering around later...

Fortress Press published a book of the same title — Beyond The God Delusion, Richard Grigg — in March this year and there's an attempt to discuss this book in the Richard Dawkins forum. The only respondent to the discussion thus far hasn't read the book: he simply sets out to sweep it aside with a series of generalisations — rather like a lot of people commenting on The God Delusion, unfortunately... perhaps Christians and Atheists have more in common than most like to believe...

Internet users in Turkey have been denied access to Richard Dawkins’ official website after Istanbul's second criminal court of peace banned the site earlier in September on the charge that it contained materials offensive to the Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar who has published many works against evolutionism under the pen name of Harun Yahya. In August 2007 Oktar’s lawyers had filed a complaint against the publication of Dawkins’ The God Delusion in Turkey, which was rejected by the court. The recent wave of bans in Turkey, including blocking access to YouTube and WordPress, is yet another blow to the country’s image at a time it is closely scrutinized for its bid to join the European Union. Read the full story in the Guardian:

Related articles:

Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?
By Gregory W. Dawes , University of Otago
(Vol. 2, November 2007)
Religion Compass

Evolutionism
[xxxiv] An anthropological approach to the study of religion, especially the Origins of religion, based ...
From A New Dictionary of Religions

She said that reading my blog made her “concerned” for me.  I told her there was no reason for that and that I didn’t understand what could have possibly made her so “concerned” but that it didn’t matter and there was no reason for whatever kind of “concern” she was feeling.

Alas, that was not good enough for her.  She wanted me to KNOW the reason that she would not be reading.  Apparently the “language” on this blog is too much for her.  Apparently she works hard at being “pure” and it took her “days to pray through it”.  Never mind that this person’s favorite show is “The Bachelor” and I find it extremely hypocritical to tell me my blog is making her impure when she loves to watch women subject  themselves to a man for money or a brand of “love” that only exists in the Western hemisphere, basically making themselves professional prostitutes.

I have no problem with The Bachelor other then than stated above.  I just don’t see how one can love such bullshit, go to Bible study and talk about it with your girlfriends, and then say that reading the word “bullshit” is making your impure. 

INCONSISTENT ETHICS!  I CALL A FOUL! 

I am a sinner.  I am in no way better than this, I am just different.  In fact, I have been very much like this person at times in my life; and nothing, no drug, no word, no action, has brought me more sorrow than my own judgment thrown onto other people.  If I didn’t have the tried and true friendship with my best friend that I do, we couldn’t have made it though that time. She put up with so much crap from my end, and MAN has she ever been forgiving!  

 SO…I wanted to address this with the rest of you bloggy readers.

I am a Christian.  I believe that Jesus is the Lord God personified.  I love him.  I want to be like him.  Thing is, he hung with the sinners, and he was called a glutton and a drunk and basically accused of being a devil.  I’m sorry if it “concerns” you, but that’s the Jesus that I like.  He offended many.  Most of the offended were those people who thought they had a handle on truth and justice; and they went wacko over him, so wacko that they tried to kill him:  the scribes, the Pharisees, the people of the law.

Guess what?  I’m not under that law.  I am under grace.  I hope I do not sin to show off the grace of God.  But NEVER EVER do I again want to be the person who says that an action makes them holy.

You see, reading a colorful word doesn’t make up impure.  Saying one doesn’t make you impure either.  If you believe cussing is “wrong” (and I certainly don’t) then you have probably need to think that through, but it certainly doesn’t make you impure.  God’s grace to us, the fact that Jesus became sin and took on the wrath that we deserve because of our offence to a holy God, is what makes us pure.  Reading a word, saying a word, having a drink, smoking a cigarette can’t touch that!  Neither can any kind of sex, murder, political party affiliation, job, malice or lie.  Jesus paid it all.  There is no condemnation for us if we are under the grace of Christ.  Knowing that is what makes me want to do right by HIM.  Not by those who judge me.

On language specifically, there was a time when I thought it was wrong to cuss.  I don’t normally cuss in my everyday language because it’s just not a habit for me, but I don’t mind when people do.  However, I rarely edit my language.  Even in front of my family.  Even in front of my child.  Why?  Because I don’t see that it’s necessary.  There is no hierarchy of “bad words.”  When the Bible says that we are not to use foul language, I do not take that to mean a cuss word.  I have heard foul language, and foul language can happen without a single cuss word being involved.  I will not let a culture tell me which words I can and cannot say.  If my daughter happens to pick up some colorful language along the way then we will make sure she understands there are certain words you don’t use unless you understand them; and that there are certain consequences for using particular words at school and in public. 

More importantly is the issue that there is a Christian subculture that cannot comprehend or focus on content without the language being pleasing to them.  This is so far from the call to compassion and commission that Jesus has given us.  First, how are we to reach out to those who do not know what amazing love God has for them if we cannot hear (or read) their thoughts.  Second, and most importantly I think, is that we prove the “secular” world’s theory right when we do such a thing.  They think we are small minded, and admittedly, we certainly are when we act this way. 

I read a quote from Bono once that went something like this.  “There are millions of suffering people in Africa who are fucking dying and you are more concerned that I just said a cuss word than about the actual problem.” 

I don’t want to be the person who misses the content because I’m so busy judging the language. 

Yet, his approach puts me off. I have great difficulty accepting the fact that a religious life has no practical use. Or that religious people are more dangerous than those living what he seems to think are more genuine lives for their foundation in reason. There are very many good religious people that I respect and whom I would never dismiss as a result of their faith.

The all or none approach that drips from the pages of his book troubles me. It seems in some respects as dangerous a form of fundamentalism as those he decries. Yet, I have to admit, a more palatable one in my mind.

Regardless of these doubts, I tend to agree that god’s existence is highly improbable and very unlikely. I remain torn in my thinking.

Given my mixed reaction to the book, I thought I would look at what some reviewers of the book had to say about it. The first review I looked at happened to be the London Review of Books’ “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching” by Terry Eagleton, who has been referred to by The Observer (see “The armchair revolutionary,” December 16, 2007) as “one of Britain’s most abrasive public intellectuals.” As an aside, I have heard recordings of some of Eagleton’s lectures and speeches. He comes across, in his speech and manner of speaking, as exactly the kind of smug intellectual he seems so earnestly to despise.

Well, Eagleton certainly is no less obnoxious than Dawkins, I’ll give him that. It takes only a few paragraphs to understand the scope of his animosity towards most of the human race, particularly in his references to “dim-witted clerics,” “right-wing Cambridge dons,” and later to “self-righteous prigs.”

Eagleton’s apparent hatefulness aside, his review seems more an apology, of sorts, for Christianity that a critique of Dawkins’ reasoning. And an oddly illogical one. For example, at one point in his review, Eagleton writes:

“For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any whatsoever, including ourselves.”

Huh? Can this be the same critic who shortly thereafter, in the same review, derides the media for being obtuse in its discussion of religious matters?

The only useful though arising from Eagleton’s review was his assertion that global capitalism breeds fundamentalism. I agree, but am discouraged that he seems incapable of seeing that regardless of the motivation, religion is still a very broad sword and many people in today’s world have no issue wielding it when it suits them.

So, time to set aside Eagleton and move on to the next reviewer. Jim Holt in “Beyond Belief” published by The New York Times on October 22, 2006. Holt’s review seems far more balanced in terms of its criticism, and certainly less vitriolic. He acknowledges that Dawkins brings some fresh ideas to the table but rather seems to resent Dawkins’ smugness. I myself had much the same feeling about what seems to me to be an overarching willingness to be dismissive of people of faith.

At one point, Holt mentions Dawkins’ apparent disgust with the argument that certain great evils have been committed by people who call themselves atheists:

“Dawkins also deals at length with the objection, which he is evidently tired of hearing, that the arch evildoers of the last century, Hitler and Stalin, were both atheists. Hitler, he observes, “never formally renounced his Catholism (sic)”; and in the case of Stalin, a onetime Orthodox seminarian, “there is no evidence that his atheism motivated his brutality.” The equally murderous Mao goes unmentioned, but perhaps it could be argued that he was a religion unto himself.”

It’s interesting to me that Holt ends Dawkins’ quote about Stalin (“there is no evidence that his atheism motivated his brutality”) where he does, choosing to leave out the following sentence, which states: “His earlier religious training probably didn’t either, unless it was through teaching him to revere absolutist faith, strong authority and a belief that ends justify means.” No doubt Dawkins is suggesting that religion, for the reasons he states, could have motivated Stalin’s brutality, but at least he acknowledges the lack of evidence to support it.

The last review I read (it was late and I was getting tired) was published by The Guardian and is hardly worth mentioning. It appeared to be a hastily assembled summary of Dawkins’ primary arguments with very little criticism attached.

I don’t really care all that much what reviewers think of books. There seem to be so many academics eager to bash one another over the head for the chance to be labeled the “right thinker” in their highly academic arguments. But reviewers, academic or not, sometimes offer useful clarification or new avenues of thought. In this case, that didn’t happen.

My next step: read The End of Faith and see where that brings me to next on my journey.

Hey!  Speaking of the fear of God...for years I've had this simple thought that maybe, just maybe, we are making a mistake when we say that "taking the Lord's name in vain" is using his name as an word to show excitement or disbelief or a vast amount of emotions really.  Using the Lord's name in vain makes me to think it means just that: using it in vain.  Example.  If I were to have an agenda (maybe it would be political) and I were to say that God wants me to (and therefore you) to do something (even though the Bible doesn't clearly say such a thing, but I really want it to be this way) then I am taking the Lord's name in vain.  Using God for my own vanity.  Simple, isn't it? 

So why do we do it? 

By the way, I love you guys.

The CBC has launched another great new music series called The Nerve: Music and the Human Experience that attempts to answer the Why music question.  It's produced by Jowi Taylor who also produced The Wire: The Impact of Electricity on Music. That series explored the world of electric music in all its manifestations and not only covered some profound territory, but was beautifully produced as well. I was jealous.

The Nerve is the follow-up, taking it's cue from the Daniel Levitin book,  This is Your Brain on Music. It explores how music affects the mind, why we love music and why we respond to music in specific ways. Levitin appears in the series, as do a cast of philosophers, scientists and musicians including my hero, Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), a member of Kronos Quartet, and producer/musician Daniel Lanois.   I think he could've gotten some more thoughtful musicians, especially in the Enchanted, Entrance: Music and Spirituality section, but that could be a whole other series.   In fact, it was one, Sound & Spirit.

The Nerve is currently running on the CBC, but don't worry, they put it on-line the Monday after the initial weekend broadcast.  You can also go back to list to The Wire.

 John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Can it be done? Well, Isaac Newton invented calculus to solve elusive mysteries of the cosmos in his day. Maybe scientists can do it again.

Some scientists, like Richard Dawkins, suggest this theory will once and for all render obsolete the need for a supernatural creator. Once the final variables describing the physical properties of the cosmos are locked into place, God will be out of a job.

Will the TOE put God in the unemployment line? Let's take a look.

Rumi, Carlos Castaneda and David Hawkins: the path needs love

In Question #6—"Can science prove the existence of God?"—we explored the simple mystical assertion that without love there is no truth. Sounds like a bumper sticker but it's true. That includes grand unification theories with fancy eleven-dimensional math.

From a spiritual standpoint, we can observe without absolute context, there is no unification. In Question #4 we explored the idea of changlessness, and discussed how absolute understanding of something renders change meaningless. For example, if I know the essential essence (akin to their Soul or Spirit) of maple trees is that they change color each fall, that fundamental essence won't change in my eyes during their annual fall color-switch. They're still maple trees in my eyes.

Every fall people say, "Oh the trees are changing!" like it's a big surprise. To believe in change one must abandon one's understanding of the totality of any essence; the fundamental error that created spacetime in the first place.

Einstein proved space is made up of energy down to its core. Even empty space has energy called zero point energy or quantum fluctuation energy. Yet energy is the capacity to cause change as we will explore in depth in a later post. I should say the perceived capacity to cause change. In ultimate reality, where essence is never considered apart from creation, there is no such thing as change.

Having absolute context about anything renders its various conditions simply part of what or who it is. We can call this the Grandparent's Effect. Ever notice how parents—especially new parents—freak out about evevything their kids do that may be slightly out of line? Yet the more "attrocities" grandparent's hear about their grandkids, it seems the more they just smile and say, "Kids will be kids." With perspective and wisdom grandparents come to realize that the more kids change, the more they remain the same, as the saying goes. That's continuous loving perspective comes from experience, patience and wisdom and can lead us down the road to understanding what absolute perspective might look like in an absolute universe.

Yet until we pull our awareness back "out" of spacetime and into the absolute knowledge of Spirit, then there is no unification of its constructions. Period.

There is no such thing as unified factual knowledge; only a unified experience, as Gary Renard has observed. The reason is simple. In the purely non-dualistic understanding of Spirit there is only oneness. In other words you must become one with all knowledge. You must literally become that knowledge, the Native American principle of knowing by being.

Thus all real knowledge must be experiential knowledge that you must self-identify as "my Self." This is a Buddhist principle called absolute knowledge, as described by physicist Fritjof Capra in The Tao of Physics.

Rumi said love was the astrolabe of the mysteries of God. Meaning, if you want to know the secrets of the cosmos, use love to find them. David Hawkins says love opens the door to truth, always in that order.

Carlos Castaneda offers the same basic advice in The Teachings of Don Juan, as quoted by Capra in The Tao of Physics:

Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you...Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question...Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use.

Physicist David Bohm: No love, no unified theory

One of the greatest ambassadors between modern physics and the spiritual community was David Bohm, an Einstein contemporary and personal science advisor/friend to the Dalai Lama (see the Dalai's The Universe in a Single Atom).

Bohm offered a comprehensive model of spacetime called the implicate order, detailed in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order. On his spiritual journey, which included a number of years studying with Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, he seems to have come to the same conclusion as Rumi, Hawkins and Castaneda: no love, no truth.

Here's writer Renee Weber on Bohm's vision for a unified field theory, as detailed in Ken Wilber's The Holographic Paradigm:

[Bohm's] vision is a unified field theory undreamed of by science, in which the searcher and what is sought are apprehended as one, the holomovement becoming translucent to itself. That unified field is neither neutral nor value-free as current scientific canon requires, but an intelligent and compassionate energy, manifesting in an as yet unborn realm where physics, ethics and religion merge. For human life, widespread awareness of such a realm will be revolutionary, leading us from information to transformation and from knowledge to wisdom.

The pursuit of the Unified Field Theory slams into Einstein's Tree

Einstein too believed, like Bohm, that true knowledge comes from a unified source. He said, "All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree." We'll call this idea Einstein's Tree. Unfortunately, it stands squarely in the path of the unified field theory.

How can a "Theory of Everything" not include the branches of its own tree?

The map is not the terrain. The branch is not the tree. Everything must include everything.

If we are not exploring a theory that can unify science and religion (Einstein and Bohm's vision), we're headed down the wrong path. And as Castaneda said, there's no harm in abandoning it.

Here's Indian philospher Jiddu Krishnamurti in Total Freedom on the necessity of unified knowledge:

...every...form of revolution is fragmentary and, therefore, inevitably brings about further problems. But the man who is seeking out what is truth, what is God, is the real revolutionary because the discovery of what is truth is an integrated response and not a fragmentary response.

The question for physicists is, are you after ultimate truth or not? If so, then the unified field theory that wholly ignores any branch of Einstein's Tree isn't going to get you there.

Integration is truth, Krishnamurti said. Truth is union, A Course in Miracles says. This is the foundational principle of non-dualistic spirituality. Absolute knowledge is oneness.

You can't be the number 3.14159. You can't be the equation E=mc^2. You can't be a mathematical theory. Does a theory feel love, or joy or peace? Do you?

The Unified Theory doesn't kill God; it doesn't even kill human love

So when atheist author and scientist Richard Dawkins insists that one discipline—modern physics—will somehow burp out some magical, universal constants (see his article in Time magazine, 11/13/2006) that will provide answers to everything within spacetime, thereby obliterating the need for God in one fell swoop, this is ego-driven nonsense.

We discussed in earlier posts that psychologist Carl Jung and Nobel-prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli believed the discipline of physics and psychology would merge. How can physics alone, wholly ignoring the fact there is no such thing as equations for human experience, claim to possess the absolute truth on anything that encompasses sentient beings, including spacetime? If our sentient awareness isn't in spacetime, where is it? And if it is in spacetime, can I see the equations that govern it, please? Certainly it would be included in any unified field that physics would bind into one mathematical equation.

Brain researchers claim our consciousness is simply electro-chemical brain activity. Isn't electricity included in the unified field theory? Then let's see the equations governing human cognitive functions.

Here's Ken Wilber on the necessity of combining physical understanding with psychological understanding:

...[Bohm] faces the conclusion that modern microphysics must deal with information defined psychologically, i.e. through behavioral observations.

Thus modern physicists and modern perceptual psychologists have converged onto a set of issues that neither can solve alone. if the psychologist is interested in the nature of the conditions which produce the world of appearances, he must attend to the inquiries of the physicist. If the physicist is to understand the observations which he is attempting to systematize, he must learn something of the nature of the psychological process of making observations.

So, you have the Dalai Lama's science advisor/physicist David Bohm saying the unified field theory as it is currently being pursued is way off in left field. We have one of the most skeptical, hard-nosed physicists of all times—Nobelist Wolfgang Pauli—saying psychology and physics will one day merge. You have Einstein saying all sciences and religions are branches of the same tree.

And finally a quote from Nobelist and quantum-mechanical pioneer Erwin Shrödinger from The Essence of Vedanta by Brian Hodgkinson. It puts the kicker on our discussion:

You may ask—you are bound to ask me now: What, then, is in your opinion the value of natural science? I answer: Its scope, aim and value is the same as that of any other branch of human knowledge. Nay, none of them alone, only the union of all of them, has any scope or value at all, and that is simply enough described: it is to obey the command of the Delphic deity...know yourself."

So, we have one of the giants of physics—Nobel-prize-level—saying physics doesn't have any scope or value at all if it is not united with other branches of human knowledge.

No love. No truth. It's that simple.

A path that excludes love—and its absolute power to unify and contextualize—is a dead end. Not of some value; no value. A path we should abandon.

Yet, in the hands of the Holy Spirit, the master contextualizer, any path—even the hunt for the unified field theory—can become a radiant, shining path of salvation, illuminating the structures that bind the human mind in suffering, as we will examine in Part 2 of this question.

Without the contextual power of love, the unified field theory
is the Spam Filter from Hell

Absent love, the unified field theory is none other than the Spam Filter from Hell (see Question #7) dressed up in eleven-dimensional, mathematical clothing. It is a perceptual filter; an attempt to block out everything but physical reality. Calling love itself false and mathematical projection laid over truth real.

What is the equation for love? How many vibrating strings does peace have? What's the formula for freedom? Again, we come back to Rabbi Yehuda Berg's research in The Power of Kabbalah: the things human beings truly desire from life are non-quantifiable, non-mathematical, non-scientific inner experiences.

How can physics avoid this continuous tendency to build an impenetrable mathematical fort around their branch of Einstein's Tree?  Put first things first, Stephen Covey says.

Scientists should ask everyone they know—including themselves—Berg's bottom-lining question, "What does a human being truly desire from life?"

Study the answers to that question and see for yourself they are not found on a map, on a scale or in an equation.

Putting first things first should most certainly include prioritizing the experiences humans most desire from life. What profession should not put the deepest desires of humanity at the core of their field?

Einstein again:

Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

Imagine you and I are standing outside a theatre reading the marquee, trying to make a choice about which movie to see. You come across a movie you're not familiar with called Spacetime. I mention I've seen the flick so you ask me what it's about. I tell you "everybody dies in the end."

"Oh, it's a slasher flick," you say.

"No, it's a Bible story. God creates this universe with a garden and there's this apple tree and..."

"But you said everybody dies in the end. That's obviously a slasher flick. What other kind of movie has everyone die in the end?"

"Well, no, it's more about science and evolution and the progress of species. There's this guy Darwin and..."

"But everybody still dies in the end?"

"Yeah, but more people are born, and new animals are born and they evolve and..."

"They all die, too?"

"Well, yeah."

"So it's a stupid horror flick with a predictable ending. Sounds boring. Let's see a comedy."

"O.K."

I could do my best to defend spacetime, but let's face it, the plot of every human life since the dawn of existence ends the same way: everybody dies. Ditto for animals and plants. Not a single living thing remains alive since the earth was formed. Now whether that death is from natural causes or accidents, or disease or whatever, the ultimate story line is the same.

"A vast spectacle of loss," I believe Sam Harris calls human life in The End of Faith. A bunch of people are born, a bunch of drama happens to them, then they all die.

Not exactly engaging screenwriting

If spacetime were a movie, how many times would you watch it? Every time a character came up on the screen the whole theatre audience would shout out, "Dead!" It's like old episodes of Star Trek. You always knew the actors you had never seen before who beamed down to the planet with Kirk and Spock were toast.

The character Boone Carlyle in the television show Lost calls them "red shirts" because they usually had red uniform tops on.

Predictability doesn't make for great drama. Yet along comes this evolution theory and suddenly people are all ga-ga about whether it proves God does or doesn't exist. Aren't we still watching the same, boring movie called spacetime? Hasn't changed its plot in 13.7 billion years.

Talk about reruns.

People, animals and plants live, a bunch of stuff happens to them, then they die. Some of the evolutionary stuff that happens to them may alter the plot slightly for future generations.

But no matter how much species "advance" from the suffering of the previous generations, they all die, too.

Evolution: not nominated for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award

Let's review some of evolution's "accomplishments":

• Modern Humans first arose as Homo Sapiens some 200,000 years ago in Africa. Evolution has been busy at work ever since making "adaptations" to our species and helping us "do better" in our environment. Yet:

• Humans can still die from eating a single peanut; yet my dog can chew on a dead squirrel with absolutely no effects.

• Humans can die from a single sip of rancid, bacteria-laced water; yet my dog can drink from the toilet.

• Most humans die after less than ten days without water; my lawn turned brown over the past several rain-free weeks then greened-up immediately after it rained.

• An infant can die from SIDS, even if it's laid properly in a crib by a loving, careful mother

• Children are born with cleft palettes, heart defects, and other severe malformations, despite the fact that evolution has been hard at work on Homo Sapiens for 200,000 years.

The Spacetime Theme Park and its Customer Experience Specialist, Mr. Evolution

Imagine your family has owned a huge amusement park called Spacetime for generations upon generations. After 200,000 years of helping your guests become "more adaptable" to the park, still 16,000 children under age five attending the park today will die from malnutrition. And that many will die tomorrow and the next day and the next day.

How long would you make it in today's business climate?

And when you went to court to defend yourself against the largest class-action lawsuit of all times, how long would the jury sit and listen as you detailed this "improvement process" called "evolution" that was slowly making all your guests more adaptable to your park. The opposing lawyer asks you for evidence to support your claim, and you say, "Well, after 200,000 years of improvements not everybody dies from eating peanuts, just some of my guests."

Your lawyer is frantically waving at you, trying to get you to shut up.

When questioned further, you admit that yes, 16,000 children are going to die every day you're open for business.

Your lawyer is now beside herself.

You go on. "And if not from malnutrition, maybe from Ebola or AIDS or hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, influenza..." You unfurl the list of all the possible ways your guests can die and it reaches the floor.

Your lawyer is now crawling under the table.

And yes, you admit, in the end, every single patron of your park will die from the effects of Spacetime.

Now your lawyer is on the floor curled up in the fetal position, slowly rocking back and forth.

Evolution: not exactly a varsity player

I appreciate all of evolution's hard work, but let's face it, it really sucks at its job. Our lives are a ludicrously fragile natural mellodrama ending in the same predictable outcome: we all die. Lightning. A bear. A lion. A mudslide. A tornado. Any of them can end our lives in an instant after 200,000 years of evolution working its magic. 

That we die this way or that, after two minutes or 90 years isn't all that exciting. Only our fixation on the details of the predictable march to death makes it interesting for us. The Buddha would say we are attached to the sense objects that cause suffering and change. Suffering and change; if there is a better three-word definition of evolution, I haven't come across it.

We need to become non-attached to our suffering evolution in order to reach Nirvana.

The fact that some species 200,000 years from now will have some slight advantages doesn't thrill me in the least. In fact, if I could, I would forward future humans an e-mail detailing what a radical failure evolution is in our day so they wouldn't hold out any hope in this load of crap.

Gee, can you eat two peanuts without dying, Mr. Future Man? Do tell! Can you get stung by two bees without your throat swelling shut? Do tell! 

Nature balancing itself by appropriately killing this or that plant, animal or human is not a compassionate act; it's a serial murderer deciding who will die today in order to keep the plot line rolling along.

What mother on this planet would be comforted by the words, "Well, the death of your child helped eliminate weak genes from our collective evolutionary pool. Thanks for your contribution to the balance of nature."

We're trying to avoid our animal nature, why study it endlessly?
The Buddha's Arrow: reductionism on the details of suffering equals procrastination.

One of the most cutting things you can say to someone is "You're acting like an animal." Out of control. Wholly irresponsible. Uncaring and unfeeling.

Evolution is the study of what humans are trying to avoid in themselves: pre-programmed animalistic behavior. The lowest assessment of our capabilities.

For the faithful, why would you look at this degrading process and say it proves God exists? You look at evidence of the one thing we're trying to avoid in ourselves—pre-programmed animalistic behavior—and ascribe that "miraculous" process to God? It's like looking at a zit on a teenager's face—the one thing they're trying to avoid the day before prom—and saying, "Yep, that proves it, God exists!"

Similarly how can the scientific among us look at evolutionary genetic programming and say it proves God doesn't exist. Didn't astronomer Carl Sagan say "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?" Has someone found a way around this logic I'm unaware of? (See question #7 for an extended discussion on why God "doesn't" reveal Himself to us.)

Radio waves from space have flown through the very nose of Homo Sapiens for 200,000 years. Yet they weren't discovered until the late 1800's. So should we all along have been insisting they don't exist? Science is one big, unending parade of discovering things we had no idea actually existed. Germs. X-rays. Sub-atomic particles. The list never ends. Sitting along that parade route drinking a beer, shouting, "Doesn't exist! Doesn't exist!" gets to be a pretty boring pastime.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Period. The correct response to the question of whether God exists, as far as science is concerned, is, "We have no evidence God exists." Doesn't mean God doesn't exist. Its one narrow framework of external-evidence-based observation that completely misses what humans want most from life, as Yehuda Berg details and as I discussed at length in question #7. 

Unless someone can prove Sagan's logic to be faulty, can we please move on? 

We should avoid evolution like zebra-striped Zubaz:
it's spiritual beings dressing up in tacky animal skins. 

We get cut off in traffic and we try our best not to respond like animals. Stephen Covey sagely observes in that single instant between stimulus and response is the measure of our humanity—the measure of how far we've come in avoiding the forces of evolution. (We'll discuss this later when we investigate vertical time.)

Between nature's stimulus and our reasoned response in the sacred moment of now is our opportunity to be spiritual beings wholly beyond the forces of evolution. That's what Eckhart Tolle discusses in The Power of Now. Between all that evolutionary, historical garbage pulling on us, pre-conditioning our instincts and trying to get us to attack the guy who cut us off in traffic, is a peaceful, spiritual orientation calling us towards our true, absolute nature—wholly calm, fully at peace, and beyond relativistic, violent causes and effects of any kind.

Our loving response in the moment of now provides proof to ourselves that we are far, far more than the spirits in tacky animal skins we are pretending to be.

Evolution is calling us to a predictable, violent movie. It is an invitation to participate as actor number 10,307,216,212 in a cheesy slasher flick where a bunch of stuff happens then everybody dies. 

And just maybe from our deaths, the extremely slow, extremely incompetent screenwriter called evolution will make some humans suffer just slightly less 400,000 years from now, that is, if a whole new list of maladies doesn't jump up to confront them.

Yeah, right.

The study of evolution is the study of longitudinally drawn-out incompetence. It is to ignore what is actually happening to humans right now, by scientifically glorifying the march to death with a ridiculous belief maybe things will be better at some point in the future.

Nature has caused humanity incessant suffering since the moment we hopped down from the trees with our sparkly new opposable thumbs. On what basis would we make the determination it will treat us to anything but suffering and death in the future?

Accountability is what separates a leader from an observer. We can observe slaughter all day long. But until we step in to stop it, we are not accountable, and we are not leaders. 

Open your eyes, dear science 

The master learns to see, with open, honest eyes, the truth of what is before him. Nature, perceived through the sensory perceptual filters it offers is a killing machine, plain and simple. A system of competition and death changing insignificantly over millions of years.

Forgive it. Bless it. And overcome your attachment to it, which includes endlessly studying its mechanism of suffering and death. Then you can allow God's sacred love to come through it, like a backlight shining through the cracks in an aging movie screen. The slasher flick on the screen does not block the power of God's love coming through nature. Not to the open-eyed sage who seeks the absolute, and only the absolute.

When we accept God's call to move into our higher selves, we free nature from the deadly programming our own minds gave it under the power of our collective ego. It's our story. Our horrible screenwriting. After the universe has been honestly accepted for what it is, then forgiven, it heals before our eyes in the sacred embrace of God's saving grace.

But to lose ourselves in the study of evolution is like the man losing himself in the constructions of a nightmare; a meaningless illusion of suffering and death. A fantasy island floating like a mirage over the true ocean of love all before him. Let that love come through by truly seeing what's before your eyes.

It's time to take the red pill

Ignoring the higher context of healing and salvation, the study of evolution is a myopic appeasement to the killing machine that is spacetime; awe-inspired applause along its wholly predictable parade route to death.

"Ooh, look at how that yak's coat is slightly thicker than yaks' 100,000 years ago. How interesting! Bravo, nature! Bravo! Now be a good boy and trot on to your death, Mr. Yak."

"Oooh, look at how that tree frog is a slightly darker shade of green than its predecessors. How amazing! Bravo, nature! Now, hop along on to your death, little tree frog."

"Ooh, look how wonderfully balanced this parade is! Everybody's dying in just the right amounts to keep it going!"

As Einstein said, the way out of this optical delusion of an individual existence of ours—our animal existence—is to expand our circle of compassion to include all of nature. Observation and compassion are two different things. Josef Mengele made all kinds of observations.

A movie critic watching that evolutionary parade would say, "This is the most predictable bunch of tripe I've ever seen. Costume changes don't make a woefully predictable plot line more interesting."

Evolution doesn't prove God exists, nor disprove God exists.

It is a single shred of programming discovered inside a non-commutative matrix that kills everyone inside of it. Take the red pill, Nemo, and wake up.

We examined in question #6 that God is love, and love is an internal, subjective experience. Only the one in love can prove that love exists. Only the one in love can prove the value or worth of that love. And only the one in love can verify that experience exists "inside" themselves by voluntarily identifying with it and saying, "I am in love."

In this  question we'll examine what "in" the "network" of love really means.

We can see how easy it would be for someone who is actually in love to deny the very existence of that love. Since it's an inner, subjective experience they hold all the cards in proving that love exists. Only they can determine the value of that love and voluntarily identify with it by saying, "I am in love.'

Love is a network phenomena

Love is, to use a computer term, a "network phenomena"—like the internet. It takes at least two to be "in" love. So, what if God were the self-evident, inner experience of love? A self-evident truth? Jesus says, "The kingdom is within you." Countless mystics talk about the truth of God being within you.

Let's assume for now that's how God and ultimate reality is; a wholly connected network phenomena. The Love Internet, so to speak.

The Buddha would have dug the Internet

The Buddhists would say, that ultimate reality is the unalterable interconnectedness of the part and the whole. This is part of the principle of dependent origination detailed by the Dalai Lama in his book, The Universe in a Single Atom:

...there is mutual dependence between parts and the whole; without a whole it makes no sense to speak of parts...anything that exists and has an identity does so only within the total network of everything that has a possible or potential relation to it. No phenomena exists with an independent or intrinsic identity.

Similarly, in the Internet it makes no sense to talk of the whole (the Internet) without the parts (Web sites). The whole Internet does not exist if there are no Web sites; conversely Web sites don't exist if there is no larger whole (the Internet) connecting them. 

A Course in Miracles says it makes no sense to talk of a Father without a son; nor a son without a father. By definition, a father can't be a father unless he has a child. Nor can a child be a child unless he has a parent.

Un-inventing the Internet with un-Al Gore: The Spam Filter From Hell

So, we can see from our definitions here that the Internet literally cannot exist—at all—without its "whole" aspect (its total interconnectivity) and its part aspect—its individual Web sites.

How does the Spam Filter from Hell "uninvent" or blot-out the existence of the Internet? All it has to do is vacillate between blocking either aspect of the Internet.

First it can block me from experiencing the whole aspect by denying me the ability to experience the totality of the Web that's out there. I would lose the "infinite" aspect of the Web's existence. Every time I tried to connect to the Internet, it would simply have to block, limit, frustrate or confuse that total experience. It could deny me access. When I went to another site that really existed, my Spam Filter from Hell could pop up false 404 Error messages. It could kick me off the Internet every time I made an actual connection to another site by crashing my browser. It could re-route me to the same Web site despite me entering all kinds of different Web addresses. The list of tricks could go on and on.

Similarly it could block the part aspect as well. Every time a connection was made and returned to my computer, it would make my screen go black. It could Spam-filter the content completely so nothing got through. It could garble the language or the graphics that were returned from all those Web sites so that they were indecipherable. It could leave my global, whole connection going all day long and simply skew, distort, erase, or mess up the information that infinite connection returned to me. 

Or like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, it could morph or alter the real characters (like she did to her loved ones at home inside her dream) of these Web sites by dressing them up in evil, frightening or sinister perceptions. So all day long their harmless, benevolent content would be returned to me as dark, sinister attempts to harm me. It could keep a known list of things that frightened me as a "cookie" on my hard drive, then simply alter all incoming content with those known psychological triggers to produce fear in my mind despite their true innocence. Then I would simply ignore them or shunt them aside mentally.

We'll call that the Fear Cookie and investigate it more later.

This is exactly how the ego keeps you separate from God and your brothers and sisters. Their communication of love is coming at you continuously, all day, every day. The triggers that twist and morph that love are kept in your subconscious mind, hidden from your view. What you perceive as hate and attack on you is simply their morphed love dressed up in your unconscious guilt and hate. As we saw in question #6, any loving act can be interpreted as an obvious attempt at manipulation or evil. That's what a relative universe allows.

There, see, the Internet doesn't exist

If I had someone over to my house, I could show them that this Internet thing doesn't exist at all. "If it exists, then hop on my computer and prove it," I could say. And when they did, my Spam Filter from Hell would do its thing, mercilessly, relentlessly distorting, skewing, and blocking the Internet.

That's a variation on the Skinny Tree, as we've discussed:

To block the existence of any totality from your awareness, you create an artifically limiting set of parameters from whatever relative vantage point you wish (science, for example), then, using only those parameters as acceptable evidence of actual existence, block out any totality you wish by simply insisting that everyone else views that totality through your rediculously narrow paradigm.

Do humans do this? From our earliest days. From inside a fort we built as young boys, I can remember hanging a sign on the door that said "No girls allowed." If we wanted to, we could have insisted girls didn't exist from inside the relative framework of our fort. 

How this applies to why God hasn't shown Himself

From the teachings of the Buddhists we can see ultimate reality is an experience of the part and the whole together as one. That's the idea of dependent origination. It takes both part and whole for a network phenomena to exist and for us to experience it as real. Period. Block one or the other from your awareness and you "eliminate" the existence of both.

Understand this trick, and how the physical universe is wired to do just that, and you're on your way to seeing how the universe attempts to block the existence of God from our awareness.

We need to pull a perceptual 180 to see the truth

So, in order to understand why God doesn't show Himself to us, we need to do a 180° in our understanding and consider that perhaps God is showing Himself to us, maybe even continuously, and we are the ones doing the filtering. God isn't hiding; we're blocking. Einstein said, "God is subtle, but he is not malicious."

What some contemporary atheist authors fail to investigate rigorously enough is that we all could very well be existing behind a perceptual filter blotting out our awareness of the exsistence of God: The Spam Filter from Hell.

If God is love, and love is a network phenomena between two or more beings, then all the Spam Filter from Hell has to do is blot out, twist or distort either the intimate (personal) aspect of our relationship to God or our awareness of the infinite (totality) of our interconnection to all things.

Is there evidence of this happening in nature? YES!

Divorcing the part from the whole is exactly what nature tries to do. Look no further than the divorce between quantum mechanics and relativity, which clearly shows that the part aspect of nature, it's point-like, standalone, "quanta" aspect, is divorced perceptually from its continuous, connected "relativistic" aspect. We'll get more into these ideas later.

Jung shows us the programming of the Spam Filter from Hell

Is there evidence some sort of unconscious, pre-cognitive filtration parameters could literally pre-screen everything we perceive in this universe, and could somehow be stored in a collectively accessible location—almost like a firewall on a collective computer server? Yes, indeed. They're called archetypes and they are stored in our collective unconscious, as Carl Jung explored in his lifetime of work.

I encourage you to read Pauli and Jung: The Meeting of Two Great Minds by David Lindorff. He shows how Jung's idea of archetypes paralleled constructions of spacetime and were explored jointly by Jung and the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli. In Introducing Jung, authors Maggie Hyde and Michael McGuiness indicate Pauli had discovered the presence of Jung's archetypes in the theories of mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630).

Lindorff clarifies: "...whereas Kepler attributed the archetypes to the Mind Divine, Pauli understood them to originate in the collective unconscious."

And regarding science, "..Pauli...concluded that the rational perspective of science in the twentieth century had gone too far, to the point where it had lost a holistic view of reality...In probing the atom, science had encountered the need to 'relinquish its proud claim to be able to understand, in principle, the whole world.'

So we have, in his day, the theoretical heir-apparent to Einstein (Pauli), arguing that pre-conditioned patterning (perceptual filters) exist in Jung's model of the collective unconscious, and that these pre-cognition filters have a parallel in the construction of spacetime, the latter idea dating back as far as the work of Kepler in the sixteenth century.

According to Hyde and McGuiness, Jung taught archetypes were "inborn forms of intuition" that "determine our mode of apprehension" and are "collective because they are concerned with universal, inherited contents beyond the personal and the individual and they correlate with each other." So, we all have these filters, we're all born with them and they literally determine our mode of apprehension.

Strong evidence of universal perceptual filtration in quantum mechanics

Look no further than quantum mechanics to see that the actual reality of the universe is radical connection—a networked phenomena—but our mental perception of it—aided by the filtration mechanism of our human senses—shows a universe that's disconnected and includes all kinds of standalone objects—stars, planets, rocks, bodies, etc.

Frijof Capra in The Tao of Physics:

As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated 'basic building blocks,' but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole.

[and]

In modern physics the universe is thus experienced as a dynamic, inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way. In this experience, the traditional concepts of space and time, of isolated objects, and of cause and effect, lose their meaning. Such an experience, however, is very similar to that of the Eastern mystics. The similarity becomes apparent in quantum and relativity theory, and becomes even stronger in the 'quantum-relativistic' models of subatomic physics where both these theories combine to produce the most striking parallels to Eastern mysticism.

Everything around us has a connection to the whole and a standalone essence

Like our discussion of the Internet requiring both a "whole" (connectivity) and a "part" (Web sites) to literally exist, physicists have discovered that everything around us has both a connection to a larger whole and a standalone, individual existence. They don't call this "the Internet" and "Web sites" they call the connected part of individual matter its "wave function" and its standalone reality its "particle function."

What quantum mechanics discovered is that no matter how separate, or alone or isolated matter in the universe looks to us—indivudal rocks or trees or even people—everything has both a wave function connecting it to the larger whole of the universe, and a particle function making it distinct from that whole.

We are lost drops from the Ocean of God's love

Ken Wilber says the mystical explanation of how we got into this universe of suffering is that we were once "parts" of the totality of God's love—like drops of water in the ocean—but identified too strongly with our "drop" aspect and lost our "ocean" aspect. In short, we became so attached to our "Web site" aspect, that we became horrified of our "Internet" aspect, even though it was completely natural and built-in.

Fritjof Capra again:

...the Eastern image of the Divine is not that of a ruler who directs the world of above, but of a principle that controls everything from within."

That could be said exactly of a Web page the Internet. The "principle" that makes a Web page a Web page has to exist inside the Web page; the protocols to connect it to the Internet have to be coded right into it. 

God's laws exist inside you, literally connecting you to the Love Internet

Similarly the real you—your Self, Soul or Spirit—does not exist in absolute reality without a "networked" component—a link to the whole. There is no such thing as a standalone you. It's a fantasy; an illusion. Einstein called our individual identity an "optical delusion of our consciousness." Like a Web page totally connected to the Internet pretending it has a standalone existence.

You were created with a network connection to God's Love Internet built right in; a connection that absolutely, without exception, cannot be severed at any time, in any place, in any way, no matter how good you are at building Spam Filters from Hell. 

Seeing your way through the Spam Filter from Hell

Once you get this whole/part seamless integration thing, you can see how so much of spacetime is set up to block or filter that understanding.

Quantum mechanics clearly reveals that our perception screens out the "wave function" or "connected aspect" of isolated objects. 

This built in combination of "standalone" and "interconnected" aspect of matter is called the wave-particle duality. Or the wave-particle complementarity (see the Wiki article on complementarity (physics).

For us to ignore or screen-out the wave (interconnected) aspect of any standalone object would be to "obliterate" the truth of that object, a physicist would tell us. Yet our perception does just that; wholly missing the truth of the object by blocking out its wave function from our perception. We look at a rock and don't see at all that it the tiny sub-atomic "particles" that make it up have a wave-function connected to everything else in the universe—but it does.

Look no further than the allegory of Plato's cave—quoted again and again by contemporary physicists—to see this great philosopher clearly believed our perception was "chained" to look only into the isolating physical world, missing a whole level of primary, deeper truth behind it.

The human nervous system is one big filtration mechanism. Here's Sam Harris in The End of Faith:

The claims of mystics are neurologically quite astute. No human being has ever experienced an objective world, or even a world at all. You are, at this moment, having a visionary experience. The world that you see and hear is nothing more than a modification of your consciousness, the physical status of which remains a mystery...

We really are such stuff as dreams are made of. Our waking and dreaming brains are engaged in substantially the same activity; it is just that while dreaming, our brains are far less constrained by sensory information or by the fact-checkers who appear to live somewhere in our frontal lobes. This is not to say that sensory experience offers us no indication of reality at large; it is merely that, as a matter of experience, nothing arises in consciousness that has not first been structured, edited or amplified by the nervous system...

For every neuron that receives its input from the outside world, there are ten to a hundred others that do not. The brain is therefore talking mostly to itself, and no information from the world (with the exception of olfaction) runs directly from a sensory receptor to the cortex, where the contents of consciousness appear to be sequestered...Your brain is tuned to deliver the vision of the world that you are having at this moment. At the heart of most spiritual traditions lurks the entirely valid claim that it can be tuned differently."

Your senses are reliable inputs? 

We say things like, "I'll believe it when I see it with my own two eyes." But our eyes show us only 1/100,000 of the total sea of electromagnetic energy spectrum (visible light, x-rays, etc) that literally surrounds us. We are literally swimming in a sea of electromagnetic energy flowing all around us—literally through the noses on our face.

Yet if that spectrum of energy were a 1,000 story office building, our eyes would show us just 1/100th of one floor! That's your measure of absolute reliability?

If a witness in court said, "Your honor, I saw the whole thing. My own eyes detected 1/100,000 of the accident scene" that judge wouldn't be able to keep his judicial decorum: he would wet himself laughing.

We're on Fantasy Island behind the Spam Filter from Hell

Again, it comes back to C.W. Lewis assertion that the door to hell is locked from the inside. We are like little kids holding the door shut in a dark closet loudly screaming out, "Why doesn't the light exist!" It's our filters doing the blocking, not God refusing to show Himself.

Is there evidence our senses screen-out the "network" or "interconnected reality" of the universe around us. Quantum mechanics offers a resouding YES!!!

Is our mind connected to that universe in some way? Nobelist and physicist Wolfgang Pauli—and psychologist Carl Jung should out a big, fat YES!! 

Do pre-screening Spam Filters from Hell exist in our collective unconscious, pre-filtering everything in the universe around us? Jung shouts out an emphatic YES!!!

So could it be, that discovering God requires approaching Him with love, not skepticism? Just as to "see" or "perceive" the internet one would have to turn off all Internet-blocking Spam filters and draw out your awareness from behind our perceptual firewall? YES!

In any networked relationship which depends on a part and whole to experience the truth, or actuality or existence of that relationship, you must volutnarily agree to experience both part and whole, and to identify with them with seamless, effortless courage and without fear. 

The same courage it takes to experience a self-evident idea like love or freedom, or an absolute universe like Heaven. 

To discover the networked reality that is God's existence, you must be open to approaching him with love. Just as to discover the reality of your child, or a loved one, you would have to approach them from love.

Jesus nails it in Matthew 18:3, "And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

Einstein loved the universe like a child and it revealed its secrets to him. Only when you love another do they reveal their truth to you.

No love, no truth.

God does reveal Himself to us continuously. We're simply too busy existing away behind our Spam Filter from Hell to experience it.

I love this idea from A Course in Miracles: the Holy Spirit will only talk as loud as you are willing to listen.

Higher intelligence is discovered through diligent listening.

The whole point of Carl Sagan's Contact.

What's so hard about belief?
People often criticise Pascal's Wager with the complaint that he only allows for belief in God or disbelief, whereas I am perfectly capable of believing, for example, that Arsenal will win the premiership, or believing that they won't, or choosing not to hold any belief on the matter at all. Why must we hold an opinion when it comes to belief in God?

Dawkins adds a different complaint, but one that has much the same answer:

"But why in any case do we so readily accept the idea that the one thing that you must do if you want to please God is believe in him? What's so special about believing? Isn't it just as likely that God would reward kindness, or generosity, or humility?" (The God Delusion, pg 131)

This is a good question. What is so special about belief? We are confused about faith these days because the word has been emptied of its content. People tend to say, "You've got to have faith" when despairing of a hopeless situation, by which they actually mean, "The facts say one thing, but believe the opposite," and usually the unspoken, "[because your depression is only going to bring everyone else down too]". One can have 'faith' without any need for an object of those beliefs. Faith like this is much the same as wishful thinking, and why indeed would God value those who can hold thumbs harder than others? Likewise, anyone is able to say, "I believe in God", and yet this is supposed to be the defining characteristic by which God judges mankind?

Dawkins may or may not be pleased to know that this is not remotely Biblical faith. Here's a rare case of scripture agreeing with Dawkins:

"But someone will say, 'You have faith; I have deeds.' Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that — and shudder. You foolish person..." (James 2:18-20)

God doesn't congratulate anyone too hard for wagering on belief in Him. Believing that He exists is all very well, but the faith that God values is more akin to faithfulness and selflessness in a relationship (a marriage, for instance), than some kind of vague assent to His existence. In fact, biblical Greek uses the same word for faith and faithfulness, and 'trust' and 'faith' are nearly synonymous (cf. Ro. 4:5). Being faithful to God requires complete humbling of oneself, renouncing of one's own autonomy, and lifelong devotion and obedience to Him. Much like a marriage again, actually.

Furthermore, faith means a new relationship between God and man, which in turn is incoherent without new relationships between man and man. Therefore, faith is also expressed in self-control and other-person-centeredness, (that is, love). Scripture continues to agree with Dawkins that a faith that is hermetically sealed off from the rest of life is worthless. Love includes the kindness, generosity, and humility that Dawkins thinks valuable, and this demonstrates that faith is genuine:

If I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. (1Corinthians 13:2)

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth. (1John 3:18-19)

Does this kind of faith sound more like a worthy 'entrance requirement'? Belief in God is not a mere opinion. It is a way of life. The qualities that Dawkins offered as better alternatives are not only included within true belief, but also radically surpassed by it. Surely not many who claim to be Christian even aim at such a faith, and even those of us who do are not completely faithful. Without God's grace and forgiveness, none of us would remotely qualify.

So, this kind of faith is bad news for the insincere bet-hedger and for the person who believes 'things they wouldn't believe in Salt Lake City', but likely also for any 'courageous' sceptic would rather keep the autonomy that (s)he appears to have than believe the gospel.

What if we wager on the wrong God?
Dawkins also criticises Pascal's Wager because it assumes one knows which God will be waiting for believers when we get there. What if we wager on the Holy Trinity, but God ends up being Baal or any nasty member of someone else's pantheon?

The best way for me to answer this question is to present reasons why I consider Biblical Christianity to be unique among all other religions and by far the most likely to be genuine.

#1 – The Christian God claims to be personal, involved, Creator and Judge
Dawkins' question seems to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it is nevertheless important enough. If there is a Judgment, then who will be hosting it?

The first thing to point out is that there are few religions for which the question is even relevant. Most polytheistic religions may have vague conception of an ultimate God (there is even a good case that polytheism stems as a corruption from monotheism), but are preoccupied with favourite gods (such as Catholic saints, in some cases) or regional deities (such as Baal) who 'control' whatever forces are most relevant to the worshipper. But these religions are vague on judgment and eternity. Other religions have gods who are not personal (Buddhism) or gods who are not supernatural, but are just a mysterious part of the natural cosmos (such as the Greek gods, pantheism, perhaps animism, and any religions that have personified natural phenomena, such as sun or moon worship).

For all of these, God is either distant, or an impersonal force, or a source of blessing or trouble in this life, but not creator and judge. Wherever this is true, concepts of eternity and judgment are vague, incoherent or irrelevant.

#2 – Christianity makes the best case for Divine revelation
I am of the opinion that God is largely unknowable and unavailable to proofs and experiments. We may gather a sense of God's existence and nature by looking around us, but many people with good eyes still find God's existence doubtful, and this general information about God can tell us nothing about who God is personally, what He expects of us, or where to find Him. In other words, God's special self-revelation is essential to a claim to true religion, or else we are left with complete guesswork rather than credible truth claims (or perhaps worship of an unknowable God, as in some mystical religions, but is this much more than enshrined ignorance?).

Hinduism has the Vedas, but it is a vast body of spiritual writings that Hindus are not expected to read as a unity. They are meditations and thoughts that are said to be spiritually helpful, but (as far as I know) may contradict one another without problem. I stand open to correction, but the Bhagavad-Gita is a portion of the Vedas, claimed as divine by the Krishna Consciousness Movement. I am unable to comment about the credibility of these scriptures, as I am unfamiliar with their history and content.

Buddhism is another splinter movement from Hinduism, but it claims only to be enlightened philosophy rather than divine revelation (Buddhism is in fact atheistic, aiming at extinction from the exhausting cycle of rebirths, rather than unity with any divine force. Folk Buddhism that worships the Buddha is an ironic corruption).

Other scriptures that claim to be revelations from God usually consist in dictations made to one man in private. This is true of Islam and Mormonism, for example. This is not necessarily an argument against the truth of their claims, but consider that the Bible was compiled over about 1500 years and written by many authors, and yet still makes a defensible claim to a unified story without incoherence. The Qu'ran, by comparison, contains claims that the Christian scriptures are true, and yet finds that the Bible repeatedly contradicts what Muhammad taught. Therefore, Muslims argue that the Bible is corrupt, but given that the Bible is almost seven centuries older, the textual evidence is overwhelmingly against them. The Qu'ran also seemingly claims that the Christians think that Trinity is Father, Son and Mother Mary ("Allah will say: 'O Jesus, son of Mary, Did you ever say to the people, 'worship me and my mother as gods beside Allah?''"), which is problematic. Finally, although Muhammad allegedly received the Qu'ran by dictation, some verses were retracted on the grounds that Satan had deceived him. But if Satan deceived him once, on what grounds can we know that the other dictation was certainly from the good source? These problems are not popular conversation starters with Muslims, as Salman Rushdie found out, but surely there are answers to them if Islam is true?

Of those religions that have scriptures, the Judeo-Christian scriptures are most credible due to their writing and compilation in more than one language, from more than one culture, and over so long a period. This is significant because there is consistency of theology and plot that is unmatched even by those works from a single author.

#3 – Christianity is uniquely moored in history
In The God Delusion, Dawkins claims that the existence of God is (at least in principle) a scientific question, because the virgin birth, resurrection and other key facts were empirical and scientifically testable. How right he is to say this is unimportant for now. It's interesting though that his comment is true almost exclusively of Christianity. No other religion that I know of claims to stand or fall on its own historicity.

Most religions are philosophical and ethical systems, but not historical. The incarnations of the gods in figures such as Hercules are told in poems and stories, but no one knows when these figures were supposed to have lived. The gods of fertility cults have 'resurrections' that signify the death and rebirth of seed, but those resurrections weren't observed by witnesses.

Christianity is completely different. The gospel events were preached in Jerusalem during Pentecost, seven weeks after the death of Jesus. That preaching presupposed that the historical events were common knowledge. The virgin who bore Jesus was available for comment when the gospels were written. The resurrection appearances were witnessed on many separate occasions, once by a sceptic who insisted on seeing and touching, once by more than 500 people, most of whom were still alive when the gospel was distributed in written form. Three of the gospels were written by disciples (if you agree that Mark ghost-wrote Peter's story), and the other by Luke who researched and gathered witness accounts. Not only does the Christian gospel claim to be historical, but it claims to be nonsense if it's not historical, and even invited sceptics to investigate for themselves.

"And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men." (1Corinthians 15:17-19, c. AD 48)

#4 – Christianity teaches a worldview that has broad power to explain
This is a minor point, and of course every worldview will necessarily have unknowns. However, if we were to judge belief systems simply according to their ability to make human experience coherent, Christianity would score highly. Perhaps stating the case against other hugely successful worldviews will make my point clearer.

Mysticism gives a high place to one's divine mind or life force. Because much in life is cyclical, and much in life is evil, material existence is viewed as an ever-repeating trap from which one's spirit must escape. Although it is internally consistent, mysticism is forced to treat some of life's realest experiences, such as the good and the value in the material world and the goodness of our individuality, as illusions.

Although not a religion, philosophical naturalism, which enshrines science and reason, and which has enormous explanatory power over the natural world, is forced to treat morality and meaning as subjective, which nearly empties such concepts of meaning (as is demonstrated in the subsequent birth of nihilism). If CS Lewis in Miracles is correct, a genuine explanation for the ability of our reason to see truths is also lacking.

Christianity is able to find a place for good and evil, for spirit and matter, for our origins and our end, for our problem and our cure, for eternal and temporal purpose, and for universal ideals in ethics etc.

An important by-product of the Christian worldview is freedom. Finding a balance between the liberty of the individual and the liberty of society, between pleasures and responsibilities, and between denial and indulgence is difficult. Complete libertarianism fails to avoid slavery to pleasure without fulfilment, and slavery of society to the freedoms of individuals. Legalist societies, such as Sharia Islam, so easily force-fit individuals into unhappy moulds, and into slavery to endless empty codes. Biblical Christianity is perhaps the most successful in promoting equality, yet social order; personal pleasures as well as self-control; and joy without naïveté.

#5 – Salvation by grace
Finally and most importantly, Christianity is unique in its teaching on salvation. Every religion in the world conceives of humanity as lacking something in regard to our relationship with the divine (if we were not in need of reconciliation, there would be no need of religion to facilitate that relationship, as is so in atheism). Every religion in the world, but for one, regards the disruption in relationship between God and man to be a gap that is bridgeable by human effort. Our offences are minor enough that if we jump to god's tune and do more good than bad. Our pleasing deeds will offset our displeasing ones when god weighs them up (allow for tweaks in terminology between religions).

Biblical Christianity has a very different view of the human problem. Our misdeeds are offences against the perfect creator, and so our attempts at offsetting the damage are hopelessly inadequate. My favourite illustration of this is adultery. Imagine that our sins are to a perfect God like adultery is to a marriage. If you've slept with the neighbour, it's no good attempting to placate your spouse by making the bed. A destroyed relationship is not fixed by doing a petty chore or two.

In the light of human helplessness to achieve reconciliation in a relationship that we've smashed without provocation, the gospel offers grace. Because of who God is, and not because of who we are, God has made a way for us to be reconciled to Him entirely free. There is no human effort that could achieve reconciliation, and so God has done what was needed and given it to us as a gift without human effort. Of course one is expected to live in that relationship as we did before we destroyed it, but, unlike every other religion in the world, there is no concept in Christianity of earning favour with God.

This is what discredits every other religion the most in my eyes. Just as every criminal believes he's more or less innocent, or himself some kind of victim, so also we naturally believe that we're not so bad, and that God has no right to be especially angry with us. In fact, we'll have a word or two with Him if we ever have to meet up. Every religion except one has more or less this kind of view of humanity built in. The fact that human 'goodness' can offset our badness is unequivocal testimony to this. Furthermore, every religion except one makes humanity into the hero of the whole story of history. God is more or less a bystander, now upset that we're being bad, now inordinately delighted that we're spinning that prayer wheel or tying bright strings around our ankles. Mankind is doing the business. It's exactly the kind of story we'd write, but bears none of the marks of Divine authorship. Humans are doing pretty well, doing the fighting; God can be pacified with trinkets.

Christianity, by contrast, points out that there's nothing significant that separates us 'good folk' from the rapist and murderer. Even if we're shiny on the outside, people are dark to the core. We're the ones who are helpless to effect any real change. God is the one who takes centre stage to restore something that He didn't break, He acts despite the fact that we didn't ask Him to, and generally aren't grateful that He did. And to cap it off, accepting this gift means the total death of human pride and human autonomy; two of our most prized possessions. What person would make this kind of story up? Well, no other religion has