I separate the Christian faith into two branches, the Irrational, which
insists in the absolute truth of the literal word of the Bible and
maintains there is no separation between the natural world and the
supernatural, and the Rational branch, which teaches there is no
conflict between faith and the scientific method, or evolution and that
there is a separation of the natural and the supernatural realms.
!0,000 Christian Clergy recently signed the following statement:
An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science
Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute
and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture.
While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to
be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming
majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science
textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible - the
Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark - convey timeless truths
about God, human beings, and the proper relation****p between Creator
and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these
truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different
order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific
information but to transform hearts.
We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions,
believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of
modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of
evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to
rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and
achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as "one theory
among others" is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and
transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God's
good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the
failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our
Creator. To argue that God's loving plan of salvation for humanity
precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to
attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to
preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the
teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human
knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain
religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.
When I referred to these Clergy as Rational Christians, I was
challenged by a contention that they were just as Irrational as their
bizarre brethren, the only difference was in degree.
The test? the topic of this thread, can a rational person accept the
Resurrection of Jesus as a real event?
Here is my answer...
The Rational branch of Christianity sup****ts the notion that there is
no conflict between science and faith, that they recognize that the
natural and supernatural are different realms. This philosophy was
purchased with a currency of horror and abhorrent brutality, the
ultimate cost of millions upon millions of lives has yet to play out to
a grand total in our own times - and has beyond doubt, surpassed the
power of reckoning.
Such is human history. Religion wasn't alone in what has been a long
rear-guard action against knowledge and rationality, every aspect of
what we call 'modern' civilization has had to try to claw its way past
an ultimate truth of human existence - we are human animals, and as
such we are fully capable of exhibiting feral, brutal, tribal behavior.
That struggle, widely misidentified as an emergence from nature, is in
fact a struggle to accomodate nature. It reveals that the early
religious teaching that man was created in the image of God was right
on the mark in at least one respect - in its own words, the deity of
the Old Testament was at times as irrational and bloodthirsty a
specimen as any feral tribe of humans that has ever existed.
Eventually, to keep their faith in the face of a world of increasing
secular knowledge and moral awareness, Rational Christianity had to
break free from the belief that God sanctified and ordained what was
the worst of human behavior - mass murder, slavery, every abomination
under the Sun - and that these were proper, even noble pursuits for a
Christian to undertake. Science too, presented arguments that were so
glaringly self evident in the power of demonstration as to cause
incredulity in Biblical claims to the contrary in any dispassionate
observer. Theology had to cope, or lose all credibilty.
They had to mend their fences with the rest of humankind, too. Rational
Christianity no longer taught that those that are not Christian, even
Atheists, are excluded from salvation. To be sure, they teach that a
person has a better chance for salvation if they accept and follow the
faith. However, they teach that the power of God's wisdom permeates
through all existence, and this can be confirmed by the number of
shared moral precepts to be found in almost all religious movements as
well as noble lives lived by those with no belief in the supernatural.
For example, Rational Christianity has allowed theology to be developed
and taught within its ranks that place the resurrection entirely
outside of a historical element. Non-material resurrection is the
belief that Jesus' corpse need not have come back to life in order for
the resurrection to be significant.
Nowhere in Rational Christian teaching or theology is it taught that
Jesus suffered a cellular death. In fact, a basic tenet in the language
of the day is that Christ's body was to know no corruption, but rose
again soon after death. The very term "corruption" would, I submit,
translate to "cellular death" in today's language.
The theologists behind these teachings aren't Atheists, they
acknowledge, insist, that according to New Testament faith the raising
is an act of God within God's dimensions, therefore it can not be a
historical event in the strict sense: it is not an event which can be
verified by historical science with the aid of historical methods. For
the raising of Jesus is not a miracle violating the laws of nature,
verifiable within the present world, not a supernatural intervention
which can be located and dated in space and time. There was nothing to
photograph or record, neither the raising itself nor the person raised
can be apprehended, objectified or measured by historical methods. As
the The Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner once wrote, "it is obvious that
the resurrection of Jesus neither can be nor intends to be a
`historical' event".
At first glance, such teachings seems to be at cross purposes with the
popular, plain meaning of scripture, but what makes this theology such
a strong challenge within Rational Christianity is the claim that its
view is actually the position of the earliest Christian believers.
These advocates argue that it is those who maintain a literal bodily
resurrection of Jesus who have misunderstood scripture. They deny that
the earliest Christians believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus at
all. These theologians are a minority in Rational Christianity, but
their teachings have not been repudiated. None of these theologians
have been cast out of their denominations, none of them have been
excommunicated, silenced or damned.
In addition, it can be demonstrated that is it physically possible that
the resurrection could have a historical basis if Jesus did not die on
the cross, and therefore that story, as handed down by the people of
the time, could be a reasonable conclusion given the knowledge and
culture it came from.
Which brings us to the Rational Christians of today. What then are we
to make of a professed belief in the supernatural, shall we label all
of Rational Christianity as irrational, that the terminology of
Rational Christianity has no meaning, no context, no applicablity, that
it is merely Irrational Christianity expressed to a lesser degree?
I say no. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I maintain that
the beliefs allowed within Rational Christianity can be construed to
view the supernatural as a matter of aesthetics.
My own view of existence is that I, and everything in existence, is
part and parcel of the universe in and of itself. Consciousness, as
expressed by my consciousness, the consciousness of people, animals,
plants - any animated matter - is in fact a form of self-awareness on
the part of the universe, with all the limitations and op****tunties
imposed by the life form one finds oneself occupying.
I like this philosophy. It is heavily influenced by, but not a direct
conclusion of the scientific method. It is an aesthetic judgement.
Unless I myself am willing to label all aesthetic judgements as
irrational out of hand, I cannot label all of Rational Christianity as
irrational. Belief in the supernatural, as an aesthetic expression,
with no denial of reality, no opposition to the real world sciences or
scientific method, has placed itself outside of the rational sphere -
without an impact, whence are we to point fingers at the entirety of
Rational Christianity?
I do not deny that there are those within Rational Christianity that
are irrational. I do not deny that many official teaching within
Rational Christian denominations are irrational. However, given the
range of theological freedom within Rational Christianity, its
demonstrated ability to adapt and change its teachings, and its
opposition to interference in the purely rational field of science and
the scientific method, I say it is unfair to say that Rational
Christianity is irrational A priori.
I would not judge those with different aesthetics to be irrational
because they differ with mine. Even one that does not share a belief in
the supernatural, a professed Atheist can enjoy the aesthetic cultural
pleasures to be found in those beliefs:
=B1
Quote: Originally posted by muddybanks
I was married in front of a Catholic priest and felt no insincerity in
doing so since most of the people in my culture use the Catholic Church
as a similar means. This could have been done in front of a judge
simply to satisfy the legal requirement but we happen to like the
ceremony and formal atmosphere that the Church provides.
=B1
It is physically possible that Jesus did not die on the cross, the
resurrection could have a historical basis.
But what about the acceptance of this belief in modern times? As it has
been pointed out, a literal belief in a resurrection can't be
sup****ted, those that contend it happened carry the burden of proof. If
you accept that it could have been a case of mistaken death, that does
not satisfy a belief in a supernatural event. There are few in today's
world that are willing to hold with a belief because of it's pure
implausibility, few indeed like Tertullian, who said of his
Christianity "I believe because it is absurd," a comment that meant
that no one would try to pass off such an impossible story unless it
was true.
We can say that this belief is like the bread and wine example from
communion, with two contradictory perceptions at the same time. The
problem there is this is not a question of a different perception of
matter, but a state of existence. You're alive or you aren't.
Most Christians aren't aware of non-material resurrection theology,
although nearly any Roman Catholic or Episcopalian with a higher
education should have been exposed to it.
As a cultural, ethical system of existence and a means of delegating
control over the population, religion and its hard and fast rules came
to the rescue to provide the ethical view of human life, and flourished
in the old religious culture. The answer was simple, Jesus came back
from the dead, there was no body of knowledge to challenge it.
The rescue of that authority today is a work of the imagination, in
which the aesthetic attitude took over religious wor****p as the source
of intrinsic values about 'deep questions regarding existence'. People
today can say they believe in the resurrection bcause there is no
conflict with knowledge - it is now a matter of aesthetics, truly
outside of the real world, but now not to be found in a belief in an
actual supernatural world either.
Modern life has boxed in religious beliefs, demonstrated facts and
increased knowledge have shrunk the areas where religion once held sole
sway and authority. The growth of psychological science was linked to
its ability to wrestle the intellectual interpretation of trances, fits
and visions away from its theological rivals - so effectively, that
many denominations used the same arguments to 'debunk' the the
so-called 'ecstatic' religious experiences of its rivals, while
continuing to maintain their denomination provided the 'real
occurrence'. Theologians soon dropped their claim in this domain, the
movie "The Exorcist" notwithstanding.
We know that we are animals, parts of the natural order, bound by laws
which tie us to the material forces which govern everything. We
strongly suspect that the gods are our invention, the supernatural,
once accepted without question is conspicuous by its absence, and that
means death is exactly what it seems. Our world has been disenchanted
and our illusions destroyed. At the same time we most people do not
want to live as though that were the whole truth of our condition.
With the repudiation of the literal word of the Bible, came knowledge
of the great evil and harm done in the name of religion, a further
dilution of moral authority, not from a replacement of fiction with
facts, but by the knowledge that what was intended as a force for good
in society and the individual had been exactly the opposite - and this
had gone undetected by men of goodwill.
It also had another implication - we could no longer entirely trust
beliefs as ordained by God, but had to use reason to determine what was
consistant with the message of Jesus and actual good works. In the last
hundred years, theology has been allowed to range further and further
from traditional beliefs in an effort to find 'truth' from a
perspective that was ultimately humane, moral and beneficial, and had a
basis of some kind in the teachings of Jesus. Nothing was out of
bounds, save for a dismissal of Jesus as a teacher, even his divinity
and the nature of divinity was and is debated. Scholars even went back
and carefully studied and debated the writings of the most noted
Biblical scholar of the last 500 years, Sir Issac Newton, whose
research led him to a belief that Jesus, while a savoir and messiah,
was an ordinary man, and he should not be wor****pped.
I contend that a belief structure at its core satisfies a human need,
not for a belief system itself, rather it is natural for most humans to
want to belong, to be within a group with shared values and beliefs
that reinforce their own - both within and beyond a family - and this
has a biological basis. The desire for tribal identity has a long
history - it is a part of the human condition, part of just not Homo
sapiens, but extending back to our earliest beginnings as a member of
the genus Homo. Belonging to a group enhanced the chances of survival.
As such we have a drive to find expression of that role in our lives.
Aspects of modern man, such as significance, love, relation****p, and
the fear of nonbeing can be addressed by another human trait - the
existence of meaningful aesthetic experience. In the sentiment of
appreciation for the pleasure it brings, for in the sentiment of the
sublime we seem to be able to see beyond the world, to something
otherwise inexpressible in which it is somehow grounded.
I think for Rational Christianity, the 'beliefs' for many, if not most
a form of devotion akin in generality if greater in degree to being a
s****ts 'fan' for a local team, and every bit as unconscious - and like
s****ts, delivering the 'goods', providing the feelings, fellow****p and
tribal idenity they need. It comforts in the modern age, aesthetic
value is a subjective reality that cannot be reduced to 'nothing but
atoms in the void'.
So, we have a combination of a belief system that by its own profession
is forced to seek tenets closer and closer to an ideal of morality and
compassion, moving further and further from from arbitrary rules and
regulations to actual ethics of love and conduct based on what is
called the 'golden rule'. Culture keeps the specifics of increasingly
less im****tant concepts like the supernatural within the faith - but
for most believers, the supernatural aspects are something they accept
without critical examination, it's just part of the shared tribal
beliefs, with no impact in their everyday lives.
Prayer is an outlet for meditation and other im****tant needs, like the
easement of fear, and the acceptance, the reconciliation of our lifes
events, good and bad. It too delivers the 'goods' for many that
practice it.
For many if not most, Rational Chriatianity is an aesthetic experience,
it is an activity that believers have an introduced cultural
appreciation for, as real as a favorite pizza, a favorite team, or the
way their family prepared a favorite recipe, but much more broadly
humanizing and sustaining. by enhancing their perception of existence.
It provides resolution to a real human need.
So why does that modern person accept the story of the resurrection? It
makes them feel good. They keep that belief in a place where it doesn't
conflict with the real world, one of the few still available as a haven
to faith in the modern world, as an unconscious aesthetic experience.
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