slowly deciphering the meaning of life

i lieu of my blogging death, i bring you this:

unfortunately, many of you will probably find the time to watch this (2:28) and not the keith ward interview. you *should* watch the keith ward interview. anyway…this is pretty funny. “he’s gone to a better place now…”

i can’t express this enough: creation “science” is NO SCIENCE AT ALL. there is nothing scientific in it, or even in intelligent design (at least the core concepts of intelligent ID…most ID’ers really like to mix in real scientific data that’s unrelated to their hypothesis in order to justify their point. but the fact remains that the core tenet of ID is scientifically untestable….making it NO SCIENCE AT ALL). the longer people believe this stuff, the longer they choose to live in a false-reality. it’s time we realize that our concepts of God must be based in reality, in the world present before our very eyes, and not in some immature “literal” reading of the Bible….which by the way is also not a scientific document.

let me also add that i’m not a Sam Harris fan. i think the acrimonious techniques he employs, while short of the vitriolic tenor of Richard Dawkins, is about as unhealthy as the views he’s attacking. that said, he still has the side of reality on him when discussing origins of life. maybe if people who follow Jesus did a better job of paying attention to reality, instead of their retarded subcultures and the incestual doctrines that runs rampant within those groups, then people like sam harris and richard dawkins a) wouldn’t be so pissed off at christians, and b) wouldn’t have as many arguing points. just a thought.

i talked about Keith Ward last time. i’ve been enjoying his books, and recently came across this great interview with Keith Ward on www.meaningoflife.tv.

www.meaningoflife.tv is basically a project of Robert Wright, an american journalist interested in all these sorts of questions (evolution, science, faith, consciousness, spirituality, etc.). he interviews a number of leading scholars and writers, such as Karen Armstrong, Stephen Pinker and E.O. Wilson, on topics ranging from faith, reason and free will to consciousness and the evolution of history. it’s fascinating stuff!

just a note, as was tipped to me by the good dr. james today: don’t attempt to watch the videos on the meaningoflife.tv website…instead, search for them on Google video. click here to see a complete list of all them meaningoflife.tv interviews on Google video.

literally. i guess this is how you make surf when you have none…

through some late night wiki diving, i happened upon Keith Ward, “a British cleric, philosopher, theologian, and scholar.” I came across Ward in the entry for Theistic Evolution, a topic that I’ve read little about, but feel that i probably agree substantially with.

how i got to theistic evolution, i can’t quite remember, but i do remember that Kent Hovind, who some might recognize as the token Christian roundtable member on the “Science”episode of Season 1 of Da Ali G Show, was involved. i had come across Hovind because of his recent sentencing to 10 years in prison for tax fraud. what i found most interesting about Hovind, however, was the fact that he got his PhD from this school.

back to Ward, what i found interesting about him were two recent books he’s authored, and the position he takes on the Bible:

What the Bible Really Teaches: A Challenge for Fundamentalists

What the Bible Really Teaches : About Crucifixion, Resurrection, Salvation, the Second Coming, and Eternal Life

one of my many obstacles lately in grappling with Christianity has been how people read the Bible. i’ve grown tired of the literalist readings that have characterized most of Christian theology I’ve been exposed to. not just with regards to the creation story, but also with most of the new testament. i feel that a literal reading often does more to uphold the theological model of the reader than it does to actually convey the true essence of the text. luckily, Ward also feels the same way.

i’m currently almost 100 pages into What the Bible Really Teaches: A Challenge for Fundamentalists, and what i can say, is that this is one of the most important books i’ve ever read for my spiritual life. making use of a rich history of Biblical scholarship and participation in the community of Biblical scholars, Ward presents a reading of Scripture that is much more consistent with the historical and symbolic contexts that the text was written from.

you can read a really good review of the book here:
http://worldofsven.co.uk/theology/postentry_54.php?w=theology_and_biblical_studies

i’ll leave you with a small quote from the first chapter:

“My argument is that the Bible’s own principles of interpretation are often quite different from the principles used by fundamentalist Christians. They lead to very different conclusions, and on some matters fundamentalists seem to have simply got the Bible wrong. They are anti-biblical at crucial points, and they are importing an alien man-made philosophy (usually some altered and over-simple version of Calvin) into their reading of the Bible. Calvin was undoubtedly a major theological writer. But he himself taught that you should never accept the authority of any theologian, and he might have been quite surprised at the way some of his opinions have got hardened into unchallengeable dogmas in the more extreme parts of the evangelical world.”

in my last post, i talked about stepping away from the institutional church.

this past week, our Emergent Cohort met with Tony Jones, who serves part-time duty as the National Coordinator for Emergent Village. it was a really nice time. tony seems like a really down to earth guy, and his comments about the non-structural nature of Emergent only further confirmed for me that Emergent is running parallel to where i’m at, and therefore it sorta IS where i’m at. Which is always good to hear.

anyway, during our meeting, Tony used a quick analogy to describe Emergent as a life-raft floating away from a much larger ship. he continued with saying that one of the possible (existing) problems is that too many people are jumping onto this raft, causing the raft to potentially sink.

a bit later through the night, i got the chance to ask Tony, “what do you think about the thought that, in your scenario described earlier, maybe it’s possible that eventually we’ll realize that people who follow Jesus don’t need a ship at all, but can walk on water?” i basically meant by this that eventually the large institution will be gone…it will die, and people will come to a completely institution-free relationship with God. death of the institution.

as it happened, i sandwiched this question between two others (a Triune question, if you will): a) “how well do you know Brad Cecil?”, b) read up above, c) how similar is the molecular structure of Reverend Ken Silva’s writings to that of crack cocaine?” and unfortunately , but expected, the latter-most question provided for enough laughs that the other questions weren’t discussed in detail.

so, i thought i’d open it up here, maybe. i feel this is a really bad and dangerous topic. or rather, that this is going to make me have to do a lot of defending. but maybe not. we’ll see.

here’s fodder, though:

i believe that humans are evolving towards a “God”-like state. this has first happened morphologically, through our own evolution into sentient bipedal hominids (this all happened as a result of genes…genetic evolution). and now the second stage of this growth happens neurologically, in terms of the ways in which we learn, and conduct our lives with one another. the primary “unit” in this case, isn’t genes (because it’s not stored in DNA). instead, this unit is “stored” in the neural firing patterns found in our brain, and are transferred between different hosts via ANY communications method available for humans. such a unit has been labelled a Meme. so, you could say that, as “moral” beings, those who can choose (basically what we entered into after the Fall), we are now engaged in a process of Memetic Evolution.

anyway, in the midst of this picture of human evolution, Jesus stands out as a drop of absolute, indescribable brilliance. the single tear drop that was his life, causes massive ripples in the fabric of human history. and the oscillations between good and bad, in terms of the how humanity plays it afterwards, are equally profound on both ends of the spectrum. but one thing is steady: the unwavering force Jesus holds in shaping the forward progress of humanity.

anyway, i believe that from an evolutionary perspective, this is what Messiah is. Jesus was not different from you and i morphologically. he was different neurally. he mind was, somehow, that of God. therefore, God came among us. Jesus’ life showed us how God brought perfection to the human flesh, which was before trapped in it’s own evolution-derived selfish instinct. his life, his teachings, show us a moral code that is both humble and powerful at the same time. he showed us a way to move forward without conflict with one another. amazingly, that path is through the sacrificing of your own life: the giving up of your own self.

anyway, i believe that today’s Church, and every Church before it, is essentially a structure created by man. i think the “Church” that Jesus talked about is not and has never been an actual structure that can be identified by mankind. most would agree with me here. instead, that “Church”, we’ll call it the Bride, is looser-connection between individual human beings, that somehow takes place, and is brought into being, when we’re in contact with one another. the shape of the Bride is dependent upon the people involved, and is always present with two or more. this only comes, though, when we’re actually living in the Way of Jesus, giving up of ourselves.

anyway, i think the institutional Church has been a shelter through which this more tender, intimate form of the “Bride” has developed. however, as we move into the future, and we evolve further, i believe that the Bride will grow more, eventually busting the institution at the seems, and eventually doing away with it.

that’s why i think Emergent is spot-on right now. Emergent is sorta like a surf board, that is currently riding this wave of human awareness, as we continue to rapidly evolve. unlike the large ship, our destination and course is not pre-ordained and immutable. and unlike the raft, we’re not destined to drowning from overcapacity. instead, our minds have been freed from the trappings of institutional-necessity thought, and we’re free to travel together, both individual (relative) and connected (absolute).

my belief is that humanity will eventually evolve to an “ethic” of Jesus. i believe that Jesus’ teachings will eventually work themselves into the base-neural patterns of the human psyche. i also believe this is what is meant by heaven on earth.

i’ve been listening to a LOT of Boards of Canada lately. this is a very cool video you ought to take 5 minutes to relax to…

this Fall has flown by exceptionally fast. this is largely due to the increase in work in my life, which has been a really good thing. as a result, i haven’t blogged, nor spent much time reading blogs, in the past few months.

so many things have gone through a transformation in our life recently. the largest of these, of course, is the change in my thesis topic, and the starting of a new project, in a new lab, with new people. i feel as though this last year has been both the darkest, and most transformative year, of my life thus far. through the darkness, i emerged into what i’m now realizing is a new path in my life. i think this is largely the result of finally being able to pair my passions with my occupation. i could never understand other people who had a feeling of “calling” in their life…it just never galvanized like that for me, until now.

since we moved to Somerville in May, we have yet to engage on any regular basis with a church service. this isn’t to say we’re not part of any community. but the relationship has changed dramatically, in what i feel is a very positive manner for us.

first, stepping away from any traditional church structure has allowed us to rethink how community should look for us. and what we’re beginning to find is that, in order to engage those outside of the “church”, you have structure your gatherings to incorporate more universal elements…such as food and discussion. for the communities that i’m interfacing with right now, this is a much more effective way instead of trying to “uphold” some standard imposed by authorities who came before us.

a second way in which our “stepping away” has been useful is in “releasing” me from what i feel are the stringent mental rules imposed by my continual involvement with an institutional structure. in order to think beyond something, it is often necessary to release onself from that something, in order to gain a better perspective. this is something i have found to be fundamentally true about the world.

this all isn’t to say that i’m “leaving” the church as it might easily lead to think. rather, i feel that this is a necessary step for us in order to reevaluate and prepare to take stronger steps forward. i also don’t think that this is what all people are given to; i’m merely trying to present the case which i feel we are encountering in our life right now. furthermore, we are heavily involved in the Boston Emergent Cohort, and have also begun hosting some of our friends in the area, largely my friends from school, over to our house on a somewhat-monthly basis. i’ve found that as these relationships develop more, i am able to express a belief in Jesus with stronger conviction than i ever have before in my life life. and what’s even stranger, is that i’m actually seeing results, in the sense that these relationships are flourishing. it’s like i’ve found that the light of Christ is something universal to all people, separate from any language/doctrinal system. almost as though it’s an emergent property of the evolving universe.

so, in sum, i’m finding that, for me in my life, following the path of Jesus is taking a very different form from anything i’ve ever learned, or ever expected. as i continue down this path, i’m also coming to see how the the church as an institution, has clouded and hidden the message of Jesus to the point of disfiguration. i’m coming to believe that the message of Jesus is something that will LIFT people OUT of the institution for good, and that good-nature and good-will will eventually become part of the human psyche for good, just as it is “God’s plan”. my view might be hopefully optimistic…but guess what i’m finding…it actually works! and that’s something i can’t argue with.

Church Norris Film Festival

this will be taking place down the road from our house.

’nuff said.

i haven’t really been blogging lately. however, i did write a lost post over at bostoncohort.org last night.