Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Harry Baird]

Thank you, Skip, for your kind words and for your welcome. I was sort of hoping this thread continues though: it's a theme that has caused me a lot of soul-searching over the years, and I'd be interested in seeing the discussion play out a little more -- I don't suppose you and tillingborn could be encouraged to "stick around"?

Thanks also for alerting me to the "unanswered posts" feature, although I'm unlikely to get involved in more than one thread at a time, at least for now.

There is (in my eyes) so much to discuss here that it would be a shame (again, in my eyes) if perceptions of improper psychoanalysis, of inexactness, and of elitism (were there any others?) were to spoil the feast.

I wonder whether it's worth my answering to some of the "psychoanalysis" from my own perspective. In any case, I'll give it a go:

What I find interesting, though strange indeed, is how this effort [a Christian apology --Harry] becomes almost 'intolerable' to some folks. It is that itself that interests me. I am not sure 'you' have the self-consciousness to really understand why this 'revanche' exists in you. But that in itself is a very interesting topic to me. I think self-resentment and self-contempt are unexplored topics.

My father is Christian, my mother was not. As children, my sister and I attended church and Sunday School until we were old enough for my father to give us the choice, whereupon we both chose to stop. For a long time I was agnostic, and for a long time I (have) had a love-hate relationship with Christianity, and so I think I understand this 'intolerance' to Christian 'apologies', having (had) a measure of it in myself.

I think the core of it is an objection to "imposition":

• the imposition of Bible-as-truth when so much of it seems so questionable to modern eyes (a several-thousands-of-years-old Earth? Uh, really?),
• the imposition of a moral code claimed to be divine yet which in fact seems in parts quite random and even brutal (that those who work on the Sabbath ought to be killed? <eyebrows raise>),
• the imposition of certain requirements on behaviour and practice (wait, you expect me to spend an hour of my precious weekend listening to some boring guy lecture me on fantasies from a pulpit? And what's this about getting down on my knees, clasping my hands and talking to some invisible dude whose existence I've got no evidence for? <in a rising voice>)

No doubt much could be added to that list, and "imposition" takes many forms, from mild discussions with believers to social norms to political and legal impositions. Nobody likes to be imposed upon, and persistent attempts at it, along with a history of it, cause anger and resentment, which perfectly explains the punk reaction, and any "intolerance" to a Christian apology. Whilst some of the impositions (e.g. the political power-plays that Skip mentions) are unequivocally objectionable, the extent to which some of the others are objectionable depends on a view of Christianity and the Bible as entirely or at least largely fictional, as having no basis in reality, and, often along with this, of the non-existence or probable non-existence of a deity, and certainly of the unreality of Christ's sacrifice, and even of the possibility that his recorded life is entirely fictional.

The (gradual) change in my view of Christianity came about as I came to believe -- as I mentioned in my opening post -- that there does indeed exist some "higher power", and that there does indeed seem to be redemptive power in Christ's sacrifice. Of course, this alone doesn't fix the many problems with this religion, such as its holy book's failure to measure up to the science and knowledge of our day, and the questionableness of aspects of its moral code, but it does at least modulate my "intolerance" somewhat. Sadly, it nevertheless leaves me groping with many unanswered questions as to the actual nature of God, and how in the world this peculiar notion of sacrificing an aspect of Oneself to Oneself to redeem sins One defined into existence in the first place actually works, and why it works, and what exactly its requirements are on me, and why God "permits" the existence of a fallible Holy Book, etc etc (questions which, I would hope, are relevant in this thread -- what say you, Gustav?).

Anyhow, to wrap things up: I'm curious as to what extent you both, Skip and tillingborn, would say any "intolerance" (and of course feel free to reject the notion of your intolerance if you see fit) might be modulated by the overturning of these two core disbeliefs (and again, feel free to deny that either of these are in fact personal disbeliefs of yours if you see fit there too): in the (probable) existence of a deity, and in the redemptive power of Christ's sacrifice -- and to what extent any "intolerance" would remain due to other factors. (And if in this I'm "legitimising" "illegitimate" psychoanalysis, I apologise -- I am I hope at least well-intentioned in attempting to resolve differences so that this thread can continue)

Again, there is still so much more to discuss, but I'll leave it there for now. I might put in another post a bit later on one of the other issues Skip raised (either inexactness or elitism).

[tillingborn]

Wotcher Gus (I'm hoping my unsolicited familiarity will grate.)
Your story is wonderful; thank you. The only bit I didn't like was this:

The other element was a vision of the way that 'divinity' is present at an 'atomic' level (if you will); a Consciousness or Awareness that, to me then (and now still) is 'inconceivable'. It seemed to be a way of understanding divinity as an underlying force, as Brahman as the Hindus describe it: 'the unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world'.

I don't doubt your experience and for all I know there really is an 'unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world', but I have never felt it. I used to wonder why I didn't have this feeling; people who apparently did would say things like, 'Jesus is knocking at the door of your heart, you have to let him in'. Maybe he just hasn't got round to me. I don't feel that I am missing anything, though; I can watch a swan taking off or look into the eye of a dead grasshopper, amongst other things, and be struck dumb by the overwhelming beauty of the world. When words come back to me, they might be something like, 'Yeah baby! If it's that or nothing, gimme three score and ten!', there's no urge to say thank you.
Anyway; it is the 'unchanging' that I object to, it is the essence of conservatism. In some people conservatism is just a mistrust of novelty, a lack of daring. This in itself is harmless enough; a bit tragic, variety is the spice of life after all, but this dreary conservatism is ripe for exploitation, particularly by people for whom change could only be for the worse. This sense of 'the unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world' has been used to justify religious and political hierarchies, not least where you were first touched. Although India has outlawed the caste system, like most countries in the world it has a de facto class structure; money and power are by nature dynastic.
So I abhor what I perceive as your conservatism, because it is unadventurous (maybe you've had too much already) and because it favours people who don't need any favours. You seem like a decent enough chap though.


Welcome Harry. I think there may be some legs in this argument. Don't be put off by gnarly old scrotes who are a bit rough on occasion, yours truly for example, and if the real nutters have a pop, remember, they're just nutters.

[Skip]

Gustav Bjornstrand: It is simply a fact that, for political and social and spiritual reasons, this 'Christianity' is or has become a contended Symbol, in addition to being a 'fact' in a political and social sense (as a church-body is a 'fact' in time and space), and there are a great many people who hate the symbol and who hate the fact.

Well then, why not choose a different - perhaps entirely new - symbol? Surely, you want to lay down much of the ecclesiastic baggage that has made present-day Christianity so contentious. There are aspects and expressions of Christian faith that are admirable - and it's exactly those aspects that the politically mighty churches have persecuted, to the death of many innocent persons as well as their sects. The franchise is corrupt.

With your style, my personal problems are these: "It is simply a fact" appears frequently in conjunction with statements that seem to me not entirely beyond question.
Analyzing my motives as if you knew more about me than you, in fact, can know: generalizing me along with other diverse persons of whom you can know even less.
And the assumption of superiority that tillingborn also objects to.
I'm not pissed-off or offended or hostile - i simply don't hold those methods in esteem.

Harry Baird: Anyhow, to wrap things up: I'm curious as to what extent you both, Skip and tillingborn, would say any "intolerance" (and of course feel free to reject the notion of your intolerance if you see fit) might be modulated by the overturning of these two core disbeliefs (and again, feel free to deny that either of these are in fact personal disbeliefs of yours if you see fit there too): in the (probable) existence of a deity, and in the redemptive power of Christ's sacrifice -- and to what extent any "intolerance" would remain due to other factors. (And if in this I'm "legitimising" "illegitimate" psychoanalysis, I apologise -- I am I hope at least well-intentioned in attempting to resolve differences so that this thread can continue)

I have no objection whatever to the teaching of Jesus, whether actual or fictional. Somebody expressed those sentiments, and i agree with most of them. (For that matter, even Marx could have agreed with them, had not the political church spoiled them.) I have known and worked alongside Christians who embody those teachings in their daily life and have enormous respect for them. Mostly because of the doing instead of preaching: i'm a practical.
I certainly have no objection to anyone's private faith or world-view, so long as it doesn't require the stoning of anyone who draws a cartoon of their prophet or loves a person of the same sex. It's the imposition of which i'm intolerant, not the belief.

The redemptive power of Christ's sacrifice is my biggest obstacle to Christianity. Too bad it's central. I have moral problems with the idea of original sin, with a deity who get angry with his creations for being as he made them, a deity who requires blood and pain to assuage his anger, with the idea that a bigger wrong rights a smaller wrong, and that anyone can make up for someone else's misdeeds. In fact, with the whole notion of sacrifice and redemption.

What it would take for me to believe in a deity, spirit or higher power is a more difficult question. The world i live in absorbs all of my awe and curiosity and aspiration and love. I have not felt the need for anyone bigger than the sky to look up at, or anyone more mysterious than the ocean to wonder about, or anyone superhuman to talk to. The world is enough.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

GB: "The other element was a vision of the way that 'divinity' is present at an 'atomic' level (if you will); a Consciousness or Awareness that, to me then (and now still) is 'inconceivable'. It seemed to be a way of understanding divinity as an underlying force, as Brahman as the Hindus describe it: 'the unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world'."

TB: "Anyway; it is the 'unchanging' that I object to, it is the essence of conservatism. In some people conservatism is just a mistrust of novelty, a lack of daring. This in itself is harmless enough; a bit tragic, variety is the spice of life after all, but this dreary conservatism is ripe for exploitation, particularly by people for whom change could only be for the worse. This sense of 'the unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world' has been used to justify religious and political hierarchies, not least where you were first touched. Although India has outlawed the caste system, like most countries in the world it has a de facto class structure; money and power are by nature dynastic."

You bring up a very good point I think. In Indian metaphysics there is the notion, which for those who believe is an 'absolute fact', that the Vedas (knowledge, teaching, the possibility of knowing, revelation, awareness, language, memory) are conceived as descending into our world from an eternal source. Without going into too much unnecessary though interesting detail, this belief system/system of interpretation is based in a notion of 'rta':

• "Indian philosophy is distinctive in its application of analytical rigour to metaphysical problems and goes into very precise detail about the nature of reality, the structure and function of the human psyche and how the relationship between the two have important implications for human salvation (moksha). Rishis centred philosophy on an assumption that there is a unitary underlying order (rta) in the universe which is all pervasive and omniscient. The efforts by various schools were concentrated on explaining this order and the metaphysical entity at its source (Brahman). The concept of natural law (Dharma) provided a basis for understanding questions of how life on earth should be lived. The sages urged humans to discern this order and to live their lives in accordance with it." [From the Wiki page].

I think that one has to establish as a base that all religious, social and cultural systems have at their base that culture's 'answers' to the fundamental questions: Where are we? What is this place? Why are we in this place? And what shall we do here? In my experience, examining and to some extent exploring so-called 'primitive' religious/magical modes such as shamanism and even the magical sciences (that have expression in our modern world through Jungianism and other up-surges of 'ancient modalities'), it is the same basic questions that are always there, they just do not go away, nor do I think will they ever.

To state it briefly, the trajectory of Western culture has been one of constant overturning of old conceptual orders and the reimposition of new ones. In this sense 'the West', for many reasons, and reasons that can be traced, described and known, has been and still is in constant ferment. I referred a page back to the 'American mania' and it is 'just a fact' that this endlessly shifting and evolving energy or 'use of energy' has direct connections to this ferment.

Perhaps it could be said that we have lost the ground (rta) under our feet and we do not know any longer how to define ourselves in this Reality? Certainly science and the 'restless ferment' have exploded the 'old certainties':

1) Man at the center of the Creation, the Universe spinning round him;
2) Man as lord of Creation, an independent creation;
3) Man's reason as absolutely true; or:
4) Man's faith as reasonable, and inspired by contact with divinity;
5) Man's capability of distinguishing good and evil;
6) That practice of good makes for blessedness, and is wisdom ('sanctification')
7) That contrary practices lead to death and damnation;
8} That reason and faith reveal Divinity;
9) That Divinity is good and is One, and is concerned for man's well-being;
10) That man's conception of the natural world, while incomplete, is fundamentally correct, and that this is so because (take a pick, folks!):
a) The senses give us reality,
b) Reason corrects the senses giving us reality, or
c) God, wisdom, faith, supplement and correct senses and reason, giving us reality;
11) That we know what matter is even if we cannot fabricate it;
12) That we know what thought is, as separate from matter;
13) That the law of cause and effect, on which rest logic and science of all kinds, is absolute;
14) That time and space are real: they are independent of our minds, and we are within them rather than they in us;
15) That human individuality---call it soul, spirit, ego---exists, not relatively, but absolutely in Time and Space.

All of the above are now 'up in the air' and contested. Ours is a world divided by chaos, and when once a Defined and Ordered World was eaten away by 'acids of chaos', now we seek (I suggest) to put our world together in a new way. Not so easy!

In the context of the discussion broached in this thread, we have, I think, to understand at least superficially the degree to which the building blocks of the old 'house' of a concept of 'rta' (underlying order or 'divine order') have been decimated.

And we need, I think, to understand what this means for each of us as individuals who are now been, in comparison to a past which supplied answers and in that sense 'solidity', 'thrown out into a world that we do not understand'. Also, to understand this 'thing' (event? force? process?) called nihilism and to understand its effect on and in us will naturally require a certain background in understanding. This is one of the reasons why (please don't beat up on me) it takes a prepared mind to grasp a great deal of What has happened to us and What is happening still. It is not arrogance so much as it is accumulated knowledge and the ability to organize that knowledge that, these days, separates people. It is just a 'simple fact' (sorry, Skip) that most people on the surface of the planet right now do not have either the background itself or the desire to have the background to understand, fundamentally, 'what is going on in our world' (the world of man principally) and Why, in the sense of antecedents, causation.

However, though we may have conceptually overturned all the Old Certainties and their forms of expression, in no sense have we overturned either the possibility that there ARE certainties (a background if you will to Reality, an underlying Order), nor that we need and require an agreed-upon base of understanding of Our Reality on which to build our models of social behavior, our ethics, and also our 'existential ethics' (ecological, biological ethics).

Rather quickly, when in truth all the above has to be gone through rather slowly---the mind requires time to adjust and to think through---we arrive again in our present. You and me, I and Thou, here and now. And here we might locate the 'problem':

I say that we cannot just wipe everything off the board even if it is all based in outmoded conceptions that no longer 'function' in our present. True, all 'old conceptual systems', all 'Old Metaphysics', all previous descriptions, are 'graveyards of meaning' or 'symbolic graveyards'. The unprepared, the ignorant (in the strict factual sense), the unconcerened and the uninterested have no tools to examine the Old Symbols, and for them the Graveyard is a confusing, overwhelming and even 'creepy' place. How eve could they make sense of it?

So going very very quickly, rushing headlong like a car-thief into the Conceptual Night, I am trying to say that:

What we call 'Christianity' is really a whole centuries-long movement through a world of Idea and Possibility and that in no sense can we merely jettison it, nor its Symbols, but we may need to revisit all of them, look into them with a different sort of mind, and reconsider their Value and Meaning within our present. This is NOT a work that can be undertaken by just anyone, and in a certain but very real sense we have to admit that the unprepared will be excluded from the process, simply because (to be truthful) they have no interest. But as I said, admitting it is a difficult topic, those 'mass men' are not impotent and they are not inactive in the world. Like naughty children they can do a great deal of harm without, say, a 'sound moral ground' from which to operate, and a controlling discipline of moral and ethical order. And we must understand that this is NOT a question of 'class' or social situation and placement, but something else quite radically different. It is when we come in contact with persons who, like with the punk bands, discover their power merely through destructive doing, that we find ourselves concerned for 'valuable things that may be lost' and also the 'spirit of nihilism' that more often than not leads to confusion and disorder in our present. We are not merely talking about individuals and their attacks on 'religion' but whole Systems, governmental and economic, in operation on the planet. Mass Man and his activities must be understood in a far wider sense.

For further research, I suggest listening to, and internalizing, this interesting musical discourse on 'Rta'.

Get back to me with your findings.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Hello Harry. The above-posted was intended also as a response to parts of what you wrote. I will leave it to you to make the connections. They are largely evident to me but much of this material is stuff I have been thinking on for some time. I will say, though it is obvious, that modern theology has superseded all of the limited symbols that you refer to, and resist (or question). One has to penetrate back through the symbols to a background of meaning and then consider the implications of the meaning.

Christianity in those early days (the Pauline days) was a radical departure from Judaic and State forms. A 'new spirit' (said without dogmatic or religious reference) began to move within a newer conceptual order. It moved with a blended with Greek rationalism and very new forms of relationship with reality took form. I suggest that there is and will always be within 'Christianity' the possibility and the fact of constant movement, constant cycling, constant restatement if you will. At least based on what you wrote it would appear that you remain confined within a 'story line' which has long ago been superseded. Consider Reinhold Neibuhr among many.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Well then, why not choose a different - perhaps entirely new - symbol?

The question of 'symbols' in this sense is interesting. If it is true that 'there is nothing new under the sun', it is possible that all the 'potent symbols' have already been given expression, in art and in idea. Take for example 'metaphysical fire', the downward pointing red triangle of 'shakti', or the symbol of 'metaphysical water', the upward pointing blue triangle. I have the sense that you won't like or accept the mention of it (?) but modernity through CG Jung has extended the notion of a simply 'physically' oriented-reactive 'unconscious' (Freudianism in crude terms) into all manner of symbolical representations charged with 'religious' content. It is simply there, within us, as possibility. In this sense Jung wrote (in typically arcane manner!) his notions of the 'phenomenology of self' through the symbol of Aion.

As in the Incredible String Band tune:

Out of the evening growing a veil / Pining for the pine woods that ached for the sail / There's something forgotten I want you to know / The freckles of rain they are telling me so: What is it that we are part of? And what is it that we are?

[Harry Baird]

The redemptive power of Christ's sacrifice is my biggest obstacle to Christianity. Too bad it's central. I have moral problems with the idea of original sin, with a deity who get angry with his creations for being as he made them, a deity who requires blood and pain to assuage his anger, with the idea that a bigger wrong rights a smaller wrong, and that anyone can make up for someone else's misdeeds. In fact, with the whole notion of sacrifice and redemption.

That's fair enough, and I also recognise similar problems, yet I simply can't ignore the fact that the power of the resurrection seems to be very real. To take one example: a year or two back I read a book titled "Healing the family tree" by Dr Kenneth McAll, in which he describes many miraculous cures that he and his friends effected through the power of the Eucharist and prayer. For example, on pages 27-28, he describes a Eucharist service for "Dorothy", "who had suffered from anorexia nervosa for six years", in which he had a vision of Dorothy's aborted sister marching up the aisle and into the arms of Christ. Upon Dorothy's mother relating this to her, Dorothy said the girl had been asking for her (Dorothy's) help for years, but Dorothy had been too frightened to tell anyone because she thought she would have been locked up for hearing voices. A week after the service, Dorothy was eating again and took "a five hundred mile round trip by train to say 'thank you'" to those who'd celebrated the Eucharist for her.

Many, many similar stories exist in diverse media, and I find it really hard to believe that they are all fakes, which leaves me only to search for resolution to the type of issues which you raise. My personal answer is, as I wrote in my first post, manichaean: that evil was not created or facilitated by God, but rather exists in its own right, and Christ's sacrifice was not so much to appease an angry God as to break the power of an independent evil over human individuals, at least for those capable of "connecting" with that sacrificial love. It's not an entirely worked-out answer, but it's the best I've got so far.

What it would take for me to believe in a deity, spirit or higher power is a more difficult question. The world i live in absorbs all of my awe and curiosity and aspiration and love. I have not felt the need for anyone bigger than the sky to look up at, or anyone more mysterious than the ocean to wonder about, or anyone superhuman to talk to. The world is enough.

It's curious that you mention "need". It seems to be a common atheist critique of theistic belief: that that belief is based on emotional satisfaction/"need". That's not how I came to theistic belief though; my path was through reasoning from experience.

Gustav,

It seems I view the resurrection more literally and you view it more symbolically. Your view is more expansive but... is it right? How would we establish that, especially in the light of the evidence I've alluded to for a more literal interpretation?

As for being confined in a story line, I wouldn't say so. I'm pretty open to ideas as to what the truth of the matter is, I simply recognise a "literal power" that seems to exist, and that's my starting point from which to explore. The problems I raised were with respect to the "old" story line, yes, but that doesn't mean I'm stuck in that story line, just that it's the original context in which the resurrection was viewed, and thus the one I look to first to find what meaning and truth there is to be found.

[Skip]

It's curious that you mention "need". It seems to be a common atheist critique of theistic belief: that that belief is based on emotional satisfaction/"need". That's not how I came to theistic belief though; my path was through reasoning from experience.

I don't know, or claim to know, anything about your need or approach or attitude. I have a great many needs, but a belief in a supernatural entity doesn't happen to be one of them. I could phrase it differently, but it wouldn't make any difference: we would always remain on two sides of the experiencers/non-experiencers divide. Those who have faith and those who have ... whatever the rest of us have.

[Harry Baird]

I could phrase it differently, but it wouldn't make any difference: we would always remain on two sides of the experiencers/non-experiencers divide.

So, perhaps experience could change your mind.

[Skip]

Obviously. Experience is change.

[tillingborn]

It's curious that you mention "need". It seems to be a common atheist critique of theistic belief: that that belief is based on emotional satisfaction/"need". That's not how I came to theistic belief though; my path was through reasoning from experience.

With regard to need; I think there is a belief amongst some atheists that some theists cling to belief in fear of death. That may be true, but from what I can gather, there are many different reasons for people believing. As a child I was very upset to find out that this wasn't forever; I got over it. As it happens, I started a thread called Who wants a soul? It was a bit of a hoot, but the way the universe works, as long as it exists, it will always be different because you were here. In chaos theory, it's called the butterfly effect and we're all little butterflies. It might not be much consolation, but it's a fact.

You give an example of a conclusion of your reasoning where you say:

that evil was not created or facilitated by God, but rather exists in its own right,

This is a philosophical position known as realism, the most famous proponent of which was Plato, who was believed by his more enthusiastic admirers to be a son of the god Apollo and whose mother, Perictione, was believed to be a virgin. Plato claimed that abstract entities, evil for example, actually exist, in and of themselves, in a world of 'Forms'. This world of forms can only be contemplated with the mind; all the things on Earth, that we might use our eyes and ears to apprehend, are only imperfect copies of heavenly perfection; which the body, with its lusts and desires, is an impediment to contemplating. Hence a Platonic relationship is one that avoids bodily contact. I don't think it is a coincidence that St Augustine, for example, who prayed to god to be celibate, 'but not yet' was a Neo-Platonist. God and the devil are the abstractions good and evil anthropomorphised. It isn't god who makes us in his image, rather we who make him in ours. As Xenophanes noted:

But mortals suppose gods are born,
Wear their own clothes and have a voice and body.
The Ethiopians say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
While Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each would shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each of their own kind.

To some people the Catholic Church is just a name; catholic means broad or somesuch, of universal appeal, perhaps. So god becomes this invisible thing that can appeal to Ethiopians and Thracians alike, cattle and horses too, in theory. The conversion of disparate pagan tribes to Christianity is then smoothed by the fact that god could be one of them. Failure to convert puts you in conflict with the most powerful organisation on the planet. It is this same brutal urge, I would suggest, that makes some evangelicals and creationists so aggressive.

The antithesis to realism is anti-realism. This is the view that there is no such thing as evil, or good, or duty, or honour etc, etc; there are only deeds and events that we judge display those qualities. Or at least that's the conclusion my reasoning leads to.

Your reasoning, I suspect, is not without foundation. I imagine it is rare for people to spontaneously conclude as you have, without access to the source material. I made the point to Gus that geography may play a part. There does seem to be a remarkable correlation between the dominant religion in the area that one is raised and the religion that one adopts. I'm guessing that Southern Baptists are so called because they are mostly found in the south of the USA. The Amish, I gather, tend to be concentrated in particular locations. Further afield, there is a curious gathering of Shintoism in Japan. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point; it could all be coincidence, but the odds are between nil and not much.

I could phrase it differently, but it wouldn't make any difference: we would always remain on two sides of the experiencers/non-experiencers divide.

So, perhaps experience could change your mind.

Who knows? Perhaps if I were to experience a Damascene vision, I might well conclude that what you apparently believe is true. If, on the other hand, you mean experience of the church, the bible and the sort of stories you relate the answer would be, not so far. You talk about "Many, many similar stories". Really? How many? A typical story that you hear from time to time is of someone thinking about another person they haven't seen in years and years; the phone rings, oh my golly it's them. One possible explanation is that there is some invisible power that makes these things happen, the Holy Ghost perhaps. Alternatively, given that people do sometimes think about people they have seen for ages and that some people do contact people they haven't seen for ages, it would be astonishing if no two such events ever coincided. I'm not convinced there are enough of these stories to demand an explanation, I have also heard variations in which the two people were watching the same thing on telly that sparked some common experience. I don't know what the underlying causes are, but clearly people can interpret the same events in different ways. So in the absence of a miracle, we will probably always remain on two sides of the believers/non-believers divide.
Anyway, Emo Philips made a joke about god, which I include, not to cause offence, but because it's a very good joke: "I used to pray for a bicycle. Then I worked out how god worked. So I stole a bicycle and prayed for forgiveness". Genius!

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

The mandala first comes into the conscious mind as an unimpressive point or dot, and a great deal of hard and painstaking work as well as the integration of many projections are generally required before the full range of the symbol can be anything like completely understood. If this insight were purely intellectual it could be achieved without much difficulty, for the world-wide pronouncements about the God within us and above us, about Christ and the corpus mystericum, the personal and the suprapersonal atman, etc., are all formulations that can be easily mastered by the philosophic intellect. This is the common source of the illusion that one is then in possession of the thing itself. But actually one has acquired nothing more than its name, despite the age-old prejudice that the name magically represents the thing, and that it is sufficient to pronounce the name in order to posit the thing's existence. In the course of the millennia the reasoning mind has been given every opportunity to see through the futility of this conceit, though that has done nothing to prevent the intellectual mastery of a thing from being accepted at its face value. It is precisely our experiences in psychology which demonstrate as plainly as could be wished that the intellectual 'grasp' of a psychological fact produces no more than a concept of it, and that the concept is no more than a name, a flatus vocis. These intellectual counters can be bandied about easily enough. They pass lightly from hand to hand, for they have no weight and substance. They sound full but are hollow; and though purporting to designate a heavy task and obligation, they commit us to nothing. The intellect is undeniably useful in its own field, but it is a great cheat and illusionist outside of it whenever it tries to manipulate values.

It would seem that one can pursue any science with the intellect alone except psychology, whose subject---the psyche---has more than two aspects mediated by sense-perception and thinking. The function of value---feeling---is an integral part of our conscious orientation and ought not to be missing in a psychological judgment of any scope, otherwise the model we are trying to build of a real process will be incomplete. Every psychic process has a value quality attached to it, namely its feeling-tone. This indicates the degree to which the subject is affected by the process or how much it means to him (in so far as the process reaches consciousness at all). It is through the 'affect' that the subject becomes involved and so comes to feel the whole weight of reality. The difference amounts roughly to that between a severe illness which one reads about in a textbook and the real illness which one has. In psychology one possesses nothing until one has experienced it in reality. Hence a purely intellectual insight is not enough, because one knows only the words and not the substance of the thing from inside.

[...]

Today it is a real problem what on earth such ideas can mean. The world---so far as it has not completely turned its back on tradition---has long ago stopped wanting to hear a 'message'; it would rather be told what the message means. The words that resound from the pulpit are incomprehensible and cry for an explanation. How has the death of Christ brought us redemption when no one feels redeemed? In what way is Jesus a Godman and what is such a being? What is the Trinity about, and the parthenogenesis, the eating of the body and the drinking of the blood, and all the rest of it? What connection can there be between the world of such concepts and the everyday world, whose material reality is the concern of natural science on the widest possible scale?

[...]

If metaphysical ideas no longer have such a fascinating effect as before, this is certainly not due to any lack of primitivity in the European psyche, but simply and solely to the fact that that the erstwhile symbols no longer express what is now welling up from the unconscious as the end-result of the development of Christian consciousness through the centuries. This end-result is the true antimimon pneuma, a false spirit of arrogance, hysteria, wolly-mindedness, criminal amorality, and doctrinaire fanaticism, a purveyor of shoddy spiritual goods, spurious art, philosophical stutterings, and Utopian humbug, fit only to be fed wholesale to the mass man of today. That is what the post-Christian spirit looks like today.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Jung developed some pretty compelling ideas, and a way to integrate the spiritual-psychic (psychological) with the material and also---importantly---a whole group of 'tools' to reexamine virtually all of the old symbolic concept-models in which man has existed. Unfortunately, it lends itself to reductionism and over-simplification (a danger Jung was aware of and wrote about). His psychological models are a way and a means of speaking about our existence here, and in this sense is part of the answer to 'What is it that we are part of? And what is it that we are?'.

What interests me in the above, in relation to the last few posts, is the issue and question of 'experience'. One very important element in there is of course 'affect' which, as I see it, is a crucial element.

It seems I view the resurrection more literally and you view it more symbolically. Your view is more expansive but... is it right? How would we establish that, especially in the light of the evidence I've alluded to for a more literal interpretation?

If it works for you (to put it colloquially) to 'view' the resurrection literally, I would not have anything to say about it. But I think we have to start from the point that for something like 'resurrection' to be real for a given person it must be a 'real process' with real results for a given individual. As I see things the classical 'story' about resurrection is, intellectually if you will, dead. (Ha ha ha, that was even sort of funny! A dead resurrection story!) For it to be something 'truly living' it has to be actually integrated at a profound level---the most profound level possible if it is possible---into the totality of the life of the person. And, in that, we are absolutely at a loss. We have no idea what that could even mean. The 'graveyard of meaning', the 'monument-yard of unfunctional symbols', recedes into the past just as archaeological artifacts return to the Earth. They are covered over. In this specific sense, perhaps (pushing the various Jungian analogies) they are 'pushed down into unconsciousness'. But I certainly doubt if they are inactive and powerless. What I am attempting to propose, and it is certainly not original to me, is that we need a group of tools and also a certain amount of energy in order to be able to examine ourselves in our present and on the far end of long historical processes. I have said that I feel that 'the mass man' is largely excluded from this project because, well, the mass-man is really a 'subject' of far greater powers that mould him. To be aware that this is so seems to me a kind of wisdom, despite politically correct formulations and democratic rhetoric.

If we cannot 'master' our world, if only superficially, if only in some degree, we will always and forever be the 'subject' of greater, moulding and directing forces. You could make a bold leap and 'translate' that and say 'demonic forces'. Man seems called upon to gain the self-knowledge to carve out some small space within essentially chaotic force and to attempt to function as a whole, conscious person. If that is NOT the case, what then is our fate?

Fairly obviously, in Jung's passages above (dutifully sermonic as he really is a sort of 'priest of the psyche' and his doctrines are extensions of gnosticism and also I think Catholicism in the widest sense), we are called to task if our 'spirituality' is merely an intellectual pose, but how are we to engage at physiological-psychological levels with those internal processes and their external, existential counterpart, without utterly becoming lost? And that most certainly, from a Jungian perspective, is the danger we face. Jung interestingly enough turned apocalypticism back on itself and places the responsibility on the individual. What he seemed to say, essentially, was: 'What you don't or can't deal with internally will rise up externally and destroy you'. But too he also proposed a way out of the Maze and a way back toward 'wholeness' and self-integration.

In my view it is almost thoroughly ridiculous to engage with Religion that chooses to remain locked within outmoded fundamentalist structures and cannot advance into the 'present'. Also in my view, the present really only ever means you and me in a here and now and in this can only be physical, biological and social. What does 'resurrection' mean in a real present?

As to the stories that you mentioned, the tales of religious healing, these are 'faith-stories' told by believers to help other believers strengthen and hold to faith. it is not 'invalid' as such it is rather (perhaps) incomplete. It is also a tenet of Freudian psychotherapeutics that when one unties an inner, psychological knot that one releases a whole lot of psychic energy that is bound up in a 'neurosis'. These are the wounds that can, according to that view, be healed. We are certainly all the victims of huge traumas, all of us, and this is why I suppose we can generally consider man a delirious creature. Our delirium is our pain, and pain we have limited clues as to how to solve. Everything works to 'shatter' us and so little beneficently seems to work to 'bring us back together again'.

So, with all that, I will actually call you on your last wager and raise you the Ultimate Price: how is 'resurrection' or any part of the Christian story relevant for you, here and now? That is the point where the rubber hits the road. In this sense we are either dying or dead or coming to life again.

I'm pretty open to ideas as to what the truth of the matter is, I simply recognise a "literal power" that seems to exist, and that's my starting point from which to explore.

If you recognized a 'literal power' you would have a relationship to that 'literal power' and you would engage it and be engage with it in your own 'resurrection'. So, what you seem to be saying is that you 'intellectually entertain' the possibility of a 'literal power' but it is not really real but 'intellectually real'. You are absolutely not alone in this and this is, of course, a huge problem: the disunity of the individual with the 'world' he lives in, his ontological reality.

A musical meditation on the difference between what we conceive intellectually and what we really know, somatically.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I can't go on, I'll go on.

[Harry Baird]

Hello, tillingborn,

we're all little butterflies

You don't know how much that tickles my hippie sensitivities!

As for realism, I'm not sure I'm entirely on the same wavelength as Plato - this world of forms sounds pretty... inaccessible (other than mentally, I mean). It doesn't quite sound like what I mean by the independent existence of good and evil; I mean that these things exist tangibly in the real world, not necessarily (but sure, potentially) because they reflect any perfect form, just... because they do. I don't know why. I wish I did. But I also believe (because of other people's testimony about them) in heaven and hell realms, which you might see as some sorts of worlds of form.

You mention "source material", and whilst it is true that I have had access to the Bible, my belief in evil comes from direct experience rather than through references.

Perhaps if I were to experience a Damascene vision, I might well conclude that what you apparently believe is true. If, on the other hand, you mean experience of the church, the bible and the sort of stories you relate the answer would be, not so far.

Yep, I meant personal experience, the Damascene vision, rather than second- or third-hand experience. Something like what Gustav related of his spiritual experience in India.

You talk about "Many, many similar stories". Really? How many?

It's impossible for me to say beyond what I did. I've never made an effort to catalogue them. Some people online have catalogued some variants of these type of stories - you might find these two pages/sites useful in estimating "how many":

• http://www.heavenvisit.com/ (warning: one of the videos autoplays when you load the page)
• Verified OBE (Out-Of-Body) Experiences

Do I know that all of these stories are truthful? Nope. My position is simply that it's far less likely that they are all false than that the phenomena they describe are real.

Re the phone ringing and knowing who it is: I seem to recall someone I know mentioning that they knew consistently when one of their close friends was ringing (as opposed to some other person ringing), but don't hold me to that because it was a long time ago and I can't be sure I'm recalling correctly.

If you want something a bit more scientific though, you might be interested in looking up the Ganzfeld experiments, which, based on my reading (yes, there are sceptics with a different view), prove the existence of telepathy.

The Emo Philips joke is clever though a little wicked.

Greetings, Gustav,

As to the stories that you mentioned, the tales of religious healing, these are 'faith-stories' told by believers to help other believers strengthen and hold to faith. it is not 'invalid' as such it is rather (perhaps) incomplete.

I'm curious as to what you mean by "(perhaps) incomplete". Could you elaborate?

So, with all that, I will actually call you on your last wager and raise you the Ultimate Price: how is 'resurrection' or any part of the Christian story relevant for you, here and now? That is the point where the rubber hits the road. In this sense we are either dying or dead or coming to life again.

You are right that at the moment, I "know" the resurrection's power only in an intellectual sense. I haven't found a true spiritual connection to it yet. I have had glimpses of it, but haven't quite worked out what I need to do to fully "tap in" permanently.

As for Jung, he's one of those authors I've been meaning to get around to reading at some point but never have. I'll let you know if I ever do. He seems very interesting.

I know that there was much more that could be responded to in your post but I've run out of steam for now (couldn't go on, going on). Until next time...