July 22, 2007
Stop victimizing your sister with reason
(via GoComics)
« Previous entries · Next entries »
Conversations with God
After discussing Misquoting Jesus recently, I thought it was about time I talked about another book that’s had a profound impact on my views - “Conversations with God”. A 3-part (now, with many more1 ) work in which the author,
“I was unhappy … and my life was feeling like a failure on all levels … This time, rather than another letter to another person I imagined to be vicimizing me, I thought I’d go straight to the source; … I decided to write a letter to God.”2
… and, God replies. The book follows with a written dialogue between Walsch and God, talking about prayer, love, divine inspiration and the nature of the bible, and all sorts of potentially controversial topics.
Now, if you haven’t already read these books, you’re probably thinking exactly what I thought when a friend first told me about them - “what kind of nut-job publishes a book claiming he actually had a conversation with God? He’s either nuts, or full of c#@p”. A perfectly valid position to take, but as you read further, you start to understand that it doesn’t matter if Walsch is actually having a conversation with God, if he’s a con artist, or even if he’s nuts - what matters is the book contains some very valid insights.
If God truly did inspire the bible, then why those people? Many of them “never met or saw Jesus in their lives, they lived many years after Jesus left the Earth”3. Some might suggest that the bible as we know it cannot be the word of God unless each of these writers, scribes, translators, etc. were all divinely inspired, which further complicates the issue. Walsch (or, God) suggests the answer to this problem is that the bible is not the only divinely inspired text - “everything in life is holy”4, and God’s inspiration is available to anyone who “listens”:
“Listen to your feelings. Listen to your Highest Thoughts. Listen to your experience. Whenever any of these differ from what you’ve been told by your teachers, or read in your books, forget the words. Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.”5
The God portrayed in “Conversations with God” is exactly the kind of higher power I could imagine being behind all the world’s religions. There’s no way any one religion has got it perfectly right, because each rely on the words that have been passed down through generations, which have been translated, changed and misinterpreted. Each “divinely inspired” text may have come from people who were more in touch with this “God”, and therefore came closer to God’s true message, but each writer had their own human flaws as well, and thus no text is perfect. In the later books, he hints at the idea that by being “in touch” with God, one is really in touch with oneself - God is not only “in” each of us, but we are (collectively) God.
The book certainly solves some of the issues with traditional religion, but possibly so much so that it’s incompatible with traditional religions (which is probably a good thing!). I mentioned in my previous post “Soft Atheist, Hard Agnostic”, that I am a “soft” agnostic when it comes to “spiritual” gods or other non-interfering higher powers. Despite the personal connection Walsch claims to have with this god, to me his ideas seem very close to these types of “gods”
The books are certainly a departure from the seemingly popular non-fiction books on religion and atheism today, but if you haven’t read anything like this before, it’s not a bad place to start.
- While I happily bought the first three books, and I honestly believe they were written with good intentions, I can’t help but feel the multitudes of subsequent books are just an attempt to “cash in” on a franchise, and hence, I haven’t bought or read any of them. [↩]
- Walsch, Neale Donald (1999), Conversations with God: an uncommon dialogue - Book 1, p.1 [↩]
- Walsch, Neale Donald (1999), p.67 [↩]
- Walsch, Neale Donald (1999), p.68 [↩]
- Walsch, Neale Donald (1999), p.8 [↩]
20 gram Links for July 21st ‘07
Here are some of the sites I’ve been looking at recently, that I wanted to share:
- Prince Of Peace - God Of War Gets First Review And A Release Date - A film by John Campea (of The Movie Blog) about Christianity and the war in Iraq. The first five minutes are available in the post.
- Ten reasons why beer is better than Jesus - and #11. Beer tastes better…
- The Ultimate Spoiler… - Don’t click this link if you don’t like finding out how the book ends (but… come on, you know you want to click it)
- The Primate Diaries: Today’s Math Lesson - The differences between fundamentalists and moderate believers and atheists.
- Actus Formalis Defectionis Ab Ecclesia Catholica instrument of debaptism - The “Actus Formalis Defectionis Ab Ecclesia Catholica” (that document you can use to ask to be “debaptised” from the Catholic Church - NOW IN ENGLISH!
- BibleMap.org - Want to know where all those places the bible talks about actually ARE? Look no further…
July 19, 2007
Freedom From Religion Party
Given that most of the Atheist blogs I read are from the USA, I realise that discrimination against Atheists and the religious influences on politics are much greater there than in Australia. That said, we’re not entirely free from these problems.
I’ve been catching up on some podcasts recently, and caught an interview of Frank Gomez, the leader of the newly formed Freedom from Religion Party on John Safran’s weekly radio show “Sunday Night Safran“. For those of you who aren’t aware of the show (I’m aware there’s only a few Aussies who actually read this blog), on his show, Safran interviews many people alongside Father Bob Maguire. I’ve found a clip of the relevant part of the show (the full show is available here) - it’s a 16 minute interview, but it’s quite interesting.
Either way, looks like I might be voting for a new party come the next election…
(the 5mb MP3 is available for download here, in case the embedded player doesn’t work)
Slightly Used Soul For Sale
A writer friend of mine writes humorous short stories every couple of days on a blog called The Double Agent. His most recent post was not only humorous, but highly appropriate for this blog. (also reminded me of someone else you might know):
One human soul - sure, it may slightly used, and more than a little tarnished around the edges and the conscience, but the damage is nothing that can’t be made clean with some minor acts of penitence, a couple hundred Hail Marys and some good old fashioned elbow grease. Single White Male, Good Sense Of Humour, reserve price US$1,000,000,000.00 with considerations met.
Ok, so his asking price is a little steep, but it’s worth a read if you like a good laugh. You might also consider subscribing to his RSS feed (oh, and mine, if you haven’t already!)- he writes well, I promise!
July 16, 2007
Misquoting Jesus
I just came across a review of a book I’ve been reading off and on for the last month or so - Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why - on a couple of different sites. The review itself (at Powell’s Books) gives a nice summary of Bart Ehrman’s arguments regarding the impossible task of obtaining and understanding the “original texts” of the bible.
Many people have a vague notion that all the original biblical texts are preserved in vaults somewhere, and translators work from those original texts. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. The earliest surviving versions of the gospels are handwritten copies dating from centuries after the original texts were written. Also, we don’t just have a single version of each gospel; we have many versions, and even more fragments. The trouble is, none of the versions agree with each other.1
If you haven’t read the book, I’d highly recommend it. Dawkins even mentions it in his recent “God Delusion” (so, it’s gotta be good, right?). Ehrman details many specific examples of differences between versions of the biblical texts, and also examines how the specific books were chosen and compiled.
Also, if there’s any Christians reading this - please, tell me - how DO you reconcile the problems Ehrman mentions? Were all of the copies of the bible divinely inspired? Was there one particular version that was divinely inspired? Please… I’m dying to know!
- Brown, Doug (2007) Review of Misquoting Jesus, Powell’s Books [↩]
Posts
