Religious Experience: Addiction or Transformation?

The purpose of this article is demonstrate the distinctions between addiction and transformation with a view toward disproving the atheist propaganda about religion as addiction and to demonstrate that religious experience is transfromative (dramatically changes life in positive ways). As regular readers of my blog recall Bill Walker tried to convince me to post on some atheist hack site "ExChristian.net" I think. It's just another ridicule station for hate group atheism. Walker tries to come on with this great social worker initiation. I'm sick and delusional and weak and I need his help because I'm a stupid Christian self deluded and he's a strong rational atheist know all social worker who is out heal. Atheists are now healers trying to help the poor sick Christians get over their delusions. He pushes a book When God Becomes a Drug (he knows the book so well he even get's the authors name totally wrong). But the begins to sound like a social worker:

There is a book that I think may help you. When God Becomes a Drug.By Bart Aikins.* Please don't feel that this is a criticism of you. You are a victim- one of countless millions. I am rooting for you.

The books is really by Leo Booth. The helping professional initiation get's even thicker in the comments:

Joe, I read all of you post. I know you had a tough time. I'm glad you have that behind you. Bu god/jesus had nothing to do with it. Ple4ase Joe, read " When God Becomes a Drug." Joe this book w2as written for YOU. You have nothing to lose but your delusions. Join us at ExChristian.net. You will be as welcome as the flowers in May. Share your experiences & your thoughts with us. You may write as a Xian or a former Xian. Many people start with us as Xians, & are 'won over'. But you are very welcome to make posts as a Xian. It is POSSIBLE that you can make some4one revert to Xianity, thru reasoning, tho I haven't seen anyone who did that, to my knowledge. But I reaslly think it will give you the experiences & thoughts of other people who have suffered as you did.

He's so friendly and caring, he just trying to help me. Desite this compassionate helping shirnk-like come on, The folks on Atheist is Dead Blow the lid off this sham by showing us what really happens when one goes on that site to "discuss" from a Christian perspective.

Let us begin with ridicule in the form of name calling. I posted on ExChristian.Net as MarianoApologeticus (since Mariano was already taken when I registered).
Here is a taste:

MoronicusApoligeticus…jerk…load of ****…fundies…trolling for carcasses…MarianoPrevaricatoricus…your pathetic and infantile dumb-****…delusional ********…idiot…dubious drivel…Forgetful Freddy…beat it…Whoop-de-frickin'-doo! You're using your own interpretation of ******** to try to disprove someone else's interpretation of said ********. You may as well go debate some Harry Potter - it's all fiction anyway!...Hahahahahahahahaha, ha, ha, ha…TAKE A HIKE…utter ********…your Apologetic drivel…how deep in your *** you had to dig to…asinine logic…it's time for you to paint your **** white and run with the antelope…your god delusion…MarianoApologeticus (aka Mario-Brothers Aplogetics)…spill your trash…you seem strong in the whine department…Moronic Apologist…Marianorepeaticus…blah, blah, blah…Dumb-***…ye of little gray matter…Grow up…all sorts of stupid, that Christian philosophy is!....****….*******….disrespectful, disingenuous religious person….apologetic horse****….you are a ******* liar….Yoo-*******-hoo….**** off….your sky-daddy….mind-****….keep your distance [expletives removed]

Considering the comparison between addiction and life transformation, let's look at the effects of real addiction long term. this is form a Department of Labor site and it deals with long term effects of drug abuse and alcoholism.


"Addiction, Dependence" (a site by U.S. Dept. Labor)

Addiction is a chronic, progressive, relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive use of one or more substances that results in physical, psychological, or social harm to the individual and continued use of the substance or substances despite this harm. Addiction has two possible components, physical dependence and psychological dependence:

Physical dependence – A state of becoming physically adapted to alcohol or other drugs. There are two important aspects to physical dependence:

• Tolerance – The need for higher and higher doses to achieve the same effects.
• Withdrawal – The appearance of physical symptoms (e.g., nausea, chills, and vomiting) when someone stops taking a drug too quickly.

Psychological dependence – A subjective sense of need for alcohol or other drug, either for its positive effects or to avoid negative effects associated with no use.

• Is everyone who tries alcohol or drugs destined for addiction?
• What is the nature of addiction?
• What are the characteristics of addiction?
• Is addiction a brain disease?
• Does addiction result from moral weakness or overindulgence?
• If an addicted person has enough will power, can he or she stop using alcohol or other drugs?
• What is denial?
• What is enabling?
• What are the typical signs of addiction?
• Can addiction be recognized in the workplace?
• How can I know if I am at risk for addiction?
• What is drug addiction treatment?
• Can addiction be treated successfully?

It if had healthy effects they wouldn't talk about it. If it was good for you no one would try to get you to quite. Obviously addiction has bad long term effects or everyone would push being an addict rather than not being one.

What Long term effects of Religious experience have been noticed by the major studies of religious experience?


Long-Term Effects of Religious experience according to major scientific studies:

Wuthnow:(Wuthnow, Robert (1978). "Peak Experiences: Some Empirical Tests." Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 18 (3), 59-75.)

*Say their lives are more meaningful,
*think about meaning and purpose
*Know what purpose of life is
Meditate more
*Score higher on self-rated personal talents and capabilities
*Less likely to value material possessions, high pay, job security, fame, and having lots of friends
*Greater value on work for social change, solving social problems, helping needy
*Reflective, inner-directed, self-aware, self-confident life style

Noble: (Noble, Kathleen D. (1987). ``Psychological Health and the Experience of Transcendence.'' The Counseling Psychologist, 15 (4), 601-614.)

*Experience more productive of psychological health than illness
*Less authoritarian and dogmatic
*More assertive, imaginative, self-sufficient
*intelligent, relaxed
*High ego strength,
*relationships, symbolization, values,
*integration, allocentrism,
*psychological maturity,
*self-acceptance, self-worth,
*autonomy, authenticity, need for solitude,
*increased love and compassion

Religion is the most powerful Factor in well being.

Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predicter of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combindation of religious items, including prayer, religionship with God, and other measures of religious experince to begin to adequately clearlify the associations of religious committment with general well-being."

(5) Greater happiness


Religion and Happiness

by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD

Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?

Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.

What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness

That doesn't really seem to be addictive does it? Not in terms of long term effects. The scientific studies on religious experience demonstate that that RE offers one the ability to navigate in life. The transfomrative effects are sucy that one can cope and get through life better.


Navigation in life:


By “navigation” I mean not physically finding our way in the world, not sailing the ocean and knowing where Jamaica is, or finding our way from Detroit to Cleveland, nor do I mean prognostication, or prophecy or using divine knowledge to get around on a daily basis. Rather, I mean finding our way emotionally in life. Mystical experience, religious experience, enables us to know who we are and where we are going, fills us with purpose and gives us a sense that our lives are on track and there a purpose in living. It also enables us to face life’s material trammels and bitter experiences. I am thinking of something more metaphorical, but just as important. The five senses enable us to navigate physically; certain centers in the brain enable us to remember not to try and walk through walls but use the door. This is analogous to the way that RE enables us to navigate. It doesn’t help us walk down the street, it helps us live and make choices and keep going in complex world in which we long for a clue about higher meaning. These experiences give us a sense of self-actualization, which is the basis of self-authentication. We understand who we are in relation to the whole. This is the basis of mythology; it’s the basis of what religion was always about, integration into the universe, and understanding of what life is about and how we fit into the bigger picture. These experiences fit the same kinds of criteria that we use anyway to make judgments about reality. There is no scientific data that gives us ultimate truth. There is no open door to ultimate truth and complete understanding of reality through any scientific or natural means. All we can do is make judgments about epistemology, and we do make them, the extent to which they give us navigation is the extent to which we deem a set of phenomena real. Thus, since RE gives us that same kind of judgment making ability, and for the same reasons (it works) we should construe it as an avenue to truth about the divine. What is said above about self authentication and mental health is good evidence for the mental the statements make above about Allman (1992)(1) Elkins (1995)(2) Shafranske and Malony (1990). (3)

The Sullivan study (1993), which shows therapeutic value in mystical experience. The Richards study (mentioned above) about mystical experience and surviving cancer. Several other studies show therapeutic value in spiritual and religious experience and mystical experience. Pargament (1996) (4) finds five studies find that religious forms of coping are especially helpful to people in uncontrollable or extremely difficult circumstances. Elliot (1994) (5) found that female survivors of childhood sexual abuse who displayed religious belief systems (namely Christian) were less likely to display the symptoms of other females so abused. Himelein and McElrath (1996)(6) find that female survivors of childhood sexual violence who scored high on adjustment scales indicated among positive change brought about by the experience their finding of religious faith. Survivors of childhood sexual abuse found that their religion: “was important in assisting them in making sense of the experience in a manner that served to free them of blame and guilt for the abuse…and gave them the faith to hold on to life and find meaning in their lives. (Valentine and Feinauer 1993 (220).” (7)

There are two problems with using this material. First, Elliot, Himelein and Valentine are not necessarily talking about mystical experience per se (although some are as indicated above). They talk about “religious beliefs,” “religious forms of coping.” It will be seen in chapters five and six that there is a continuum of experience. All believers probably encounter some aspect of mystical experience even though they don’t necessarily have the full blown mystical union. Nevertheless, if a belief system is an effective means of coping then surely we can infer from that that the actual transformative power of that belief system will also be a an effective means of coping. This leads to a discussion of the second problem, that survivors (especially female) of sexual trauma and violence often reject religion and often experience negative aspects associated with religion. These effects are not the result of religious experience such as peak experience, but are associated with the religion of the abuser especially if the abuser put a religious justification on his/her abuse.(8) This is also where mystical experience enters the picture again. The alternative to rejecting religion as whole, that female survivors often take as an alternative is to change religious views, sometimes change religions altogether and to take a more privative and spiritualized practice. This often takes the form of mystical experience. Some researchers, according Ryan find that the violence itself is a occasion for mystical experience and it is theorized that violence can be a trigger.(9) None religious women who have not been forced to associate their abuse with a particular religious tradition often turn to religion and spiritual practice as solace.(10) Irwin found that the more likely a child was to have traumatic events in childhood the more likely the child was to experience paranormal events latter in life.(11) Moreover, it is also been found that as people reach middle age they are more likely to broaden their religious perspective to a point that they see more of a transcendent form of spirituality. Many abuse victims come to view God in more cosmic and impersonal terms, which would be compatible with some forms of mystical experience. Survivors of childhood trauma and abuse often report that they felt the abuser was trying to destroy their soul but that this was the one inviolable core that the abuser could not reach. (12) This should certainly link survival to spiritual experience.

Loretta Do Rozario’s hermeneutic Phenomenological study of those with disabled people indicates the value of peak experience or self transcendence, the transformative power of religious experience.(13) The study was conducted as series of interviews with respondents chosen for disabilities and hardships that they faced (more about the mythology in chapter four, “studies”). The study proceeded based upon two major procedures, analysis of interviews done with respondents and autobiographies the respondents wrote.(14) The findings indicate a set of over all strategies and paradigms that people use to enable them to move forward and survive and deal with their conditions. The major results show that the states of hardship and joy can coexist in the same life at the same time but these depend upon strategies. Mystical experience is not a panacea through which all problems vanish just because one has this experience. But the study does show that the transformative power of religious experience as a whole and mystical experience in particular, is a vital and integral part of making the strategies work. The sense of spiritual unity involves transcendence of the self, thus making suffering bearable. Spiritual awareness (which is clearly an aspect of experience) fosters hope through belief in some greater aspect such as the divine or a cosmic force; religious assurance as a value of traditional beliefs; religious experience along with rituals provides order and meaning; adds to the sense of an existential journey in which the sufferer is growing and progressing, and the idea of purgatory enables one to separate oneself from suffering. (15)

The findings of this study put the experience of having an illness or disability into an overall context of a person’s universal search for meaning and self transcending. This can be likened to Victory Frankl’s belief, based upon his experience of living in a Nazi concentration camp, that ‘suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds a meaning…and that through suffering one is given a last chance to actualize the highest value to fulfill the deepest meaning…’ People in this study concurred with this personal and contextual interpretation of illness and disability, by reaffirming that the process of meaning making was similar to that of the mythology of the hero and heroine’s journey, which depicts a universal journey from a separation of self to a return to ‘true self…’ The inner awareness of wholeness despite all the odds points to an implicit experience of life which can transcend form and matter. This experience of wholeness or consciousness extends and challenges the view of disability and illness as only a meaning making and revaluing opportunity in the lives of people. Instead, the model of wholeness and reconstitution point to the possibility of an implicit order of consciousness or wholeness in which people who have undergone some crisis or critical incident in their lives may be able to access and experience a ‘deeper reality’ or ‘flow’ in life…similar to the insights of the great religions (author points to social psychologist Csikentmihalyi).(16)

Thus the “shared” aspect of the experience is not in terms of physical navigation the world, not shared perception of objective objects, but the “inter-subjective” similarities of navigation in life. RE is an integral aspect of the spiritual and psychological wherewithal that we all need to “make it” to bear up under the material trammels and horrific disappointments and tragedies that life brings our way. Just as the same kinds of experiences, the same emotional and para-senstory features are experienced by people the world over so the same coping ability and meaning and journey to wholeness is also experienced through RE.


We can boil down what is meant by "transformation" to the simple two things: (1) Are you happier? (2) are you functional? "Happier" compered to the "before conversion." If you can't say
"Yes" to both of these then something is wrong with your religious experience. Not to say that it was not a valid religious experience, but something in the current practice has gone wrong, and quite probably the answer is to look at the group you are in. I call your attention to a study foot noted below. That study is: D.M. Elliot, “the Impact of Christian Faith on the Prevalence and Sequelae of Sexual Abuse (fn5). This study says that when religion is used by absuers of children it tends to make the children turn out to hate religion, and it magnifies the effects of the trauma. The atheist propaganda machine is sure to sieze upon this and say "see, religion makes you into a child abuser." Of cousre that's not anything like what the study says. The study is not about the causes of child abuse. But wehat I'm sure hey will ignore of take out of context is that the study also shows that when victims of childhood abuse (this is speaking mainly sexual) aer able to use religion as a buffer or for solice it's very effective and can be psychologically healing. The determining factor is weather or not the absuer is able to force the child to link the abuser to God or not.

Rather than proving that religion makes you into a child abuser, what this actually means is that religin is very powerful, and it depends upon how it's used as to weather or not it's harmful. Those who link the absuer to God are often the super literalism, the authoritarian, the one who imposes religion upon the child in the form of legalism, wrather, atuhority without temporing it with love and understanding. Of course if the abusers understood love they would not be abusers. That's the whole point of the Christian message is love. If you screw that up and turn God's love into something perverted its a very powerful weapon that can crush the psyche of a child. When people are able to sense the presence of God they are healed by God's love. This is not my opinion nor it is the regurgitation of sundae school cliches, this all over the studies. The essence of the sense of the numinous is an all pervasive sense of divine love permeating all of reality. The abuser does not experience the love of God, is not a mystic, does not have the numinous and is in the dark about the true essence of religion and thus iposes an er zots form of religion that is a perversion of the actual thing itself. That is my own extrapolation from the studies but I think I can back it up pretty well.

We all know what the Atheist propaganda machine will do with this. It's the "no true Scotsman fallacy," they will say. For them that means if one moron who calls himself a "Christian" however badly he/she exemplifies the faith, that person must be the essence of Christianity and is proof that Christianity is evil. But none of hte good things Christians do represent true Christianity but are adde on because they are human and humans are good or whatever. They are basically essentialist. Christianity has the evil essence of Religion and no amount of clensing can change it. In all religous belief their lurks the hidden Hitler waiting to get and kill some Jews and abuse some kids. Of course it's pretty transparent why these people say such thing. It's clear the "ex Christians" at "exChristians.net" are probably suffering form this sort of er zots religion in the first place.

When Walker says :

I know you had a tough time. I'm glad you have that behind you. Bu god/jesus had nothing to do with it. Ple4ase Joe, read " When God Becomes a Drug." Joe this book w2as written for YOU.

He could not be absurdly wrong. He's taking the book he use out of context because the Priest who wrote it certainly does not agree with Walker that religion itself is to blame, then of curse he's being extremely patronizing to assume that he knows my situation better than I do, he doesn't' even listen when I talk about what things actually enabled me to cope and kept me from suicide (which I did intend at one point) so he's not even allowing me to have my own life or my own experiences, he's so certain that he has to be right that he dictates to me what my experiences were and what got me through them. His entire position is groundless because he doe snot have even a signle to back him up, he's flying in the face of 300 empirical studies that say he's full of it, and the one the book he does use he's taken so out of context he doesn't even know the author's name.

The over all point I make is this: religous epxeirnce, if it is genuine, does relate to a reality beyond ourselves and it is proved scientifically that it is more likely to give the strength to cope with life than is anything else. Certainly more the mocking ridiculing know nothings on atheist boards who have no data to back up their hateful claims except that which they steal from sources they don't understand. Don't listen to their lies. Don't be afraid to trust God. The scientific data shows that we can trust whatever that is that we experience when we have those experiences. I call it "God." You can trust God. What you can't trust is people. Don't turn your psyche over to other people, even if you understood therapy with a qualified shrink don't just turn yourself over, be an active participant in your therapy. Any shrink that wont let you participate actively in your own therapy is a fraud. Don't be afraid to trust God. All you have to do to trust God is not freak out and believe that God will help you. That's it. You don't have to do anything, you don't have to risk anything. If someone tells you to give them your money they are probably a con man. Don't listen to the lies of atheists, don't be afraid to read the Bible. Seek to understand the Bible. Understanding is the key not fear. Religious belief is not an addiction, mocking and ridiculing people to make yourself feel better is an addiction.

[1] L.S. Allman, L.S., Dela, R.O., Elins, D.N., & Weathers, R.S. (1992). Psychotherapists attitude towards mystical experiences. Psychotherapy, 29, 564-569.

[2] Elkins, D.N. (1995). “Psychotherapy and spirituality: Toward a theory of the soul”. Journal ofHumanistic Psychology, 35, 78-98.

[3] E.P. Shafranske and H.N. Malony, “Clinical Psychologists Religious and Spiritual Orientations And Their Practice of Psychotherapy.” Psychotherapy, 7, 72-78

[4] K.I. Pargament, in Patricia L. Ryan, “Spirituality Among Adult Survivors of Childhood Violence A Literature Review.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 30,no. 1 (1998) 41.

[5] D.M. Elliot, “the Impact of Christian Faith on the Prevalence and Sequelae of Sexual Abuse.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 9(1) (1994) 95-108.

[6] M.J. Heimelein and McElrath, “Childhood Sexual Survivors, Cognitive Coping and Illusion.” Child Abuse and Neglect, 20 (8), (1996) 747-758.

[7] L Valintine and LL. Feninuer. “Resistance Factors Associated With Female Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse.” The American Journal of Family Therapy, 21 (3) (1993) 216-224.

[8] Ryan, 41-46.

[9] Ibid, 47

[10] Ibid, 42

[11] H.J. Irwin, “Childhood Trauma and the Origin of Paranormal Belief: A Constructive Replication.” Psychological Reports. 74 (1) (1994) 107.

[12] Ryan 43, see Gamje-Fling and McCarthy.

[13] Loretta Do Rozario, “Spirituality in the Lives of People With Disability and Chronic Illness: A Creative Paradigm of Wholeness and Reconstitution.” Disability and Rehabilitation: An International and Multidisciplinary Journal.Vol 19, no 10 (1997) 427

[14] Ibid. 428

[15] Ibid, 430-431

[16] Ibid. 433

God is the Eligant Solution

I've had this parsimony argument on my God argument list for a long time. I put it up on my boards as an experiment. It never satisfied me as a strong argument,so I don't argue it on message boards, but I still think it has a lot of potential but I just haven't quite developed it. It was answered by my friend and loyal atheist opponent Quantum Troll, who is one of the most intelligent atheists posters on my boards. I think I answered his answer pretty well, it makes a good point that should be noised about (yet the development of the best argument from this premise remains an unfinished task).

First My argument.


Meta:

I. God is the simplest Solution.

(1) nature of simplicity

Atheists often think that God is the more complicated solution. On discussion boards they will often argue that the Big Bang is much simpler than God because it comes from a singularity. So they are confusing size with simplicity. Apparently they think that an infinitesimally small thing is siple and an infinite thing is complex. But this is not at all true, which one can see with proper reflection. God is actually much simpler. The singularity has to be explained itself, it offers no real explanation but invites a cause for itself. And if it did contain matter and energy, which many skeptics seem to think but the real scientific theory doesn't say that, it would be even more complex because that would require an explanation as to how infinitely dense matter got in there in the first place.

2) Theism simpler hypothesis- in terms of origin.

As Duns Scotus put it, there is an infinite distance between being and non-being, and theism posits the origin of being by being, whereas atheism posits the origin of being from non-being.

Edmund Whitaker, a British physicist, wrote a book entitled The Beginning and End of the World, in which he said, "There is no ground for supposing that matter and energy existed before and was suddenly galvanized into action. For what could distinguish that moment from all other moments in eternity?" Whitaker concluded, "It is simpler to postulate creation ex nihilo--Divine will constituting Nature from nothingness." [cited in Jastrow, R. 1978. God and the Astronomers. New York, W.W. Norton, p. 111-12.]

Physicist Barry Parker agrees: "We do, of course, have an alternative. We could say that there was no creation, and that the universe has always been here. But this is even more difficult to accept than creation."[Barry Parker, Creation--The Story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe (New York & London: Plenum Press, 1988) p. 202.]

II. Through this one simple notion all problems of origin and meaning are solved.

A. The God Hypothesis forms basis for modern science

Appeal to God as metaphysical construct helped build modern sicence.

*
Whitehead

christepher C. Warren

"Can Science Exist Without Faiht?"

(Oxford educated biochemist)

Einstein said: "Belief in an external world, independent of the perceiving subject, is the basis of all natural science. Without the belief that it is possible to grasp reality without theoretical constructions, without the belief in the inner harmony of our world, there could be no science. This belief is and always will remain the fundamental motive for all scientific creation."

Oppenheimer said: "We cannot make much progress without a faith that in the bewildering field of human experience there is a unique and necessary order."

Whitehead said: "The belief in a personal Creator is implanted in the European mind -- the inexpungeable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definable manner, exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope. It is this instinctive conviction, vividly poised before the imagination, which is the motive power of research: that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. This faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology."

Newton


Reductionism, Clockwork Universe

The Physical world

Open University


Newton's three laws of motion and his principle of universal gravitation sufficed to regulate the new cosmos, but only, Newton believed, with the help of God. Gravity, he more than once hinted, was direct divine action, as were all forces for order and vitality. Absolute space, for Newton, was essential, because space was the "sensorium of God," and the divine abode must necessarily be the ultimate coordinate system.


B. The Elegant Solution.

God is sipmler by far, espeicially Tllich's notion of God as the ground of being or the Thomistic concept of a God whose existence is his essence. This is the most eleigant solution in the world. God is on a par with Being itself and his essence is to be. That is elegant becasue it means just this: Being has to be, and what being does is merely eixst, thus if God's existence (the fact that he is) is his essence (the thing that he is) than it means that Being itself is merely doing what it is supposse to do, merely being and through its own being allowing the beings to come into existence.



1) The problem of existence.

In terms of the ultimate question of origin this is solved in the God hypothesis in the logic of the final cause. The assumption of an infinite regress of causes is ultimately illogical and the chain of cause and effect must stop some place.

2) The human problematic.

All world religions seek to define a human problematic, the human condition, the centeral dilemma at the core of being human. They all define it in different terms but they all do recognize that there is one. Some think of it as sin, some as imbalance, some as being alienated from nature and the universe, but all have some notion of a problematic.

Athesits approach the notion of God and what God wants as though merely dealing witht a big bully in the sky. God is just another guy and he has his opinion and we have ours. It doesn't matter that he' s more powerful, most bullies usually are, but that doesn't make him right. This view is so silly, shallow, and short sighted and yet it will be the basis of most responses given. They often say things like "how does having a first principle help you? " or "so what if God thinks this?" IT is not merely a matter of God' s "opinion" if God exists God is a priori the dterminate of all truth and justice and all meaning and judgement simpley by virtue of the fact that God not only created all that is, but that even potential existence must originate in the will of God. That means God makes things true! That being the case, all the problems involved in the human probelmatic are bound up in God.

a) Problem of meaning.

Without God all meaning is merely relative and subjective. Any meaning that can be had on those terms is pretend meaning. With the concept of God meaning is wirtten into the fabric of the universe because it stemms form being itself. Meaning is just a matter of interpriation, but God interprits from the ultimate univresal persective. He knows all and sees from every vantage point. Since God is eternal, true meaning is that which registers on the eternal scale of values. God's scale of values is absolute, so if God assigns meaning it is universally true and valid for all eternity. Thus, the deaths of unknown martyrs are always already more meaningfull and better known where it counts than the most famous events in history, even if no one on earth knows about them. This is far more "meaningful" than what you or I can think or pretned about our lives.

b) The moral problem.

Consult the moral problem, argument no. 8 two pages back. The explainitory value of the argument shows why we have moral motions and why we are not able to live up to them. With God this problem is exaplained as well but with materialism it must either be ignored or reduced to something else.Now atheists have this habit of reducing God's will to mere whim. Thus they argue that God's will in terms of ethical mandates is nothing more than argbitrary. But that is foolish. If God exists than his will is paramount, it is the defining factor, not in an arbitrary way, but because God is synonimous with the good. The good is based upon God's character. This is a logical necessity based upon the fact that God is the ground of being. Thus, it is not a mere whim that creates the good, but the openess of being which creates the essence of all rational ethical choices, the will for the good of the other, giving opening up to, in short, love. This forms the essence of all valuations and makes moral that which is merely factual, or immoral that which is merely factual.

4) Epistemologial problems.

God gives us epistemology assumptions which cover a wide range of topics and offers certainty as to the ultimate form of knowledge.

5) Ultimate Concerns.

Hunaties ultiamte concerns which are meaning and death are wrapped up in the nature of God's existence. God gives meaning and satisfies ultimate concerns thorugh transformation.

D.The Atheist Hypothesis is comparitvely contradictory.

Yes, there is no "atheist hypothesis" per se, other than that God doesn't exist. But that is juts the point. To simply posit no God and life as the result of dead matter and random chance alone leaves on in a confused state of disarray, with no central over arching theme that ties together all the problems of humanity. Themselves solves them all, especially does Christianity solve them all in one fell swoop. With atheism or materialism most of these problems are disconnected and require separate solutions. With God they are all resolved in the one simple answer of God's existence. This makes belief in God the simplest and most eligant solution because it resolves all of our most important questions at once. That offers a strong indication in a probabilistic assumption that God is the nature of the case.

Now comes the debate when Quantum Troll answers:

by Quantum Troll on Sun Nov 29, 2009 2:06 pm

Metacrock, let's discuss this argument. Especially the part where you claim that God is simpler than atheist theories of existence. I claim that God is complex and not as simple as a purely physical theory.

My argument is as follows:

1. Complexity can be measured as the length of the shortest string of text that describes something.
2. God is generally taken to be indescribable and infinite.
3. Therefore God has infinite complexity.
4. The physical laws of the universe are generally taken to be fundamentally very simple (see e.g. Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature).
5. Therefore even a complete physical theory will probably be very elegant and simple.
6. Therefore the principle of parsimony falls on the side of the atheists.

You might take issue with step 2, since you sometimes describe God as "Being itself", which is quite short. However, I've already written at length in other threads about how and why I think your idea of God is really much more than only that. For example, "Being itself" doesn't imply (to me, at least), intelligence and a capability of actually doing anything, let alone answer human prayers and get a woman pregnant with a perfect male human. So that's my defense of point #2.

What are your thoughts?

then I answer him

Meta on Mon Nov 30, 2009 9:56 am

QuantumTroll wrote:Metacrock, let's discuss this argument. Especially the part where you claim that God is simpler than atheist theories of existence. I claim that God is complex and not as simple as a purely physical theory.

OK sure, but before we do that you have understand that (and this does screw my argument, I have to re think, so you know this is an experimental argument.) but I don't think concepts like simple or complex are meaningful in relation to God. As far as the argument goes what is simple is not God per se but the understanding we have of his relation to the world. the reason I think terms like that don't apply is God is the basis of relaity. How can you compare God to concepts like that if the whole concept we have of existence per se is just a thought in the mind of God?


The impulse to do that, to compare God to our concepts of complexity, is based upon the Dawkensian notion that God can be case in terms of a biological model. You probably want to accept he notion that our model of psychical is the only for that existence can ever take and that biological life is the only form of life or consciousness, while none of these ideas can be supported I'm using you probably accepting them on some automatic level just because they fit so easily with a scientific world view (no offense).


btw I'm discussing the notion of the TS in that other thread precisely because you said you thought i didn't understand signifier and signified so you should go over there and defend your supposition.

My argument is as follows:

1. Complexity can be measured as the length of the shortest string of text that describes something.

that's a biological definition. How do you know, what do you compare to? So if I say "God is the primary act of existence" Aquinas thought that was the ultimate in simplicity, how do you know it's not, after all it lacks anything to do with DNA.

2. God is generally taken to be indescribable and infinite.

But not a biological organism or a product of DNA

3. Therefore God has infinite complexity.

that assertion is supported. It's at cross purposes with the concepts. It stems from a biological model and God infinite nature is more of a mathematical model. Mathematical infinity can be very simple. A line can be infinite, a circle can infinite, neither is complex.

4. The physical laws of the universe are generally taken to be fundamentally very simple (see e.g. Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature).
5. Therefore even a complete physical theory will probably be very elegant and simple.

God is elegant and simple, exhypothosai.

6. Therefore the principle of parsimony falls on the side of the atheists.

Only if you assume Dawkin's biological mode which contradicts every concept of God in all of organized religion.

You might take issue with step 2, since you sometimes describe God as "Being itself", which is quite short. However, I've already written at length in other threads about how and why I think your idea of God is really much more than only that. For example, "Being itself" doesn't imply (to me, at least), intelligence and a capability of actually doing anything, let alone answer human prayers and get a woman pregnant with a perfect male human. So that's my defense of point #2.

What are your thoughts?

according to Gaswamai God is is being itself and being itself is the basis of consciousness and is simple and elegant.

Two major observations to be learned from this exchange:

(1) The nature of "simple" is being used at cross purposes.

I was speaking of the simplicity of the fit of the answer within the framework of the question. I other words, it's a simpler solution to just understand being itself as the "divine" and see the basis of reality as this thing we call "God" than to try and piece together a fragmented world view from whatever bits of data can be gleaned through scinece while cutting off most of reality conceptually with modern reductionism. I wasn't talking about the actual nature of God as "simple." That's not really an issue anyway, for reasons stated above. So the argument QT makes, while good and must be answered is not really germiane to the nature of the argument I was trying to develop.

That's why the argument is not in contradiction to my answer. I was worried about the idea that I'm saying God is the simple answer and yet I'm also saying we can't compare concepts like simple and complex to God. If we can't say God is simple or complex, if that's not meaningful to apply to God, how can one make an argument that God is the simple solution? Well because it's in a different sense. One is talking about the nature of God the other about the way the concept of God fits into the equation of life as an explanation and basis for epistemology and metaphysics. Not God's specific nature but the nature of the God hypothesis in comparison with other ideas.


(2) Consciousness is not complex and need to be understood as such.

the Vedanta based Gaswamai is

they only see consciousness as complex because they use the biological model. Consciousness as it is known to us through biology requires and brain and brains are complex. Of course if you are speaking from within a biological life framework in temporal existence that's true. I'm not sure it would have any meaning if one is speaking through a larger framework of the foundation of reality. Comparing God to biological life is like having a room full of artifacts and a scale to weight them. If you have only one scale how can you weight the scale itself? The limit on that analogy is that the scale would have a finite weight and the mass of the scale would be known so we could compare the scale to some other object also weighed, but how could you do that if you could not see the scale and didn't know it's size or its mass or density?

God is off scale. God is the basis upon which all reality coheres so what meaning does it have to compare God with finite temporal biological life which for all we know is nothing more than a fleeting idea God had one day. Gaswamai is a physicist and he and many other physicists do not think of consciousness as exclusively produced by brains, not exclusively part of the domain of the finite or the temporal or the biological.

Moreover I put my argument in terms of "elegant" not "simple" as in no moving parts, but "elegant" as in the most adroitly fitted to the framework in which it is meaningful.

Goswami himself says:

The current worldview has it that everything is made of matter, and everything can be reduced to the elementary particles of matter, the basic constituents—building blocks—of matter. And cause arises from the interactions of these basic building blocks or elementary particles; elementary particles make atoms, atoms make molecules, molecules make cells, and cells make brain. But all the way, the ultimate cause is always the interactions between the elementary particles. This is the belief—all cause moves from the elementary particles. This is what we call "upward causation." So in this view, what human beings—you and I—think of as our free will does not really exist. It is only an epiphenomenon or secondary phenomenon, secondary to the causal power of matter. And any causal power that we seem to be able to exert on matter is just an illusion. This is the current paradigm.

Now, the opposite view is that everything starts with consciousness.That is, consciousness is the ground of all being. In this view, consciousness imposes "downward causation." In other words, our free will is real. When we act in the world we really are acting with causal power. This view does not deny that matter also has causal potency—it does not deny that there is causal power from elementary particles upward, so there is upward causation—but in addition it insists that there is also downward causation. It shows up in our creativity and acts of free will, or when we make moral decisions. In those occasions we are actually witnessing downward causation by consciousness.

Goswami actually says that consciousness is the ground of being. This is because the ground of being is what being is grounded in, and if that is consciousness, if the nature of existence is to be a thought in a mind, than the ground of being is consciousness.


Water is much less complex than the conduits we use to control it. Water is a simple di polar molecular structure that allows it to transform from solid (frozen) to gas to liquid. That structure is relatively simple when compared to the pumping stations and piping networks and water purification filters of New York City. QT is mistaking the sewage and drainage system for the thing itself. The brain is like the infrastructure of pipes and pumping and purification that makes New York's water system possible, and the water itself is like the consciousnesses being transferred through the brain.

When this is done in biological organisms it requires a complex brain. Who knows what is involved in pure consciousness as being itself, the basis of all reality?

That's saying heaven is up and not down. If you have no base line of comparison how can you say which way is which? You are litterly trying to say there's up and down in deep space. What meaning does the term "simple" have in a context where the simple thing is also the basis of complex? If there is only God and nothing else, what do you compare God to say he's "simple" or "complex?"

Atehist Watch Alert:God as a Drug, See atheist watch for my review

Poster Bill Walker (a follower of this blog) going for the "big one" trying to de-convert me )on (Metacrock's Blog) introduces a book:

There is a book that I think may help you. "When God Becomes a Drug.By Bart Aikins. Please vdon't feel that this is a criticism of you. You are a victim- one of countless millions. I am rooting for you.

On the comment page he says:

Joe, I read all of you post. I know you had a tough time. I'm glad you have that bgehind you. Bu god/jesus had nothing to do with it. Ple4ase Joe, read " When God Becomes a Drug." Joe this book w2as written for YOU. You have nothing to lose but your delusions. Join us at ExChristian.net. You will be as welcome as the flowers in May. Share your experiences & your thoughts with us. You may write as a Xian or a former Xian. Many people start with us as Xians, & are 'won over'. But you are very welcome to make posts as a Xian. It is POSSIBLE that you can make some4one revert to Xianity, thru reasoning, tho I haven't seen anyone who did that, to my knowledge. But I reaslly think it will give you the experiences & thoughts of other people who have suffered as you did.

So I looked for this book. I found that He got the author's name so totally wrong it makes me think he's putting me on. Instead Bart Aikins it's Leo Booth. Booth is an Episcopal priest who wrote this book not as a denouncement of all religon but as a warning against the kind of rigid fundamentalism we all know and hate. He is in no way saying that all religion is like this. As one book reviewer says:

"And yet he says that there is nothing in the nature of religion which makes it unhealthy in itself, and that it is possible for a neurotic to use a healthy belief system in an unhealthy way. Booth writes that it is not necessarily the contents of the belief that make a system addictive, but rather the personal rigidity of its purveyors who discourage any kind of questioning or disbelief."
--John A. Speyrer

In spite of this we find the atheist having a field day in their propaganda using this book as though it totally disproves all religion. Shy David's Religion page, (there's a scholarly source for you) does a hack job on the book. Sky David is so balanced and fair minded he opens with the balanced and articulate statement:

Religion has always been used by evil men (and some times women) to inflict evil upon the world. The evil enacted is always either by design or by consequence. The latter generally has two causes: the person engaged in evil believes he is doing good, godly works, or another person or groups of people take the result of someone's good works and builds upon those works with evil acts. A specific example I can readily think of is Islam: when Mohammed founded his religion, he taught liberal reforms such as equality for females and tolerance for infidels. One problem, though: he was illiterate. When the Koran / Qur’an / Alcoran was written by his followers, Mohammed's teachings were drastically altered. Slavery of women became law; infidels were taken hostage and, upon threat of death, ordered to convert; women who did not sexually submit to their owners could be beaten, with the authority of law.

This book is being shamelessly exploited by unscrupulous hate group atheists who are merely using it for propaganda and taking it out of context. See my view in Atheist watch

Answering Bill Walker's Version of Optimism

Bill Walker is a long time blog reader and someone who often likes to make comments both here and on Atheist Watch. His comments run the spectrum form intelligent and well put to blathering insulting ridicule, depending upon how badly I've insulted him that week ;-)

This is pretty nice I feel it deserves an answer. Here's the comment as a whole:

Joe, I am,as an optimist feel sure that you will, one day cast off that yoke of Xian dogma, & join us in the joyous freedom of dis-belief of ALL those man-made holy books, all those man-made religions, all those man-made gods.Join us on the ExChristian.net site. We are many hundreds of former Xans of many 'different stripes'. Main line, fundamentalist, evangelical people of all ages & former strongly held beliefs. This includes former preachers, with PHDs in religion. You are welcome to post any & all thoughts-even Xian ones. We all share the right to state our thoughts & all can share in responding to all posts. You may find it helpful in requiring thought, logic, common-sense & reason. Give it a shot, Joe. There is a book that I think may help you. "When God Becomes a Drug.By Bart Aikins. Please vdon't feel that this is a criticism of you. You are a victim- one of countless millions. I am rooting for you.

My overall answer: Fat chance. You have no idea what I've been through, so you have no idea to what extent I have found God to be the answer for my life. But that being the case, I will never abandon what I know to be true. I know God is real and I know it totally and securely right down to the bottom of my little heart. Ok so let's break down the statment as there are many things it prompts:

Joe, I am,as an optimist feel sure that you will, one day cast off that yoke of Xian dogma, & join us in the joyous freedom of dis-belief of ALL those man-made holy books,

This is an absurd statement, especially a long time reading, it becuase he has not been reading closely. He assumes my belief is nothing more than "dogma" or something I just adopted for some stupid reason like my parents told me to. He should know I was an atheist. I pride myself on what a good fine intellectual atheist I was. I came to believe because the power of God was made real to me in my life. Here atheist like play little games, if it was an experience it must be that I was emotionalistic and delusion so it can't be trusted. If it was ideas then it must be that I'm just accepting groundless dogma and either way I can't think properly. I can think better than most atheists I meet on the net. But yea I had an experience and that proved ot me That God is real. Atheist games not impress me. That experience was more than just one experience, it was the culmination of years of searching. It really was the capstone to a year of searching that involved both ideas and experiences, and that year was the culmination of a whole youth of searching.

What's really absurd is his contrast of dry groundless dogma with "joyus freedom" of atheism. It's really depressed insanity. I have 300 scientific empirical studies (I just finished writing a whole book about them). They prove that religious people are much happier and much better off and much less depressed than are atheists. At least that is religious people who have the kinds of experiences I'm talking about. These studies show that people who have such experiences are much happier, better adjusted, better able to cope and less depressed than those who do not. My conversion (see link above) involved such experiences.

Here are some of the quotations about that, comparing happiness and depression levels in the two groups. These are from the various studies and they are listed on my pages about the studies on my site Doxa. They are also found in God argument no 4 or 5 on religious instinct.

Religious belief indicative of good mental health

a)Religous Pepole are More Self Actualized


Dr. Michale Nielson,Ph.D. Psychology and religion.
"http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/ukraine/index.htm"

Quote:

"What makes someone psychologically healthy? This was the question that guided Maslow's work. He saw too much emphasis in psychology on negative behavior and thought, and wanted to supplant it with a psychology of mental health. To this end, he developed a hierarchy of needs, ranging from lower level physiological needs, through love and belonging, to self- actualization. Self-actualized people are those who have reached their potential for self-development. Maslow claimed that mystics are more likely to be self-actualized than are other people. Mystics also are more likely to have had "peak experiences," experiences in which the person feels a sense of ecstasy and oneness with the universe. Although his hierarchy of needs sounds appealing, researchers have had difficulty finding support for his theory."

Gagenback


Quote:

In terms of psychological correlates, well-being and happiness has been associated with mystical experiences,(Mathes, Zevon, Roter, Joerger, 1982; Hay & Morisy, 1978; Greeley, 1975; Alexander, Boyer, & Alexander, 1987) as well as self-actualization (Hood, 1977; Alexander, 1992). Regarding the latter, the developer of self-actualization believed that even one spontaneous peak or transcendental experience could promote self-actualization. Correlational research has supported this relationship. In a recent statistical meta-analysis of causal designs with Transcendental Meditation (TM) controlling for length of treatment and strength of study design, it was found that: TM enhances self-actualization on standard inventories significantly more than recent clinically devised relaxation/meditation procedures not explicitly directed toward transcendence [mystical experience] (p. 1; Alexander, 1992)

b) Christian Repentance Promotes Healthy Mindedness


william James
Gilford lectures


Quote:

"Within the Christian body, for which repentance of sins has from the beginning been the critical religious act, healthy-mindedness has always come forward with its milder interpretation. Repentance according to such healthy-minded Christians means getting away from the sin, not groaning and writhing over its commission. The Catholic practice of confession and absolution is in one of its aspects little more than a systematic method of keeping healthy-mindedness on top. By it a man's accounts with evil are periodically squared and audited, so that he may start the clean page with no old debts inscribed. Any Catholicwill tell us how clean and fresh and free he feels after the purging operation. Martin Luther by no means belonged to the healthy-minded type in the radical sense in which we have discussed it, and be repudiated priestly absolution for sin. Yet in this matter of repentance he had some very healthy-minded ideas, due in the main to the largeness of his conception of God. -..."

c) Believers:less depression, mental illness, Divorce rate, ect.


J. Gartner, D.B. Allen, The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3090


Quote:

"The Reviews identified 10 areas of clinical staus in whihc research has demonstrated benefits of religious commitment: (1) Depression, (2) Suicide, (3) Delinquency, (4) Mortality, (5) Alchohol use (6) Drug use, (7) Well-being, (8) Divorce and martital satisfaction, (9) Physical Health Status, and (10) Mental health outcome studies....The authors underscored the need for additional longitudinal studies featuring health outcomes. Although there were few, such studies tended to show mental health benefit. Similarly, in the case of teh few longevity or mortality outcome studies, the benefit was in favor of those who attended chruch...at least 70% of the time, increased religious commitment was associated with improved coping and protection from problems."

[The authors conducted a literature search of over 2000 publications to glean the current state of empirical study data in areas of Spirituality and health]


3) Shrinks assume religious experience Normative.

Dr. Jorge W.F. Amaro, Ph.D., Head psychology dept. Sao Paulo

[ http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/amaro.html]

a) Unbeliever is the Sick Soul

"A non spiritualized person is a sick person, even if she doesn't show any symptom described by traditional medicine. The supernatural and the sacredness result from an elaboration on the function of omnipotence by the mind and can be found both in atheist and religious people. It is an existential function in humankind and the uses each one makes of it will be the measure for one's understanding."

b. psychotheraputic discipline re-evalutes Frued's criticism of religion


Quote:

Amaro--

"Nowadays there are many who do not agree with the notion that religious behavior a priori implies a neurotic state to be decoded and eliminated by analysis (exorcism). That reductionism based on the first works by Freud is currently under review. The psychotherapist should be limited to observing the uses their clients make of the representations of the image of God in their subjective world, that is, the uses of the function of omnipotence. Among the several authors that subscribe to this position are Odilon de Mello Franco (12), .... W. R. Bion (2), one of the most notable contemporary psychoanalysts, ..."

[sources sited by Amaro BION, W. R. Aten��o e interpreta��o (Attention and interpretation). Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1973.

MELLO FRANCO, O. de. Religious experience and psychoanalysis: from man-as-god to man-with-god. Int. J. of Psychoanalysis (1998) 79,]

c) This relationship is so strong it led to the creation of a whole discipline in psychology; transactionalism

Neilson on Maslow

Quote:

"One outgrowth of Maslow's work is what has become known as Transpersonal Psychology, in which the focus is on the spiritual well-being of individuals, and values are advocated steadfastly. Transpersonal psychologists seek to blend Eastern religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) or Western (Christian, Jewish or Moslem) mysticism with a form of modern psychology. Frequently, the transpersonal psychologist rejects psychology's adoption of various scientific methods used in the natural sciences."

"The influence of the transpersonal movement remains small, but there is evidence that it is growing. I suspect that most psychologists would agree with Maslow that much of psychology -- including the psychology of religion -- needs an improved theoretical foundation."

4) Religion is positive factor in physical health.


"Doctrors find Power of faith hard to ignore
By Usha Lee McFarling
Knight Ridder News Service (Dec. 23, 1998) Http://www.tennessean.com/health/stories/98/trends1223.htm Quote:

"Some suspect that the benefits of faith and churchgoing largely boil down to having social support � a factor that, by itself, has been shown to improve health. But the health effects of religion can't wholly be explained by social support. If, for example, you compare people who aren't religious with people who gather regularly for more secular reasons, the religious group is healthier. In Israel, studies comparing religious with secular kibbutzim showed the religious communes were healthier."Is this all a social effect you could get from going to the bridge club? It doesn't seem that way," said Koenig, who directs Duke's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health .Another popular explanation for the link between religion and health is sin avoidance."

"The religious might be healthier because they are less likely to smoke, drink and engage in risky sex and more likely to wear seat belts.But when studies control for those factors, say by comparing religious nonsmokers with nonreligious nonsmokers, the religious factors still stand out. Compare smokers who are religious with those who are not and the churchgoing smokers have blood pressure as low as nonsmokers. "If you're a smoker, make sure you get your butt in church," said Larson, who conducted the smoking study."

see also: he Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993 For data on a many studies which support this conclusion.


5) Religion is the most powerful Factor in well being.


Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predicter of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combindation of religious items, including prayer, religionship with God, and other measures of religious experince to begin to adequately clearlify the associations of religious committment with general well-being."

(5) Greater happiness

Religion and Happiness


by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD


Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?

Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.

What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness

br>

Argyle, M., and Hills, P. (2000). Religious experiences and their relations with happiness and personality. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10, 157-172.

Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nielsen, M. E. (1998). An assessment of religious conflicts and their resolutions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 181-190.


Nielsen again:

In the days before research boards reviewed research proposals before the studies were conducted, Pahnke devised an experiment to induce people to have a religious experience. On a Good Friday, when they were to meditate in a chapel for 2.5 hours, twenty theology students were given either psilocybin or a placebo. The students who were given the psilocybin reported intense religious experiences, as you might imagine. Their levels of happiness also were significantly greater than the control group reported. But what is especially interesting is that these effects remained 6 months after the experiment, as the psilocybin group reported more "persistent and positive changes" in their attitudes to life than did the placebo group.

Pahnke, W. H. (1966). Drugs and mysticism. International Journal of Parapsychology, 8, 295-314.




Page 2 (the arguement on Doxa)

Let's look at more of What Bill says:

dis-belief of ALL those man-made holy books, all those man-made religions, all those man-made gods

If he had been reading closely he would understand that my views on inspiration of he Bible include the fact that they written by men, which in fact no Christian theologian ever denies not even the inerrentists. No one says God actually wrotet anytin but the 10 commandments. I am not an inerrantist. This is not a problem because I see that God is working thorugh human experience as described above, and in this way God works in all cultures.

We are many hundreds of former Xans of many 'different stripes'. Main line, fundamentalist, evangelical people of all ages & former strongly held beliefs. This includes former preachers, with PHDs in religion. You are welcome to post any & all thoughts-even Xian ones.

Notice he does not say they have liberals. He says many stipes but he mentions "main line" and fundie. What is meant by main line? He probably means two shades of fundie. But more importantly how many of them had mystical experiences? I've seen that board before it is not great shakes. They are all suffering from cognitive dissonance and are totally unwilling to listen a reasoned discussion. The didn't strike me as having anything different than your average atheist hate group board. Their discussions read like Infidel guy or atheism.net In other words stupidity! When he says they have Ph.D.'s is he speaking of Hecotor Avelos? If so I am not impressed.

You are welcome to post any & all thoughts-even Xian ones. We all share the right to state our thoughts & all can share in responding to all posts. You may find it helpful in requiring thought, logic, common-sense & reason. Give it a shot, Joe. There is a book that I think may help you. "When God Becomes a Drug.By Bart Aikins. Please vdon't feel that this is a criticism of you. You are a victim- one of countless millions. I am rooting for you.

I'm a victim of happiness. How kind that you wish to liberate me from being happy and having a good life. It is really such a burden not to be depressed as I was when I was an atheist. I really mis feeling life is meaningless and absurd. I just can't stand the idea that the creator of the universe loves me and that I feel happy any time I want to because I have meaning and purpose I really need to be helped out of that terrible fix of having a good life.

Here's my question, do you know the difference in a drug induced high and real happiness? I don't think you do. If you did you wouldn't be foolish enough to think that atheist depression counts as real happiness and religious people happiness, which cleinically is proved to have less depression is analogus to drugs.

I will go over there and challenge that guy becuase I am not afarid to argue with a guy with a Ph.D. even in a field I know nothing about, but I should have a Ph.D. the only reason I don't is because it was stolen from me as I was on the door step of receiving it. He knows nothing about my field so we are even.

Now let me tell you about my life, just a little bit. I had a 4.0 in doctoral work for five years. All professors liked me and I had a bright future as an academic and everyone who knew me just assumed I would make it. Then my parents got sick and I had to take care of them. I had other family members who were mkaing it really hard to take of them, I spent all my time doing it. I didn't give up on my doctorate I still worked on my Ph.D. while running my own little nursing home and giving my parents 24 hour round the clock care, with two other relatives works against me all the time. My father was dead for several minutes having been hospitalized for big heart attack. Then in the night he had a worse heart attack, he died in the ICU on the table as they worked on him. They got his heart going again. He was dead for maybe eleven minutes. That in itself is not a miracle, but there are some amazing things about it. What really meant a lot to the doctor was that he came back so strong (He was 89) his heart was weakened by the attack and very arrhythmical and he came back with a strong, steady, rhythmical beat like a much younger man. I did not know about any of that, I was at home having been in the hospital 48 hours already. I prayed with the Pope's midnight mass and because of that I can time it and find that it was during that time when he was actually dead. I dreamed that the Pope brought him to me and he said he would be alright. What I knew going to bed was that he had had a worse attack and they didn't expect him to live through the night. I woke expecting to find him dead but then the dream came back to me. Then I went to the hospital and the nurses were saying "Have you heard about the miracle?" I asked the doctor if he would call it that he said "I have never used that word in my practice but I use it now, this is a miracle!" That's exactly what he said.

Now this comes after 20 years of the kind of thin on a regular basis that you find in the testimony I liked to above. So I was already living the kind of life style that an experienced Charismatic lives. My live was already full of miracles and testimonies and things God has done. As I cared for my parents we had more. On occasion we called the ER guys, we called on a regular basis. As they hooked him to up to their gadgets they watched his heart attack symptoms change and go to normal as we prayed for him. They were all saying "wow this isn't suppose to happen!" I gave up everything in my life for them. There were several such incidents. I cared for them (my parents) full time round the clock for three years, and still tried to finish my Ph.D. that's when I discovered message boards and CARM as well.

Eventually of course my parents died, this time for keeps. I went back to school full time and worked as a teaching assistant. But then I went through a year long process of losing the house. It was stolen by a gang of criminals disguised as a mortgage company! So my brother and I were out on the street. We slept in our car in front of my friend's house for a bit and they let our dog run in their back yard. I could not find a job and I began to shout at God. I would drive around they city shouting at the top of my lungs "You liar!" "you lied to me!" I just openly mock "I've never seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begin for bread, well lookie here liar! I'm beging for bread, why don't you help me!??" That homeless period did not last long but we had to take a real crummy apartment. It was full of Hispanic low riders and dug dealers. A knife broke out in front of our door not long after we moved in.

I was convinced my life was over and ready to die. That last year in the old house was ridiculous. Every single day I tired to fight the motgage company. We were in the aucion, the house begin sold out from under us, for a year. Every month we were in it and it never sold. People didn't know why it didn't sell, it was a good proeprty and they said real estate agents were after it, people wanted it, but somehow when it came time for the auction somehting hapepned and it just didn't sell. I was prayihg of course. When we did finally have to leave I got resentful and that's why I would shouting and saying "you are not helping," that and not being able to find a job. A real estate guy told me that our house was being talked about real estate seminars all over this part of Texas becuase it was so amazing that we kept dodging the bullet. I wasn't really doing anything special. Twice we sold it, signed papers and all and they went back and backed out. I didn't play that but it got us out of auctions a coupe of times. we had no air conditioning, the place filthy because I didn't care any more I wasn't trying to keep it clean. It was infested with flies.

We got out and into this dump surrounded by drug dealers, I felt that my life was over. I had planned to go back to our old house, which was standing empty, this was at the height of the mortage crisis (which is not over yet) and I was going to put the car in the garage late at night and just keep the motor running. But I decided to do it in the day time because I was real upset about something. There was a cop sitting in front of the house for no apparent reason and I decided to take it as a sign. I went home and said "I am still alive, thank you God for that." I began to thank God every morning, "thank you that I am at least still alive." One day my sister came over to pray for me. She said "God please show Joe that his life is not over, you will still use him and have things for him to do." I thought, yea sure! Next day we went to a toaco place and were in life waiting order. this guy I had never seen before cam up and gave me 10$ and said "get some food." I was embarrassed but I took it becuase we only had enough to split a combo.

I noticed the guy was still jus standing there. I said "is there something else?" He was acting really embarrassed and he said "I don't this kind of thign all the time but God wants me to tell you something." I thought "O yea sure, Jesus loves you and has a plan for your life." He spit back word for word exactly what my sister said. i know what you are thinking, she prayed general positive stuff and he said general positive stuff. This was the exact next day, how many times does this happen to you? It was word for word. Not just general stuff but exactly what she payed including the reference to writing books and doing acacemic stuff who would think of that? No one would think at that point where I looked homeless that I was an academic.

I began thanking God for everything. I prayed every day and thanked for God for everything and started feeling God's presence again and began to be happy again. i begn to feel that I was re-building my life one piece at a time. I have no stopped feeling good. The only time I feel bad is when atheists are ragging on me. But that doesn't last long because when I stop posting on their boards I feel good again. Over the months we got into a wonderful house, a beautiful house which is the only one in all of North Dallas that is affordable to us given our incomes. We got this house because a little voice told me to go see about it and we went and the woman was coming out the door.

Now land lords in Dallas since 9/11 have been very peranoid and it's really hard to rent anything in Dallas. We were rejected by several apartments because my brother was arrested and our credit is bad and it said "foreclosure" on it so that in itself is an impassable barrier and it had just been a year and a half or two years since that happened. My credit sux, we don't make near enough to rent a house let alone a nice one, and this voice told me to go to this door and I did and the women was just coming out from having been observing the re modeling. She just happened to be the one Land Lady in North Dallas who understood the problems we have been facing and was caring enough to rent to us.

this kind of thing happens in my life on a regular basis. It happens beause I continue to thank Gdo for everything and pray every day and I love God. I believe what he says. I have been totally happy since living here. Why should I give any of this up? At this piont It's 30 years of knowing Jesus and that means 30 years of the kind of things I talk about happening all the time. It's a regular way of life and it works.

You know what? I really do resent atheists assuming that I'm unhappy because they were. I resent atheists assuming my beliefs arent' deep or sincere just because their's werent. I really resent atheists assuming that I'm depressed and need to be somehow liberated froma faith that was never real to them and that did not mean as much to them as it means to me.


The reasons people quite Christianity are many, but one that is most common is the legatlistic absuive group. I was raised in a group like that. I know what that is. It does feel freeing for a moment utnil you realize you have nothing to replace it with. What is a thousand times better is finding God for real and realizing that God doesnt' want you to be in the abusive grouip either. you can find good grouips that are not oike that.

It's not about grouip it's about a relationship to being.

Paul's Sruggle Against the Gnostics part 2

Jesus shows Thomas His Wounds




II.Paul's Jewish Background.

A. Resurrection is Flesh and Blood.

In speaking about Jewish concepts, N.T. Wright tells us "within this spectrum two points need to be made very clear: first, though there was a range of belief about live after death the word 'resurrection' was only used to describe reembodiment, not the state of disembodied bliss. Resurrection was not a general word for 'life after death' or 'going to be with God' in some general sense. It was the word for what happened when God created newly embodied human beings after whatever intermediate state there might be." (N.T. Wright The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering who Jesus was and is," Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter varsity Press, 1999, p. 134)

B. Flesh and Blood Messiah

The Jews expected a flesh and blood Messiah! They never looked forward to a mere ethereal being. Gnosticism did originate in Judaism but not as "Christian Gnosticism" which developed in the second century (with forrunnigs in the first).

C. When Did Paul Become a Gnostic?

The theological background for a Gnostic redeemer myth existed among Jewish sources, but Paul was not a Gnostic.

Paul was a Pharisee, a student of great Rabbi (Gamaliel) he was very proud of his tradition. He could not be further removed form gnosticism. There is no point in assigning to him a Gnostic ethereal theory of the universe when plainly he did not hold to such clap trap. there is simply no reason to think that he believed this.


III. Paul Battles the Gnostics

A. Doherty's assumptions of secret teachings in Paul


Piece No. 3: REVEALING THE SECRET OF CHRIST

Doherty says:

Paul and other early writers speak of the divine Son of their faith entirely in terms of a spiritual, heavenly figure; they never identify this entity called "Christ Jesus" (literally, "Anointed Savior" or "Savior Messiah") as a man who had lived and died in recent history. Instead, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, God has revealed the existence of his Son and the role he has played in the divine plan for salvation. These early writers talk of long-hidden secrets being disclosed for the first time to apostles like Paul, with no mention of an historical Jesus who played any part in revealing himself, thus leaving no room for a human man at the beginning of the Christian movement. Paul makes it clear that his knowledge and message about the Christ is derived from scripture under God's inspiration. [See "Part Two" and Supplementary Articles Nos. 1 and 6.] (Doherty)

As We have seen above this is totally false. There are Pre-Pauline and Pre-Markan references to Jesus as a flesh and blood man, and the basic historical setting of the Gospels existed in wrttien and oral traditions from at least the middle of the century. We have no reason to assume that this doesn't' reflect the basic facts of the original events and Jesus' actual sayings. Even though Doherty tries to connect his theory to the Mystery cults, it really belongs more firmly in the realm of Gnosticism. The Gnostic redeemer myth was that of a ethereal being whose participation in history was marginal and whose fleshly appearance only illusory. The Gnostics traded in "secret knowledge" and "hidden wisdom." It is really the Gnostics that fit the theory better, but they do not fit Paul at all.

B. Gnosticism at Corinth

Fred Layman,
Northwestern Nazarene University
Wesley Center Online
"Male Headship in Paul's Thought"
april 2004

Historical studies have increasingly shown the pervasive presence of Gnosticism in the background of several New Testament books, especially those which are important for this discussion-1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and the Pastorals. At this stage Gnosticism was not so much a defined religious philosophy as it was a radical pneumatic disposition which was diffused throughout many religions including Judaism and Christianity. (for his sources see below)

This does not mean, however, that Gnosticism is the basis of the teaching in the NT books, rather the basis of the heretical ideas being combatted! That is the is the context of the above statement.




Paul Does seem to know a wisdom saying source for Jesus' sayings but it is one that is also reflected in the canonical Mark. The believers in Corinth seem to have a different take on the Gospel than many others. In the first couple of chapters of 1 Cor. Paul uses a different terminology than he uses anywhere else. Mainly this consists of words like "wise" and "wisdom." He uses these 10 times in the first chapter, but only four times in all the rest of his corpus. These terms bring up a set of sayings from Mark that are noted as distinctly different from Jesus' other other sayings. Mark: 11:25,27, 13:16-17--Luke 10:21-24. The contrast between terms "wise" and "clever" found there are used nowhere else in Jesus' sayings. These refer to Isaiah 29:14:"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." Paul refers to this saying. Other contrasts include hidden and revealed. All of these concepts pertain to Gnostic ideas of the secret knowledge and those who possess it vs. those who possess it not. In 1 Cor. 4:5 "the Lord who will illumine the hidden things of darkness and reveal the councils of the heart." This is parallel by Mark 4:22 and also has a parallel in the Gospel of Thomas.


What's going on here? Does this mean that Paul was a Gnostic? It means that there was a Gnosticizing element in the early church, one which complied an early sayings list, and fragments of that list are used in the canonicals (perhaps because Jesus really said them?) But the Gnosticizers put their own Gnostic spin on these sayings. Such a faction existed at Corinth. Paul is entering their scheme and their language to deal with them. In other words I'm arguing that either Gnostic perverted real sayings of Jesus or they use a common background document that was an authentic saying source and all we have is some Gnosticized version like the Gospel of Thomas that contains some potentially authentic sayings of Jesus mixed in with latter Gnostic lore.

1) Paul adopts "wisdom" Schema to deal with faction

Koester tells us "Paul not only alludes to the sayings where were evidently of crucial importance to his opponents, he also adopts their schema of revelation which speaks of the things that were formerly hidden, but have now been revealed. This scheme is characteristic of the Q sayings...though it is not really typical of the Synoptic Saying Source as a whole. In the genuine Pauline letters, it is used only in 1 Cor 2:6-16, while it occurs frequently in the deutero-Pauline letters and also appears in the secondary ending of Romans" (16:25-26).(Koster p.59)


"For the Corinthian wisdom theology this revelation schema, of central importance for their understanding of salvation, it related to the sayings tradition by another element, namely, the recourse to the authority of certain persons: Paul, Appeals, Cephas, possibly Christ "(1 Cor 1:12, 3:4-5, 22).(Koester p 62)


There are three elements which together call for an answer: (1) the Corinthians knew saying which they took to be a hidden wisdom saying source. (2) Paul rejects that his calling had anything to do with Baptism (1 Cor. 1:15-17) the claim of belonging to a specific person may have entered into this. (3) Several other sources indicate that Apostolic Authority and the name of a specific Apostle played a role in transmission of sayings for both Orthodox and Gnostic. These sources include: Gospel of Thomas, The Apocrypha of James and Ptolemy's Letter of Flora.


Koester concludes form all of this that at Corinth Paul faced a Gnosticizing faction which believed that they had been initiated into secret knowledge through baptism. "They understood particular Apostles as their Mystagogues from whom they received sayings from which they received life giving wisdom...Paul's arguments against this understanding of Salvation become quite clearer if they are understood against this background." (Koster, p.62).

2) Paul never adopts this vocabulary again

As pointed out already, he only uses these terms of Wisdom and wise four other times in his whole corpus. Koester says that with this background in mind the way he speaks of the cross as hidden wisdom before the ages becomes understandable, because he is dealing with this Gnosticizing faction in their own terms. It is also important to note that the Cross was "hidden" to human understanding. The only verses about it in the OT are "hidden" and require interpretation, which even the Jewish people don't' accept today (Is 53, Ps 22, Zach.10:11). In other words Paul is creating the impression in the minds of the Gostic "I will show you the real secret knoweldge and wisdom, it's knowing Jesus."

3) never speaks of the Cross this way again.

Moreover, as Koster states: "Nowhere else does Paul speak about the Cross of Christ in such terms." (p.62). Doherty is merely confused and reversing Paul's meaning to place him in a position the opposite of which he was taking.

4) Paul is arguing against the Corinthian position!

It does not require much persuading to get most knowledgeable Bible readers to agree that Paul was not pleased with the Corinthians, that only when he was flattering them to coax them into submission was he saying positive things about their behavior. In the opening chapter he is clearly arguing against everything they think. He denies the importance of attaching one's self to a famous Apostle but one should only follow Christ. He denies that his mission was baptism precisely because they thought baptism by an Apostle or noteworthy was initiation into the secret mysteries. That's why he says "I thank God I did not baptize any of you." The rest of the time he is telling them they are not wise. They do not have the full truth, they are immature.


Note: There probably wasn't a full blown Gnosticism at Corinth since this doesn't show up tied to Christian Doctrine until the second century. The Corinthians probably didn't deny that Christ was a flesh and blood being, but just believed that they had "secret wisdom" that other churches didn't have. That is why Paul doesn't just come out and say explicitly "this is wrong, Christ was in history..."

C. No Grounds for the Charge of non-historical crucifixion

Paul's repudiation of the Gnostic faction at Corinth can be seen as a repudiation of all Gnostic positions, especially any position that would detach Jesus Christ form Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of flesh and blood and history. Paul clearly rejected the hidden wisdom schema, why than assume that he rejects the rest of the Gnostic schema? Moreover, Doherty sites this Gnostic vocabulary as grounds for the assumption that Paul is working in the Mythos of a mystery cult. Yet Paul repudiates the mystery cult diatribe. Let's look further at some of the verses Doherty sites.

1) The Charge that Paul does not
Place crucifixion in Spiritual Realm.

Doherty:

Piece No. 4: A SACRIFICE IN THE SPIRITUAL REALM

"Paul does not locate the death and resurrection of Christ on earth or in history. According to him, the crucifixion took place in the spiritual world, in a supernatural dimension above the earth, at the hands of the demon spirits (which many scholars agree is the meaning of "rulers of this age" in 1 Corinthians 2:8). The Epistle to the Hebrews locates Christ's sacrifice in a heavenly sanctuary (ch. 8, 9). The Ascension of Isaiah, a composite Jewish-Christian work of the late first century, describes (9:13-15) Christ's crucifixion by Satan and his demons in the firmament (the heavenly sphere between earth and moon). Knowledge of these events was derived from visionary experiences and from scripture, which was seen as a 'window' onto the higher spiritual world of God and his workings." (See "Part Two" and Supplementary Articles Nos. 3 and 9)

2) The Charge Refuted

As we have seen, Paul most certainly did place the Crucifixion in history, even tying it to historical witnesses Peter and James, and the Resurrection. But moreover the Pauline Verses (and Hebrews) Used to place the Crucifixion in this ethereal realm of The Gnostic Redeemer myth are totally misconstrued. Of course these other sources he uses, the Ascension of Isaiah for example, has nothing to do with Pauline letters and was produced late in the first century. He can't tie that to Pauline thought at all. Paul actually does say Jesus was flesh and blood in Romans 1:3 where he speaks of his linage. He even uses the Greek word for Felsh calling it his fleshly line, but Doherty who is not a Greek Scholar fudges on the meaning of the term.

a. Crucifixion in Space? 1 Cor. 2:8

This is a very deceptive statement Doherty makes above, for while many scholars do believe that the phrase "rulers of the age" could refer to demon powers, very few of them actually believe that Paul places the crucifixion in some ethereal Plaroma or nether world. In fact the statement does not have to be understood this way at all. The word Archon (ruler) merely means "firt" or "commander." It is used of human commanders and rulers all the time. While Aeon, "age" just means a period of time, or this epoch in history. So this statement could just as easily describe human rules as demonic ones. The statement , taken by itself, just in terms of its language, could as easily place the crucifixion in history as outside it. Since we have already shown so many ensconces where Paul thinks of the crucifixion as historical, it is foolish and absurd to make this one enstance into anything more, especially when we know that he is adopting the terminology of a Gnsoticizing faction in order to coutner their heresy.

b. Rulers of the Age are in history.

Now it is probable that Paul did use this phrase of demonic powers. But he believed that demonic powers played a hand in the running of the world, the affairs of state, that they controlled governments. They were able to motivate the crucifixion for this very reason. That still means however that the crucifixion was in history. It is the demonic powers influence over human affairs of which he speaks, not some ethereal events in some realm removed form history (Whiteley, Theology of St.Paul Fortress:1965, 229).

2:7 "No we speak of God's secret Wisdom. A wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rules of this age understood it for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. "(8)

He adopts the language of the Wisdom faction at Corinth while arguing with them. This is a basic Pauline strategy "I become all things to all men that I might win some for Christ." He's merely striving to appeal to his audience. Nothing in this statement implies that the crucifixion was not in history. Rather, it was motivated by the demonic powers since they control the worldly reigns of power, through their stooges the humans who are not clinging to God but sold out to the "worldly powers." This is clearly an event in history.

E. St. Paul and the Mystery cults

1) Cross cultural fertilization

The framework of Palestine in the first century was a melting pot of several cultures cross fertilizing each other. "It must be remembered that Jewish and Hellenistic thought both grew up together in the Eastern end of the Mediterranean, both owed a little bit to Egypt and a great deal to the civilization of the Trigris-Euphrates valley. Both alike derived something form Aegean culture." (D.E.H.Whiteley, The Theology of ST Paul. Philadelphia: fortress press, 1964, p.5) It is not surprising then that some concepts and expression, modes of thought would be cross fertilized and "borrowed." This is a far cry form the "copy cat" savior theory that skeptics such as Dohrety often go in for.

2) St. Paul Not indebted to Mystery cults

As for the notion that Christianity was a mystery cult, D.E.H. Whiteley one of the greatest Pauline scholars tells us, "the subject need be considered only at the level of popular misconceptions. Most of our evidence for the extant mystery cults comes from after the time than that of ST. Paul. For example Apuleius whose Golden Ass is one of our sources for these cults wrote in the third quarter of the second century...St. Paul does not seem t have been the sort of man to barrow from pagan sources. He was brought up as a strict Jew...Col. 2:8 'do not let your minds be captured by hollow and deceptive philosophies' is a warning against the kind of thinking we find in the mystery religions." (p. 2). Moreover Whiteley points out had Paul borrowed from the mystery religions we should expect to find his "Judaizing opponents" attacking him for that.

3) Paul Warns against Mystery cults


"St. Paul does not seem to have been the Sort of man that we should expect to find borrowing from Pagan sources. He was brought up as a strict Jew (Phil 3:5) Col 2:8 'do not let your minds be captured by hollow and deceptive speculations'...this is the kind of thinking we find in the mystery religions: it is not directed against philosophy in any modern sense of the word." (Whiteley, p. 2).

__________________________


(The sources used in the Layman article)

12Constance F. Parvey, "The Theology and Leadership of Women in the New Testament," in Reuther, Religion and Sexism, p. 121.13Ibid., pp. 121f.14Walter Schmithals, Gnosticism in Corinth (New York: Abingdon, 1971), pp. 160f.15Ernst Kasemann, New Testament Questions of Today (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), p. 71.)

Paul's Sturggle against the Gnostics part 1

I.The Pauline Connection

A.Formation of the Gospel


The notion that there was "a Gospel" per se, that the message about Jesus was distinctive from the one about the Messiah, that Jesus gave it a kind of life of its own, was also slow in coming. The first real formation of it was the Apostle's Church council which we find in Acts . Before this time emphasis was upon Jesus as Messiah. Now Jesus did not cease to be the Messiah, but the church's vision of what that means in terms of the mission to the gentiles and something more than just liberation of Israel from the Romans began to dawn upon them at that council. The Word preached in Antioch, by Hellenistic Jews, the first to be called "Christians." The Antioch church knew their traditions independently of the Apostles. The Creedal formula Paul quotes probably came out of this this council.


B. The Antioch Community as connecting link


"The creedal formula quoted in 1 Cor 15: 3-7 in which the "gospel" is defined as the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Christ make it possible that the understanding of the Gospel shared not only by the Church of Antioch from the very beginning but also by others who are named in the citation of those to whom Jesus appeared (Peter and James). This is confirmed independently in Paul's report about the Apostle's council" (Gal 2:1-10).(Koester p. 51)

"What Paul preached was never the subject of the controversy between Paul's Gentile mission and the church in Jerusalem. Jesus death and resurrection was the common event upon which their proclamation was based. Through the proclamation of this eschatological event the communities of believers became the New Israel. As new Believers came into the community they were baptized in the the death of Jesus so they would share also in Jesus' Resurrection." (Ibid.)

In other words the Antioch community didn't just Preach Paul's doctrine, they already had the basic core of the Gospel which they knew from their migration form Jerusalem. They knew the cross and the Resurrection from the beginning. Clearly they located these events in history, in their own recent past as did the Jerusalem church. This will be seen shortly.


C. The Peter and James Connection.


Paul had several opportunities to Meet Peter and James, perhaps even other Apostles or those who saw Jesus in the beginning. He knew the stories to some extent, although perhaps not all of them and not well. But he clearly grounded himself in Jesus teachings. The creedal formula which he quotes places Peter and James in the thick of the action, ignoring the women witnesses of the Gospel (probably because they were women) and only counting these two men as early witnesses. Yet this was circulating during their life time. Peter and James knew this talk of Jesus resurrection and themselves as witnesses was being noised about the very city in which they lived. They clearly did nothing to hush it up! Why would they have no issues with Paul's basic message if that message was that Jesus was not an historical figure? The creedal statement says: "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that the appeared to Peter, then to the Twelve..."


Why would an ethereal spirit require burial? Clearly the passage is speaking of events that occurred in space and time as we know it, in our world, involving flesh and blood historical figures. Paul knew those who were involved in the events and they had no problem with his understanding of those events or the core message.


D. Pauline References.


First, there is no reason for Paul to include such references since the epistles are not an attempt to convert pagans, but letters to churches dealing with practical and theological matters. Secondly, Paul was an intellectual, a thinker and a theologian. His concern was theology. He sought to answer the hard questions about the faith which were not answered by mere repetition of the basic facts of Jesus life. Why should he go into detail about Mary and Joseph and Christ born in a manger when he had more lofty matters to deal with? Finally, he wasn't present during the ministry of Jesus and he was not an eye witness, it is doubtful that he he ever saw a copy of Mark, or any of the other Gospels, so he may not have known all the facts or all the sayings. But he knew enough to formulate a theology. Granted it is a lofty theology, he does have something of a "cosmic Christ," but Paul's Christ is not a Gnostic redeemer, and Paul does demonstrate many times a basic awareness of the core Jesus story. But we should not expect to find it in great detail. This is argument from Silence and proves nothing. I will argue that not only do we find many direct contradictions to Doherty's views, that the Gnostic redeemer myth is bunk, and that Paul saw Jesus was a flesh and blood man who lived in history, but that some traces of the Gospel theology and material come through in Paul's understanding.


See my Chart showing Paul's allusions to Gospel stories and saying of Jesus. Koester believes he had a saying source, such as Q.

Paul was not a Gnostic Part 1

Here I have another fun exchange with my Jesus myther friend "Grog" who remains one of the best dialogue partners on carm. .

Quote:
Originally Posted by grog225 View Post
Paul the Gnostic

So now we are ready to consider Paul’s thoughts. First, let’s consider the main elements of Jewish Gnosticism and how it relates to wisdom or “Sophia.” Gnosticism held that the world was created by a demiurge, the malformed offspring of Sophia (wisdom). The Demiurge is the ruler of this material world often with Sophia enthroned alongside him. Depending on the version, Sophia created the demiurge in an attempt to be as the Supreme Aeon. So we have this dualistic world: the demiurge and the Supreme Aeon. Within this world, Sophia plays a dual, ambivalent role: she is on the one hand responsible for the evil material world and on the other hand the source of wisdom from the Supreme Aeon (see McRae, Novum Testamentum, 1971).

Earlier, I posted 1 Corinthians 2:6-10 and proclaimed it to be the bedrock of Paul’s thinking. Metacrock countered saying that Paul specifically rejected wisdom in 1 Cor 2:6:

1 Cor 2:6We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

Metacrock’s error here was failing to recognize the ambivalent nature of Sophia, both as agent of the material world and as agent of the Supreme God. In 1 Cor 2:6, Paul explicitly references that:”We do, however, speak of Sophia among the mature” (or in some translations, ‘perfected’). Then “Not of Sophia of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.” This exactly and precisely reflects Jewish Gnostic thought of the times. Note that the ‘rulers of this age’ are the evil elemental spirits, agents of the Demiurge:

No Sophia was the good guy among the gnostic, she was their goddess.

Actually I have no idea where you get the idea that this statement is the bedrock of Paul's thought? It's only the time ever talked this way.Most scholars are convinced that he adopts this kind of language for no other reason than to humor the Corinthian proto gnostic so he can lead them down the garden path to his own view. You are merely willing to read into it at ever opportunity the slightest nuance that puts a myther spin on it. Of course your motive for doing that its merely to fit the Doherty time table on grounding Jesus in history by the next century, and then making it appear that Paul supported some sort of gnostic or mystery cult myth making in the first century, so that you can subvert the history of Christianity and make it appear that it came out of mystery cult sources.

see Koester, in his chapter on John, he takes the prologue to be an anti-gnostic counter to the Sophia cult. Ancient Christian Gospels.


Koester tells us "Paul not only alludes to the sayings where were evidently of crucial importance to his opponents, he also adopts their schema of revelation which speaks of the things that were formerly hidden, but have now been revealed. This scheme is characteristic of the Q sayings...though it is not really typical of the Synoptic Saying Source as a whole. IN the genuine Pauline letters, it is used only in 1 Cor 2:6-16, while it occurs frequently in the deutero-Pauline letters and also appears in the secondary ending of Romans" (16:25-26).(Koster p.59)


"For the Corinthian wisdom theology this revelation schema, of central importance for their understanding of salvation, it related to the sayings tradition by another element, namely, the recourse to the authority of certain persons: Paul, Appeals, Cephas, possibly Christ "(1 Cor 1:12, 3:4-5, 22).(Koester p 62)

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“However, it appears to us that these names have been indiscriminately used by Paul to designate the cosmic powers. Besides them there are also "OS0L 7oXXoi" and "xupmo ToXXoA" (I Cor. viii 5), "aocv 6votoca votaocC6irvoq" (Eph. i 21), and "erzoupavoc" and "MysWoc" and "xoraXocovLc" (Phil. ii Io). Finally, some of their names with cosmic bearings are "xootpoxp'Tops; TOU C7XOTOU TOToou" (Eph. vi 12), "a'roloa" (Gal. iv 3, 9; Col. ii 8, 20), and "'dpXovTzo zo ax6O0ou TOUTou" (I Cor. ii 6-8). These designations seemingly correspond to the Johannine title for the supreme demonic being…”(Lee, Novum Testamentum, 1971)[emphasis added]

That is all third century. We have no writing's from the gnostics from the first century, except those mentioned nit he NEw testament, and couple of lost gospels such as Egerton 2 or the Gospel of the Savior, but they do not include these kinds of characters found at Nag Hammadi. Everything from Nag Hammodi is third century.

When Paul says "we struggle not against flesh and blood" (totally anti-gnostic statement because they did struggle against flesh) "but against principalities and powers" he's talking about the demonic force in the Roman empire not just the powers that the gnostic dreaded running into after death. That whole business about the powers keeping the spirit from the plaroma is latter. We don't have an example of it ni the first century. It looks like it evolved.

so you are trying to impose the third century style of gnosis upon the first century before it even existed. And there's no evdience for the type of gnostic Doherty reads back into the era before Chrsit. either.

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“All this suggests that St. Paul did not think about earthly kings and authorities, but rather about spiritual entities located somewhere in space, the ambivalent spiritual powers behind the earthly authorities.” (Quispel, Vigiliae Christianae, 1965)

So what if he did? Jews believed in demonic powers. But he's probably talking about demonic powers as they pertained to the Roman administration. There is nothing uniquely gnostic about that.


Now it is probable that Paul did use this phrase of demonic powers. But he believed that demonic powers played a hand in the running of the world, the affairs of state, that they controlled governments. They were able to motivate the crucifixion for this very reason. That still means however that the crucifixion was in history. It is the demonic powers influence over human affairs of which he speaks, not some ethereal events in some realm removed form history (Whiteley, Theology of St.Paul Fortress:1965, 229).


2:7 "No we speak of God's secret Wisdom. A wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rules of this age understood it for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. "(8)

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Quispel adds “behind the earthly authorities” but I think that presumes too much that the crucifixion is an actual event

.

you are begging the question. there is no reason to assume otherwise, you are treating the gap in knowledge a proven fact.

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In fact, in Romans 13 Paul refers to the governing authorities as agents of the Supreme God, not the Demiurge (I have argued this elsewhere and for the sake of space, I won’t do so here). So I agree with Quispel up to “spiritual powers” period.
supreme God in comparison with pagan gods. The God who really exists vs teh "gods" who are really the demons. given what he says in Rom 1 that makes such perfect sense and is clearly what he means!

That's imposing the reading upon the text. There's no connection between the idea that civil authoities are agents of God so therefore that must be a reference to the "true God" above the dimurge. That's certainly a warpped way to look at it.

(1) Clearly he's talking about human governments, for he would hardly advize us to pray that God would bless the authorities and keep them peaceful so we wont be persecuted and the talking about demonic powers.

(2) The phrase "principalities and powers" probably does refer to demons but as they work their evil through human governments. You are using that to connected to what you take to be a gnostic dichotomy but there no reason at all to connect it in that way. It makes just as much sense with Christian, who would also be talking bout demonic powers.

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So having set aside Metacrock’s objection, let’s look at the rest of 1 Cor 2:6-10:
1 Cor 2:6We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9However, as it is written:
I sense a twister coming on. He uses the same pharse who ti must be same idea for the same group.

this is still just more of your refusal to understand the uniqueness of this kind of talk in Pauline usage means he had a special reason for speaking to these guys this way. This was not Paul's usual way of speaking, which indicates something different is going on and we can't take it to be indicative of his real beliefs. In other words he's trying to reason with them no their own terms!

here's the sort of ink blot job you are doing on the language:

Barit means covenant in Hebrew

ish means man in Hebrew

therefore barit-ish means "man of the covenant"

therefore the British are the 10 lost tribes!

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"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him"— 10but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

Again in 2:8, ‘none of the rulers of this age’ refers to the evil elemental spirits as I documented above with the Quispel and Lee quotes. (A sidenote on Quispel: he believes Gnosticism is a late development and a Christian heresy. If this analysis of Paul is correct, that would be decisive against Quispel.)

again you continue along the same lines of errors. Still using Corinthians which is not normal language for Paul. You also seem to assume that Orthodox Christians didn't have the idea of revelation by the spirit, which is just foolish as hell.

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Note that in 1 Cor 2:10 the source of the revelation is the Spirit, not an earthly ministry of Jesus. Who is this Spirit? The Spirit is most often in Gnosticism associated with Sophia. So it is Sophia who has revealed the gospel to Paul, the “secret wisdom” of the Supreme God, hidden through the ages, and now revealed through Sophia.

It's totally ridiculous to try and kidnap the Holy Spirit and term him into a side kick of Sophia. There's absolutely no reason to think the Orthodox could not have the Holyk Spirit as a miracle working aspect of God's power. Clearly they did. It's all over Acts, the Jews had it to. Its' in the OT: Joel 2 "in the last days I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams."



(1) you assume fallaciously that he would have to chalk the source up to Jesus ministry

(2) you are apparently ignorant of the role of the spirit of God in Jewish beilef--it had one

(3) in several places Paul refers to "the spirit of Christ."

this is all the very very Jewish concept of Memra. The presence of God revealed on earth--which is equivalent to the logos. When John said "logos" in John 1:1 he was saying "memra" the phrase used in the targemum to say "the presence of God revealed downward from heaven to earth."

very very Jewish has nothing at all to do with Gnosticism and that's the link he's making to Sprit.

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Note also the similar passage in the Gospel of Thomas:

“I will give you what eye has not seen, and what ear has not heard, what has not been touched, and what has not arisen in the heart of man.”

Thomas is not gnostic. the core first century sayings of Thomas are not gnostic, they are q source and related to Q source. The gnostic bits are just a framework in which the core was placed in the second or third century.

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(Albeit the source of this saying is Isaiah 64:4, however, it clearly resonated with Christian Gnostics.)

why is that clear? prove that it resonated anymore with them than with any other Jews or Jewish Christians? There are no writings of Christian gnostic in this period. They don't show up until the middle of the second century. We don't kow exactly who he was dealing with in Corinth or exactly what they were thinking; but there were ony "proto gnostics" among the Christians at this time.

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It is hard to imagine a more thoroughly Gnostic passage than 1 Cor 2:6-10.

there's basically noting Gnostic about it. The kind of gnosticism you try to read into it you can't prove existed at that time.

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If you read Paul from this perspective, you find that his thinking is grounded in Gnosticism. Another parallel to Gnosticism (parallel? it is Gnosticism!) is Paul’s reference to different levels of understanding his Gospel (don’t confuse Paul’s gospel with THE Gospels, they are separate things!). Paul, like the Gnostics, referred to different levels of understanding God’s revealed secret mystery:
if you stare at my shrink's ink blots long enough you get the same effect

again, he never spoke this way again. It's totally unique for Paul and that implies that he was trying to reason with a proto gnsotic faction on their terms. OF course one can read in all sorts of things when dealing with what we take to be someone's understanding. So the ideas of "levels" is all the fruitful imagination of the mythers require to go off to the races.

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1 Cor 2:14The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:

Jews believed in the Holy Spirit. it was the Sprint of God. they talked about they believed in it. that's clearly and obviously what he 's talking about.


the Gnostic did not talk about "the spirit." you are trying to equate that with Sophia but Paul never links the spirit to wisdom except in an ordinary way and never attaches female sense to it. I've never seen any references by the gnostics to "the spirit" in this way, or any charismatic seeming passages about the giftrs either. I don't call any such thing in Nag Hammadi or in the Gnsotic elements in Thomas.

Obvious you are just reading in what you want to be there.

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16"For who has known the mind of the Lord
that he may instruct him?"But we have the mind of Christ.

show me what ordinary Jew could not say that?

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Koester and Fred Layman based research (my words largely but from Koester)

Paul Does seem to know a wisdom saying source for Jesus' sayings but it is one that is also reflected in the canonical Mark. The believers in Corinth seem to have a different take on the Gospel than many others. In the first couple of chapters of 1 Cor. Paul uses a different terminology than he uses anywhere else. Mainly this consists of words like "wise" and "wisdom." He uses these 10 times in the first chapter, but only four times in all the rest of his corpus. Therse terms bring up a set of sayings from Mark that are noted as distinctly different from Jesus' other other sayings. Mark: 11:25,27, 13:16-17--Luke 10:21-24. The contrast between terms "wise" and "clever" found there are used nowhere else in Jesus' sayings. These refer to Isaiah 29:14:"I will destroy the wisdom f the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." Paul refers to this saying. Other contrasts include hidden and revealed. All of these concepts pertain to Gnostic ideas of the secret knowledge and those who possess it vs. those who possess it not. In 1 Cor. 4:5 "the Lord who will illumine the hidden things of darkness and reveal the councils of the heart." This is parallel by Mark 4:22 and also has a parallel in the Gospel of Thomas.

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“Man without the spirit” is reference to the lowest level of understanding the hylic or Psychic. Those with the Spirit are the Pnuematic they are the “spiritual man”, The Spirit has blown the pneuma (revelation) into them.

not talking about people who don't have spirits he's talking about people who don't use the Holy Spirit. To the myther this is so inviting to see it as the secret Gnostic the man without the spirit would be the ordinary fleshly man who si not gnostic. But that's just the spin that gnostic put on it a century latter. That's not the implication that need be attached to the actually thinking of Paul which is charismatic in nature. He's saying those who don't live by the spirit. It's the myther's misfortune not to know about that.


Paul’s Followers

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It is interesting to note that early Christian Gnostics cited Paul as the founder and sage of their movement.

that's hardly surprising. They could hardly claim a James church origin since Paul was the one with the mission to the Gentiles. Paul was not the only origin they claimed either.

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Today’s orthodoxy maintains that Paul was not a Gnostic, Metacrock scoffs at the idea, but to the gnostic Marcion, Paul was the one true apostle.

because he took the missions to the gentiles. Marcion was not a Gnostic.

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In fact, Paul’s letters probably survive today because of Marcion.

foolish. he's clearly a badge of honor for both Clement and Igantias. and Ploycarp. That's why!

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Marcion was the first to collect together writings and call them a Gospel, the Gospel of the Lord or the Evangelicon. This was in the early second century and it is the first attempt to create a cannon. Marcion’s cannon included a version of the Gospel of Luke and the letters of Paul. Valentinius, the great gnostic sage of the mid-second century also traced his philosophy to Paul:

you are confusing uses of the term "gospel." Just because the term came into coinage then, and originally it mean the four fold gospel because the four canonical were accepted everywhere, that does not mean Marcion's was the original source. he truncated the previous Gospel he didn't make them.


Marcion had the demiurge, but that doesn't mean you can lump him in with the Nag Hammadi Sophia types. See you are just melding the "Gnosticism" into a single monolithic body. But the term is one coined by the Orthdox to brand who are not Orthodox. It's really a collection of a whole bunch of different groups that are not related.
__________________

you also need to ask yourself why Paul became the centerpiece of the Orthodox? If he was a Gnostic and if the Orthodox were those who took the church away form the original gnostic state why did they take Paul for the major NT writer?



Paul adopts "wisdom" Schema to deal with faction


Koester tells us "Paul not only alludes to the sayings where were evidently of crucial importance to his opponents, he also adopts their schema of revelation which speaks of the things that were formerly hidden, but have now been revealed. This scheme is characteristic of the Q sayings...though it is not really typical of the Synoptic Saying Source as a whole. IN the genuine Pauline letters, it is used only in 1 Cor 2:6-16, while it occurs frequently in the deutero-Pauline letters and also appears in the secondary ending of Romans" (16:25-26).(Koster p.59)


"For the Corinthian wisdom theology this revelation schema, of central importance for their understanding of salvation, it related to the sayings tradition by another element, namely, the recourse to the authority of certain persons: Paul, Appeals, Cephas, possibly Christ "(1 Cor 1:12, 3:4-5, 22).(Koester p 62)


There are three elements which together call for an answer: (1) the Corinthians knew saying which they took to be a hidden wisdom saying source. (2) Paul rejects that his calling had anything to do with Baptism (1 Cor. 1:15-17) the claim of belonging to a specific person may have entered into this. (3) Several other sources indicate that Apostolic Authority and the name of a specific Apostle played a role in transmission of sayings for both Orthodox and Gnostic. These sources include: Gospel of Thomas, The Apocrypha of James and Ptolemy's Letter of Flora.


Koester concludes form all of this that at Corinth Paul faced a Gnosticizing faction which believed that they had been initiated into secret knowledge through baptism. "They understood particular Apostles as their Mystagogues from whom they received sayings from which they received life giving wisdom...Paul's arguments against this understanding of Salvation become quite clearer if they are understood against this background." (Koster, p.62).


2) Paul never adopts this vocabulary again


As pointed out already, he only uses these terms of Wisdom and wise four other times in his whole corpus. Koester says that with this background in mind the way he speaks of the cross as hidden wisdom before the ages becomes understandable, because he is dealing with this Gnosticizing faction in their own terms. It is also important to note that the Cross was "hidden" to human understanding. The only verses about it in the OT are "hidden" and require interpretation, which even the Jewish people don't' accept today (Is 53, Ps 22, Zach.10:11).


3) never speaks of the Cross this way again.


Moreover, as Koster states: "Nowhere else does Paul speak about the Cross of Christ in such terms." (p.62). Doherty is merely confused and reversing Paul's meaning to place him in a position the opposite of which he was taking.


4) Paul is arguing against the Corinthian position!


It does not require much persuading to get most knowledgeable Bible readers to agree that Paul was not pleased with the Corinthians, that only when he was flattering them to coax them into submission was he saying positive things about their behavior. In the opening chapter he is clearly arguing against everything they think. He denies the importance of attaching one's self to a famous Apostle but one should only follow Christ. He denies that his mission was baptism precisely because they thought baptism by an Apostle or noteworthy was initiation into the secret mysteries. That's why he says "I thank God I did not baptize any of you." The rest of the time he is telling them they are not wise. They do not have the full truth, they are immature.


Note: There probably wasn't a blow blown Gnosticism at Corinth since this doesn't show up tied to Christian Doctrine until the second century. The Corinthians probably didn't deny that Christ was a flesh and blood being, but just believed that they had "secret wisdom" that other churches didn't have. That is why Paul doesn't just come out and say explicitly "this is wrong, Christ was in history..."
C. No Grounds for the Charge of non-historical crucifixion


Paul's repudiation of the Gnostic faction at Corinth can be seen as a repudiation of all Gnostic positions, especially any position that would detach Jesus Christ form Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of flesh and blood and history. Paul clearly rejected the hidden wisdom schema, why than assume that he rejects the rest of the Gnostic schema? Moreover, Doherty sites this Gnostic vocabulary as grounds for the assumption that Paul is working in the Mythos of a mystery cult. Yet Paul repudiates the mystery cult diatribe. Let's look further at some of the verses Doherty sites.
1) The Charge that Paul does not
Place crucifixion in Spiritual Realm.