The Word is Eternal(ly changing)

The Word of God is eternal.

The Idea of God may be eternal. But the Word is constantly changing, just as language is constantly changing. All ideas, godly or otherwise, must be interpreted by human beings and expressed in words. 

Obviously, translation of an idea from one language to another will change the original meaning of the text. For this reason Muslims accept only the original Arabic transcription of the Qur’an by the Prophet Muhammad as the true text, avoiding many of the misunderstandings that plagued the Christian scriptures over the centuries due translation from Hebrew and Aramaic to Greek and again to vernacular languages. 

But even within the same language, the meaning of each word will change over time. This can be due to anything from technological innovations to the synthesis of clashing cultures, from which come new philosophies, traditions, and practices. 

Some religions—or rather, interpreters of religious scriptures—argue that there is a pure state of their religion that is defiled by the influx of the ideas of outside influences. For example, one religious sect of Christians might insist that followers practice the holy days as God intended, without any pagan or infidel antecedents and innovations, such as costumes on All Hallows’ Eve, or Christmas trees on Christmas. However, all religions in their past and present states were and are the result of the synthesis of merging cultures. Change and  adaptability are core elements of humankind. Of all species for that matter. For if Nature had not intended there to be change and synthesis, we would not have meiosis. We would be single-celled prokaryotes spawning identical copies of ourselves via mitosis.

10 reasons I’m not a good Christian: #10

10. “Joe! Guess what happened while you were out!”

 

Mom gets pregnant before Mom and Dad make sex.

 

That a large portion of the earth’s population has no problem accepting this scenario is frightening. In fact, to suggest another possibility for the Virgin Mary’s predicament is tantamount to an attack upon the whole Christian faith.

 

Grown-ups tell their children this. Religious leaders base their life on it. The story has been handed down by billions of people for two-thousand years.

 

Yet, when this happens in today’s world, we don’t call it Virgin Birth. We call it Jerry Springer.

 

It is centuries too late for a paternity test, and we have no pictures of Mary’s personal trainer. But if she lived today, she’d be booed off the stage and sent back at the trailer park faster than she could cash her immaculate alimony check.

 

Of course divine conception was a lot more common back then.  Plenty of beautiful Roman and Greek girls were inseminated in the forest by virile deities in the centuries before Jesus. Which may be why Constantine his posse didn’t have a hard time believing it.

 

But why would Matthew go to all the trouble of listing all 42 generations of Joseph’s ancestors (who cares is Rehaboam begot Ajibah?) and then say, oh, but they’re not related. 

 

Why didn’t the Gospel of Mark, the first gospel, even mention Virgin Birth? Is it possible the story came out later, as Matthew and Luke attempted to retroactively fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament?

 

I’d just like to hear one preacher say, “Maybe that immaculate impregnation was a bit over the top, the story may have been corrupted by the Romans…adhered to the mores of the day…was required to justify his divinity to the pagans…but is a little hokey in this day and age, and Christianity is strong enough to stand on principles rather than myth.”

 

No, if you don’t believe in the Divine Impregnation, you’re off the team.

 

Period. 

But what has He written lately?

(continued from “God the Author“)

Why has God–once such a prolific author–failed to publish anything worthy of note in the past, say, 1300 years?

Has he lost his touch? Has his sacred printer run out of divine toner? At a typical university God would have lost his tenure ages ago. But in the field of religion, the longer God waits, the more his words are revered.

Perhaps he has given us great works, but penned them under different names, or inspired others, rather than take the credit himself.

Works such as:

The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

The Origin of Species

The Special and General Theories of Relativity

Is it possible he has chosen men such as Newton, Copernicus, Darwin, and Einstein to be his prophets, not because they had cool beards or were willing to off their sons for God, but because of their non-conformist thinking and their untiring search for truth. Perhaps these are values God cherishes.

The End is Near, but always in the future

That Fate been pre-arranged by a deity and that humanity has no impact upon the pre-ordained future…

 

Some religions present a “golden age” of humanity, such as the Garden Eve, a time of near-perfection that humanity should strive for again, and that was lost because of the imperfections or sins of humankind.

More religions present a golden future age of humanity, such as heaven, utopia, or the return of God.

Predicting an imminent future—divination—is commonly associated with religions because the future is unknowable with certainty. Science may deal with the future in terms of theorizing the paths and orbits of celestial bodies, but its predictions must involve evidence and duplicable results, neither of which burden religious divination.

True, the future is determined partially by natural acts, sometimes called “Acts of God” over which humans have little or no control. But acts of humanity also determine the future, and there is no evidence to suggest that there is one unavoidable future timeline of events pre-ordained by an omnipotent deity. Since the future is determined by both humankind and nature, humans should determine the future in which they would like to live (and their progeny to live) and then work to establish that future.

 

Many religions prophesy an “End Time,” during which God will appear to prove disbelievers wrong, and reward believers. However, unless the religion assigns a specific date and time to the End, it is very difficult to prove or disprove. So long as humanity exists, the End Time will be assigned to that amorphous period known as “the future”.

For this reason most religious leaders tend not to assign specific dates to the End Time anymore. However, some religious leaders have done so in the past and continue to do so today, often proclaiming that the End Time is dangerously close to their own time. When humanity passes the said date—the death of the last Apostle, say, in the early days of Christianity, or much later 1000 AD—and the End has not occurred, the past date is scrapped and a new future date is easily prescribed.

God: the Author

“It seems that if our species ever eradicates itself through war, it will not be because it was written in the stars but because it was written in our books.”

- Sam Harris, The End of Faith

In The End of Faith Sam Harris points out that most people in the world believe that God has written a book. “We have the misfortune of having many such books on hand, each making an exclusive claim as to its infallibility.“

This of course has lead to deadly conflicts among the various Book Clubs over the millennia, each proclaiming their own as the #1 book.

Question:
Was the animosity between the clubs as vicious before the written word? When the “book” was a purely verbal medium? Was there something about the permanency of the written word that placed religion in bondage, that made it difficult to change as the club encountered new tribes and new knowledge? Was religion more fluid before it was set in stone, vellum, or papyrus? 

King Ptolemy’s translation of the Torah into Greek in the 4th century BCE was considered a day of mourning for the Jews, equal in sadness to the creation of the Golden Calf. For by translating from the original Hebrew, Ptolemy changed the words of God.

Were the Greeks once livid at Homer for setting down in writing what was supposed to be eternally oral? Did they fear their religion would lose its dynamic power after this? Passages could now be called out. Someone could point to a passage and say, “Really? Does that jibe with what we now know? Or what another tribe has shown us?”

Tellers created life spans for the prophets’ ancestors that lasted centuries, despite never knowing anyone who lived to be over a hundred. If new information came to light to improve our knowledge on the history of sacred events, one could simply update the telling. As more tellers updated the story, the new story would replace the old. There was no permanent record for the average faithful dinosaur to go back to review and say, “This is the way it always was, this is the way it always will be.”

Before the written word, despite opposition, religion could adapt to observation over time. Since the written word, the faithful dinosaurs have asked human observation to adapt to the books.

continued in:

But what has He written lately?

Jesus: the non-conformist

Jesus.

Here was a non-conformist if their ever was one. He took the book that his ancestors had revered for centuries and turned it on its head.

“Let he without sin cast the first stone.”

“Blessed are the peace-makers.”

“Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”

“You have heard that it was said, “Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But…If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.”

“You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

[Then again, he also said, "Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away." But how many one-eyed Christians do you see walking around?]

Leaders and prophets such as Jesus, rather than living in the ancient past, updated the tenants of their people to resonate with a more modern society. He lived in a time when prostitutes were stoned to death. He recognized this as wrong, even if the god-given laws of his time proscribed it. And he did something about it.

If Jesus were alive today…

It’s a question Christians ask all the time. No one has the answer.

Part of Jesus’s power was his unsurpassed ability to incorporate new understanding, new knowledge, and new philosophies into old religious and legal structures

If the prophets and religious leaders from thousands of years ago–whom we admire as the non-conformists of their day–came to our time, would they ignore the scientific discoveries and the technological innovations that have occurred in the past thousands of years? Would they brush aside the tools that allow us to see parts of the universe they never saw? Parts of the human body and human genome? parts of the smallest elements that create our world? The tools that have allowed people in the recent centuries to make judgments and predictions based on information unavailable to the people alive at the time of the prophets?

Or would they shake Creationists awake and say “God gave you this knowledge! Use it!”

The reason for the seasons. The substance that makes up the stars. The discovery of planets. The power of the microscope and telescope. The periodic table. The discovery of fossils. The ability to see bacteria and germs. The carbon-dating of artifacts and bones.

Would these prophets preach that the world was created in six days? That humans have always been shaped exactly as they are? That the earth is the center of the solar system?

Or would they see the power of God within each new discovery. Would they see the terms “God” and “Truth” as interchangeable. The search for one is the search for the other.