Don’t Blame God (Part VI) (The End)

Tags

agnosticsm, bible, fundamentalism, God, Journey, Non-Believers, religion, theology

I have been periodically answering some claims made by a person who says he “lost” his faith. I think in the end it becomes rather more clear that said person never had a real faith. Certainly when he came up against logical issues with faith as he understood it, he was not motivated to look for a way to reconcile those issues with the faith he was presented. Pity he did not. He might have found some answers.

In any case, this person now declares himself an atheist. And sad to say, his blog is not the thoughtful questioning  I had hoped it would be, but is the more common one which consists of  making fun of a faith tradition and making claims that are unsupported by real facts. In so doing, the speaker, doesn’t realize that the person who is made to look silly is himself, mostly for a childish, pedantic, and ill-informed list of claims about what Christianity lacks in his opinion.

I have often said that I find seasoned atheists rather intellectually challenging. They seldom engage in snickering jokes about believers and call them names. They don’t refer to God as an “imaginary friend,” and liken Him to the Easter bunny. They are wise enough to actually know a few things. But in reality, most intellectual atheists are way to smart to really be atheists at all, which is why they differ so magnificently from the wannabe atheists.

Definitionally speaking, an atheist denies the existence of God. That doesn’t get us very far does it? I can deny the existence of a material reality and claim that we are all living an illusion. As long as no one asks me to prove my claim, I’m proudly the holder of it. And the atheist too, can deny that God exists, and when he proves that God does not exist, then he can continue with that appellation.

The atheist will protest that he does not have to prove a negative, that it is incumbent on the believer to prove the existence of God. I suppose that is correct as far as debate rules go, but then, we aren’t debating. I have no particular interest to “prove” the existence of God, for I believe that intellectually, that cannot be done. I make one claim only, well, actually two.

First I claim that I believe that God exists, and second, I claim that it is rational for a human being to come to that conclusion. Not that the atheist should or must, but that it can be rational for anyone who does so believe, to believe.

So the atheist, if he wants to prove that he has the right to ridicule me for believing, better darn well prove that God doesn’t exist. Otherwise I have no patience with you, because you are merely expressing your lack of knowledge of what can and what cannot be proven.

The agnostic, on the other hand, doesn’t fall into this trap. The agnostic says, I find there is no believable evidence for God’s existence, and I’m not sure there is any means by which God can be proven ever. So I maintain that I have no idea and no one else does either. That is a position that is sensible and I can relate to. For I agree, God is not provable, except to one who already believes. When you believe, you can find any number of reasons why you believe. They do not meet an objective test however, and that must be admitted.

 Either you have experienced that something, that creates within you a certainty of belief, or you haven’t. And frankly, we don’t feel that certain every day. Plenty of the time, we question, we doubt, we spend hours of time thinking, trying to reconcile things that don’t make sense. There is not a thing wrong with that. That is what drives us in part to continue searching on this marvelous journey.

Contrary to the second illustration above, anyone who discards God because of the standard fundamentalist litany of Christianity, was never much of a believer in the first place. They are the ones who were “raised” in a faith, but never paid much attention to it. When confronted with real facts that some things in the bible were not as reported, they are shocked and then use this as an excuse to walk away. God is a joke. I know this because I found out that the  Bible isn’t reliable as “the word of God.” So goes their thinking.

Now they can start a blog and look up neat websites that list all the inconsistencies in the bible, and they can look up neat quotes of other non-believers, and they can post sentences here and there from ancient believers who make statements of their present realities which we find archaic and not in keeping with scientific knowledge. Haha, aren’t we somethin’? Sticking it to the Christians, those dopes who believe in all this voodoo.

And guess what? They are the ones who are silly. Because they are so limited in their understanding of any religion that they didn’t know they barely scraped the surface of what it is about. Most of us didn’t get stuck in fundamentalism. We realized it for its extreme limitations and we long ago moved on. We have matured, need I say, and our theology of God reflects that maturation.

It is in the end, too boring and tiresome to talk to adults about faith when they are at the child’s level and most of us are at least still moving along the path. We haven’t figured it all out, or even a tiny bit of it rightly probably, but we have realized that it is our responsibility as creature to make the effort to discern God, not God’s responsibility to hand it to us in some singsong simplistic fashion. In that effort, God supports us, I’m convinced, and guides us to what we need to read, what tradition we need to be in, and where. We make mistakes, we come unto roadblocks, we get confused, we find paradoxes and contradictions, and we continue to puzzle and think and read and study and pray, and we work out a knot here and there.

In the end, I believe, as I’ve stated here before, in perhaps not so clear a fashion, that we must each of us create a workable but ever changing theology that clicks for us. The atheist in his lack of  intellectual prowess has given up and makes claims that he cannot support. The agnostic is still open to being persuaded by evidence. I get the agnostic, but I’m not wasting any more time on the dullard who claims he doesn’t care enough to think any more.

I Got the Vapors!

Tags

Arnel Pineda, Journey, Music, Rock bands, Steve Perry, Super bowl

Now that we are down from the hoopla of Super Bowl whatever number it was, I thought I would share a moment in that day that shook me to my undies. As many of you undoubtedly know, the pre-game show starts at some ungodly hour of the day and proceeds onward, filled with an enormous amount of unimportant trivia that clog the brain and contribute to overfilling of said brain box.

To say that I don’t watch it, is to well, understand my animosity toward it. However, if you have ever checked, Sunday morning and afternoon TV sucks pretty much anyway, so as I am wont, I had the appropriate channel on while on the computer.

This is my normal practice, to have the TV on to my right as I hammer away at the keys, sending you all these delightful posts. Mostly I don’t watch, but I pick up a thing here or two. I will even admit that I keep track of the story lines quite successfully for both All My Children and One Life to Live.

None of that is of any importance to my story, but I thought I would throw it in. Anyway, some time about an hour or so before the kick off of the greatest ball game of the year (usually a dud to be sure in reality), I sauntered into the living room to take up my place next the Contrarian who was pretending to “listen” as he sat laid back with eyes closed. (The Contrarian swears he does not sleep on the couch, the snoring sounds are merely a novelty of sound he enjoys fooling me with.)

As I was gazing not too intently at the screen, punctuated with looks at the frenzy at the bird feeder (the cat TV we call it actually), I heard this from a frantic broadcaster: “And now, for your entertainment delight (not really, but I’m trying to be dramatic here), JOURNEY!!!!!

That made me turn my head quick enough to engage whip lash. You see, I am a fan of the band and have been for many a year,  more than I would care to admit actually. As the familiar notes and refrains began to vibrate in my ear anatomy, the camera began to pan to the lead singer, Steve Perry. And OH MY GOD, IT WASN”T STEVE PERRY!!!!

Now some of you may guffaw at this, for I have always thought that Journey might be a second or third rate rock band. Actually, in the minuscule research I did for this piece I discovered that in fact it usually appears on most people’s top ten, and Steve Perry is regarded as one of the better lead singers of a rock band. This is also not necessary to this post, but I thought I would defend myself and them anyway.

So I was yelling, where is STEVE???? The Contrarian piped up, “I think he died.” “What??????? NO, how, where, when, who?” The Contrarian knew no more. Just that ugly bottom line. Now Journey is, well, not worth much without Steve Perry as the photo undoubtedly makes clear:

I mean, heck, I am a warm blooded woman with all my sexual err, ummm stuff  intact. I mean what is the point of being a long distance groupie without the point of the group to salivate over?

I was non-plussed, and if that is not strong enough, and I’m not sure it is, (what is non-plussed anyway), I fairly fainted dead away.

Not actually of course, but in my mind I fainted. That left me only Depp to slobber over.

Said band was now being led by a cute little guy, called Arnel Pineda. Arnel is Philippino it turns out. What is more, he sounds amazingly like Steve Perry. So the music remained the same. But as I said, damn the music, it was the sexy Steve that was missing.

Thank God for computers and the internet is all I can say. When I got around to it, I went off in search of the facts. What had my dear sweet boy died of I wondered.

The answer was quick and simple. He wasn’t dead at all. The Contrarian shrugged, “well, I thought I heard something to that effect, someday, somewhere, sorry.” Yeah, sorry my butt! It seems Mr. Perry had a bad hip, and the band waited some time for his return, but he seemed uninterested so they went elsewhere. Not much of a story.

Mr. Pineda’s story is a bit more interesting. Turns out he is in his 40’s, married, father of a two or so, and had to sing his way into America. The customs official asked why he wanted to enter the US, and Pineda replied he has an audition with Journey. The official was a fan and asked for some singing to prove the claim. Obviously Arnel did well.

Anyway, such is the story. Steve is doing whatever Steve is doing. He has done some solo work, has cut his hair and doesn’t look nearly as cute as the above pic any more. He is either 50 or 60 depending on which fan site you go to. More likely the latter. So, I’d just as soon let him live in my memory as the darling with the long flowing hair anyway.  Age seems to do that to me. I don’t like seeing Paul McCartney much any more either. He looks freakin’ old! Me? I’m still a fresh young thing…….inside!