Both Jews and Catholics share an understanding that the Bible is the word of God – “divine revelation” – and they also share a hope for a messianic era.

“This hope is something that profoundly divides us while at the same time unites us,” said Rabbi David Shlomo Rosen, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Department of Interreligious Affairs.

He said that while Christianity is uniquely focused on the personality and divinity of Jesus – and that divides Jews and Catholics profoundly, “the idea that human history has meaning and is progressing toward a vision and that we need to work for the betterment of humanity – that is a shared value.”

These shared values as well as the drive to work toward mutual understanding and achieve joint goals was originally set forth in a document published in 1965: The Nostra aetate, written by the Second Vatican Council. In 2015, on the 50th anniversary of this document, a reflection on theological questions pertaining to Catholic-Jewish relations was published in the form of a letter, which once again stressed the unique status of the Catholic-Jewish relationship within the wider ambit of interreligious dialogue. The document also discusses theological questions, such as the relevance of revelation and the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.

In that document, Pope Francis is quoted as stating, “While it is true that certain Christian beliefs are unacceptable to Judaism, and that the Church cannot refrain from proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Messiah, there exists as well a rich complementarity which allows us to read the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures together and help one another to mine the riches of God’s word. We can also share many ethical convictions and a common concern for justice and the development of people.”

The sanctity and preservation of life, for example, is a major ethical value that Judaism and Catholicism share, said Rosen.

“We don’t see the whole question of the beginning of life in the same way,” he explained. “Aside from that difference, there is a sense that we live in a world where life has been devalued and even instrumentalized – for Jews and Israelis, in particular, with terrorism and violence being abused in the name of religion, but also on the Catholic side, there is this sense that we live in a world where life is no longer being cherished with the reverence it deserves.”

Of course, Jewish life was not always respected by the Catholics. The history of Christianity has been seen to be discriminatory against Jews, even including attempts at forced conversion or murder for the sake of faith. However, the fundamental esteem for Judaism expressed in the Nostra aetate – and re-energized in the 2015 letter – has enabled these communities that once faced each other with skepticism to become better and more reliable partners.

The 2015 letter was signed by Cardinal Kurt Koch, the Most Reverend Brian Farrell and the Reverend Norbert Hoffmann. In that same year, a separate letter signed by Jewish representatives of the Conference of European Rabbis, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Religious Council of America, stated that despite irreconcilable theological differences, “we Jews view Catholics as our partners, close allies, friends and brothers in our mutual quest for a better world.”

“As the Western world grows more and more secular, it abandons many of the moral values shared by Jews and Christians,” the Jewish letter states. “We seek the partnership of the Catholic community in particular … to assure the future of religious freedom, to foster the moral principles of our faith, particularly the sanctity of life and the significance of the traditional family, and to cultivate the moral and religious conscience of society.”

Pope John Paul II laid the groundwork for this 2015 exchange of letters. He took concrete steps toward further improving the Jewish-Catholic relationship when he visited the former concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau and a Roman synagogue. Later, in 2000, he also visited the State of Israel. This visit to Israel led to the establishment of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (ICJIC), which is now the official Jewish representative to the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, a pontifical commission in the Roman Curia tasked with maintaining positive theological ties with Jews and Judaism that was established in 1974. Rosen sits on the ICJIC.

Similarly, in 1983, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein  founded the Holyland Fellowship of Christians and Jews to fulfill his vision of building bridges of understanding and cooperation between Christians and Jews. Today, now called the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), the organization promotes understanding between Jews and Christians to build broad support for Israel.

Over the past decades, Eckstein’s organization has worked closely with the Christian community to support Holocaust survivors, Jewish orphans, children and families, as well as the elderly. The Fellowship is now one of the largest philanthropic foundations in Israel.

According to the 2015 letter, the goal of the dialogue is to “add depth to the reciprocal knowledge of Jews and Christians. One can only learn to love what one has gradually come to know, and one can only know truly and profoundly what one loves.”

Other important goals stated in the document is joint engagement for justice, peace, conservation of creation and reconciliation.

Rabbi Dr. Alan Brill, the Cooperman/Ross Endowed Chair for Jewish-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University – where he teaches Jewish studies in the Department of Religion and the Jewish-Christian Studies Graduate Program – said Catholics and Jews are working together in the social, ethical and educational realms. For example, there has been much work together to alleviate poverty. Catholics and Jews – Orthodox Jews, in particular – together have fought to maintain a religious worldview. And, there is a new thrust within the Church to study Judaism and vice versa, even in the Vatican.

The dialogue also consists in jointly combatting all manifestations of racial discrimination against Jews and all forms of anti-Semitism.

Rosen said that through this ICJIC, Jews and Catholics are now likewise tackling issues of science and society and what our sources say about contemporary challenges.

He noted that while one “cannot just dismiss the past – there is a never-ending educational task,” he would suggest that in 2018 the Jews can be looking forward to ways in which the two religions can cooperate for the benefit of humanity.

As its states in the 2015 letter: “When Jews and Christians make a joint contribution through concrete humanitarian aid for justice and peace in the world, they bear witness to the loving care of God.”

Photo Credit

Photo is from shutterstock

Guest Author Bio
Silvana Williams

Silvana Williams is a freelance writer with a deep sense of faith and an intellectual curiosity about all religions, philosophy, and spirituality as well as travel, fitness, and health. She looks for spaces where religions unite rather than divide. Silvana is especially passionate about yoga, her pets, and creating the best life for herself and those she loves while leaving as small a footprint on the earth as possible.

Silvana has worked as a technical writer, proofreader, and content creator. She has also been a professional baker, caterer, and event planner. She has also been a social worker, helping heal families and brings parents and children closer together. She believes that communication is critical, that there can be no conflict resolution without the conflict, but that the process can be creative, productive, and healing.

When not writing, Silvana searches flea markets for old furniture pieces to refurbish and repurpose. She currently lives in Boca Raton, Florida.

Blog / Website: Balance Inner Life, Health, and Wellness

It’s a spooky, surreal scene, dimly lit by a cluster of candles melting into the concrete floor and a few neon halos amid a crowd of brilliantly-coloured bunting festooned through the rafters. While the tourists gawk, the shaman is making a desperate, emotional plea for a miracle, and because Western medicine has failed his relative’s health, he’s placing his faith in a small timber idol—the Maximon—whose origins can be traced to the core of pagan Mayan beliefs.

The presence of the Maximon in this modest family home in the village of Santiago Atitlan, beside Lake Atitlan in central Guatemala, is a great honour. After all, he is deemed the spiritual protector of Santiago Atitlan. But he isn’t an easy idol to comprehend. Maximon is both divine and devilish, fiend and friend, a communicator to Ajaw, the supreme Mayan god, but also a trickster that may double cross whoever presents an offering. So some supplicants appeal for miracles, some hope to extract revenge on foes, some for riches, often at the expense of detested rivals. The stoic Maximon gives nothing away; maybe he’ll help, maybe not, though his elusiveness hasn’t diminished his popularity.

The Maximon now takes the image of a cowboy—big hat and cigar, leather boots, and many knotted silk ties (they represent wisdom) surrounding a carved, timber face that has recently been upgraded. The original frail mask, said to be over 600 years old, is preserved in a locked cupboard. The current idol is surrounded by offerings of rum, flowers, and money.

It’s quite a spectacle, which will be maintained by this family until next Easter, when a ballot among the villagers will decide in which house the Maximon will reside for the following year. And despite deep mystery surrounding the Maximon legend, which changes with each person you speak to, visitors are always welcome, because tourists bring money. It’s a costly enterprise to host the Maximon, ensuring the idol is constantly guarded, plus lavish decorations and electricity (which isn’t cheap), so payments are made to compensate the host family. Up to 100 daily visitors each pay 50 quetzal (about $9) for the privilege of meeting the idol (it costs an extra 10 quetzal to take a photograph, which multiplies if you’re snap happy). True believers and shaman tend to visit at dawn and at sunset. Maximon is not the only deity in the room. Wherever the idol appears in Santiago Atitlan, there is also a life-size figure of the sleeping Jesus nearby, a creepy wax-skinned corpse-like manikin in a coffin illuminated with strings of flashing party lights. There are more of this family’s Catholic icons in the room, also strewn with knotted ties, including a distraught Jesus with an iron rod impaled through his shoulder, and an anxious Jesus having his heart pecked by a raven—bizarre and gruesome scenes that I can’t recall from the New Testament.

These are truce offerings that acknowledge the dominant Catholic faith in the region, which tolerates the ongoing idol worship but seethes that it can’t be defeated. Maximon has been a focus of pagan worship since the ancient Tzutuhiles tribe settled by the shores of Lake Atitlan, centuries before Franciscans brought Christianity to the region in the late 1500s. And while Mayan shamanism is now practiced by only 10 per cent of the population, most local Mayans haven’t entirely let go of the old ways. The town’s Catholic cathedral, built on the foundation of a Mayan temple, has a Maximon image carved in the giant wooden altarpiece that was finished in the 1980s. While it caused a giant stir, the carving has not been changed. The Maximon idol is even brought to a building in the cathedral plaza during each Easter week as it awaits its next homestay. Most practicing Catholics in Santiago Atitlan won’t denounce the Maximon idol or its influence. Indeed, many hedge their bets, coming to visit in disguise to pay their respect.

This strange co-existence of faiths can be observed throughout rural Guatemala. In a Catholic cemetery in Chichicastenango, shamans burn offerings in huge firepits beside consecrated graves. Oh, and there’s an ice-cream vendor pushing his cart around the cemetery, ringing his bell to alert the devout of his sweet treats.

Here, the trappings of faith are carried more lightly and less preciously than Westerners feel comfortable with, yet the tenor of belief has no less fervent intensity.

Photo Credits

Photo 1 courtesy of David Sly—All rights reserved. 

Photo 2 from Wikimedia Commons—Public Domain. 

This post first appeared online at The Adelaide Review

Peter’s Dispute with Simon Magus

Many years ago I rashly volunteered to teach a 7th-8th grade Sunday school class at a rural and somewhat fundamentalist church, and, on my first Sunday on the job, was tasked with teaching the first three chapters of Second Samuel, which includes one of three accounts of the future King David presenting 200 Philistine foreskins as the bride price for Saul’s daughter Michal. Fortunately none of the kids had read their Bibles beforehand, so I did not feel compelled to explain the passage. I have since used it in arguments with Christian fundamentalists as an example of a Biblical passage whose relevance to spirituality and salvation is tenuous at best, one that no modern preacher would touch with a ten foot pole.

Perhaps I spoke to soon. Recently, reading a letter of Peter Damian (1007-1072), Benedictine monk, church reformer, and canonized saint, I encountered a commentary on the episode of the Philistine foreskins as an illustration of simony, and it seemed relevant not only to ecclesiastical appointments in the 11th century, but to the process of appointment and advancement in the sciences in American universities. If that seems like to wild a leap of speculation, consider at least that for many people in the West science has become the new religion, and that there are distinct parallels between a medieval bishop, supposed advocate for the spiritual well-being of the masses and defender of ecclesiastical purity, and a modern tenured professor or department head, who becomes the gatekeeper determining who is allowed to pursue a scientific career, what are legitimate objects of scientific inquiry, and what results are disseminated under the imprime of a prestigious peer-reviewed journal.

Simony is defined as the sale of ecclesiastical offices. The term refers to Simon Magus, a first -century figure who fell afoul of Saints Peter and Paul when he attempted to purchase the gift of the Holy Spirit. His downfall is frequently depicted in medieval art. In Damian’s day, the task of appointing bishops fell to secular noblemen, some of whom were quite corrupt and lacked any motivation to further the physical or spiritual well-being of the people they governed. Paying large sums of money and/or serving the lord’s corrupt ends became the only avenue for entry into the higher echelons of the church hierarchy.
Damian used the example of the Philistine foreskins to illustrate the principle by which continued service to a corrupt lord is actually worse, spiritually, than a straight cash payment. In the case of the cash payment, the aspirant could have gotten the wealth by honest means, and once he had bought the office, he was a relatively independent man. The man who had obtained his position by enabling the interests of a corrupt Lord, on the other hand, earned the office through malfeasance and was expected to continue toeing the line. David’s motives for marrying Michal (influence, inclusion in the royal succession) were not inherently bad, but he used his military prowess in the service of a king who had, in the words of scripture, “abandoned God.”

Until well into the nineteenth century, becoming a scientist was pretty much a career objective limited to men of independent means. Academic positions did not pay very well. The purer the science, the less likely it was to produce a saleable product in a reasonable time frame. Although the cost of tuition was not necessarily high, the cost of withdrawing from the labor force for the time required to get an advanced degree discouraged people of modest means. On the plus side, many scientific disciplines did not require a huge amount of capital on an ongoing basis, so independent researchers had a better chance of succeeding.

At present, in the United States at least, entry into a scientific career is in theory open to anyone with the ability and the drive to invest a huge amount of labor into a path that offers no guarantee of success for the laborer. The work that graduate teaching and research fellows, postdoctoral fellows, and people on the lowest rungs of the faculty ladder expend goes disproportionately towards enhancing the power, prestige and wealth of a small number of people at the top. The person on the bottom labors to increase knowledge and to make discoveries that benefit humanity, and hopes someday to gain enough autonomy to realize that vision. That’s how science is supposed to work. That’s how most people seem to assume science works.

Both academic science departments and government laboratories have become heavily dependent upon government grants for their continued existence. The ability to bring in money has become the main criterion for hiring into tenure-track positions and promotion in academic ranks. The granting agencies are under strong pressure from corporate interests to favor lines of inquiry that strengthen the corporate bottom line, and, conversely, to suppress anything that calls into question a lucrative paradigm. The dependence upon grant funding also favors costly, technology-intensive branches of science over more traditional method of observation.

A result of the very long unpaid or inadequately paid period of apprenticeship, during which survival is dependent on adhering closely to programs established at the higher levels of the hierarchy, is training in avoiding independent thought, especially avoiding noticing when the results of research are not serving the general public. It would be remarkable indeed if any great proportion of people who succeeded in such a system, upon finally achieving a position of relative security, miraculously recovered the idealism they were forced to shelve two decades previously.

I was three years into a PhD program in ecology at Cornell University when I dodged the request to teach seventh graders about Philistine foreskins, and I was still excited about the prospect of finding solutions to pressing dilemmas through observation of the natural world. More than forty years later, I can still get excited, at least momentarily, by a fleeting glimpse of synergy between that experience and the writings of an eleventh-century theologian who is currently under an even deeper shadow in academia than his contemporaries, because of his attacks on sodomy. I have given up all hope that it is anything but an armchair exercise.

Image Credit

“Peter’s conflict with Simon Magus,” by Avanzino Nucci, 1620. Public domain.

Giotto: Adoration of the Magi

People react in a variety of ways when some piece of information, apparently reliable, contradicts a long-held belief.  Changing beliefs, especially core beliefs, is rather rare, and tends to occur only after a long process of accumulation of contrary evidence until critical mass is reached.

When I was in grade school, I had an interest in astronomy and read popular books on the subject aimed at adults. I was taught that the periodicity of this celestial body was discovered by Edmund Halley, England’s Astronomer Royal, in the early 18^th century, and confirmed in 1758. This story is still the dominant textbook account on sites like this one:  http://www.space.com/19878-halleys-comet.html. Years later, researching something called the Astronomy wars, I learned  that the actual discoverer was John Flamsteed, Astronomer Royal before Halley, whose painstaking observations on two comets visible in 1682 led to the conclusion that they were one body and allowed orbital calculations that confirmed a pattern of recurrence already long suspected.  Halley used his clout with Sir Isaac Newton, president of the Royal Academy, to obtain Flamsteed’s notes and publish them under his own name. So it’s not really Halley ’s Comet after all, and the pedestal on which that icon of the enlightenment stands has a few cracks in it.

But is the discovery Flamsteed’s? Textbooks will mention a reference by Chinese astronomers in 239 BC, the notable appearance in 1066, and perhaps the visit in 1301, which was depicted by Giotto di Bandoni in a fresco of the Nativity. In a review of historical records he compiled for writing a novel about Dante (who also witnessed and recorded the 1301 appearance) the novelist Christopher Cervasco noted that Eilmer of Malmesbury, writing in 1066, assumed that the comets of 1066 and 989 were the same comet. The scribe Eadwine, commenting on the appearance in 1145, also mentioned it as a recurring phenomenon.  (http://christophermcevasco.com/2011/07/22/halleys-comet-part-3-12th-15th-centuries/) According to Cervasco, the earliest possible mention of periodicity is from the Talmud, of a star that appeared in 66AD and appears every seventy years. The recurring nature, then, was common knowledge in the Middle Ages.

What follows now is speculative in the extreme, but is based on Dante’s explicit mention in Paradiso of the Catholic Church’s reaction to Mesopotamian charts of solar eclipses, produced in the 13^th century and vindicated by a total eclipse of the sun crossing Spain and Italy in 1297. At the time, the church taught that the darkness that occurred during Christ’s crucifixion in 33 AD was a solar eclipse; the Arab charts showed no eclipse in Palestine near that date. The discrepancy caused great consternation because people placed great stock both in the accuracy of the Bible and in the reliability of the heavens. Some church apologists claimed the passion was so momentous an event that it affected the movements of the sun and the moon; Dante concluded that the darkness was not an eclipse, and suggested what we now know as volcanic veiling as an alternative.

The astronomers who produced the eclipse tables had the capacity to use observations from the 989, 1066 and 1145 appearances of a comet to model its movement in the heavens and accurately pinpoint its return in 1301. However, to produce anything like a tidy model of a body with the observed characteristics is impossible in the Ptolemaic earth-centered cosmos. That model already required a great deal of fudging, but Halley’s comet clinched it. The earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around. This was a much more serious discrepancy than the lack of coincidence between celestial phenomena and specific biblical events, for it required rethinking an entire world view. The world in 1301 simply wasn’t ready for that, either in Europe or in Mesopotamia, where the most radical astronomy was also labelled as heretical.  It would take another 150 years before Copernicus found currency for his heliocentric theory, which did not find immediate acceptance and was indeed still the subject of learned debate when Flamsteed began his researches in the 17^th century.

Have we made significant progress in dealing with cognitive dissonance in scientific thought since the beginning of the fourteenth century? I wonder.  Models of the primordial earth have been rewritten at least three times in my adult life to preserve the organic soup theory of the origins of life in the light of the discovery of increasingly ancient fossils. Philosophically, at least, our models of the cosmos still reflect a geocentric perspective.

Image Credit

Giotto, Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1305. Lucas. Creative Commons Flickr. Some rights reserved

I suppose it could come from the fact that the term “Atheism” is often used in conversations.  The addition of that “-ism” to the end of a word tends to identify something as an ideology – Catholicism, Fundamentalism, Islamism, Buddhism, etc.  So it is possible that it is through this unfortunate terminology that people have come to misunderstand what identifying as an “atheist” means, at least at it’s most basic definition.  

Sans Deities  

The word “atheist” comes from the Ancient Greek word atheos which means without gods or godless.  It is a simple statement of disbelief in a god or gods.  Unlike many other “-isms”, it does not bring with it any other doctrinal requirements. There is no creed.  There is no standard set of beliefs that all atheists accept.  That makes being an atheist in today’s society all that much more complicated.  

But it should be simple.  My understanding of atheism, being an atheist, is a simple thing – I am not convinced, as of right now, of the existence of any supernatural being I would acknowledge as a “god.”  Interestingly, many people prefer to use the term “agnostic.”  Agnostic derives from the Greek agnostos meaning “that which is unknown or unknowable.”  Which raises a subtle and interesting question.    

If an atheist is not yet convinced of the existence of a god and an agnostic believes that the existence of a god is unknown or unknowable with any certainty at this point in time, are they not the same thing?  Well, to my way of thinking, yes.  They are the same thing.  The atheist who remains open to possible new evidence in the future is indistinguishable from the agnostic who openly admits that they do not know whether or not a god exists.  It is the difference between answering the question “Do you believe in god?” with a “not yet” versus a “maybe.”  It is a subtle difference that may mean something to others, but doesn’t seem all that different to me.  

Different ways to be godless   

People come to their lack of belief in a god in different ways.  The path that any of us take to reach our beliefs and conclusions in this life is always informed by many experiences and ideas that we encounter along the way.  So it can be tricky to simply state that I am someone who does not believe in gods.  It seems that there are always assumptions from other encounters with those who do not believe in gods.  There are many reasons people do not believe in gods.  

Just as there are those who are fervent in their belief in a god, there are those who are similarly committed to their unbelief.  It seems no amount of evidence will ever convince them of the existence of a god.  I would call them “anti-theist”; convinced that a god could not possibly exist.  Others have come out of a religious past and may have anger or animosity toward their former faith.  They are “anti-religion” for personal reasons.  Still others view the role that religions have played in societies as overwhelmingly harmful and hold “anti-religious” beliefs for philosophical reasons.  There are many reasons that people decide not to believe in gods.  

The bottom line is that identifying as an “atheist” does not tell you a lot about me or what I believe.  It does tell you one thing that I do not believe.  Perhaps this is why many atheists bristle when they are treated as if they have a “faith” or a religion.  When someone identifies as a Christian, you can make a fair number of assumptions about how they approach life and relating to others.  The same is not true of atheists.  They can be as different from one another as they are from a Buddhist or Muslim.  Sharing a disbelief in gods is the same as sharing a love of banana bread.  It’s just one facet of who I am.  

It’s not like a club  

I have heard it said that thinking of “atheism” as a religion or ideology is like thinking of “abstinence” as a sexual position.  That someone does NOT do a thing isn’t the same as describing how they would do it!  There is tremendous diversity among atheists.  There are liberals and conservatives, rich and poor, people from all walks of life.  

No, I don’t believe in The Devil.  But not because I am an atheist.  I don’t believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy either.  There are a lot of things I believe in and many that I do not believe in.  The fact that I don’t believe in a god makes me an atheist.  And that is all that being an atheist should tell you about me.  I don’t think people who believe in a god are wrong.  I don’t believe that religion is necessarily bad for society or that people shouldn’t attend the church, temple, or mosque of their choice.  

I have heard a lot of things said about atheists.  That we are not moral.  That we do not respect the beliefs of others.  That we seek to bring down the religions of the world.  And many more outrageous claims.  I live a life without gods but I am none of those things.  There is no set of beliefs that comes along with my atheism.  If you wish to know what I do or do not believe in, we can have a conversation and you can ask me.  But unlike a Christian or Hindu, the simple label of “atheist” cannot tell you anything about me.  It only tells you that I do not believe in a god.  

If you talk with an atheist, you might be surprised what you might learn.  You will almost surely learn that many of us have different views on a diverse set of subjects.  More importantly, you might learn that many of the things you have heard about atheists are just not true.  We are people first; human beings just like you.  

Photo credits
 Magenta Dusk- Francis Vallance 2015 from Flickr

Such was my salvation. In the weeks that followed, members of the group would quietly talk with me. I was told that questions were perilous. They were concerned that a lack of “faith” would endanger my relationship with “God” and that my immortal soul would be in jeopardy. I learned that it was a part of Christian teachings to try to “save” those who could be saved. Just as I had been saved. To try to bring all people “into the fold” in order to spare their souls from torment in the afterlife. It was a Christian’s duty to “spread the good news” and salvation to any and all who would hear.

In the end, it may have been that aggressive approach to selling the Christian idea of salvation and rewards in an afterlife with their “God” that put me off religion for good. I had been raised by parents and an educational system that encouraged me to understand things, to ask questions if need be to understand clearly. But I was being told that if I wanted to continue to enjoy the benefits of that Christian community, I had to set my questions aside and accept what they told me without questions. That just didn’t sit well with me.

I moved on from Christianity. But I found that this marketing of ideas was not unique to that faith. The 1970s were a time for many nontraditional beliefs to find a place in Western Culture. From various Eastern religions and philosophies like Taoism and Buddhism to more radical and obscure ideas like Spiritualism or belief in various meditation methods or other fringe philosophies, it seemed like there were many groups trying to attract followers to their particular path to “enlightenment.” They all claimed to have the answer. It seemed to me that many different groups were concerned with my salvation.

What’s good for the goose…

Fast forward many years and here I am, a non-believer. An important part of my life is a reasoned search for truth and meaning. So far, I have found nothing that has convinced me of the existence of any supernatural force I would call “god.” I’m still open to new evidence so that may change tomorrow but that’s where I am today. Remarkably, having arrived at this view of life and living, I feel no desire or need to convince others of what I believe. It just isn’t a priority for me. I don’t need to “save” others from thinking differently than I do.

But apparently that isn’t true of everyone who has abandoned a belief in “gods.” There are those among the unbelievers who feel the need to market their beliefs to others. The Internet provides a forum for quite a number of very vocal and eloquent atheists and nonbelievers who seem intent on “saving” the religious from what they see as the error of their ways. To spread their non-belief. Whether it be blogs, videos, or discussions on social media, there are plenty of places online trying to convince people who believe in gods that they are wrong. I suppose you could call it salvation of a different sort.

As an atheist myself, I understand the desire to help others come to a rational and well reasoned view of life and the world. I think the difficulty for me is that conversations about such things are very personal. Because these beliefs are so personal, any attempts to challenge these fundamental beliefs would be something of an intrusion. I have always been taught that it is rude to talk about very personal things without being invited first. But for some reason, religious or philosophical questions do not seem to have the same social restrictions as, say, discussions about money or sex. People seem just as comfortable telling you how your god is the wrong one as they are to try to convert you to their particular faith. And I don’t know if that is a good thing.

Dangerous thoughts

There are atheists who feel that it is dangerous to allow the religious to believe in the gods. They fear that their use of faith to accept the teachings of their religion will compromise their ability to think and reason in our everyday world. While there may be something to that, I’m not sure I’m comfortable restricting how and what people should be allowed to think and believe. Religion and gods have been a part of human society since our very beginnings. They have played a role in our development just as science and reason have. To deny the benefits humanity has enjoyed from religion seems as myopic as focusing only on the tragedies religion has caused in human history. Babies and bathwater.

Personally, I’m a great believer in the principle of Occam’s Razor – that given that all things are equal, the simplest explanation of something tends to be the correct one. Occam’s Razor requires me to continually question and get new information. I cannot just sit back on my existing stockpile of information and make my decisions from there. I have to continue to question whether there might be a different answer, a simpler answer out there. Sometimes that means talking through what I think I know and sometimes that means listening to what others have to say. Even if I don’t agree or understand it.

In the end, I don’t think salvation will come from thoughts or beliefs but from actions. Our human history is stained with the blood of countless conflicts over nothing more than ideas. The only life of which I am certain is this one. For me, salvation begins and ends here. My opportunity is to save others from pain or suffering. To lend a hand where I can and show compassion knowing that each day is a new turn of the card. The small act of kindness I show today may be the thing I need tomorrow for my own life.

Whether or not there are divine forces and gods, it is within my power to improve the lives around me. If someone is hungry, I can give them food. If they are hurting, I can try to ease their pain. It doesn’t matter to me which god they pray to or what they may believe. They are fellow travelers on this world. If we do not have each other, does the epistemology matter? Knowing is important. Believing is important. But the doing is what I think will save us.

Photo credits
Starry Horizon – Karl Lindsay 2013 from Flickr

I was raised by grandparents. They were people who were born and raised in the early 20th century. They had lived through the hardships of the Great Depression and World War II. They raised me during the tumultuous 1960’s with all of the hope and despair and promise that the decade brought with it. And even though they were both “Christian” in the sense that Jesus Christ was at the core of their respective faiths, they differed in how devoutly they followed those beliefs. In spite of their different views and adherence to their church doctrines, they taught me what they believed was the best way to conduct myself in society.

Their advice was remarkably simple: don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t be unkind or mean to people, be wary of strangers but help them if they truly need help, and other common sense suggestions. Work hard, be loyal, be fair, and be appreciative. Occasionally there would be some words about “God” being happier if I did these things or that there would be some price to pay in the “next life” if I didn’t try to stick to their suggestions But by and large, the advice was always practical and ignoring it would likely mean I would come to regret it in THIS life.

Objective Morality

I recently read a blog post by Matt Slick on the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry website entitled “The Failure of Atheism to Account for Morality.” In it, the author suggests that because the atheist does not appeal to some divine, supernatural authority (in this case the Christian “God”), they cannot have “true” morals. Slick’s main point seems to be that, while atheists may be morally “good” people, it is only a coincidence that their behaviour happens to be consistent with what “God” wants. This, according to the author, is insufficient. Atheists, he claims, are free to assign whatever moral judgement they choose to things like lying, cheating, and causing others harm. By contrast, he suggests that “believers” have the benefit of “God’s” unchanging and objective morality set down in a holy book as a guide.

Remarkably, this same article allows that “atheism offers a subjective moral system that is based on human experience, human conditions, and human reason.” The sentence struck me because it sounded remarkably like my upbringing. It’s how my grandparents frequently talked to me. They told me of their experiences, their lives, and how the morality they were suggesting helped them along in this world. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I was shocked that the next sentence suggested that such a way of approaching morality is “dangerous” and “can lead to anarchy.”

Dog is god spelled backwards

This article is not the only example I’ve run into where people have suggested that without the authority of “god”, there can be no valid sense of morality. It has been suggested to me more than once that “right” and “wrong” cannot be determined without the guidance of a deity. I guess it was just luck that people who raised me had advice that seems to coincide with a lot of what most people think is “right” and “wrong.” Or was it? Secular philosophy and religion have grappled with the questions of morality for centuries. And it was always done in the context of our human experience and it may be that experience that provides the common thread when it comes to morality.

I’m a dog lover and I have spent the last dozen or so years studying modern training techniques based on psychology and behavioural science. It’s remarkable to me that the notion of an externally imposed morality such as that suggested by Matt Slick’s article looks very much like the “because I said so” approach to dog training that was so prevalent in the 1960’s and 70’s. Much of what I’ve learned to do in training my dogs is to show them how cooperation and certain behaviours will benefit them in both the short and long run. It’s a comfortable format for me because, after all, it is how my grandparents taught me about “right” and “wrong”!

For me, it is compassion and a desire for community that informs my moral choices rather than a desire to adhere to the rules passed on to me by some authority.  I am a human in a society of humans.  My first responsibility may be to myself but my very survival depends on the others around me.  I have a responsibility for them as well.  It is easier for me to understand that I can do kindness or harm to the people around me than to an all powerful god.  My moral choices are for the humans I share my life with and not for some check list in a book.  I don’t think that life is a test to pass or fail but a journey to share with others like myself.  Moral choices make that journey more satisfying for me and those I meet along the way.

Relatively moral

Some might call this a relativistic approach to morality. That what is “right” or “wrong” is dependent on the society and culture I live in. And I think that is essentially correct. As I was taught, it is “wrong” to steal from others because I would not want others to steal from me. Similarly I shouldn’t cheat because I don’t want others to cheat on me or lie because I don’t want others to lie to me. And suddenly this all sounds very much like the “Golden Rule” as it appears in the Christian Bible in the gospel of Matthew 7:12 – “do unto others what you would have them do to you.” Interestingly, “God” is not mentioned in that verse. There is no “because God says so” clause in there.

I was taught that the most important thing in this life was to keep the machinery of society running smoothly. Nearly every moral lesson passed on to me in my childhood has helped me in my life to do just that. The moral choices I have made have provided me with good relationships, a way to interact with others on a daily basis, and a way to get along in the world. Somehow that upbringing also taught me how to make new moral judgements without the need to consult a rule book for each and every new situation. Apparently I was taught how to “do the right thing” even in situations I haven’t encountered before.

It troubles me that someone might feel that, as someone who doesn’t believe in gods, I would not have a sense of “right” and “wrong.” That all of the rules of civilized society would seem arbitrary or optional to me. That without the threat of some divine retribution or the promise of some divine favour I would immediately fall into criminal or anti-social behaviour. And then there would be question of WHICH god and WHICH set of rules are the most truly moral. Given the wars and conflicts throughout human history, it seems to be a question that doesn’t have a universally accepted answer yet.

Martin Luther King, himself a Christian minister, once said that he had a dream that his children would be “judged by the content of their character.” Like Dr. King, I prefer that all people be judged for who they are and not by the labels that society places on them. I live a life without gods but I do not often refer to myself as an atheist. Too often “atheist” and “amoral” are confused. Too often “godless” is taken to mean “dangerous” or “evil” and that is just wrong. The Golden Rule – “Do unto others…” provides us a good way to measure the content of someone’s character. How a person treats others in society means more to me than which god they may believe in or what church or mosque they may attend.

In my view, a life without gods is decidedly NOT a life without moral choices.

Photo credits
Moral choices – Clayton Parker 2006 from Flickr

So much of my childhood, being raised as a Catholic, was about learning and trying to obey God’s laws. There were commandments and parables and a lengthy list of “do’s” and “don’t’s” in order to live a good life. Ultimately it was about securing my place in “the next life.” The meaning of this life was to make my place in Heaven with God or in Hell with the others who had not heeded the recommended ways of living.

Humorist A. Whitney Brown once suggested that living for a reward in the afterlife was like going to the movies and keeping your eyes closed the entire time in the hopes of getting your money back at the end. An amusing analogy to be sure but remarkably descriptive of my Catholic upbringing. But what if existence has a firm “no refunds” policy?

Many people in a variety of religious traditions derive meaning by living according to some set of rules or prescribed behaviours. To be sure, civilized societies must have agreed upon codes of conduct; a set of laws to govern interaction. Historically, many of those laws have their roots in religious tradition. Breaking these divine laws could jeopardize one’s immortal soul; the ultimate punishment.

For the Hindu it is being reincarnated into a lower form. For the Muslim, it is being denied the reward of the soul being at peace until the Last Day when Allah will raise the dead to be sent to Paradise or Hell when the world is destroyed. There are many variations on this theme – live a good life according to the tenets of your faith in this life and you will be rewarded in the next life.

I don’t believe in a soul. I don’t think there is a “ghost in the machine” that animates and uses this body of mine. There is nothing of me to live on once the physical body I spend my life in ceases to function. Once I die, there is nothing. And so there is the question of what gives my life meaning if not to prepare for the next life.

For me, the answer is almost too big to put into words. As I sit here writing this, there is music playing. One of my favourite composers and some of my favourite works. I am inspired. I am moved. I am filled with a quiet joy at the sounds all around me. This evening my wife and best friend of more than 30 years will make an offhand remark that will make me laugh in the way she has done consistently for decades. And my dogs, each in their own way, will spend some time with me in play or even just resting together to give me a sense of belonging. There are a thousand other examples that I could give you.

Meaning in my life is not just about what I get out of the deal. I am lucky to play music with friends. It is good to give my time and energy to help them enjoy their time while we are together. I take great joy in making my wife laugh and in listening and comforting her when she is having a bad day. I have family and friends. There is so much to do in this life and so short a time to learn to live well.

So much to know

There are days that I am astonished at what I know. I know about the “event horizon” at the edge of a Black Hole. I know what “contrary motion” is in the harmonies of a song. I know that the part of the brain called the “Hippocampus” plays a critical role in depression. I know that my wife really likes certain mystery writers. And a million other things. Some of them I went out of my way to learn and others just kind of happened. But the fact that I can know them at all seems pretty amazing to me. It is a gift that gives my life some meaning.

There is so much that I don’t know. I discovered late in life that I am a half-brother to 5 women I am still getting to know. I don’t know how to be a brother because I was raised as an only child in a different family. I have spent much of my adult life playing music in my studio for my own enjoyment and now find myself playing in a band. I don’t know how to be part of this musical group but I’m learning. I guess that my biggest challenge is that I don’t know how to be comfortable with who and what I am. They tell me that it could be a life-long project.

For me, living is learning. It is a process of moving from “not knowing” to “knowing” a great many things. That process is a big part of what gives my life meaning. I have the chance to succeed or fail in this life. As long as I’m alive, I have a chance to recover from my failures and improve upon my successes. I can be a better husband. I can be a better friend. I can be a smarter person. I can be more helpful to my community and my world.

For me, living for this life is enough. I’ve talked to others who find that idea troubling. They wonder why I would follow the rules of civilized society if there were no consequences in the afterlife. And the answer to that is simple. I respect the lives of others as I hope they will respect mine.  There are consequences in THIS life.  I find myself here, in this life, and it is a privilege I choose not to take for granted. I have found that joy and meaning in this life come not just from what I get from life but what I give as well.

This life is what gives my life meaning. I don’t need the promise of rewards or threats of punishment for eternity to give me something to live for. There is so much to experience in this life that finding a way to live well, for myself and for those I love, is all the meaning I need.

Photo credit
Still, in a Crowd – Robert Swier 2009   from Google Images

Blood Moon

The approaching lunar eclipse on September 28 promises to be a spectacular event, and some people who are inclined to focus on Biblical prophecies of Armageddon claim to see in this “blood moon” an echo of the sixth chapter of Revelation. The problem with equating a lunar eclipse (even the uncommon phenomenon of a lunar eclipse when the moon is at its closest approach to earth) with the onset of the apocalypse is that such eclipses occur at roughly 25-year intervals and do not correlate with natural disasters.

“Blood moon” can also refer to a moon whose light is obscured by dust and smoke in the atmosphere. This may be local, as those of us in the West who were affected by forest fires can attest. On rare occasions it may be a more general phenomenon caused by a massive volcanic eruption, in which case sun, moon, and stars are all affected, and the effect may persist for months. In recent times, volcanic veiling has been observed in conjunction with Mt. Pinatubo (1993), Krakatoa (1887) and especially Mt. Tambora (1815), and in every case the visible veiling preceded a drop in global temperatures and poor harvests.

The simultaneous darkening of the sun and a blood moon, visible over a wide area, can only occur as a result of atmospheric veiling. The orbital configurations that produce solar and lunar eclipses are diametric opposites, and observable solar eclipses are restricted to a small geographic area. This combination is a genuine portent of impending crop failures and famine, something recognized in ancient times in the Middle East, China, and Central America.

The prediction found in the sixth chapter of Revelation, and repeated elsewhere in the Bible, includes an additional portent: stars falling from the sky. “I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; 13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.…” Allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration, this sounds like a description of a meteor shower, and, if the shower were immediately followed by massive discharge of dust into the atmosphere, obscuring all but the brightest stars, if would appear that the stars had indeed fallen from the sky.

The likelihood that a notable meteor shower, an uncommon event, will coincide this closely with a massive volcanic eruption is small, but atmospheric veiling can also follow asteroid impact. This is the presumed mechanism for the end-Cretaceous extinction of the dinosaurs. The largest impact explosions documented in modern times are the 1908 Tunguska meteorite incident in Siberia and the much smaller disaster in Chelyabinsk, also in Siberia, in 2013. The Tunguska explosion produced visible veiling in North America.

As it travels in its orbit, the earth is constantly encountering objects traveling in their own orbits, ranging from pebble-sized missiles that produce a momentary flare in the night sky, or a house-sized rock like that which exploded above Chelyabinsk with a blast several times the power of the atom bomb that leveled Hiroshima, to objects kilometers in diameter with the capacity to wipe out the human race. Of particular note are comets like Swift-Tuttle, which crosses the earth’s orbit every 133 years, leaving a trail of pebbles that fall to earth as the Perseid meteor shower. If Swift-Tuttle were to collide with the earth, the result would be massive extinctions, but a smaller object with similar properties, exploding over the Pacific Ocean, would produce effects in Europe and the Middle East that approximated the description in Revelation 6.

Specifically, the first visible manifestation would be a spectacular meteor shower as the earth entered the cloud of gravel accompanying the comet. Within days of the explosion, sun and moon would darken, temperatures would start to fall, accompanied by extreme weather events, and crop failures would precipitate famine. The sequence famine – war – pestilence is well documented historically.

Did the author of Revelation personally witness this sequence of events? Possibly. There is an abrupt cooling event in 186 AD that does not connect neatly to any known massive volcanic eruption. This is later than the traditional date for the composition of Revelation but not outside the bounds of what serious biblical scholars consider possible. According to this speculative scenario, the author, drawing upon a number of traditional sources, correctly predicted a chain of natural disasters and their human consequences but erred in extrapolating to an end-of-the-earth scenario.

This has implications for the present day. In the modern world, if we see these signs, we will also be presented with a scientific explanation. It will be tempting, when presented with them, to go to one of two extremes: either to opt for superstitious apocalypticism and assume that real-world approaches are futile, or assume that our scientific knowledge alone will ensure an adequate response. The world’s food supply is already unstable, and our political institutions unable to maintain society in the face of even local natural disasters. If human society is to survive a disaster of much greater magnitude than anything we have experienced in modern times, some meeting of minds is necessary.

Image Credit

“Moon becomes as Blood,” by Waiting for the Word. Creative Commons Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Einsiedeln Abbey

(We had bought second-class travel on our Swiss Travel Pass and when we boarded the train for our first official day of rail travel we were surprised to see how luxurious second-class is in this country. The trains are modern and very clean and the seats are comfortably plush. Through the huge windows of the second-class car we inhaled the lovely scenery and gorgeous homes along our route.)

Once we arrived in Einsiedeln and received directions from a train station employee and then again from a man on the street, we made our way through the town and up to the monastery, a huge complex of buildings, dominated by an impressive church, built in the early eighteenth century. As we entered the church just before ten, it was immediately apparent that a Mass was about to begin in the chapel of the Black Madonna, called the Chapel of Grace, located at the back of the church. The chapel itself appeared to be constructed of black marble and featured a fifteenth-century statue of the Madonna, her face blackened by centuries of dust and the soot of candles and incense; she was surrounded in gold and dressed in a beautiful robe (which apparently changes according to the seasons of the liturgical calendar), behind the altar. As we walked around the church we could hear the progress of the Mass, some of which was beautifully sung, behind us.

The Grace Chapel

The church is decorated in the baroque style, and how over-the-top baroque it is! It seems that every square centimetre of this church is covered with painting, iconography, and gold filigree. Even the pipes of the organ are decorated. Down either side of the church are numerous altars, dedicated to various saints, of different sizes and made of different materials. The main, high altar at the front of the church is the quintessence of baroque excess.

Going for Baroque

Einsiedeln Abbey is a working monastery with about sixty monks in residence. According to Switzerland.com, “The monastery complex includes not only the living space for the monks but also a diocese school, ten workshops, a wine cellar for the monastery’s own wine and stables for the monastery’s own breed of horses.”

View from the Abbey into Einsiedeln

The heavily decorated church at Einsiedeln Abbey stands in marked contrast to many of the large churches in Switzerland, like the Grossmünster in Zurich and the Cathedral of Lausanne, which were once Catholic but were taken over by the Protestants in the early 1600s during the Swiss Reformation, which was led by Huldrych Zwingli, who had once been a priest at Einsiedeln. In the process of the takeover, these churches were stripped of all their icons.

Image Credit

Photos by Juswantori Ichwan. All rights reserved.