You might find prayer rather silly. I find meditation rather silly. We both might agree that taking a pilgrimage to a rock where someone once had a vision of God was rather silly.

But clearly some people find prayer edifying, others find value in meditation and others in pilgrimage. Why?

I watch some sports, like soccer, and it just seems rather daft. I watch a good baseball game, and I am transported by it. Why?

I’ve been thinking about why some experiences are meaningful and ‘deep’ and others trivial and ‘shallow’. There may be many answers, but I’m pretty sure one of the most important is investment. We find experiences to be edifying if we invest in them: if we give ourselves over to them without cynicism.

I still pray from time to time. Not to anything. Prayer is not an transitive verb for me (like singing, I only do it for and to myself). Sometimes it is good, sometimes not. When it isn’t good, that’s because I catch myself doing it and my cynical brain decides it wants a debate.

Cynicism is the opposite of investment when it comes to these things: at least for me.

Investment is about choice. Lack of cynicism is about choice. I realize I can choose to engage with anything and find it deep. I could choose to invest uncynically in prayer, or the laying on of hands; in a tea ceremony or a shabbat meal. And it would be meaningful.

But!

I have other reasons for not participating in some things. I won’t join in Communion if I go to a church. Not because I couldn’t choose to invest in it and make it meaningful. But because doing so would be deceitful: I would be adopting an identity that I don’t want. I wouldn’t take part in a Peyote ritual, because I don’t do drugs. I have political and credal objections to a lot of the spiritual practice of organized religions. But yet, the mental states associated with them I would like to experience from time to time.

So over the last year or so I’ve been looking for things that I can do. Things that I find morally neutral, but open to investment, and capable of inducing the same experience of transcendence (by which I only mean the sensation of loosing one’s sense of self or self-importance). Its been hard, but there are a few that work well (the list is personal, YMMV).

Listening to noise – I started listening to modern classical, particularly highly minimal pieces. I mean really listening. As an act of investment. But I wanted the sound to be always less structured, so I turned to noise. I mix my own concoctions with a blend of broad-spectrum noise, low frequency hum and static. Sometimes now I find myself fantasizing about the sound of noise and the effect it induces.

Studying Kōans – I solve tricky problems for a living. There is something quite moving about committing to something with an inherent contradiction. Here the dividing line between investment and cynicism is stark. When I first heard about Kōans such as “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” I thought them silly. But investing in them really does induce a different state of mind and a different perspective. Sometimes this just doesn’t work, because my cynical brain won’t be quiet.

Gratitude – Not to anyone (though I am grateful to plenty of people), but spending time investing in being grateful. In deliberately focusing on those things and people that enrich, challenge and protect me. In dedicating time to teasing it out from the shadows of my selfishness.

Mazes, Labyrinths and Shapes – Tracing shapes and symbols I find a really efficient anchoring system. Shapes and paths can suck up meaning, if you invest it. I made a conscious choice to give certain shapes certain meanings. A silly conceit, no doubt. But they repay that investment, because those shapes are everywhere.

These ad-hoc practices, combined with our recent family trauma, prompted me to try something new and a little more structured. Or at least it prompted me to have the courage to suggest it to my wife, who encouraged me to do something about it. It is done, and I’ll share what that is in a couple of days.

In the meantime, for those of you who are post-religious here, or maybe post-theistic but still in a faith community: do you have similar activities you invest in so that you induce the same kinds of mental states that religion used to provide for you?

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor’s boots, nor does he give a moment’s consideration to Bellini’s masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor’s Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor’s raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk. Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.

It was designed to counter those ‘sophisticated theologians’ who criticized New Atheism’s arguments as simplistic and who encouraged Dawkins et al to read and engage with modern theological treatises.

When I first read it I was impressed, but I’ve been hearing it a lot lately, and not from Atheists.

It is, at heart, an argument of anti-intellectualism. It says that for field X there is a direct way of accessing the truth and therefore one can come to the secure conclusion that any academic or scholarly work in that field is wrong without having to consider it on its own merits. Put another way, if you have good reason to believe you know the truth, than you don’t need to look at the evidence.

Which other groups make the same kind of claims? Lots, as it happens. Geocentrists, holocaust denialists, mythicists, and, darling of my debating life: Creationists. And the latter (who I have most exposure to) have begun to quote it to me. When I suggest that they find out about genetics, or learn about radiometric dating techniques. And this week it was quoted by name:

Look up the Courtiers Reply by your beloved PZMeyers [sic] — I don’t need to go to school for ten years in biology to know its all a lot of rubbish — cats don’t turn into dogs — the emperor has no clothes.

I have studied, and continue to study theology. I believe there is no God (for the most common definitions of God). I think those very few theologians who claim their work shows otherwise are wrong, and I can generally say where their reasoning is specious. But such rejections cannot be made on the basis of Emperor’s New Clothes type thinking.

I wince hard when New (or Gnu) Atheists make theological statements the equivalent of “cat’s don’t turn into dogs” and then, when they are corrected hide behind this kind of response: ‘first show me why your field is valid, then I’ll listen to anything you have to say’. Especially when this is most often correlated with communities of non-believers who are more likely to claim they understand religions better than their believers.

And this is why: it is the exact same arrogant anti-intellectualism that endangers good science.

The Books of the Protestant Bible, To Scale - The books are color-coded based on their traditional Christian classification. Note that this does not reflect the ways Jews would classify the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament).

The design of the books, incidentally, is based on the O’Reilly books: the iconic programmers books. The size of the book is such that the volume of the book (pages x page area) corresponds to the size of the biblical book, except for very small books, where the binding would be too small to support the title. Of course, you can’t see the depth of the books in this view, so there’s a dimension you are missing, but hey — its close enough for government work. That the titles of some books are unreadable is not unintentional – there are better versions of this image to work from if you’re trying to learn the books!

You may use this image under a Creative Commons Attribution License, 3.0, US. The attribution I require is leaving the ’2012 irrco.org’) message intact somewhere on the image.

Sabio is responding to someone who is claiming that one can challenge the religious right’s use of Jesus by appealing to the Jesus of the New Testament. He rightly says that there is no ‘Jesus of the New Testament’ – there are many of them. And he is right to say that the historical Jesus (the facts about Jesus we can be reasonably confident in as historians) are very few indeed.

I’ve been banging the drum for a better public understanding of the diversity of content in the bible for some time. So this is right up my alley.

But it strikes me that the two arguments pass in the night. It is both true that there is a diversity of concepts of Jesus in the NT, that the historical Jesus (HJ) is very minimal, and that one can argue that the religious right have Jesus all wrong. And I think the route of the mismatch is in understanding that the historical Jesus is not the same as the consensus Jesus of the NT. The gospel writers do agree on quite a lot about who Jesus was, what was important to him, and what he did. Historically much of this is dubious, a lot of it downright absurd, but that’s beside the point, I think. If you grant that the bible is authoritative in some sense, then even though you acknowledge its diversity, you can ask of it: does it have a consensus on this issue? And if it does, then one would presumably want to be able to mobilise that consensus as clear teaching from that authority.

This weekend was the first stage, hopefully, in coming to terms. We attended the funeral, which was excellent. Very positive, very celebratory. It was highly, highly Christian. And everyone, I think, appreciated that it reflected the character of her very strong and frank faith quite authentically. I certainly did, and would not have wanted it any other way.

So, for the few of you who know me or our family, be assured this is not critical.

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But this is a blog about religion and the bible, and the way life is complex and right and full of compromises.

There are, broadly speaking, two sets of stories about what happens when you die in the Christianity I’m familiar with.

The first is the ‘heaven’ story: when you die you go to heaven to live – you get given your own mansion in heaven, you meet all those who’ve died before you, you get to finally meet God face to face, and you can ‘look down’ in appreciation on those left behind: watching over the family members who try to honor your memory.

The second is the ‘sleep’ story: when you die your body goes back to the earth, and there you lie, your soul at rest. At some point in the future, Jesus will return to the earth, and the dead will rise again from the earth with new bodies. God will create a new heaven and a new earth, and will come down and make his permanent home on the new Earth in a great city (the new Jerusalem) with the believers.

Both these threads are there in the NT, to a greater or lesser extent. The second is perhaps nearer to the theology of Paul, say, and the first to the writer of Revelation*.

What was interesting about this weekend, was the way the family and church had completely opted for the first story. That was the model which guided all discussion and all the messages preached at the services. But the bible verses quoted were specifically those of the second. So we had the famous 1 Thess 4 reading, surely the epitome of sleep-story references, immediately followed by the pastor saying (I paraphrase) – “yes, as the reading says, X is now in heaven with Jesus”.

Now, don’t get me wrong, a harrowing situation like this is *not* the time to be worried about consistency in theology. If religion has any use it is in times like this, when the *effect* of the words are far more important than their logic. But I did find it interesting and curious.

I wondered to my wife beforehand which story they’d go with, being a family that is quite evangelical (and conservative evangelicalism is the context I’ve come across the second story in, the first is much more culturally common here). The little corner of my brain still engaged as a biblical geek (which, it must be said, was a tiny fraction that day), found it an interesting compromise.

At some point, I think it would be interesting to think and write something about religion and rites of passage, particularly in how we deal with death. But now’s not the right time, now’s the time to comment briefly and focus on rebuilding our family.

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* For clarity: I don’t mean to suggest either story is a fair portrayal of Paul or John’s theology of death, or that either is a ‘good’ exegetical story at all. Just that, if you wanted to quote-mine the NT for support, you would probably want to start in Paul for the sleep story and Revelation (or the gospels) for the heaven story.

The con I fell for was a short con. It was started and ended in one ten minute period. I went into a store to buy one product, and was sold an essentially worthless one at twice the price of the good one. When people talk about cons they talk about victims ‘falling for’ them, or being ‘gullible’. My experience was that something altogether different was going on.

The con started when the person I was talking to threw me. I had a degree of nervousness about buying the product (since I hadn’t before), but I’d read *lots* about it. He immediately started by telling me I’d misunderstood (very pleasantly, and with the air of trying to help). This tripped a mental state in me where I felt confused, a state he then filled by talking to me. As this was happening, I was aware that I was detached, something wasn’t quite right, but I couldn’t focus on anything particular.

What particularly impressed me about those ten minutes was that my lie-detection circuitry was completely disabled. I don’t mean that I was taken in by lies I that I could have been more skeptical about: I mean that the guy was saying things that were blatantly untrue to me, and I understood they weren’t true, but that didn’t feel odd. For example, at one point he pointed to a completely blank wall behind the counter and told me to look at all the postcards from satisfied customers they’d received. Another example, he turned over the product and pointed to the number below the barcode – the EAN number, and said something like ‘you can see what amazing deals we can do here, check out the RRP’: pointing at a 13 digit number. I remember looking at the number, and recognizing it wasn’t a price, but that didn’t seem odd. I firmly believe he could have called me ‘John’ and told me we were old friends, or told me black was white, and I wouldn’t have noticed he was wrong.

Anyway, I bought the product, and lost a hundred dollars or so. The experience has stayed with me since, not for any hurt for having been swindled, but because that mental state was just so bloody fascinating.

The thing that was most fascinating was the process of realizing, over the period of another hour or two, what had happened; of my brain finally noticing the lies. And wondering how the lie detector could have been so thoroughly switched off.

I didn’t have the same sensation of detachment when I was involved in religion, but I have the same kind of puzzlement looking back. I can’t figure out how I could have possibly believed what I would have claimed to believe. I can’t figure out how I didn’t notice it was all rubbish. It seems so obvious now.

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I’ve read a little on the loathsome world of the ‘pickup artist’: men who manipulate women to take sexual advantage of them. In the little I’ve read it seems that a very similar process is at work. The man starts with a regular flirting exchange (which means the woman is probably a little nervous, but has a good mental grasp of what’s what) then he suddenly insults her, which the woman struggles to assimilate, and then follows up with a full-bandwidth patter where he can say any lie he chooses, and she is unlikely to notice. Until finally he claims that he is going to be totally worth sleeping with and she acquiesces, despite knowing full well he is a total shit.

Any other examples of the same process?

My wife counted the children there. There were ten boys for every girl.

Is that because parents don’t think to take their girls to do science? Or is it because girls would rather do something else with their activity days?

Either way, if you care about gender issues in science (and I do), it is a depressing omen for the future.

“Is that which is Good, Good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is Good?”

It is a dilemma which originating in a work by Plato, where Socrates poses the question to Euthyphro (although about ‘gods’ plural rather than my monotheistic restating above). The wikipedia article does a good job (as usual) giving a general overview, so I won’t cover the history. It has come up a couple of times recently, particularly in the cross-blog discussion that I found via this post of Sabio’s, which in turn traces its genesis from this post of right-wing fundagelical John Barron.

It is a topic I find fascinating (I’ve stated previously on here, that although I’m interested in philosophy, I claim no great knowledge or understanding of its minutiae). But it normally occurs in debate in a slightly different form, better expressed as this:

“Is God good by definition, or can he be recognized as good by his actions?”

In other words, when discussing God’s morality (or lack of it), are we dealing with an a priori result? Or one that is grounded in evidence?

The horns of this dilemma map nicely onto Euthyphro but have slightly different force, and are more particularly suited to the kinds of debate I find myself involved with, between believers and atheists. If God is good by definition, then he could do anything (such as genocide, say) and that would be, by definition, good. And Christians cannot reasonably claim to have found that God is good or experienced his goodness (or if they do it is no more meaningful than claiming to find or experience that a tree has tree-ness). Or can we judge God’s morality by some consensus standard, and determine if the God of the bible is good or not? If so where does that standard come from?

In my offline life I’ve mostly found folks who believe God can be recognized as good, and who claim to have been constantly discovering the goodness of God in their lives. Online I’ve found more people who claim God could do anything and we could not judge its moral worth, that God’s actions are beyond of any human moral judgements.

If you’re a believer, where do you land in the dilemma? If you’re not, which side do the believers you interact with tend to cluster?

The top post is The G Spot and Jesus (shows what people search google for), with Peter: Feed my Sheep coming in a close second. But there are larger numbers of folks coming by the front page too, and larger numbers on all posts.

I had assumed there were fewer people because the comment life of the blog dropped right off. Comments are why I blog, and that’s why they are at the top of the right-hand column above ‘latest posts’. So if you are stopping by and weren’t a regular back in 2010, please add a comment to wherever you feel is interesting. I’d love to chat.

2011 has been very tough with a new work project. I’ve always hoped to get back to blogging more regularly, because I loved the interaction with the commenters here. I hope to do that in 2012, and have the opportunity to do some more of the expositional biblical stuff that was the meat of the site.

Remember a few years ago the furore about “The Bible Code”? If you don’t, then here’s a precis. If you arrange the letters of the bible as a sequence, and then search through the letters, you find embedded messages. The messages are embedded using ‘skips’ (a method of code embedding that is quite genuine). So if you have a skip, say, of 10, then you start at a particular letter, and take each tenth letter. These letters form a short message: a name, maybe, or an event. “The Bible Code” was the popular book based on some previous work that had found these kind of letter-skip messages in the bible – messages that predicted the future – The assassination of Rabin, for example. More recently the 9/11 attacks.

This was concrete proof that the bible was a) written by God and b) unique.

But the Bible isn’t the only set of symbols, or code, that was written by God.

So I had an idea. Perhaps one of the most important in human history.

Take the human genome – its data is published online. As you may know, each triple of ‘letters’ in the genome codes for an amino acid which are assembled into the proteins that make every cell in our body function. You might not know those amino acids also have letters (not all letters: ACDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTUVWY – though the remaining BJXZ do have meaning in these sequences so could be interpreted if needed). So if you interpret the the human genome as its amino acid building blocks, you get a vast sequence of letters (three sequences, actually, depending on where you start).

Running this through a custom search algorithm I have developed, I found that God has left even more amazing messages here: in the very DNA of the beings he created in his image. I don’t have time to do all of this, because I have to work my day-job, but I just did a quick test with part of human chromosome 1 and found.

GD MADE ME

Why GD? Well, clearly this is God being very specific. There’s no ambiguity here about which God it could be – only the God of the Jews, the God of the Christians, drops its vowel like that. This is proof beyond doubt that YHWH is responsible for the human genome.

Isn’t that incredible? God’s signature is literally on our DNA, and has been all along, but its only now we’ve developed the technology to read it! With just a few months of studying this (months of time I can’t spare, financially), who knows what else we would find written by God in our genes. Please get in touch if you want to sponsor me to make this amazing scientific effort happen.

Can you imagine how important a discovery this is? These messages have been sitting there, undetected, since creation, waiting for our knowledge to catch up to the point we could read them. We are tantalisingly close to being able to read them in full.

All it needs is your generosity and faith.