Category: religion

The Absurdity of Atheism in Maher’s ‘Religulous’

 “Religulous,” a mockumentary, is a two-hour assault on religion. The not-very-subtle message is that to be “religious “is “ridiculous.” The title combines the words.

       Bill Maher, the host, delights in skewering the seeming absurdities in religion: babbling in tongues, silly hats, the manipulation by televangelists. I think Jesus himself would likely laugh or weep over our folly. Religions need people like Maher. He is like the court jester employed by wise medieval kings to point out when people were getting too pompous. 

       Maher also attacks the dangerous side of religion: the holy wars, suicide bombings, anti-science, and potentially self-fulfilling prophecies of nuclear end-times. Maher does religion a service by courageously showing us when it is absurd, mindless, and destructive. He mainly attacks Christianity and Judaism, but also dares to criticize Islam. 

       However, he does religion a disservice by presenting the extremes as the norm. There is a danger the uninformed might think this is all religion is.

       He conveniently leaves out when religious people live according to their true values, have a deep spirituality, found service agencies and hospitals, educate and feed the poor, protest war and injustice, promote the sacredness of life and marriage, and constantly remind us life is more than the unbridled pursuit of money and self-centered pleasure.

       He conveniently leaves out the many profound and very rational Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers: Abraham Heschel, Martin Buber, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Thomas Aquinas, Avicenna, and Averroes, to name a few.

       He conveniently leaves out the constant progression in religious thinking and that atheists are stuck in a time warp in their criticism. Sure, there were absurd things written in the scriptures 2500 years ago, and God was often portrayed as an angry despot. Sure, there were crusades, and the church condemned Galileo hundreds of years ago. However, most believers today have repented of those ways of thinking and left them far behind. 

       This is where Maher totally misses the mark. The inconvenient truth for him and other atheists is that most people in the mainline synagogues, churches, and mosques are not extremists but moderates who believe in a loving God, are in favour of rationality and science, and are themselves critical when their traditions become absurd and dangerous.

       Maher also conveniently leaves out that atheism itself may be dangerous and absurd. Without religion, people make up false gods, for example, absolute ideologies like capitalism and communism. Maher conveniently leaves out that atheists like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao killed 80 million people in the twentieth century, more than all the religious wars in all of history.

       He conveniently leaves out that it might be more rational to believe there is a Supreme Intelligence behind all the order of the universe than to believe it all just happened by chance. He conveniently leaves out that without God, life might seem ultimately absurd when you are suddenly downsized, become sick, or lose a loved one. He conveniently leaves out that God and religious faith may, in fact, be the only real answers to life’s absurdities and dangers.

       Thank you, atheists, for keeping religion honest and accountable, but please don’t try to convince people that religion is all absurdity and destruction, and please be as self-critical as you ask religious people to be.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com

Understanding Spirituality: The Essence of Consciousness

    God is Mother as much as Father. God as Mother is welcoming, warm, and inclusive. Returning to God as Mother would be a return to compassion and wisdom as a way of life.

The most foundational thing in existence is not matter, atoms, or quarks, but consciousness or spirit. Ultimately, we live in a spiritual universe.

    The bottom line is not money; it is God’s love. So, reality is foundationally safe and benevolent. Ultimately, it is not a scary universe. 

    God does not love us because we are good. God loves us because God is good.

    Salvation is not perfect morality. It is letting the dance/wind/fire of God flow through you.

    True religion is humble, not judgmental. It says, “Maybe I am the problem here, not you.”

    Love is to recognize the oneness of all things. God is in all of us, I am in you and you are in me, and we are all in this together. 

    God is not a concept to be believed in. God is a reality to be experienced.

    God, who is infinitely perfect and blessed, in an act of sheer goodness, created humans to share in God’s blessed life. That is our ultimate purpose.

        All the world’s major religions have identified the main problem as the ego.

    All the world’s major religions have identified the main problem as the ego.

    We all need to stop focusing on which worldview or religion is superior and start focusing on inner transformation by letting go of our egos.

    The only way to let go of ego is awareness of it. Ego is unconsciousness, so awareness kills it.

    The foundation of all justice is that our equality is intrinsic and founded on God’s love, not earned. Through no doing of our own, we are all equally loved by God.

    A teacher imparts knowledge or techniques. A master teaches by his or her way of life.

    All the great spiritual masters say: wake up: God has a plan for the creation. The plan is that God be all in all. This is the ultimate purpose of the cosmos. Do not shut God out of your life!

    The rich person may be poor, blind, and naked in God’s sight. Or not. The poor person may be rich in God’s sight. Or not. Outward state is no indicator of God’s favor or disfavor.

    “Ten thousand difficulties do not make a doubt.” – John Henry Newman

    To have everything, desire nothing.

    The garden of Eden, paradise, heaven, and God are within us, and it is the knowledge of good and evil, and the judgmentalism that comes with it, that keeps us out of the unity of all things.

    Life has always been a struggle and always will be. The fact life is hard does not mean it is not good. If the universe was perfect, there wouldn’t be anything to do. God made life good not easy.

    If we accept whatever God gives us: honor or dishonor, long life or short, health or sickness, riches or poverty, then we are free indeed.

    God is the only true object of desire because God alone has all love, knowledge, truth, justice, peace, freedom, and wisdom.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

Hypocrisy: not just religion!

People may refuse to attend religious institutions for a multitude of reasons, but in my spiritual direction practice, if I ask Christians if they belong to any spiritual community, they often reply they don’t go to church because churches are full of hypocrites. I imagine people of other faiths have the same reason for not going to synagogues, mosques, or temples. 

       What is hypocrisy? It’s pretending to be what you aren’t. It’s espousing high ideals (compassion and generosity) on Sunday, and then living by a different set of values (competition and greed) the rest of the week. Hypocrisy is the opposite of authenticity and sincerity.

        Non-religious people usually do not mind religious people who are authentic and sincere, who “walk their talk.” What they do mind are religious people who engage in hypocrisy. In this they are in good company. The only thing that made Jesus angry was hypocrisy. 

       Jesus handled hypocrisy in three basic ways. He used vitriol, blasting self-righteous religious people: “You hypocrites, you brood of vipers! You are like whitewashed tombs: beautiful on the outside but full of corruption within!” Or he got physical, clearing the temple of moneychangers and demanding to know why the religious authorities had allowed God’s house of prayer to become a den of robbers? Or he used humour: “Friend, why do you try to remove the sliver of wood in your brother’s eye, when you haven’t removed the log in your own?”

       I am often tempted to use humour in my practice: “Don’t let your idea that the church is full of hypocrites stop you from coming. There’s always room for one more!” Although I don’t use it, this joke might make the non-churchgoer think because it implies that perhaps they are not living in complete accord with their highest ideals either.

       The person who judges another as a hypocrite must have high ideals and be living up to those ideals themselves, or they have no right to make that judgment. However, our society as a whole, not just the church, is filled with hypocrisy. 

       We tell our children not to gossip or drink and then do it ourselves. We say we love our spouses in Valentine’s cards and then treat them badly the rest of the year. Unions say they are going on strike to serve the public better when it seems like their real motive is even higher pay. Corporate advertising is often deceptive. Politicians espouse high ideals and then fight for power.

       A helpful way to look at all this might be: hypocrisy and authenticity are on a continuum, and everyone, both in religion and society, is somewhere on the continuum. In both religion and society, the actions of some do not match their ideals at all, and for some, their actions and ideals are totally integrated. The latter are called “saints” in religion, and “together” in society.

       Churches, like the rest of society, do have hypocrites. However, no church I know of claims to be a society of the perfect. Going to church does not mean you no longer have human weaknesses and are not exposed to temptations like the rest of us. Most churchgoers I know are very aware of their imperfections and go because they need God’s help and the support of a religious community in living their faith. In other words, they go out of humility, not pride.

       In short, to those who judge churchgoers as hypocrites, I would only ask two questions: “Friend, where are you on the continuum?” And “Have you removed the log in your own eye?”

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion.

Christianity needs to befriend contemporary spirituality

Twenty years ago, Eckhart Tolle’s books, The Power of Now and A New Earth sold millions of copies, and more recently Tolle facilitated what was probably the largest classroom in human history: 1.2 million people simultaneously online. 

       This great spiritual teacher’s vast popularity has led to the predictable reaction of some conservative Christians who have branded Tolle as a threat to Christianity and a leader of what used to be called the “New Age” movement, which is really simply contemporary spirituality. This is unfortunate because first of all, Jesus said “those who are not against us are for us,” and secondly Tolle can give us fresh new insights into the depths of the teachings of Christ.

       A Rabbi once told me that many Jews believe that non-Jewish people who live by the Ten Commandments, whether consciously or not, are on their side. Tolle, while not explicitly claiming to be Christian, is certainly not anti-Christian. If anything, he seems to bring to light things in Christianity that have been buried for centuries.

       One could easily argue that Tolle is a latent Christian and capable of helping many people become latent Christians, in that he subscribes to many of the same values as Christians, such as peace and detachment from materialism and consumerism. Also, in A New Earth he quotes Jesus more than anyone else, and the endnotes are almost all references to the New Testament.

       Throughout The Power of Now you could replace the word “Now” with “God” and the meaning would not change. His basic message in the book is that we need to live in the present moment, the Now, not in the past or future. Jesus said similar things, for example, “take no thought for tomorrow,” that is, don’t worry about the future or past, live now. He also said the reign of God is “at hand” that is, here and now.

       In A New Earth Tolle engages in a brilliant analysis of how the ego causes all our problems and how we must let go of it to live fully. Jesus taught that if you lose your small self you find you true self, your self in God.

       Richard Rohr, one of the most enlightened Catholic priests in the world, believes that Tolle could be seen as part of the “Sacrament of the Present Moment” tradition made popular by Brother Lawrence, Francisco de Osuna, and Jean Pierre de Caussade hundreds of years ago. Rohr sees Tolle as no threat to Christianity because Tolle is not teaching doctrines or dogmas, he is teaching practices just as John Wesley taught methods, and Ignatius of Loyola taught exercises, meant to help people overcome their prideful self, the ego.

       Rohr also believes that, although Tolle never explicitly states his theology, he is not a pantheist (all things are God), but rather a panentheist (all things are in God). The few times Tolle does speak of God he says things like “God is the One Life in and beyond all forms of life.”

       Rohr further believes that Catholics, who have a much longer tradition and are more familiar with mystics like John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart, will more easily embrace Tolle than Protestants whose tradition began in the sixteenth century. Tolle in fact adopted Meister Eckhart’s name when he realized he was also called to be a spiritual teacher.

       If Christians want to be relevant, they need to respond to the “signs of the times” by engaging contemporary people who are SBNR, that is, spiritual but not religious, in dialogue. What is needed is intelligent Christianity, capable of sifting out the good wheat in the current “zeitgeist,” or “prevailing thoughts of a culture,”  and letting the chaff blow away. Otherwise, Christianity may miss the opportunity to understand its own teachings more deeply and seem irrelevant to millions of people outside the church. These people might be more interested in the church if the church was more interested in contemporary spirituality.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

Seeing God and Humans at Work in All Avoids Pitfalls

If you understand that God works with, in, and through things without violating their essential nature, you can avoid many contemporary pitfalls. 

    To begin at the beginning, God created laws of nature, such as the law of complexity/consciousness, which means God and nature constantly co-create more complex, conscious, and free creatures. 

    John Polkinghorne, a physicist and Anglican priest, stated in his “free-process defence” of the existence of God in spite of evil: God allows nature a certain amount of freedom because it is better to have a creative world free to make mistakes than a mechanical world ruled by a cosmic tyrant.

    Evolution is so full of false starts that it would be easy to conclude it is just a random process. However, it is a divine/natural process that, overall, is heading in a spiritual direction: from matter to life to thought to spirit. We can see this in the movement from our planet’s original chemical soup to plants, animals, humans, and religions. Sri Aurobindo (Hindu), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Christian), and Ken Wilber (Buddhist) all agree about spiritual evolution.

    The increasingly free natural world co-created with God free human beings. God made humans with free will because it is better to have a world with people who make mistakes than one of perfectly programmed machines. Robots cannot love. For love, you need freedom. This is the “free-will defence” of God’s existence despite evil.

    With nature, God co-created humans with the intrinsic law of love: a deep desire for absolute goodness, truth, beauty, and love. In other words, what everyone wants is God, whether they know it or not. It would be easy to get so caught up with all the sins of humans that you miss our overall goodness: most people want to love and be good. On the other hand, you could get so caught up with the goodness of humans, as the human potential movement often does, that you could naively miss our sins and need of God.

    Similarly, the writing of scripture is a divine/human process. God co-created the scriptures with the human authors without violating their freedom. On the one hand, you could get so caught up with all the scientific and historical errors in scripture that it would be easy to conclude it is all a human fabrication, as John Spong and Marcus Borg have done.         

    On the other hand, you could get so caught up with the divine inspiration of scripture that you make it infallible in all things and fail to see that, while it may be inerrant on matters of faith and morals, it is not a science or history textbook, it is a faith document. Believing in the absolute infallibility of scripture closes people off from science, makes them fundamentalists, and contributes to the rise of scientific atheism in our culture.

    Similarly, Jesus was and is a divine/human person. The Spirit never violated the essential human and divine nature of Jesus but co-created his life, death, and resurrection with him. It would be easy to get so caught up searching for the historical Jesus that you miss his overall divinity. On the other hand, it would be easy to get so caught up in his divinity that you miss his humanity and his message of social justice, as Christians have largely done until the last hundred years or so.

    Churches are also divine/human co-creations. No church, synagogue, or mosque is a society of the perfect. Even Christian saints, such as Peter and Paul, and Jewish heroes, such as Abraham and Moses, were as full of human foibles as present-day imams. You could get so caught up in church scandals that it would be easy to miss the overall goodness of churches and conclude they are just an all-too-human enterprise. Most of the time, churches quietly go about doing good, but this rarely gets in the news. 

    On the other hand, you could focus so fully on the divine side of churches that you become triumphalist and believe the church has all the answers and doesn’t need to learn from science, psychology, history, and other religions. God works with churches, letting them make mistakes, but also guiding churches, other religions, and people who are “spiritual but not religious” towards the reign of Spirit. 

    At this crucial time in human history, in spite of all the doomsday predictions about the climate and economy there also seems to be a massive outpouring of Spirit going on in peoples’ hearts and souls. So, we need to avoid the pitfall of despair, as if God was not involved with and through the whole process. Again, God does not violate our freedom to make mistakes and wise decisions. God draws and invites us rather than forcing and driving us. 

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

Atheists not scientific about religion

    For the past few decades, atheists have been speaking freely about their lack of faith. In part they have been emboldened by two vociferous atheists. In both Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, they take the worst examples of religious folly and advocate getting rid of religion because it is an irrational curse on the human race.

    There is no denying that they are both partially right: religion has been the cause of a lot of irrationalism and evil, witch-hunts and terrorism. However, there is also no denying that they are largely wrong: religion has been responsible for untold good. There is not only unhealthy religion, but also healthy religion.

    As my friend Dr. Larry Cooley, a philosopher of science and religion, put it: “From a scientific viewpoint, Dawkins and Hitchens are unscientific when it comes to religion. In formulating a theory, a competent scientist tries to account for all the data.” It’s surprising that Dawkins, a respected scientist in the field of genetics, would throw out the scientific method when it comes to religion. In arguing that we should get rid of religion, both he and Hitchens have not taken into account all the data about bad science and good religion.

    It would be easy to attack science based on all the evil it has brought upon the human race. Science and the technology that derives from it have brought us all manner of weapons of war: bombs, machine guns, tanks, and biological and chemical warfare. Science has been responsible for the maiming and deaths of hundreds of millions of people.

    Science has also robbed people of hope for the future. I remember thinking in the 1980s that my family and I probably had no future because of the constant threat of nuclear war. Now, people in their twenties tell me they have no future because of the destruction of rain forests, pollution, and global warming brought upon the human race by science and technology: bulldozers, chain saws, cars, planes, and factories. Science is once again threatening our planet with destruction. Science has totally failed to bring us the utopia promised by the Enlightenment. One could argue that science is evil and should be done away with.

    On the other hand, Dawkins and Hitchens have not taken into account all the data about good religion. The World Council of Churches and the Vatican have issued and implemented numerous statements and strategies about war, social justice, poverty, hunger, welfare, and the environment. Most universities and hospitals in the western world began under the sponsorship of Christian churches. Here in London, Ontario, for example, St. Joseph’s Hospital began as a mission of the Sisters of St. Joseph, and Parkwood Hospital began with the Women’s Christian Association. The University of Western Ontario began with Huron College, an Anglican seminary.

    The whole Canadian system of universal health care happened because of the efforts of a Baptist minister, Tommy Douglas. Our legal system and moral code are based on Judeo-Christian precepts. As Michael Coren once said, “Quite simply, without Christian groups and Christian people, the social network of Canada would collapse. This is not hyperbole. Walk along almost any main street and look at the names of the houses, associations, and institutes that work for the poor.”  In London, we have the Salvation Army and numerous soup kitchens sponsored by churches, and most churches educate their congregations about social justice issues and engage in charitable activities here and abroad. 

    Countless missionaries have brought not only religion but also education and medicine to developing countries. I think of my friend Dr. Harold Fast, a Mennonite who lived and died selflessly helping thousands of Muslims as a medical missionary in Pakistan. Save a Family Plan, operating out of St. Peter’s Seminary here in London, has helped tens of thousands of the poorest of the poor in India become self-sufficient.

    On an individual level, religion has given billions of people a sense of significance, that their lives have transcendent value and meaning, that they are more than a cog in the drudgery of daily existence. Religion has brought people a sense of personal ethics, community, comfort, and hope for the future.

    The problem in the world today is not science or religion. The problem, and the glory, is human nature. As human beings, we have the capacity to take these two great endeavors of the human spirit, science and religion, and make them into something very compassionate or very destructive. Dawkins and Hitchens seem to miss altogether the fact that, whether as scientists or religionists, we are capable of unlimited good and evil. Religion, at least, predicts this.

    The most serious criticism of fundamentalist atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens is their inadequate scientific method: not taking into account all the data about healthy religion and unhealthy science makes them incompetent thinkers from their own scientific viewpoint.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion: brucetallman.com.

Resolving Religious Conflict: A Path Through Faith Development

 Throughout history, there have been conflicts between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: pogroms, crusades, and jihads. There have also been conflicts within religions: Orthodox versus Reformed Jews, Catholic versus Protestant Christians, Sunni versus Shiite Muslims. Religious conflicts are often rooted, at least partly, in different stages of faith, and the cure lies in reaching the higher stages.

       In the 1980s and 1990s, Dr. James Fowler of Emory University conducted the first research-based study on how faith develops. Researchers interviewed thousands of believers from all religious traditions and identified six distinct stages of faith.

       Stage One, Imaginative Faith, does not cause conflict as most people pass through it by age seven. Stage Two, Literal Faith, normally extends to about age twelve. However, many adults clearly get stuck here, taking stories like Adam and Eve or Noah’s Ark as literal history rather than as faith stories meant to convey a profound theological message about fall and redemption. Since fundamentalists in any religion consider anyone who has different beliefs to be a heretic, this is fertile ground for conflict.

       Most religious conflict happens between Stages Three and Four. Stage Three, Group Faith, is marked by conformity. The Stage Three motto is: “I believe it because my religious group believes it.” Faith is a simple matter of following group rules. People in Stage Three defend their own in-group, believing “my church is the only true church” or “Islam is the only true faith.” Anyone who disagrees is seen as their mortal enemy.

    Usually, at some point, Group Faith gets shaken up by life’s injustices, conflicting opinions of others, corruption of religious leaders, or new teachings such as those of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which moved many Catholics from Stage Three to Stage Four. Still, some want to revert to the 1950s when the Catholic laity was taught to “pray, pay, and obey.”

       Stage Four, Personal Faith, begins when a person asks, “What do I really believe?” Usually, there are a lot of struggles as the Stage Four individual no longer believes things just because someone else says they should. As many questions arise, the Stage Four person often feels like they are losing their faith, but if they keep the essentials, they are going deeper as they begin to own their faith, not just blindly follow the crowd.

       People in Stage Four may seem dangerous to the faith of those in Stages Two and Three, whereas people in Stage Four may see those in Stages Two and Three as a threat to rationality and civilization. Again, this is fertile ground for religious conflict.

       The solution is to go to Stage Five, Mystical Faith, characterized by the ability to understand another person’s faith from their point of view; and paradox, the ability to simultaneously hold two conflicting points of view. This creates great respect for other traditions. For example, a Stage Five person might think that “Jesus Christ is the only way to God and yet it is quite clear to me that there are also other ways to God. This goes beyond logical reasoning, but I am willing to suspend my judgement about what God thinks about these other traditions while being committed to my own tradition.” 

       Finally, Stage Six, Sacrificial Faith, means that you are willing to fight to defend the foundational human right of religious freedom and even lay down your life to bring reconciliation between people with differing beliefs. This was Gandhi’s faith, who, in attempting to promote peace between Hindus and Muslims in India, paid for it with his life. A Hindu fundamentalist killed him.

       To prevent religious conflict, we need to be aware that differing stages of faith often cause it. We also need to work towards Pope John XXIII’s recommendation: “In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things, charity.” That is, we need to strive for the highest stages where the unfathomable essence of the One God transcends all differences, and we need to be charitable toward those with differing beliefs. After all, God is exceedingly tolerant and loves everyone regardless of their faith stage.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com

Exploring the God Debate: Proofs for and Against Existence

THE GOD DELUSION: FACT OR FICTION?

    In 2003, a new book by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, was climbing the bestseller charts and giving atheists everywhere powerful fuel for attacking religion. On November 9 eighty people attended a debate sponsored by the Humanist Association of London and Area on “Is There A Loving Creator God?” Here are the key points by the debaters Dr. Goldwin Emerson and Dr. Bruce Tallman.

    EMERSON: NO. THERE IS NO LOVING CREATOR GOD

    The Christian God is reputed to be an all-knowing, all-powerful, benevolent, supreme being who created the universe, answers prayer and influences events on Earth. He is also believed to have sent his son to Earth for the purpose of atoning for the sins of humankind. This description causes skeptics to ask the following:

  1. If the deity is all-knowing, he would know when disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes are about to happen, and if he is all-powerful, why does he not stop these catastrophes and prevent the death of innocent people? 

2. If this deity is powerful and benevolent, why does he allow humans to be born with defects and incurable diseases? 

3. Millions of believers pray to their deity, asking that he intervene in events on Earth. Why are so many prayers not answered? 

4. Why do Christians claim that Jesus is divine, requiring worship, when no other monotheistic religions make this claim for their prophets? 

 5. As scientific knowledge advances, we learn that many of the world’s problems of pollution, war, global warming, hunger, and disease are human-made problems which, if they are to be solved at all, will need to be solved by human-made solutions. Why is it that Christians claim that God is necessary for ethical behaviour?  Effective ethical codes were established in various early civilizations prior to the existence of Christianity. 

    When asked why their omnipotent, loving God allows so much misery in the world, believers say God moves in mysterious ways, or the universe is unfolding as it should.  These answers are hardly satisfying to skeptics, and one is tempted to side with Sigmund Freud (1870-1937), who said: “A personal god is nothing more than a father figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshiped by human beings out of a sense of helplessness.  Religion belongs to the infancy of the human race; it has been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity.  It has promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity has come of age, however, it should be left behind.”                                                                  For non-theists, the conclusion is that there is no God. On the other hand, there are alternative ways of viewing what has been called God. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch philosopher Spinoza proposed that the belief in God’s activity in the world was merely a way of describing the world’s mathematical and causal principles. For Spinoza there was no need for the concept of divine law: the best guidance is the eternal laws of nature. The famous physicists Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, and many more recent scientists and philosophers have expressed a similar view.

     Others may think of God as a quality within themselves, the Ultimate Reality or the Ground of All Being, instead of believing in the traditional Christian concept of God.

     Most liberal Christians accept the firm scientific evidence that the universe is billions of years old and that life on Earth evolved over millions of years; nevertheless, they may still believe that, in some mysterious way, God is a prime mover in this evolution. While religious people also credit God with the origin and existence of love, humanists believe love is a product of evolution. The emotion of love, particularly in mammals, enhances the survival potential of offspring. Considering God as a creator begs the obvious question: Who or what created God?  For humanists, the answer is simple: humans created God.

     It seems that primitive peoples looked for explanations of how the world works and created numerous spirits and gods to account for natural happenings. Over the centuries, many different gods were invented by ancient civilizations, including Egypt, Greece and Rome. One exception was the monotheistic God of the Hebrews. We now accept that the multitude of ancient pagan gods were created in the minds of humans. It is reasonable to conclude that Yahweh was also created in the minds of the Hebrews and became entrenched in the myths contained in the book of Genesis. Thus, humans created God in their own image rather than the other way around.

     Humanists are guided by the principles of rational thought, scientific inquiry, responsibility, ethics, compassion, fairness, and equality, and find it difficult to believe in the Christian concept of God. Instead, we believe that he was created in the minds of early Hebrews. Rather than worshiping the Christian God, humanists celebrate the opportunity of living on our wondrous planet and having the privilege of enjoying the many good fortunes available to us. In other words, they try to follow a philosophy of loving and revering life like believers love and revere God.

TALLMAN: YES. THERE IS A LOVING CREATOR GOD

    Nonbelievers usually do away with the idea of a Creator by ascribing God-like qualities such as infinity and eternity to the universe. However, Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, the two greatest scientists who ever lived, both believed that the universe is finite, and modern astronomers all agree that the universe began with a Big Bang about fourteen billion years ago. They have also done computer projections that show that the universe will end in about one hundred billion years. Monotheistic religions believe that nothing caused God to exist, God exists infinitely and eternally by God’s own nature, and God caused the Big Bang.

    Believing scientists like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, an expert on the fossil remains of evolution, have noted that evolution on our planet has proceeded from matter (rocks and water) to life (plants and animals) to thought (humans) to spirit (the great religions that continue to spread across the world) because humans are “homo religiousus,” that is, “hardwired for God”. The fact that the whole natural world has evolved in a spiritual direction, from matter to life to thought to spirit, is evidence that God is directing the whole evolutionary process.

    Many nonbelievers say they only believe in things for which there is scientific evidence. Although we cannot scientifically prove there is a God, there is evidence of the creativity of a Creator all around us: the sun, lightning, rainbows, flowers, mountains, peacocks, giraffes, children, and on and on. It’s as if the whole creation is shouting, “There is a God!” As one contemplative said, “ If you want to see God, just open your eyes and wake up!”

    Just as there is plenty of evidence that there is a creator God, the evidence of a loving God is all around us. First of all, there is far more good than evil in the world. Evil is always only a corruption of something that was originally good. For example, illness is always only a corruption of original health. 

    Doctors estimate that only about three percent of the population has a major illness at any one time; health predominates by far. If there is seven percent unemployment, it means there is ninety-three percent employment. Criminologists estimate only two percent of the population are criminals, the other ninety-eight percent are law-abiding citizens. So good is foundational, and evil is secondary. We take the good for granted because it is just so everyday and commonplace. Again, we need to open our eyes.

    The greatest proof that there is a loving God is that love is the central thing in life. This requires no argument since lovers, poets, philosophers, and mystics have been proclaiming it for centuries, and we all know in our hearts that it is true. If there is no God of love, why is good far more predominant than evil, and why is love the central thing in life? Atheists have no good explanation for this.

    Although God is loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing, God is also self-limiting. Natural laws serve us well the vast majority of the time, so God chooses not to interfere with them. If God interfered with them every time they might cause suffering, the world would be chaotic. Similarly, God chooses not to take away our free will, even when we misuse it and cause suffering, because otherwise, we would be robots, and there would be no real love in the world.

    God constantly works within us, trying to motivate us to love one another, prevent suffering, and bring greater good out of evil. Indeed, life is full of the overcoming of suffering. However, sometimes, we disobey God and cause suffering on a massive scale, such as killing millions of innocent people in the twentieth century. The real question here is not “How can God allow suffering?” but “How can human beings allow it?”             

    God does allow suffering, but only so that the highest human virtues: compassion, wisdom, heroism, service to others, and self-sacrifice, can emerge in response. If God took away all suffering life would lose its profundity.

    The crucifixion of Christ is the great symbol that God suffers with us and is right in the center of our pain, trying to alleviate it. And the resurrection of Christ is the great symbol that all suffering is finally overcome by God in heaven.

    Life on Earth is evolving in a spiritual direction; religion and spirituality constantly spring up everywhere because we are hardwired for God, good is foundational, love is central, and there are answers to suffering. All these things testify that there is indeed a loving, creator God.

Concluding Remark

    The two statements represent different ways of viewing our universe. One is religious, the other non-religious. These two positions are offered so that readers may better understand both and make their own choices on these important concerns.

The Historical Reality of Jesus: Myths vs. Truth

Within Christianity in the past thirty years, there have been persistent attempts to recast the basic tenets of Christianity itself. One of the most remarkable attempts came from Tom Harpur, who noted in The Pagan Christ that other cultures had myths about the dying and rising god, and therefore, the early church just made up a myth about the dying and rising Jesus. 

    Myths in many cultures have been powerful carriers of cosmic truths, and the early church knew this. However, according to Harpur, over the course of its first three hundred years, the church gradually came to claim that the myth they had made up was a historical reality called Jesus Christ.

    My sense is that Harpur is either not being true to himself or has somehow forgotten his theological studies as an Anglican priest. Every student of Christian theology is taught that the distinctiveness of the Jewish God was that this God acted in history. One of the most dramatic examples of this was when God liberated the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. God acted throughout Jewish history from the time of Abraham to the kings and prophets. 

    This experience of God acting in history simply continued in the most dramatic way of all when God became human in Jesus Christ. God acting in history was not a new idea that the early church made up. The church did not try to change a myth into a reality. Rather, it proclaimed that all the myths of other cultures suddenly became a reality when Christ was born. This was Paul’s basic approach when he told the Greeks and Romans that Jesus was their Unknown God.

    Harpur is right that God has always been incarnate in all of God’s creation, and therefore, there are many paths to God, but the traditional belief of the church has been that God was incarnate in a special way in Christ and therefore, Christ is a specialpath to God. This idea that the Infinite Ruler of the Universe can be in a specific location in a special way is, again, not a new Christian idea. Jews believed that God was present in a special way in the sanctuary of the temple. Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans have taken the special incarnation of God a step further in their belief that the cosmic Christ is incarnate in a very special way in the communion host.

    It makes sense that God would not just tell us how to live, as God did in the Ten Commandments, but God would also showus how to live by becoming human. In Christ, God gave us a three year audio-visual demonstration of what a true human being is and also what God is really like.

    There were many witnesses to the specialness of Jesus before, during, and after his life. First, there is the ancient scriptural record. Before the historical Jesus appeared, there were dozens of prophecies recorded in the Jewish scriptures of what the Messiah would be like: royal, suffering, and divine. Jesus fulfilled all these prophecies, particularly the ones by the prophet Isaiah, who said that a child will be born who will be called “Mighty God” and “Everlasting Father” and will have a kingdom without end (Isaiah 9: 6-8). This suffering servant will be “pierced for our sins”, but “by his wounds, we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5)

    Then there is the vision of the prophet Daniel of a man who was led into the presence of  God. God gave this man everlasting authority, sovereign power, and glory, and the people of every nation worshiped him (Daniel 7:13-14). There are many other Jewish prophecies like this.

    During Christ’s life, he gave great and sublime teachings such as the Sermon on the Mount, in which he first focused on the nature of true happiness in the Beatitudes. The rest of Christ’s teachings also extended and completed the spirit of the Law and the Prophets.

    Another witness is the astounding miracles: Jesus calming the raging sea, multiplying food for the hungry, healing all manner of illnesses, driving out evil spirits, and raising a man to life who had been dead for four days!

    Even if we overlook the miracles, there is the witness of the way Christ lived. His courage, integrity, wisdom, and compassion were so complete they must have had a supernatural source.

    There is the witness of the appearances of Christ after his resurrection to hundreds of disciples, and there is the New Testament record of miracles performed in the name of Jesus by these disciples.

    There is also the witness of people dying for their faith in Christ, the record of all the martyrs in the early church. No one would lay down their life for some mythical human being. Then there is the record of the ongoing growth of the church through the centuries and of so many present-day martyrs.

    Put all this together, and one is almost forced to conclude that in Jesus, something extremely special was going on. In fact, it all points to one reality: that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to God. In the birth of Christ, God gave us the greatest gift of all: God in the form of a human being.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion www.brucetallman.com  

Archetypes underlie all religions

Given all the religion-based conflict in the world, perhaps it would help if we tried to emphasize the similarities between religions rather than the differences tha t drive us apart and cause bloodshed. Archetypes provide a valuable common ground since they underlie all faiths.

   Carl Jung, one of the great psychologists of the twentieth century, noticed that certain patterns kept coming up, not only in his patients’ dreams, but also in literature, mythology, history, religion, and daily life in all cultures and all ages.

    From this he surmised that all humans must share in a level of the psyche even deeper than the subconscious mind that his mentor, Sigmund Freud, discovered. Jung called this deeper level the collective unconscious, and the contents of this part of the psyche or soul he called archetypes. 

    Archetypes are spiritual energy centers and part of the imago Dei, the image of God that God created in the soul, to guide us to fulfilling lives. Jung and others claim that these primordial images are like instincts in that they subconsciously control everything we think, feel, and do.

    Four key archetypes that form the basic structure of the human soul in men and women everywhere are the sovereign, warrior, seer, and lover. Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, Robert Moore, Carol Pearson, Caroline Myss, Robert Bly, and others have written extensively about these four heroic archetypes.

    The sovereign is the benevolent leader or person in charge, the warrior is the one who fights for goodness and justice, the seer is the wise man or woman, and the lover is the one who is passionate for others whether it is a partner, friend, the poor, or the earth.

    As an example of how the sovereign appears everywhere and in every age, consider that throughout history there have been kings, queens, maharajahs, sultans, tsars, emperors, presidents, and prime ministers in various countries, as well as chiefs in native American, Canadian, Brazilian, Australian, and African tribes. The sovereign is also manifest in daily life in the chief executive officer or manager at work, or the father or mother at home.

    There are also anti-heroic or “shadow” archetypes which involve complete possession or complete dispossession by the sovereign, warrior, seer, or lover. For example, if a person is completely possessed by the sovereign archetype, he or she becomes a tyrant. Complete dispossession means the person becomes an abdicator. The other anti-heroic archetypes are the sadist and masochist (warrior shadows), manipulator and fool (seer shadows), and the addict and frigid (lover shadows). 

    These negative archetypes, working subconsciously, can cause great misery in our lives. In fact, the whole post-911 world can be explained in terms of archetypes in the form of tyrants (George W. and Saddam) and sadists (Osama and other terrorists). 

    Negative archetypes can also affect church leadership in the form of bishops and priests who are tyrants ruling with an iron fist, abdicators who don’t teach justice, sadists who condemn everyone’s spirituality and morality but their own, masochists who don’t take care of themselves, manipulators who make the laity fearful, fools who subtly block the ministry of any talented lay person, addicts who abuse children for their own sexual pleasure, and frigids who are burned out, emotionally dead, and cynical.

    People in archetypal roles have great power because they activate the numinous archetypal energies of our souls. This explains the aura that surrounds seers such as the medical doctor, medicine man or woman, shaman, guru, imam, rabbi, priest, or minister. This also explains why the pope and dalai lama draw huge crowds wherever they go. They have double the fascinating numinous power since they are in both the sovereign and seer role.

    The Bible is eternally appealing to the human soul because it is an archetypal book, full of heroic and anti-heroic sovereigns, warriors, seers and lovers. Think, for example, in the Jewish scriptures/Old Testament of King David, Queen Esther, King Saul, Queen Jezebel, Goliath, Samson, Delilah, Samuel, Solomon, Isaiah, Ruth, and the lovers in The Song of Songs.

    The New Testament likewise is full of heroes and anti-heroes. There is Peter (the spiritual abdicator and later, spiritual sovereign), Paul (the spiritual warrior if ever there was one), King Herod, Queen Herodias, Pilate (the political abdicator), centurions and zealots, magi (seers), good and bad priests, John the Baptist, Judas (the manipulator), contemplatives (lovers of God) like Stephen and John the beloved disciple, and so on.

    Churches use archetypal language all the time, whether they know it or not, when they refer to Christ as priest, prophet, king, and supreme lover. Certainly he was in warrior mode when he cleared the moneychangers out of the temple, and there is a graphic, symbolic description in the book of Revelation (19:11-21) of Christ leading the armies of heaven against the forces of evil. To Christians, Jesus had the four foundational archetypes in perfection.

    Since these archetypes are hardwired into the human psyche, they appear in other religions as well. No Muslim would dispute the fact that Mohammed is the sovereign leader of Islam, that he was a physical and spiritual warrior in the wars against the polytheists, and a great seer in receiving the Quran from the archangel Gabriel. 

    Hindus could point to Krishna as a lover when he danced with the gopi cowgirls, Arjuna as a warrior, and great seers like Sri Aurobindo, Vivekananda and others. All Buddhist monks and nuns would come under the seer archetype, and boddhisattvas would be examples of agape lovers, sacrificing their own entrance into nirvana until all sentient beings are enlightened.

    Anyone interested in ministry or leadership in any religion, or in spirituality in general, would do well to familiarize themselves with the heroic and anti-heroic archetypes which have the power to fulfill or destroy any individual, religious tradition, or even whole societies.

Bruce Tallman is author of Archetypes for Spiritual Direction: Discovering the Heroes Within (Paulist Press 2005). See http://www.brucetallman.com.