On Sin, or True Dissonance

I don't even know what to write right now. This may make no sense, but I have some things to process.

How does a person deal with all intellectual structures around them falling out from under them? How do you deal with your reservoir of faith running totally dry? What do you do when all of the answers of spiritualists, mystics, religious figures, and those you've grown up listening to sound like nothing more than abuse? What do you do when you realize you've been psychologically abused for a good portion of your life?

You are worthless. You are a sinful, horrible monster. You are broken. You've missed the mark. Your best intentions are filthy rags. You don't know what you're doing. You're horrible. You suck. You must constantly repent, constantly be sorry, and constantly deny yourself any happiness. You need our answers. We know God, and the only way we can be sure you do is if you gain the same understanding that we deem spiritual. You better not be wrong, though your nature is to be wrong constantly. You must doubt yourself constantly, never have confidence, never be correct, always be self-deprecating. You are a fool, but you mustn't call your neighbor a fool. Your neighbor is anyone else. They must be allowed to run you over constantly, because you are worse than dirt. You deserve to be persecuted. You deserve death. You deserve eternal torment forever. You are worthless. Your sex drive makes you sinful. Your questions make you arrogant. Your humanity makes you useless. Your ideas make you heretical. Your creativity makes you threatening. Your compassion is empty, your grace hollow, your beauty pointless, your mind broken, your heart evil, your soul monstrous. God loves you anyway, because we say so. You should be grateful.

It hurts. Beyond any thoughts, any reason, any movement or investigation or research or experience, I must admit to the fact that I have been abused by those who claim to be in authority. I have never been sexually abused, and I've never been hit in my life. My family is wonderful, and I've had good friends for most periods of my life. But I have learned the mantra of self-hatred, and it is attached to growing up as a Christian. I learned in Christian school that when one is angry at the church, the first question one must ask is "who is it?"

There is no one person. It doesn't matter which theology, which church, which sect, which movement I deal with, this mantra is always a part of it. Even those centered on grace cling to the doctrine of sin. Whether it is phrased that we accept salvation so God does not allow or cause our eternal torture, or that we live in salvation to participate in who God is, and any other way to live is hell, Christians still speak of hell constantly, whenever salvation is spoken of. Because we are so free that we can choose whatever we want, even though God's way is the only real way to live.

The question is...who has articulated God's way correctly? Has the Roman Catholic Church? Has the Protestant Reformation? Has Islam? Has Judaism? Has the Orthodox Church? Has the Pentecostal Church? Has the liberal sections of Christianity? The UMC? The Baptists? The Anglicans? Are there actually multiple gods? Who is God? El? Allah? Jesus? Yahweh? Which way is the correct way?

"We shape our god, and our god shapes us." This is from the only man that has ever portrayed religion to me as anything but abusive. The movement itself, which has emerged from the Postmodern world's religious sentiments, is a complex form of psychology, rooted in the historic orthodox Christian faith. An acknowledgment and apology for the history of religion, and a willingness to be progressive, to move forward, to narrow one's focus to only who Jesus is, reinterpreting the ancient scriptures through that person. Incarnational, compassionate, and focused on a God that simply wants to reunite with humanity. In this framework, sin is us, however it actually happened, losing a relationship with our creator. His desire to reunite with us is what drives his actions. We were made to create as well, and we do it through relationships, art, science, philosophy, religion, history, literature, and culture.

The question is...how much of the historic, orthodox Christian faith is kept in this movement? It is ecumenical in focus, often including other religions. The notion is that God has been after humanity for a while, but we must choose Him as well. Religions are the byproduct of us sensing the spiritual world.

Ancient Christianity is not progressive in nature, and is concerned with continuing the traditions of the religion itself. Church history has been fraught with power struggles, war, death, movements and reformations, and all of the things that we've come to expect of humans through study of history and our nature. The thing is...if empirical science proves something wrong, then religion has no choice but to change it.

So, we are left with two questions. Firstly, given how little we know about the universe and existence, how can we be sure that our scientific conclusions are, in fact, correct? Secondly, how can a God, whose nature is unprovable, exist at all?

1. Science, by its' nature, is a method of progress. The more we study, the more we understand through research and observation, the better science becomes at portraying the universe. That said, the more we study science the more questions we have, and that is the beauty of it. Will we ever understand all of existence? I simply do not know. We constantly revise our picture of reality, and it could be uprooted at its' core by some discoveries. How can we be sure we are correct about anything? This is why philosophy is necessary. We are now progressing into Epistemology and questioning empirical sources.

2. God's every move avoids giving irrefutable proof of his existence. We are given the gift of faith, which is to say, the hope for things unseen. At some point, all of humanity has some sort of faith. Philosophically, these are more accurately termed to be presuppositions. For example, I have faith that what I am looking at and interacting with is, in fact, reality.

However, religious faith, particularly theistic faith, is entirely different. You see, the nature of Jesus is relational, by a matter of course. He is a proof of God's existence, God in flesh, but only if you believe the miracles reported by ancient sources, uncorrelated by any other historical sources outside of the Christian religion. What then? Is this merely an anti-faith bias I am spouting, or is it possible that historians had a religious agenda around the founding of Christianity? Does not every religion believe that it only exists because it is true? Is this not believed by any devout believer of any religion?

So there is a God, who is all powerful and all knowing and compassionate and loves humanity, but there is a marked lack of evidence of such things in our chaotic world. The answer, of course, comes from the fall. We are totally free, we are the ones destroying, and we are the ones that can create and come back to God. In this sense, God is a moral standard. All good things happen because of God, and all evil happens because of humanity, or if you wish, the devil.

We have once again circled around to sin, and its' meaning as us being evil, us being separated from God, and us being uncertain about everything, necessitating faith. The empirical gap presented by science and philosophy and human understanding of the universe is used as an epistemic wedge that drives us toward faith. In this sense, the conflict between science and religion is very true indeed.

So the real question is simple. Is religion worth trusting? At the end of the day, it always seems to come down to that. Religious claims can only be made in ignorance or by trusting in a historic source. Before a movement is a religion, it is simply a spiritual proposition. The problem is, things like hell and judgment cause humans to panic, and do what they can to avoid horrible things. The instinct of self preservation is at work.

I have severe problems trusting authority, and the simple reason is because I am entirely sick of being told, implicitly and explicitly, how horrible of a person I am. The religious would say this is self-centered and arrogant of me, but they must also acknowledge their own self-centered nature by attempting to avoid hell and judgment, and their own arrogance at claiming to know all of the answers.

Religion always boils down to what humanity is saying about the spiritual world. I have no doubt that the spiritual world exists, because of my own experiences with it. There is definitely something more to our existence than being animals that have evolved on a planet in one universe of millions that barely understand reality. However, I must also acknowledge that part of the reason I believe in spirituality and in the idea of God is because there are people I trust and admire that also do. I must also acknowledge that I am not the most objective person right now, and that I have trust issues, systemic of things I probably do not even understand about myself yet.

What I do know is that I love understanding psychology, religion, philosophy, and this thing called spirituality. I believe this is an art, and I will probably spend my life studying and creating in it. For me to do this, I must leave behind this notion that I am inadequate. It has been toxic to me for my entire life, and I am sick of it. Even if the notion of sin is true, I learned when I was very young that sin means I must berate myself, and it has always held me back.

I also know that I cannot sacrifice my intellectual honesty just because I am uncomfortable questioning something that has been part of my identity for a long time. No matter the consequences, I must move forward. I simply have no more faith left to give to this destructive culture I have grown up in. What does this make me? I have absolutely no idea, but it's pretty interesting.

Mystification

Sometimes, we have to stop and ask ourselves questions. When it comes to my situation, I've had to stop because life is intensely and in my face unfair, frustrating, and dangerous. I've realized I've been angry a lot because I thought I was owed something by life. I thought my prayers, my sincerity, my attempts to do the right thing, and my hard work would bring some kind of reward. Or, at the very least, I would stop struggling so much. The truth is, the more I've struggled, the more I've tried to make sense out of everything, the less I know and the less I feel I can do. In a real sense, I totally understand why people give up. I want to, almost every day.

What's damning about this is my ideals are probably the cause of most of these problems.

I grew up expecting to change the world, to be some kind of visionary and create something new that will change everything. A pretty egotistical way of living, I'd say. "Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

I've come to understand that progress only happens when humanity stops being idiotic and thinks for a second, or when a drastic example is put in front of them and forces them out of their apathy. On one hand, this is kind of how people function in our society. On the other hand, it is infuriatingly unfair when we look at people like Nikola Tesla. Someone who was legitimately a genius, but was screwed over by people constantly. This is a man who died alone after making huge contributions to the world, while businessmen and greedy men profited by stealing from him. He also did not care. If you don't know who Tesla is, that's exactly my point. Look him up.

I'm certainly no Tesla, and a lot of people are not. However, it's important to remember that we are owed nothing and indeed, we will be given nothing if we merely work our way forward in a straightforward way. That is a recipe for being stomped on, and I've had more than enough of that. I could descend into a bitchfest about a multitude of things at this point, but that would be pointless.

A better point is also a simple one. I have decided I know nothing. I have more of an education than over 90% of the world, and that's enough to know I have more questions than answers. I still don't know much about the nature of our existence, and I look to scientists and philosophers to understand that better. I've begun to look to practical examples to learn skills to survive in every day life, and I look to spirituality for self-improvement. In all of these areas, I have more questions than answers. Indeed, in the area of my own spirituality, I seem to have nothing but questions anymore.

If we evolved over billions of years from abiogenesis, if our universe is gigantic and we are microscopic and our universe is only one of many, then what significance does one person writing on one blog even have? Indeed, is this a waste of time, or is there something more to my existence than just another sentient life form on a remote planet complaining because he has to deal with other insignificant lifeforms in a mob that run him over every single day (and more ironically, is often part of that mob just to get even)? If there is a god that cares about us that much, where is he when there are millions of people less fortunate than I who die of hunger and thirst? Does he not care? Does he not care about me? Does he not care about the insane amount of people less fortunate than I? If I'm supposed to put myself aside (sick of hearing that shit whenever I have a problem by the way) and go help other people, then is that not just man helping his fellow man? Why is the significance of community about something other than people helping each other?

The big question, of course, is why are we "murdering each other over tribal god images," as Q so aptly put it? Given our advancing understanding of the universe, we are left with more and more disturbing implications and more questions, and the religion I've grown up interacting with has exactly one current public figure that even comes close to interacting with legitimate questions, and with helping those who are actually unfortunate, as opposed to a disillusioned college graduate with some minor emotional problems. That public figure is routinely reviled and harassed by the majority of his own religion. Let that sink in for a moment.

A religion, based on Jesus, who came and turned a persecuted religion that was looking for the messiah on its' head. He said that money and power are pointless, and that there are more important things to life. He was then killed by the predominant religious and political powers of the day. Two millenia later, we're left with a violent church history full of power struggle and bloodshed, and an institution that acts like any other does with money. When does the majority simply overpower the minority? When does the religion itself become illegitimate because the abuse is found to be the natural outcome of the theology itself? Can we really afford to continue to talk about how we live in a fallen world with sinful people, or should we simply accept who we are and get over ourselves and our power structures that will cause our own destruction?

These questions aren't about me, they're simply a product of a mind that can't seem to stop asking questions like these. I can't afford to continue doing business as usual and being the same person I always have been. Not anymore.

If there is one thing I've learned since I've graduated college, it's that those in power are going to abuse those not in power 99% of the time. Out of sight, out of mind. I'm the same way. I want to have so much money that I don't need to put effort into anything anymore. I want to have so much control that I don't have to deal with the uncertainty of life anymore. These are the actions of someone who is afraid, and I am done with it. Life is to be lived now, and all one can do is their best. The ideals I've grown up with no longer function for me, so it's time to start over again, as one knowing nothing.

The Death of God

I feel that I am filled to the brim and ready to burst. So, I am writing again. I've always made a conscious effort to be objective, as a moderation to the things I believe, the things I'm passionate about. Perhaps that's because I've always seen passion scare people, or perhaps I wish to always see every side of an issue. Maybe I just don't want to get into more fights over things that I feel should be positive. Regardless, I am passionate about my faith.

It's an extremely conflicting experience to relate to and agree with atheists, but be a theist and a Christian. When I read and hear about people moving from Christianity to atheism, belief in religion to other ways of believing, I am conflicted. I have had to move on from the Christianity I've grown up with as well, though I have never found it necessary or correct to move beyond a belief in God, in the spiritual reality that is connected to our experiences, and the checkered and conflicted history of the Church.

I've written lately about my experiences in Christianity, and currently I feel that all of the things I believe in are most closely represented by the Eastern Orthodox Church. Perhaps I am merely fooling myself, as I've been to one of these churches only once. As most people can tell you, experience often colors the theoretical understanding you have of things in ways you would never expect. I am both afraid of trying a new church and desperately want to be involved in a community that discusses things meaningfully. I do not miss most of my college experience, but what I do miss is the good conversations. The ones that naturally happened as far divorced from the "spiritual formation" efforts the school made to indoctrinate us as possible.

I've watched more and more people move away from Evangelical Christianity, and some people move deeper into it, become more conservative, more entrenched and, I suppose, stronger in what they believe. But strength in what you believe is often overrated, and often goes along with stubbornness, blindness, and lack of compassion. Those things are not necessary to be strong, but the baby often gets thrown out with the bathwater on this matter. Regardless, Evangelical Protestant Christianity will shortly be a memory, and will polarize to the level of fundamentalism. At the same time, a lot of the more "liberal" Protestants I've known have polarized more toward atheism. Sometimes I wonder if I'm polarizing to one side or the other, but I know the truth.

I've always been torn between two extremes. Don't get me wrong: I'm no moderate. If I'm pointedly ask what I believe or think about a subject, I will tell you, and I've never tried to balance extremes. What I have tried to balance is who I am. I will laugh at almost any religious joke a person makes, and I will make fun of my own beliefs. To me, that is a sign of security. Plus those jokes are usually hilarious until they turn awkwardly hateful. Regardless, it is unnecessary for me to defend anything, because the truth will eventually prevail, whatever that may be. The truth is that the church has often stood in the way of the truth it claims to protect. The truth is, religion has often made people blind.

The truth is, it does not have to.

I will tell anyone that I believe Jesus Christ is God. I do not believe in the penal substitutionary atonement, original sin, or the inerrancy of scripture. I am not a traditional Christian in the Western sense of the word, and when people make light of the Christian belief that "God kills God to satisfy God's wrath" and say it's absurd, I can only agree. When they say a book cannot be without error if written by people, I can only agree. My foundation for my beliefs has always been and will always be founded in experience, intuitive understanding, and church history. If the human race lost all memory of the era that the historical Jesus came from, I have no doubt that the God I believe exists would have other creative ways of seeking out humanity. I also have no doubt that our understanding of religion, philosophy, metaphysics, science, and the nature of reality and truth is so entirely small that the ultimate God I believe exists goes over our heads all of the time. There's so much we do not know.

Every single person has a right to disagree with me. I expect no respect for my beliefs, nor do I expect anyone to care that I even have them. I'm not the best person in the world, and I often act selfishly or impulsively. But I do try. I want to make my surroundings better, but I've been blessed and cursed with a critical mind and a great deal of passion for fairness, justice, and the truth. I end up being way too excessive on these things more often than not, and end up as a hypocrite quite often. I am no role model.

However, one thing college taught me is that no one else is, especially not the authority figures that claim to have spiritual truth and maturity figured out. Even those that claim to know the entirety of the truth are guessing, like the rest of us. Perhaps some have more educated guesses than others, and I respect those people, especially the ones that will admit that the more educated they become, the more questions they have.

This is the adventure of life. Know more, discover more, find more truth, and realize just how much more you have to discover.

A lot of people call the world we live in Post-Christian. The more I experience and talk with people, the more I have to agree. Christianity, as the Western world knows it, is dying. The remnant of Western Christianity will be a core group of extremists that preach God's vengeance and anger and will become more embittered by the progress of society, and the world will move on as it always has, leaving them behind. However, there is another group of Christians that are content to quietly believe what they do believe, and recognize that their faith does not represent a comprehensive understanding of reality, only a claim that God loves every soul, and has more planned than we can ever imagine. These are truly two different gods represented, and to react against one is not to react against the other.

As Nietzsche prophetically spoke, God is dead, and we have killed him. The question we must answer is simple. Which god is it that is dead, and was his death necessary?

Decisions and Power: the Intellectual and the Intuitive

I believe what I do about life because I feel that it is true.

Automatically, in the culture I live in, this statement is regarded with suspicion at best. Most people I've talked to are looking for proof, whether it be through sacred texts, historical context, the sciences, or philosophical argumentation. It is important to note, however, that with proof comes a natural imperative on the part of whoever something is proven to.

That is, if I prove to you that my beliefs are true, you have an imperative to agree with me or live in willful ignorance. I say that gravity is true, I drop a box, and use that as evidence that it is true. For you to say it is not true is regarded as stupid. This analogy, however, is interesting for two reasons.

Firstly, when I give evidence of gravity, I am showing you its' effects. Gravity itself is a theory, an explanation for a consistent pull of objects toward the center of our planet. For me to say "no, gravity isn't something I believe in" would not make me fly off into space, because reality is consistent despite our beliefs.

Secondly, to enter into discourse is much more intelligent than to agree or disagree. Perhaps you have a different explanation for why a box falls when it is dropped, or perhaps you wish for the terms to be redefined or you think that on some level, the standard understanding of gravity is flawed.

So either way, when making assertions about reality, you are in a position of power, and if people have other inclinations, then they enter into a power struggle with you. Ideally, if your allegiance is to the truth as opposed to being correct all the time, you are willing to back off if proof is offered otherwise.

The problem, however, is that proof only goes as far as our senses and our knowledge go. This is why our understand of reality continues to evolve as we as a species evolve. Yet still, we cannot explain things like consciousness and miraculous occurrences and a lot about our universe. These things have implications for how we understand all of life.

As incomplete beings, humans fill in the blanks where proof is lacking with their own experiences and personality. This is natural, and can lead to beneficial and detrimental consequences. One's culture, experiences, emotions, flaws and places they excel are all a part of this, as is one's biology and family.

In a way, philosophy is just as much about one's intellect as it is about one's experience and feeling. If a person doesn't understand themselves or the source of their feelings, then their philosophy may be filled with all sorts of unwarranted cynicism, reductionism, or it might be full of empty ideals.

In the same way, if people understand very little, then their philosophy will be full of inaccuracy and assumption. Ego makes this worse.

So you end up with people making absurd factual declarations or becoming anti-intellectual, and people choosing to ignore any aspect of life that isn't analytical. The problem is, since every person is human, they are a fusion, on some level, of these aspects of life.

Whether intuition and feelings are products of brain chemistry and instinct or an indication of higher reality (or both), they exist and have to be dealt with. Whether the universe is a naturally occurring phenomenon or a created existence, it exists and has to be dealt with. On a practical level, this means that we feel and we think. To ignore one is to ignore part of what it means to be human.

I find Christianity to align with something I feel to be true about reality. That is, that the best way is one of reconciliation, respect, love, and value of everything around me. Obviously, I have to sort through a hell of a lot of baggage to even make that statement in the first place, because Christianity means so many things that its' definition has begun to break down. I also believe that part of being a Christian is listening to the beliefs of everyone around you with respect, and allowing for the possibility of being wrong. If someone says my religion is a moral failure or some tenants of it (such as the existence of God) are wrong, I need to take that seriously and look at those things. I believe I do this well.

However, I must also always look at the evidence around me as well. This is why, once I began to really question things, I realized that a lot of the talk about scientific theories like evolution and abiogenesis at my religious schools was not founded in reality. One must always pay attention when reality interrupts your religious thoughts, and one must always investigate deeply before throwing out something you feel is true.

Sometimes a feeling is a product of a simple emotion and can be valued as such without needing to blindly believe religious tenants. Sometimes a fact is a product of simple observation and can be valued as such without needing to blindly accept it without a full explanation.

Both of these things have been and will be used to hold power over others. I encourage you, never settle for this. Investigate for yourself, think and feel for yourself, listen to others and really consider what they say, and make your own decisions.

The Morality of Atheism and Theism: Science, Religion, and Progress

Some say the universe came into existence through a rapid expansion, a "Big Bang." Some say that it began with a single Word from God, in creativity and joy. Some say it began with a conflict between multiple gods, through war and strife. Some say the universe has always existed and perpetually will exist.

The origin and nature of humanity has been attributed to many thing as well. The prevailing scientific theory is one of Abiogenesis and Evolution, life arising from inorganic matter and continuously evolving. The religious would say that humanity was created spontaneously by God and is a spiritual as well as physical being. Others would say that we are spirits and all of the physical world is incidental, that we are spirits inhabiting physical bodies, awaiting freedom at death. To be absent from the body is to be present with God. Some make no claims about the origin of man, stating that they simply do not know.

In general, people are theistic or they are atheistic. There are gods or a single God, or there are no gods. A god is usually defined as a being that is above humanity, or as the greatest possible being. Supernatural, with power beyond what humans have, and usually immortal or possessing an ascension beyond death and usually the laws of the physical world. Many cultures have had conceptions of gods, and the Abrahamic religions are the major monotheistic ones (Islam, Judaism, Christianity). Christianity is peculiar in that it, for the most part, includes the doctrine of the Trinity, that God exists in three person, who are united in one essence. This is commonly subject to the accusation of being polytheistic by the other Abrahamic religions.

The only reason I don't speak about polytheistic religions is because I don't know them as well. I would like to remedy that through study of various theology, culture, and mythology, as I think they're very interesting. However, for now I speak of monotheistic religion.

Religion has evolved over the years, and some link it with the continued voice of ignorance and lack of progress. Unfortunately, this is often correct. The most frequent disparity is between the voice of science and the voice of religion. Indeed, you can probably see this in what I've written about so far. Scientific theories stand apart from religious theories regarding creation, the origin and nature of man, and the nature of the universe as prevalently atheistic. This is because the existence of gods have not been evidentially proven. The reason for this is because science is by nature materialistic and empirical. That is, it is about what can be observed and proven through testing and the scientific method.

I think it is fascinating that a type of morality has grown around the scientific method in our culture. Combined with the abuses that are easily observable from the major religions, science has become more than just a method; it's become an epistemological stance. Citing my own religious orientation as a reference, one need only read my past month of posts to note that Christianity, as I and many others have experienced it, is abusive, manipulative, destructive, and ignorant. Much of this can be traced back to theological beliefs, as practice naturally flows out of belief. You may believe that sexism and racism is contrary to your beliefs, but if you hold them dear and find yourself being sexist and racist more often than not, then it's possibly you are incorrect. The problem, of course, comes from the fact that your beliefs are inherently unique and informed by your experiences. This is the problem of speaking about religion: no two religious individuals are precisely the same in belief.

Regardless, the moral stance of the religious often flows from commands of their deity or from implications within religious writings. The morality that seems to be developing from the movement around the scientific method is an allegiance to the truth. Which of these is a higher morality? If a deity does exist, then are they not the same thing? It is comforting to think that a being with higher morality can direct our paths, because we often don't have a clue what's going on in our lives. Or perhaps that's just me.

In any case, the natural conclusion is that our actions matter. The epistemic stance of the culture of science is that we must always progress, the method leads us forward into truth and enlightenment, and that there is no evidence thus far of anything higher evolved than man. Humanism is what we are now speaking about, because you must believe yourself to be capable of finding the truth and with a moral responsibility to move in that direction. Evidence based epistemology is admirable for its' allegiance to the truth, but it makes several assumptions. Namely, humanity is nearly god-like in humanism. No, I'm not saying humanists are egotistical maniacs. I'm saying that humanity is able to see the simple truth and that reductionism is a natural extension of that, that nothing emerges from the evidence that is beyond our comprehension, because there is nothing else. The problem with this is that if there is more than what we can prove, then the system is merely progressive and can not lend itself to claims about things beyond its' method.

In other words, the theory of evolution is a most excellent theory regarding the origin of man. However, to then move into extreme atheism from this point does not follow, as one has not scientifically tested the universe in its' entirety (whether we're speaking of the vastness or the amount of things we have yet to understand), and a negative is not a provable premise without a comprehensive knowledge. In other words, God has not been proven to exist, but that does not mean He does not exist.

That also does not mean He does exist. It is simply not provable at this time. This is why I respect atheism as a stance. It lends itself to honesty and to asking questions, which religion often does not comply with.

The simple fact is, the term atheist simply refers to one belief. There is no God. It is not faith, it is the inverse. There is no evidence, so there is no God. Theism is the opposite (obviously). There is no evidence, therefore God transcends our evidence. Both, however, are beliefs.

This is why the divide between the atheist and the theist has lost a lot of its' meaning. There are philosophical implications of both beliefs, but they are both presuppositions. To judge a presupposition, one must ask themselves what the implications are and whether or not it is true, or compliant with reality as we know it. We must, in a sense, use epistemic, scientific, and intuitive methods for measuring our presuppositions, as none are adequate on their own.

This leads to a whole litany of questions. If there is a God, then where is He? Why is there evil if a being is powerful enough to prevent it? Why is there anything good at all if this God is evil? If there is no God, how do we explain the spiritual aspect of our lives? Are we merely evolving to a higher state of being? Is something more emerging from humanity, or has it been there all along, as the existence of religions would imply? What's the point of what I do? How can what I do not matter if it affects others and the universe?

We're all trying to understand and find meaning, but some have stopped and they think this is all there is. Their religion/stance/culture/morality is the endpoint, and they become militant while others are still asking questions, still trying to understand, still learning.

Where do I stand between science and religion? I answer yes to this question. They address two different things, evidence and intuition. The material reality and the spiritual reality. They are not so different, and they bleed over into each other. Why else would we have stories, and why else would I and those like me, as young children, go outside and look at the stars and wonder what else is out there?

I asked in my previous post why it matters what I believe and what I think. In a sense, I am merely a small being theorizing on a random blog with a few readers that hopefully benefit by cognitive dissonance. In another sense, I'm asking questions that my race is asking in its' global culture. We cannot escape from the morality and the implications of our actions and beliefs, and as a Christian, I once again come back around to saying that I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what my religion has done, for the ignorance it has promoted, for the harm it has done. What is important is to move forward from that, progress, and do better. That is the nature of repentance, and it's what I and those like me strive for. This goes beyond religion to being a person open to truth, being an explorer, and giving respect to what is around you and demanding that respect in return.

Moving Beyond Good and Evil: College, Universal Truth, and my Rejection of Evangelicalism

If there is one time in my life so far that has been key for shaping the person I was into the person I am, it would have to be my time at college. I've talked to a lot of people about this, but I think this is the first time I've actually come to have some perspective on all of those happenings.

Disclaimer: I don't portray my college or most of the religion I grew up with very well. This is by no means intended to be defamatory, it is simply what happened. You have been warned. Don't take it personally if you're involved in any of this.

Before I went to college, I had become good friends with the person I met in the 10th grade of high school. I'd go so far as to call him a mentor, which is a little odd, since he was about my age. Regardless, after my foray into public college, I decided to get a Counseling degree and to go to a Christian school. My friend decided similarly, but he'd be going for a more pastoral/theological path. So we looked at schools together, and we both decided to go to one particular Bible college in northeast Georgia. We went to their visitors session and it seemed to be a good fit, considering that we had begun to explore differing religious thoughts. This school seemed to be a cross-denominational institution that allowed for people with questions and freely exploring thought. So we decided to go there.

My first year at this school showed me how wrong my initial preconceptions of the place were. I don't know how much of my initial belief came from being lied to by the institution and how much was me needing to believe I could go somewhere and figure out who I am and what I believe, but I quickly found out that questions and exploration of religious thought was scary to most of the people at this school. I suppose I can't blame them, since I also quickly found out that they were definitely a conservative Evangelical institution. More on that later in this post.

In the first few months at this school, my friend and I became involved in the Philosophy club/department, and he ended up changing his major to Philosophy, while I stuck with Counseling. In many ways though, I interacted with the philosophy section of my school more than the counseling/psychology section. I signed up and became active on a forum for several years, declared a minor in Philosophy, and most of the people that heard of me at the school assumed my major was Philosophy.

I say that people heard of me because one of the first things my friend and I participated in was a formal debate hosted by the Philosophy Club. I reference this a lot as one of the key events of my College experience, for very good reason. The topic was the inerrancy of the original autographs of the new testament, and the club hosted this topic because we did not believe in Biblical inerrancy. I would come to term myself liberal around this time due to my religious leanings, which was a dirty word at my college, as were other things that I'd find out about later. However, for now, a definition.

Inerrancy. The belief that a book, usually religious, is without error in some way. The way my college and some conservative Evangelicals mean this term is that every word (plenary verbal) of the Bible (biblical) is inspired by God and without error (inerrancy). This runs into some problems when we consider the contradictory accounts of the gospels and the differing tones in the collection of books that is now called the Bible, not to mention the fact that the Bible did not exist until well after the death of the Apostles in the first Century.

Plenary Verbal Biblical Inerrancy rests on some references in the New Testament to "all scripture" being "God breathed," which is taken to mean inspired and inerrant. We argued against this on the grounds that the original manuscripts were no longer in existence, the contradictory accounts of the gospels, our understanding of church history and the canonization of scripture's time frame, and the simple fact that it cannot be proven. We won a pyrrhic and meaningless victory. Perhaps it would have been better if we had lost. Being freshman at a college, you can imagine our nervousness at being up in front of a lot of people at the school, including professors and board members and students and various others associated with the school, and debating against upper-classmen on a topic that 99% of the room disagreed with us about. That said, we obviously did very well bringing forward our argument to win the debate. We won on the grounds that we called out the circularity of the positive side in their reasoning and on the presentation of our argument in a logical and consistent manner.

We then spoke to the moderator of the debate in front of the audience about why we really believe our position and the implications for it, and then were presented with the results. The judge presenting our win corrected the positive team's error in reasoning to show that we were wrong by asserting that they did not escape circularity by claiming apostolic authority, and then a week later in the school paper there was a two part article by two of the judges about why our position is wrong, sub-Christian, and borderline heretical.

If you know me, you know that this caused me to do the exact opposite of falling in line with what I was supposed to believe. This also gave me a reputation that would stick with me for the entirety of my time at the school, as my friend left Christianity and the school shortly after to explore other options in life and religion. I never did renounce Christianity, though I did come very close following these events.

What followed was me trying to figure out some things, being told to have faith by a lot of people (apparently meaning to believe something despite reason), and generally stumbling around reading things and having conversations with people. I made some very good friends in college, and there was the standard social drama that came along with having a group of friends and with the college you attend being much closer to a small Christian high school experience than an academic institution.

We were required to go to chapel every week, 3 times a week and to attend a small group every Thursday at my school. I did this begrudgingly, and often I was put on "chapel probation" due to not attending chapel enough, which I had to work off by doing chapel summaries (watching a video of the chapel message and summarizing it to turn in) and by adequately attending chapel the next semester of school. I attended a few small groups, and ended up attending a really excellent one with some great people in charge of it. We'd go through some material and talk about it, then most of the time end up talking about our lives and praying for each other. Regardless of religious conviction, I find this small group to be one of the best things that happened to me at that school, as it was often then only time during the week besides hanging out with friends that I felt like people cared.

The administration of my school changed several times as well, and this was connected to a movement in evangelical Christianity called the Emerging Church. This movement is hard to define, but I got into it for several years in college. Basically, the Emerging Church as a movement has no set theology, and is a movement that embraces Postmodern culture. It is friendly to questions (which I desperately needed at the time), and loosely embraced Christianity as a very good story. Postmodernism, at its' core, is skeptical of metanarratives, which are stories that explain life. The Emerging Church is part of this, but in general seeks conversational change and community minded thought as opposed to a strict theological adherence and foundational epistemology. Confused yet? So was everyone else.

What this practically meant at my school was that people became opposed to each other. Some would hold fast to "true Christianity" and be conservative Evangelicals and call the "postmodern" section of the students liberal and heretical. The Emerging Church people would respond by saying they are shutting down conversation and would ask for definition. What this meant for me is that I generally sided with the Emerging Church movement, and I came to become very sensitive to the repeated accusation directed at me of "heretic."

I was told by many students and professors that I was a "false teacher" and that I was destroying other peoples' faiths, and somehow I was never kicked out of the school. To this day, I still don't know why I wasn't, and I can only conclude that the administration change (which caused a lot of people to get fired) may have been part of it. When the administration changed to a more "postmodern friendly" group of people, we were all required to sign a community covenant based on accountability and conversation with others. A lot of punishment for breaking school rules was abolished (including having to do some work on campus for free for most offenses, including failing room check), and in general, either you were talking to someone in administration or were kicked out of the school if you were in trouble. A lot of people were kicked out for things like drinking or clear violations of school rules. One of my friends was kicked out for repeated violation of the chapel policy. Somehow, I was still not kicked out, though I was now very frequently on "chapel accountability."

As often happens with movements like this, the administration went the other way after the chaos of the initial change and chose to follow a more moderate path. This was after 3 years. My experience at this time was being called heretical, fighting with people over things, having a few experiences with dating, having some good friends I could talk to, being basically infamous at the school, having to do a lot of the "free work" policy, and generally chaos around my beliefs. My friend who'd left the school wanted me to leave Christianity to explore some other religious movements more in line with gnosticism (which is ironic since a lot of American Evangelicalism is basically gnostic in practice), my friends were every which way, and the administration basically considered me unsaved, as did most of the rest of the school that didn't know me personally. Having a reputation is annoying.

I did not even try to figure out anything from all of this chaos. It was simply impossible. I made my beliefs a personal thing and stopped talking to anyone but close friends about philosophy, theology or my religious beliefs. Of course, this was hard at a school where you're basically supposed to talk about these things constantly, so I started to simply say what I needed to say to get through my classes and chapel. I began repeating to myself that no one cares what I have to say when someone's theology pissed me off or made me want to say something, and the only place I regularly went to debate topics was the Philosophy board, which I was still a part of for a time. I did that until a Professor told everyone I didn't care about the Truth, then I left. The board was hacked and taken down a while after that, and a new board was put up on the school's website for Philosophy discussion. I joined that and made a few topics. Half of my posts were deleted and I was basically told to stop talking, so I left that as well.

As the reader, you may now have one of two opinions that I can think of. You may be asking yourself why I even put up with Christianity anymore at this point and why I didn't just leave the school and say to hell with it. Good question. You may also think I should've just fallen in line with people that have more experience than me, people that were older, the majority, and wonder why I didn't just conform and learn from people. Also a good question. In either case, I think the core question is "why did you put yourself through so much of this unreasonable insanity?" I asked myself this question frequently. Here is my answer.

When I first started having some difficulty with the religion I'd been brought up with, I considered leaving it. I thought it was a fable that a lot of people believe because of culture. However, something was really bothering me about that assertion. I'm not sure if it was because of the way I was brought up or some other feeling, but I did know a few things. My family and some really really close friends have always contrasted with my terrible experiences I've had with religious institutions. They were not uniform in belief by any means. My father is Reformed, my mother has a lot of the same thoughts I do about religion, my sister is in the process of asking her own brilliant set of questions, and a lot of the people I respect have religious beliefs entirely different from mine. Some are conservative Evangelicals, some are postmodern Emerging Church, some are atheists, some don't care about movements and have their own beliefs. The common thread is that they respect every person around them. Their beliefs and claims do not take away from that respect, they don't take cheap shots at people, they don't take advantage, they're self-aware and generally respectful and well-intentioned people.

I learned from this that my religious convictions needed to align with how I treat people. I believe very deeply that every person is worthy of basic respect. They are a person, and they should not be manipulated, taken advantage of, stepped on in any way, or disregarded. This does not mean you allow yourself to be taken advantage of, it means that you do the correct thing when no one else does.

I also read a book early on in my questioning called Velvet Elvis. I was ready to leave Christianity, and a friend recommended this book by Rob Bell (who a lot of people have called a heretic for reasons that have nothing to do with reality). This book basically took things like a triune God and an inspired set of writings from the ancient near-east and interacted with them with skepticism and facts from history. It also was my introduction to narrative theology, treating something like the Trinity as a story, which I still assert is the only way it makes any sense whatsoever.

From this I learned that theology and religion have no context whatsoever outside of history, narration, and intuition. I also concluded that science and religion are two languages talking about the same thing: the universe. This would stick with me as I have interacted with the differing branches of the church, differing religions than what I grew up with, and especially different philosophies. It was very freeing because I'd been taught growing up that religion is an intellectual decision, and I absolutely refuse to ever believe that again. It interacts with logic and philosophy, but that is by no means all of what it is.

Why did I stick it out? For two reasons. First of all, I had a sense that I was in the right place at the right time. Even when my days were mostly terrible, I knew I was doing some good just by creating dissonance where uniformity is demanded. Secondly, once that time was done I wanted to finish what I started, so I put my head down and plowed through it. I graduated and promptly cut the institution out of my life completely, with the exception of the friends I made there. I believe I've visited once since then, and I never plan to again. While I enjoyed seeing some friends, I was very obviously not welcome at the institution, and I will not willingly be back there ever again. Some things belong in the past, regardless of forgiveness. It took me a long time to forgive what was done to me, but being able to do so has allowed me to see how I grew during that time and why I am who I am after going through those experiences.

From all of the chaos of transitioning from high school through my college experience, I have learned that the truth is what all people should give their allegiance to. Regardless of my particular religious beliefs, I want to know what the truth is.

All of this said, about halfway through my time at college, I basically rejected Evangelical Christianity completely.

Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is a movement originating in early fundamentalism that initially crossed denominational Protestant lines and came to stand for a certain set of focuses and practices. The "fundamentals" of Christianity are the inspiration/inerrancy of scripture, the Virgin Birth of Christ, the belief in the Atonement for Sin by Christ's death, the bodily Resurrection of Christ, and the historical reality of Christ's miracles. They also emphasize the need for personal conversion (being "born again"), biblical authority, the death and resurrection of Christ, and the active sharing of the gospel, which can be summed up in all of the previous emphases and an intellectual decision to accept guilt for sin and Christ as the sacrifice for salvation.

Over time, Evangelicalism has become a cultural, political, and religious institution that wields a unique kind of power. I rejected Evangelicalism due to its' wielding of power for its' own ends and mainly due to rejecting its' particular theological emphases as reductionistic and imbalanced. What this means is that I came to see Evangelicalism as another movement of people looking to have control over others, using fear-based proselytization and theology with disturbing implications about God. The Evangelical God is much the same as the movement: conditional love, manipulative and capricious, and more concerned with a person's legal standing than the person itself.

The overriding reason I began to disassociate from Evangelicalism, however, is because of its' activism. I do not believe it is my place to convert any person to my faith (mainly because I'm still figuring it out). The Emerging Church redefined evangelism as conversation, and I found that I resonated with that a lot more at the time, mainly because I learn just as much from speaking with people that don't share my beliefs as they learn from me, especially when the conversation can be respectful.

So in a nutshell, Evangelicalism is a separationist movement that created its' own culture and set of values, being generally concerned with who is "in" and who is "out." Through my experience with this subculture, I began to see less and less of any real distinction between the "in" and the "out," and in many cases, I shared more values with those that the Evangelical would be attempting to evangelize with fear based tactics. Separationists are those who believe that they should stand apart from liberal Christians, who do not take theology or the Bible as literally. So obviously, I became one of the "out" in college.

Being an outsider does give one a unique perspective however. I held onto my faith through my own choice, though it was never the same after college. That, however, is a story for another day. Please note that I have a lot of friends that are Evangelicals, and even though I criticize the movement itself, I do not believe it is my place to pass judgment on the intentions of others.

Indeed, I can write about this with a critical mind only because I forgive the institutions and persons involved for the pain I went through. It is the past, but the past is something good to learn from. I'll continue my story with the rest of my college experience next week. Please leave me a comment if you have any questions or comments.

A Prologue: The Groundwork of a Story

It is my intention to share with you, my readers, a bit of my life over the next few weeks. I have a few reasons for doing this.

I believe that Philosophy and who a person is are inescapably linked. We create from our experiences, and I think it's a good idea to be transparent to be a good writer. I have always intended to provoke thought on this blog, to have it be a place for me to be a Philosopher above all else.

A lot of people I've talked to tend to fall on two different sides of things. They are either atheistic or they are very religious. In the process of doing something as simple as check the weather for my area tonight for details on tornado warnings, I saw a debate about religion being started. On weather.com. This is relevant to all.

Religious experience is a key part of who I am, but so is unyielding allegiance to the truth, whether that be scientific, philosophical, religious or any other method. I've never fallen into any camp very easily, and I like that about myself. I'd like to think that people are a lot more than just these belief systems too.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, this is to help me figure out what's going on with my beliefs. To that end, I appreciate input and discussions conducted in a respectful manner. Please, feel free to respond to what you read here. I am at a crossroads in my beliefs at the moment, and this is one of the methods I choose to explore that crossroads and figure out what's going on.

To that end, here is my understanding of a few terms just so we're all on the same page.

Religion. There are a few kinds of religion, in my understanding. The modern common understanding of what religion is is an institution designed to communicate dogma and doctrine about cosmological, theological, and metaphysical truth. The religious institution I have most interacted has been the Protestant Christian Institution, stemming from the Roman Catholic Church and the early Christian movement being formed in the first several centuries by the early Church councils. I'll have more to say on this as I continue.

This definition is not what I mean when I say I am religious. Through my experiences and personal development I have come to reject and dissociate myself from the Protestant Church as an institution. This is not to say that I do not have a similar or the same faith as some within this movement/institution, but I do not fall within the bounds of this particular institution.

When I talk about being religious, what I mean is that my experiences have lead me to believe that there is something more than what my base senses tell me about the physical world. I am this way because of and in reaction to how I was raised, and through various explorations, still seek to understand what I feel about the universe. I believe I am not alone in feeling this way, and that the Protestant sensibility of "just reading the Bible" is inadequate to understanding this, as the thousands of contradictory denominations of protestantism show.

I also believe that religion, in some fashion, is relevant to any person, even if they are not religious in any way. This is due to it being so ingrained within culture and due to religion being about things that anyone can have a conversation about, whether they are all true or not.

Philosophy. Put simply, Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Philosophy is a currently dead discipline for seeking an often intellectual understanding of the nature of reality. I say it is dead because it has come to the end of itself in Nihilism, the system brought forth by the revolutionary Nietzsche as the logical progression of Modern thought. Philosophy is also dead in current Western culture, as it is viewed as merely an "academic" exercise with little practical uses.

Every person has a philosophy, even if it's something as simple as "have fun and live for the moment," or "Love, and do what you will." In this sense, philosophy is an approach to life, what some have called a worldview. When we think of it this way, philosophy's groundwork is a combination of morality and epistemology. Morality is the philosophy of what is good and bad, involving intention, action, and belief. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and its' origins.

Philosophy is part of how I am as well, for several reasons which should become apparent through these writings.

Science. I hesitate to offer definitions on areas that I am not extremely well versed in, but this is also relevant to what I have to say. Science is a method for understanding more about the universe by hypothesizing, testing and theorizing. Scientific theory is the groundwork for our empirical understanding of the universe. Some popular theories are the theory of gravity, atomic theory, string theory, thermodynamics, evolution, relativity, and cell theory. Science is rationalistic by nature, seeking an understandable explanation for observable phenomena.

This is relevant to what I am writing about because I do not believe that science is in opposition to religion at all. Obviously, there is history of these two "forces" being in conflict. The most easily illustrated example of this is Galileo's Copernican astronomical theory coming into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church's Aristotelian assertions. Obviously, Galileo turned out to be correct about this, despite being censored by the church.

The problem with Rome's approach to this matter is threefold, in my opinion. Firstly, they were treading on ground they did not need to tread on. One can be a scientist and be religious, but both should be sought with objectivity to the best of one's ability, subject to correction by what is real. Secondly, Rome sought to impose their will upon a person speaking truth to the best of their ability. They did this not with contradicting evidence, but with imperative dogma. Science is a different realm than religion in this sense, though in the West that fact is unclear at best. Lastly, Rome lacked belief in the progress of understanding of the universe. This is problematic because the Church by its' nature is supposed to be concerned with truth.

It is important to note that I am not attempting to attack the Roman Catholic Church here, but facts are facts. I do not believe science, religion, and philosophy create anything more than a delightfully dissonant tension when brought together because they are all concerned with one thing. Ideally, all of these forces and the people involved with them seek truth.

Mysticism. This last definition is probably the most relevant to where I am currently. Mysticism is awareness and experience of states of consciousness beyond normal human perception. More than the religious are fascinated by this, which is why people enjoy horror stories and movies, and certain paranormal fiction. Some argue that a "spiritual" sense of things comes from our instincts that we are still aware of, and some argue that it is evidence of another reality. Obviously, no one's going to win this argument, since we are discussing something without scientific proof at this point.

Mysticism, I believe, is a way of embracing mystery. One need not have special esoteric knowledge or be initiated into certain rites in order to be a mystic. In fact, if we are to posit that mystical experience is experiencing another level of reality, then this necessarily means that peoples' experiences are not disconnected, but merely aspects of a singular thing.

Mysticism is also one of the scariest things to write about, and I do so humbly, recognizing that a lot of people will probably think I've lost it. Perhaps they are correct. More on this later. For now, this all leads to one conclusion.

I believe in God. The reasoning for this can be seen above. I think that religion, philosophy, science, and mysticism all add up to there being something more, a personality behind and within the universe. Please understand that I have never made an argument for the existence of God, as I think any such argument is merely a logical progression from an initial presupposition. This is merely my reasoning and intuition at work.

Faith. Faith is a process by which one's experience points in a direction, and you move there with all of the tools at your disposal. Faith is not evidence in the scientific understanding of the word, it is much closer to hope. This is the process I have gone through, and am still going through in life with regards to many many things.

I have been told to "just have faith" when asking questions about religion, as if my questions betrayed my lack thereof. This is a serious misunderstanding of faith, similar to the understanding that says atheists have more faith than the religious. What is being spoken about here is a presupposition. When we frame statements like "just have faith" or "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" in this light, we come upon a discovery that these are in actuality just condescending statements.

"Just have [my] presuppositions."

"I don't have enough [of their] presuppositions to be an atheist."

I would like to take this opportunity to distance myself as far as possible from this, as any person has a right to their own presuppositions and thoughts about reality. I will say no more about this, lest I begin to truly rant.

At this point, I've made several assertions and defined several things, as well as given several opinions and probably showed some of my irritation and bitterness, and hopefully some of my drive to move forward. I now wish to look back at some of the ways I've been influenced by institutions, people, and movements. Feedback is welcome. I'll have another update for you next week, if not sooner.