On Ignosticism

'The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as “My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false,” or Nietzsche’s famous statement “God is dead.”'

Do I believe God exists?

Recently I was talking to a Christadelphian I’d not met before. It wasn’t long before the question came up, “Do you believe God exists?”

Russell's Teapot

Attribution: xkcd

Thoughts on the Sunday School Prize Giving

Today was the occasion of the Sunday School Prize Giving at my family’s meeting. One of my kids particularly wanted to see me there so I agreed that I would arrive after the breaking of bread meeting was over while some people stayed for a picnic lunch prior to the prize giving in the afternoon.

A conversation

Atheism for Lent led me into another Facebook group that is made up from a similar cohort of people; those who have or are deconstructing their previous religious ideas. As part of that I agreed to having a recorded face to face conversation to be shared online. I thought I'd post the resulting chat on my blog here for those who may be interested...

CrashCourse

I've previously posted a YouTube by Hank Green, one of the VLogBrothers, his brother being John. Well, as you can imagine from a couple of talented guys they do other stuff too, so keep a look out for them (and their friends).

One of the things they do is run another YouTube channel called 'CrashCourse'. It's a great resource for learning...well...stuff. Take a look and see if they have anything on a subject that interests you. Here three videos that interest me because they relate to some of life's big questions:

Good Without God?

The BBC World Service runs a programme called 'Heart and Soul' which describes itself as, "a weekly half-hour programme that has the scope and understanding to explore different experiences of spirituality from around the world. Whether examining religious faith or any other belief-system, the programme talks to believers and non-believers, and tries to get beyond superficial notions of spirituality and religion"

Atheism for Lent

I’d never done anything for Lent before this year. Obviously I knew about lent and as a child I looked forward to ‘pancake day’, but being a Christadelphian, and therefore not following the church calendar, it wasn’t really something on my radar to actively take part in. This year was different, this year I decided to join an online course where a group of people spent a short time each day reflecting on a critique of theism, with the aim of throwing out the superfluous.

The most beautiful emotion

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the sower of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger ... is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself to us as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of all true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of devoutly religious men.

- Albert Einstein

What sort of god do you affirm or deny?

Everyone carries around with them an idea in their mind which they call ‘God’/’god’, and which they choose to either affirm or deny the existence of. What is immediately striking is that everyone has their own personal ideas about their deity concept. This is true even limiting ourselves to the Judeo-Christian tradition, which Christadelphians should know since they deny the doctrine of the Trinity which most other Christians affirm, but it runs much much deeper than this with many different historic and contemporary ideas about God that go far beyond what most of us have ever heard of.

The fact that everyone carries around a different idea of God in their mind should make us more open-minded towards others in that just because we superficially disagree with someone about God that doesn’t mean we are talking about the same God concept, and may actually find we have more in common with them than we think.

Talking Faith and Deconversion with Andy Stanley

Andy Stanley is the senior pastor of North Point Community Church a megachurch in Atlanta, GA. In this episode of 'Life after God' Andy talks to the shows host, Ryan Bell, who was an ordained minister with the Seventh Day Adventists before becoming an atheist.

I think this is a model conversation, in terms of attitude, between two people with different views, especially between a Christian and an Atheist who have different worldviews.

The show opens with this quote from Andy,

Pints and Parables

I've been following Pete Rollins more of late. Wacky stuff for some I'm sure, but I find the ideas really interesting. Anyway, one of the things he does is called 'Pints and Parables', and I was listening to some of these in the car to and from work today. I've decided to write one up here, adapted slightly, because I thought it may provide some food for thought...

Jumping to conclusions bias: How our minds actually work

I’ve been reading a book called Thinking: Fast and Slow by Dr Daniel Kahneman who is a Psychologist and won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. His findings challenge the assumption that human rationality prevails in economic judgement.

Worldview Orbit

It could be said that every worldview has an orbit, a stable and continuous path through which adherents travel that is unaffected as long as there is no external influence. The Christadelphian worldview is no exception and those immersed in the Christadelphian echo chamber will live out their lives in the Christadelphian orbit. Outside that echo chamber things get a little more interesting and, as I’ve previously noted, our conscious minds are biased towards maintaining the orbit we are already in. But occasionally people will find themselves in an unstable orbit for one reason or another, and that is when their worldview can change – and it can change in one of two ways: falling back to earth with a bump or spinning off and becoming lost in space.

Towering Mountains of Ignorance

It's a bit of a slow start, but bear with it. The second half is excellent.

Action Science

I work in the upstream oil and gas industry and over the last few years the Society of Petroleum Engineers has generated some great discussion about decision making under uncertainty. This is a very relevant topic for an industry that excels in extracting oil from harsh environments in hard to reach locations and from politically challenging regions. The extraction of oil requires international, multi-company, multi-agency, multi-discipline, mega projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve its goals. All this leads to a high level of uncertainty around project outcomes and a requirement for good decisions to be made with limited knowledge.

Logical Coherence

When a worldview is asserted by someone I think it should be checked by the receiving party for logical coherence before being accepted as a possible truth. The three main logical inconsistencies I hear relating to Christianity/theism are these:

Religious Ideology

I’m reading The Divine Magician at the moment which is a book by Peter Rollins who is a prominent figure in ‘Radical Theology’. It’s really interesting and provides some fascinating alternative perspectives on well-known Bible passages. He rails as much against atheism as he does small ‘o’ orthodox Christianity.

One quote from the book that particularly appealed to me is this:

Faith Transitions

If you've never been through a faith transition then you won't know what it's like, and even then everyone has their own experience (you can read a bit about mine on my website over here).

Some transition experiences are described on podcasts from 'The Liturgists' (specifically 'Lost and Found', 'The Other Side of the Mattress' and 'Parenting and Deconstruction'). I started listening to the first of these in the car on the way to work yesterday. It's a discussion between Science Mike and Michael Gungor, both of whom transitioned out of and then back into Christianity. Apart from anything else this makes them hugely interesting people to me in an intellectual way. Anyway, about three or four minutes in part of a Michael Gungor song is played as an interlude "Please Be My Strength".

I tend to bury my emotions pretty deep, but I found the first half of this song really moving. It took me right back to the time I spent asking God to show himself and help me find Him, something that hasn't happened.

I'll never forget the day that came a while after that when I actually wondered...genuinely in the core of my being...not as a mental exercise but emotionally deep within me...for the first time in my life: Does God exist? I was shaken inside, my body ached, I couldn't concentrate, I was terrified the answer was 'no', it really felt like it could be 'no'.

That was a long time ago now and I've had to come to terms with the reality I'm faced with: The God I thought existed doesn't. Perhaps a different one does, and perhaps not. Life journey's on...

Faith transitions are hard. Give people going through them a break.