November 23, 2018. Mike Enright. "Secular Humanism vs. Fundamental Christianity." Everyone is invited
to discuss their personal philosophy and how it guides their life.
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Oops: Looks like I have to create 2 posts to complete my comments.
ReplyDeleteOh, I do hope I am not mistaken but on Mike Enright’s title page of his presentation he referred to himself humorously as Pastor Mike.
In that humorous spirit I offer this reflection on
"Christian Fundamentalism vs. Humanism"
While listening to Pastor Mike preach upon the benefits of replacing unscientific fundamentalist Christian beliefs with a set of Humanist beliefs better backed by science, I experienced arising in me various thoughts and feelings deserving reflection. The one standing out most I will call feeling ‘left-out.’ But ‘left-out’ of what? I felt ‘left-out’ of Pastor Mike’s picture of a more reasonable world.
I am not a fundamentalist Christian nor Atheist nor do I find myself un-skeptical of the Humanist Manifestos 1, 2 and 3 as written. And, while I appreciate Atheism as a healthy reaction to the unreal, illogical, irrational, superstitious and magical gods of childish belief, I am not willing to dismiss religious mythological stories of God(s) or theology out of hand. That seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water, to me. Though I can’t prove the existence of God – and though I know of no scientific experiment that has proved the non-existence of God – I do keep my mind open and in search for that mysterious something which Lao Tzu, Confucius, Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed, Gandhi, M. L. King, N. Mandela and the Dalai Lama, to name a few, experienced in some way as real. To my mind, those listed are not simply delusional persons trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Unless they were all lying, I take their words and deeds as reasonable attempts to express the depths of their experience. And to the best of my knowledge most – not all – of history’s great philosophers, artists, statesmen, and even scientists found more meaning by not abandoning their wondering yet frustrating search for God. Ah, but now a days, even the simplest and most fundamental Atheist mind has so surpassed the interested minds of people like Socrates, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Michelangelo, Dante, Goethe, Descartes, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, that they need no longer even consider forming an ‘idea’ of God to represent mysteries beyond personal understanding: Obviously, the minds of those persons listed had nothing like our modern scientific practices or the certainty of modern atheistic intelligences, both of which seem to suggest this simple step to solving personal and environmental problems: replace the idea of ‘God’ with the idea of ‘Science’.
To be continued in next post......
Continuing:
ReplyDeleteSo what good could possibly come from taking a deep dive into the personal meanings expressed through stories in the ‘Tao Te Ching,’ the ‘Bhagavad Gita,’ the ‘Upanishads,’ the ‘Bible,’ or the ‘Koran’? There is nothing scientific within them. And they are so preachy of an impractical wisdom – often stressing more what we should not do than telling us how to do what we want.
Of course Pastor Mike’s preaching the benefits of a better guiding Humanist Set-Of-Beliefs was not meant to leave me, or anyone else, out of the picture of properly reasoning persons. His presentation – as always – was fun, entertaining, and educational. And it was an invitation accepted to good discussion. So, I wonder, with all those positive affects arising in me, why do I also experience one negative affect of being ‘left-out’? Perhaps it is because I find myself somewhere within the vast middle of a not so simple minded Agnostic bell-curve that has opposing tails: one tail being fundamentally religious; and, the other being fundamentally atheistic. Admittedly, I struggle with but lean towards Theism in our not so black and white world. And I do not think myself smart enough to place myself in one bell-curve tail or dumb enough to be in the other. With my limited intelligence I have come to understand that “The more I know the more I know that I don’t know.” And with that knowledge I find reason to believe that both tail extremes are – let me say – a little bit silly.
In my opinion, both extreme ends of the Agnostic bell-curve are results of fundamentally narrowed points view: one excludes from its vision anything seemingly outside its prescribed big-picture narrative; and the other explores the vastness and depths of personal experience with one eye closed and the other looking down and through the lens of a microscope.
Thanks for the presentation,
Maury Garvey
Maury Garvey:
ReplyDeleteTHANKS! Your Comment is exactly the type of collegial sharing of ideas I love to see, and I hope others will follow your example.
Your final paragraph summarizes your view well:
"In my opinion, both extreme ends of the Agnostic bell-curve are results of fundamentally narrowed points view: one excludes from its vision anything seemingly outside its prescribed big-picture narrative; and the other explores the vastness and depths of personal experience with one eye closed and the other looking down and through the lens of a microscope."
I do not have any LITERAL belief in Judaism or any other religion I have heard of, but I am definitely not an Atheist. As a kid, my brother and I learned to read Hebrew and were Bar Mitzvah although our parents and grandparents were not particularly religious!
While I do not believe in miracles, I am mighty pleased that our three daughters and three granddaughters all learned to read Hebrew and were Bat Mitzvah, and - here is the "miracle" - they did so although neither my wife nor I, nor, in the case of our Grands neither our daughter nor her husband, nor our Grands themselves, had any LITERAL belief either! If that is not evidence of some kind of MIRACLE, I do not know what is :^)
When Einstein was asked about his religious belief he mentioned Spinoza (as he did in the Einstein letter read by Mike Enright's daughter during Mike's excellent talk). Spinoza, Einstein, and I are Pantheists who believe God is, in some LITERAL way, the UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING IN IT itself.
As I noted in my comment after Mike's talk, many believing Christians accept God's existence based on their belief that biological life on Earth is so complex and wonderful that it could not have come to be without an Intelligent Creator (God).
OK, I said, but God is even more complex than His Creation, so WHO CREATED GOD?
The answer given by religious believers is GOD ALWAYS EXISTED, which to me, sounds like a "cop out".
However, Scientists (and I) believe that MATTER/ENERGY and the LAWS OF NATURE ALWAYS EXISTED (that is, the UNIVERSE ALWAYS EXISTED IN SOME FORM). That, as Carl Sagan wisely pointed out, puts us in the same place as the religious believers in GOD, saving only one step.
Like Spinoza and Einstein, I believe in "strict causation" and ABSOLUTE DETERMINISM. Therefore, given the LAWS OF NATURE and the INITIAL CONDITIONS, the Origin and Natural Evolution of Life as We Know It was Inevitable.
At some point, I hope to give a talk on my "GOD", the "General Optimization Director" (tm).
Love, and THANKS again, Ira