Truth | Way of the Mind

Archive for the 'truth' Category

Religion, Doubt, and Freedom

Published

on March 31, 2007

. 30 Comments

A reader called Matt commented the following in another post:

I don’t hate God, but I’ve suffered an insane amount pretty much my whole life and I’ve had lots of hateful thoughts about God combined with bad feelings which I can’t necesarily help.

I’ve been a christian whole life and feel like I’m worst off than most. I felt religion and spirituality had alot to do with my pain (combined with my anxious shitty mental disposition) so have often felt let down and bitter, feeling like religion f’ked me up, but God did nothing to help, feeling like would have been better if never thought about spiritual, religious things relating to God.

Obviously life isn’t fair, one might say as great as God is, he isn’t perfect? I mean who decided to make this earth-even God got mad with it and wiped it out with a flood (in the Bible).

I also feel frustrated with the thought of people going to hell, I mean God (and parents having sex) makes us (much of who we are is not what we choose), how can God condemn his own creation at it’s expense; mind, body, spirit and environment we’re raised in? And what about a bit more responsibility for looking after your creation, I mean what do they call a father who doesn’t look after his kids; dead beat dad? or someone who doesn’t look after their pets? Oh but God gave us free will(did I ask for it?), well my free will is to not have free will if that helps me have a life.

It’s says in bible that God so loved the world that he gave his only son, I’m not disagreeing, but I also think he had a obligation to save us from sin or ultimately hell (God can’t stand sin being so holy). Ok he can’t stand sin so the unsaved soul doesn’t get to go to heaven with him, but wouldn’t it be more loving to not make hell such a horrid place, unless your like an evil tormenting demon. I honestly don’t think Ive ever done anything to deserve eternal burning flames of hell, and if I was a horrible person (honestly how much control does a person have over the type of person they become? -being a product of genes and environment - a born psychotic or abused as a child?).

Maybe their should be like an in between house, where don’t live in heaven or hell, or maybe could just obliterate the unsaved soul so that cease to exist I know what I’d prefer if not going to heaven.

I’m not saying God isn’t good, but right now i feel somewhere along the line that God did the deed and we’re paying for it. But if you really want to hate someone hate Satan, according to the bible his messing things up was very deliberate and selfish unlike the loving God.

Matt: the fact that you have doubts and are courageous enough to admit so and write about them is a step in the right direction. Christianity, like most religions, certainly works a lot by creating guilt (“God loves you! How can you doubt him / not love him back, you monster!?”) and fear of eternal damnation. But, if you have admitted that many parts of Christian theology don’t make a lot of sense, that they even paint God as a somewhat cruel being, why not go all the way, and check every premise that you’ve been taught, or that you’ve always believed in without question, up to and including the very existence of a god?

I’m not trying to “convert you to atheism”, or anything like that (atheism isn’t a religion, anyway). But think about it: if something doesn’t survive honest questioning and investigation, what does it say about that something? If you can only keep your faith by not ever thinking critically about it, what does it mean? I’ve been there, too, years ago: religion, to me, was something I was afraid to think about, to point a flashlight at, because I’d always known — maybe by instinct — that it would all begin to unravel if I did so. So I spent decades of my life afraid to think about religion, just “believing”. Until, one day, enough was enough. As I said, if my beliefs only survived because I was too afraid to think about them, what did it mean? That they were probably wrong, of course.

Even if it turns out there is a god, if he would actually punish you with eternal torment because of honest doubt, because you dared to question and use your mind, then he would be an evil, sadistic monster. If, on the other hand, there turns out to be a loving, benevolent deity after all, he will surely prefer honest doubt and sincere truth-seeking to blind faith and robotic worship, to turning off your mind.

Above all, don’t be afraid. You may be told that “you soul is at stake”, and that doubt leads to hell. But don’t be afraid to question, to express your doubts, and to not be satisfied until you find an answer, even though you may be told that you already have an “answer” and that you shouldn’t ever think about it any more. There’s something else at stake, something I believe is infinitely more real and important than any dubious, unseen, undefined “eternal soul”: your happiness. Your intellectual honesty. Your sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Your respect for truth and reality. Your freedom from fear and guilt. Your life.

All of those are real. They exist, and affect your life, without question — unlike most of the claims of religion, which are far from self-evident at best. And anyone who tells you that the above are meaningless, that your happiness isn’t important, that life is just a test, that you should “hate the world” and your life, and that the only thing that matters is whether you are “saved” from hell, that an unseen “god” owns you and you owe everything to him… anyone who tells you that, is not your friend. “Hell” does exist: it’s living life in pain, guilt and fear. It’s hating yourself for the “sin” of using your mind. It’s believing that you deserve damnation.

I’ve never written about this particular topic before, so I’m probably not the best assistance you (or anyyone else) can get, but if you (or anyone else) have any questions about this, please comment, and I’ll try to answer them as well as I can. Threats of eternal damnation / emotional blackmail, to me or to Matt, will be deleted, though.

The Historical Jesus

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on October 13, 2006

in christianity, history, religion and truth

. 31 Comments

If you’re a Christian, you almost certainly believe that Jesus existed as a human, was the son of God, performed miracles, died, resurrected, and ascended to heaven.

Buddy Christ

Even among atheists and agnostics, however, it’s common to believe that Jesus did exist, though he was one hundred percent human and mortal; that he was a religious leader at the time, who inspired a new faith, an offshoot from Judaism.

But did he really exist? If so, what was he like?

Of course, we can’t know with absolute certainty without a time machine. But we can, I believe, look at several theories and interpretations, and figure out which one is the most likely, according to whatever facts we have.

I’ll start by refusing the “he really was the son of God” one. There’s absolutely no proof of that, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan said. I won’t repeat all my reasons here; readers of WotM should know them by now.

Until recently, however, I believed that Jesus did exist; a fictional being wouldn’t be such a big influence in the world for thousands of years, would he? (ahem…) But how was he like? A meek, religious figure like the Gospels suggest?

Two books, Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Messianic Legacy, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (and before you say “they’re crackpots”, yes, their Merovingians / Templars / Saunière / Priory of Sion theory was completely wrong, but their research on Jesus through the Gospels does make a lot of sense - and, after all, the Gospels are available to anyone; it’s not as if they’re claiming to have some secret source of information) suggest something different: that Jesus - the “Christ”, or “Messiah”, or “Anointed One” - was more of a political leader, the rightful king of the Jews (in a temporal sense), and was crucified by the Romans, not the Jews, as a real threat to their authority. According to this theory, the Gospels, having been written decades after Jesus’ death, were written for a Roman audience, and therefore turned Jesus into a meek, “turn the other cheek”, “render unto Ceasar” religious figure, removing any political / revolucionary content from his story.

Also according to them, Jesus was always a devout Jew and never intended to create a new religion; it was Paul who did so, always stressing Jesus’ divinity without ever mentioning Jesus’ actions or teachings. Reading Paul’s letters, this is obvious - Paul writes about Jesus as God, not as someone who really lived on Earth, taught men, and died years ago. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln’s conclusion, then, is that Paul “stole” Christianity, using Jesus’ name to create his (Paul’s) own religion.

Which certainly makes a lot of sense.

However, more recently I read about a different theory, in Ebon Musings: that Jesus never existed as a man… and that the early Christians actually believed that.

According to Ebon, to early Christians Jesus died and resurrected in heaven, not on Earth. Some of them even said as much, in writing. Besides, there are no historical mentions of Jesus at the time, or even a hundred years later - and there would have been, if he really had hundreds or thousands of followers, as the Gospels say. This also explains why Paul never wrote about anything Jesus said or did: Paul’s letters were all written before the Gospels, and he wasn’t writing about a man who lived and died on Earth, but who supposedly did so in a spiritual realm.

But what about the Gospels themselves? Well, not only were they written many decades after Jesus was supposed to have lived, but they were written as a story - there are many parts where some events are described even though no disciple of Jesus could have been there, such as:

[...] in Matthew 28:11-15, we see a gospel recording, with no difficulty, things that none of Jesus’ followers should have been there to witness. In this case it is a conspiracy between the temple priests and the guards set at Jesus’ tomb, after the resurrection, when the priests bribed the guards to say the disciples had stolen his body. Was Matthew present to hear this? Again, how is it possible that any gospel records things that none of the gospel writers could have seen?

The list goes on and on. Matthew 27:19 writes about a private message Pilate’s wife sent to him. Matthew 27:3-8 describes how Judas returned his blood money to the priests and then hanged himself out of guilt. (Did he make a quick detour in between to confess to the other disciples?) Luke 7:39 tells us what a Pharisee was thinking.

Besides, it’s accepted that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, and the others used it as a source, adding to it, or reinterpreting some parts. The idea here, then, is that Mark was written as a fictional story, and the others were revisions of it. Certainly, none of the authors was present there at the time.

This view is also corroborated by the documentary The God Who Wasn’t There. You can see a part of it here, and I highly recommend it. Among other things, that film shows how every single part of the Jesus story (virgin birth, healing the sick, raising the dead, sacrifice for our sins, resurrecting after 3 days, and many more) existed before, in pagan myths - sometimes, centuries earlier.

So, did YOU believe the Bush administration?

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on October 10, 2006

in honesty, politics and truth

. 42 Comments

When the Iraq war began, I, naturally, talked to friends and co-workers about it. As they were of different ages and backgrounds, opinions varied; most saw it as an oil grab and opposed it, while others, while not believing anything about “WMDs” or connections to 9/11, actually thought that Saddam was a problem, and should be taken care of.

I didn’t find one single person - even among those who usually disagree with me in everything - who believed in the Bush administration’s lies about WMDs, terrorist camps, connections to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, or simply that Saddam was a threat to anyone outside Iraq.

No one.

I talked to young people and old people. To men and women. To more educated and less educated people. To Christians and atheists / agnostics. To right-wingers and left-wingers. To people who opposed the war and people who supported it.

And no one believed Bush’s lies.

Bush’s “reasons”, at the time, were so obviously fabrications that I don’t think almost anyone in Europe - except maybe in the UK - believed in them. Even those who actually thought that invading Iraq and removing Saddam from power was a good idea.

Now, the fact that we all lived in Portugal may have had something to do with it. We tend to distrust our politicians; even when they actually improve things, we always realize that they’re doing it to be re-elected, not out of the “goodness of their hearts”. Not because they’re honest or have any principles. Hell, they’re politicians, after all!

Americans, from what I see, are a different bunch. They idealize and idolize their politicians, almost worshipping them. They believe they’re honest, ethical, and are sincerely trying to do a good job, even when they mess things up.

Yet, from everything I see, they aren’t. Bush has said so much crap, has lied so much, and has insulted the intelligence of the public so thoroughly, that I can’t see how anyone could ever believe in him. Yet, Americans did. They believed his lies.

So, a question to the American readers - and please, don’t feel insulted or take this the wrong way -: did you believe Bush’s lies back in 2003? That Saddam had WMDs, that he had anything to do with 9/11, that he was a threat to the US, that invading Iraq would make the world “safer”?

And, if so, why?

I’m not calling you guys “gullible” or anything. I simply want to understand what is, to me, a strange phenomenon.

Honesty and the Iraq war: calling things what they are

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on August 9, 2006

in courage, definitions, honesty and truth

. 1 Comment

Two posts ago, I wrote:

Let’s hope this is but the beginning of a wave of people finding out where their balls are.

And I’d really like to see it happening, though I’m not too optimistic.

For instance, take U.S. Democrats. While they criticize the Bush administration, they always say things like “mismanagement of the war”, “faulty intelligence on WMDs”, “negligence”, and so on.

Where is the politician (Democrat or Republican) with the courage to say that Bush lied? That the war was, and is, all based on deceit? Is it political suicide to say the truth, these days? Is it barely acceptable to say that the war wasn’t handled very well, but not to say that it was wrong from the start? That there never were any WMDs there, or a connection to 9/11, or any kind of threat to the U.S.?

How many politicians supported the war because they didn’t want to be seen as “weak”? Were they all deceived by the administration’s lies? I doubt it. They simply went along with the lies, because they’d lose influence if they spoke up - they’d be seen as “weak on terrorism”, as (perish the thought) “liberals”.

The Iraq war isn’t being “mismanaged”, it’s going exactly like the Bush administration wants: never-ending. Why, if the war ever came to an end, people might want their lost civil liberties back… or believe that it was OK to criticize the president again without being “unpatriotic”… or notice the state of the economy… and we don’t want that, do we?

Letting the "bad guys" name things

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on March 1, 2006

in definitions and truth

. 3 Comments

On Slashdot, I saw a discussion which, while mostly about other things, at one point mentioned this, and it got me thinking (which, as everyone knows, always means trouble).

The thing is: a lot of things that sane, rational people oppose have names which are absolutely wrong, and which were… skillfully named by its proponents, because, to many people, opposing them means opposing what the names suggest… and what the names suggest always seems “good”.

A few examples:

Continue reading ‘Letting the "bad guys" name things’

People and their stated goals

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on October 19, 2005

in politics, reason and truth

. 6 Comments

I wanted to talk about Jack Thompson’s latest disgusting scheme (he said he would donate $10.000 to charity if someone made an absolutely revolting game about going on a murder spree against real members of the video game industry, then someone did it, and he said his offer was just “satire”, then the Penny Arcade guys donated the $10K to charity - in his name - and now he wrote a letter to the police asking them to arrest the PA guys…), but everything that could be said about that has already been said elsewhere.

So, instead, I’m writing about one of the possible ways that that creep could be successful:

Equating someone’s stated goals with the person himself.

Consider that example: Jack Thompson says he wants to prevent school shootings and cop killings… by banning violent video games.

Now, preventing school shootings and cop killings is a laudable goal, certainly. But:

Thompson doesn’t really want to do that, he only craves attention, fame and money
there’s no relation between video games and violence, several studies have already indicated so
none of his attempts, if successful, would actually lower real life violence
his methods have been despicable - lies, personal insults, threats of lawsuits against people for simply disagreeing with him.

However, to a certain… let’s say, “more intellectually-challenged” segment of the population, it’s easy to make the jump from:

- Jack Thompson is trying to prevent cop killings

(which is already untrue, but let’s even imagine that it was true, that he was simply misguided instead of being what he is)

to:

- Anyone who opposes Jack Thompson’s methods, or criticizes him, is in favor of cop killings.

To anyone who uses reason, that’s absurd - there’s no way to logically conclude the second from the first (even if the first was true, which it isn’t). But it’s easy to get confused, and perform that leap of “logic” - “he says he’s in favor of X, so anyone who criticizes him is against X”. Or the other way around.

It happens the same way, but on a larger scale, with a certain current American president. He says he’s fighting terrorism. Whether he actually is, or not, isn’t important - anyone who disagrees with him or his methods, or criticizes him in any way, is “supporting terrorism”.

Just like anyone who opposed Senator McCarthy was “a communist”. He said so, and people believed him.

People, please think a little more about things like this. A person isn’t defined by his stated goals, which are usually laudable, but by his actions - and you aren’t against those goals when you notice that his actions don’t actually do anything to accomplish such goals… and say so.

How I’ve become an atheist

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on August 26, 2005

in atheism, honesty, reality, reason, religion and truth

. 27 Comments

Douglas Adams (more info) has been one of my favorite writers for years, but, until I read “The Salmon of Doubt”, a collection of essays and articles collected after his death, I only had had contact with his fiction work. But a particular entry in “Salmon” changed my life.

That entry is here, it was an interview Adams did for the American Atheist magazine.

I had a Christian education (Catholic, in fact), and, until I was about 26 or so, I really believed in it. Why? I tended to be rational in most of my life, but there was a part of it about which I apparently refused to think. It’s as if it was something so fragile, that I didn’t let anything near it - like reason or logic - , because I was afraid it would collapse, that I would “lose” it. If faith couldn’t withstand logic, then I wouldn’t let logic come anywhere near it. Why did I want to keep it? In part, I guess, because I loved the person (now deceased) who was responsible for my belief, and I wanted to respect her memory. And maybe I also felt alone - the existence of an all-powerful, all-loving God was something that would keep me company. And there was, too, the promise of “eternal justice” - that the injustices we suffered on Earth were only temporary, that eventually there would be justice, and the good would be rewarded, and the evil would be punished. I wanted it to be true, so much… therefore, I believed it.

Until I read that interview. It certainly got me thinking. And, in a way, Adams had gone through similar experiences, so I could relate. He put into words what I had only felt - that faith and religion, in me, only “survived” because I had a defense mechanism - I refused to think about it, like I thought about anything in the “real world”. But if faith and religion can’t survive a “closer look”… why is that, and, most importantly, what does that tell us about them?

That they are a lie.

Afterwards, I thought a lot about it - what I should have done during all the years before. Is there a God? I don’t think so; reality and the universe can be perfectly explained without one (Occam’s razor), and a God creating the universe in 6 days is no more believable than an Invisible Pink Unicorn or a Flying Spaghetti Monster. But assuming that there is a God… then where is he? Why is there so much suffering? Why do people pray, if it doesn’t work (any scientific test shows it, and there have been some)? Why would a god create a world, then hide all traces of doing it, then stay completely invisible except for some ridiculously minor appearances to a person or two, every couple of centuries? Why would God hide, then damn to eternal suffering everyone who didn’t believe in him?

And the existance of a god is certainly something extraordinary. That, to a scientist, requires extraordinary proof. Where is it? And no, ancient books are not proof. Many people believing in him are not proof either.

I realized that I had been guilty, through most of my life, of two of the worst forms of irrationality: wishful thinking, and refusing to think about something. I had been dishonest with myself. I had put something “above” reality, about the truth. And that is wrong.

But it’s better to open one’s eyes later than never to do it at all.

One of the greatest phrases… and also one of the rarest

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on August 24, 2005

in honesty, reality, thinking and truth

. 2 Comments

There is a phrase that many people spend their entire lives without saying, hearing, or both. And it’s a pity, because it’s something that says a lot of good about whoever says it.

It says that he or she (”he” from now on, because I’m lazy, but the gender doesn’t really matter here) is honest, most importantly with himself. That he is not “old and tired”, but still has a young, inquisiting mind, like that of a child. That he is capable of learning - and willing. That he doesn’t confuse beliefs with principles, to be defended even if reality shows them to be wrong.

It shows that he isn’t arrogant, that he doesn’t believe he knows “enough” and doesn’t need to learn anything more. It shows courage - the courage to review one’s opinions, beliefs, way of thinking, even though not doing it would be a lot easier. It shows a healthy respect for reality, instead of replacing it with beliefs - as if believing something would make it true.

Most of all, it shows that his eyes are open.

The phrase? “I’ve been wrong all these years…”