Gunpowder, band-wagon and lot Part 4

Winchester cathedral (stock photo)

If you have got this far in my diatribe you'll appreciate that I do not necessarily believe in a six 24-hour day creation. In our group we get around difficulties in OT exegesis like this by spiritualising. This technique is based on "now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come". We say the Bible is a spiritual book and can only be understood by spiritual people. Exactly what is meant by "spiritual" is a moot point but it's not literal, carnal, natural, physical, tangible or demonstrable.

This link quotes the sad story of Charles Templeton, one time popular evangelist to thousands and partner with Billy Graham only to go on to become an atheist, to demonstrate that any who deny six literal creation days will follow suit. Which theory does not bode well for me. But the argument is good in so far as it emphasises the need for solid foundation. Both parts of the Bible (and I make no apology for so often quoting it whatever I might conclude) have a lot to say about foundation, most notably that other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire... 

Winchester cathedral was built in the peaty flood plain of the river Itchen on a foundation of oak logs. The story goes how, after discovering huge cracks in the walls, a diver William Walker was commissioned to bolster up the foundations below the water table and so the iconic building was saved. My foundations, though hitherto I had thought adequate, are likewise causing cracks in the edifice I have built on them. All ye do-gooders that will, on reading this, jump up to utter trite encouraging words beware: you might have more on your hands than you bargained for! Because:

From 1906, Walker laboured under water below the Cathedral for six hours a day at depths up to 6 metres (20 ft). He worked in total darkness, using his bare hands to feel his way through the cloudy, muddy water. His huge, heavy diving suit took a long time to put on. So when he stopped for lunch, he’d just take off his helmet. It took him six years to excavate the flooded trenches and fill them with bags of concrete. When he’d finished, all the groundwater could be pumped out and the subsiding walls safely underpinned by bricklayers. By 1911, the team of 150 workmen of which he was part had packed the foundations with an estimated 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks, and 900,000 bricks.

If that story don't light your fire, your wood's wet - I'm tearing up after just copying that text. It's all the more apropos because back in school days I lived only seven miles from the cathedral and attended an annual service there in connection with Peter Symonds School. Like other European cathedrals it is a totally awesome building all the more so when one considers the limited equipment they had back then.

So what are my conclusions?  The mere idea that I should even consider conclusions about such momentous concepts seems preposterous. Who am I to dictate what should or should not have happened thousands of years ago?  But this much I will say.

Here's a board book I was reading at dinner time. Actually it is not mine - it belongs to my Thai granddaughter. It is a good example of the absurd. The artist has gone to great lengths to add strange detail in the yellow levers, green cylinder and various pipes, but they are all totally ridiculous and untrue. Why go to all that bother only to lie? Will a child as young as my granddaughter care? Probably not, but in a few years she will - I know because I was once a child, fobbed off with untruths and caring about it. Children are not as stupid as some adults (who apparently never had a childhood) maintain. 

Perhaps some of the Bible stories are like this. In an effort to simplify to suit our limited intelligence and yet maintain interest the accounts are indicative but not intended to be exact in every matter. I find that I cannot accept, and do not think I ever have since college days, the fundamentalist claim that the text of the Bible is literally true in every respect, for example creation in six literal 24 hour days? Or Noah's flood being global when it is more likely that it only covered the then known world: the fertile crescent and its curtilage. I realise such statements may offend some of my readers but, after all, this blog is a picture of Me and not Them and I can't help being who I am. Believe me, I have tried to change, to become a more conventional Christian. 

Compared with the OT stories I think it more likely that the gospel accounts are substantially true. It is apparently better documented than most things back then that a man we call Jesus lived, was crucified and started a sect we now call Christianity. Less well attested but hard to to dismiss are the claims of miracles and in particular the Resurrection. Of course, whether you or I think this or think that will not change what actually happened. It would be the ultimate arrogance to think otherwise. But some things in the here and now can be analysed. Here is a Sunday School favourite I have sung since a child:

I serve a risen Saviour, He's in the world today
I know that He is living, whatever men may say
I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer
And just the time I need Him He's always near

He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today
He walks with me and talks with me
Along life's narrow way
He lives, He lives, Salvation to impart
You ask me how I know He lives?
He lives within my heart.

But I don't. I don't "hear His voice of cheer". I like to think that "He walks with me" but I do not know that he "talks with me" although I wish and constantly pray that I did. And those last two lines: that my proof that he lives today should be that he "lives in my heart": I do not even know what this means, or is it some sort of meaningless, gooey but feel-good poetic license?

I can, I guess I do, accept the divinity of this man Jesus and the Plan of Salvation that he wrought and its personal adoption by the likes of me by accepting the offer "by faith". And that so doing gives me meaning for living, a foundation to build upon.

I note that the act of "becoming a Christian", which evangelicals metamorphous into "four spiritual laws" or the language of the above song, was simple in the case of the Philippian jailer: Then he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" And they said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." 

(continued in Part 5)             (go back to Part 3)  

Belief and Diesel

I've always thought the advice to the Philippian jailer was over simplistic when he said: Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. To give credit, the Greek pistis "belief", often translated "faith", includes the idea of wholly putting one's trust in something or someone. Whereas the modern English "belief" is sometimes much weaker as in "I believe it is going to rain this afternoon". So the above might better read "Put your trust wholly in the..."

One of our diesel vehicles had inadvertently been topped up with petrol (maybe 50% mix). I did not realise this until well on the way to Dublin to take Ali to an appointment. The engine ran lumpy but we got there, turned the engine off and did what we came for, but then I couldn't start it again. I got talking to the guy who we called out to drain the tank and we started discussing religion. He claimed to be a humanist atheist and said he believed only what he could see proof for, which definitely didn't include God. But apparently it did include some very wacky things like UFO's and life on other planets and the Jesus story being no more than a rehash of the Egyptian god Horus and did I know that Jesus condoned killing his enemies? When I got home and checked up on his points it quickly became apparent that there was a good deal less proof for his ideas than my Christian ones. But he was not the kind of gent that would be easily persuaded against his will and I'm not much use in debating (my brain works too slowly).  So we parted company each wondering how the other could possibly believe what he claimed.

Rachel Nuwer argues that the reason a god-shaped hole seems to exist in our species’ neuropsychology is due to a quirk of our evolution.  She says we have two very basic forms of thought: System 1 and System 2. System 2 evolved relatively recently. It’s the voice in our head – the narrator who never seems to shut up – that enables us to plan and think logically. System 1, on the other hand, is intuitive, instinctual and automatic... It makes us prone to looking for patterns to better understand our world, and to seek meaning for seemingly random events like natural disasters or the death of loved ones. Hence religion and her conclusion “There will always be people who believe, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they remain the majority”. But implied is that she doesn't.

In their paper "The biochemistry of belief" the authors quote Anton Chekhov as saying “Man is what he believes” and summarise that Beliefs are basically the guiding principles in life that provide direction and meaning in life. By way of example they mention the placebo effect: Medical history is replete with numerous reported cases where placebos were found to have a profound effect on a variety of disorders. One such astounding case was that of a woman suffering from severe nausea and vomiting. Objective measurements of her gastric contractions indicated a disrupted pattern matching the condition she complained of. Then a ‘new, magical, extremely potent’ drug was offered to her, which would, the doctors proclaimed, undoubtedly cure her nausea. Within a few minutes, her nausea vanished! 

We are motivated by belief at many levels. I can get out of breath jogging to my daughter's place a quarter mile down the road. When I tackle a long run like Church Mountain I have to first believe that I can do it (running barefoot with significant ascent and descent) and so far this has worked. Indeed I have just returned from such a run. I made it back albeit feeling like I couldn't have gone a step further, quod erat demonstrandum...

 distance 14.54 miles

 average speed moving 4.94 mph

 elevation gain 733m

 maximum elevation 541m

My track 

My lake, viewed from the summit

Looking south, the bump on the horizon centre left is Baltinglass Hill

What if the tenets of Christianity were untrue? Perhaps it might still be beneficial to believe in them, as in my recent post does it matter what one believes. This of course is the Puddleglum argument. But how much better if it the object of our belief could be shown to be true. And here's the catch: what does it take to show that something is true?  We take for granted that things we can sense are true, although even that is debatable. The rest: the makeup of an atom, the distance to far-off galaxies, the big bang and evolution (or creation) of man, the resurrection of Jesus, and whether the ladder I am about to climb will hold my weight... we take on trust. We have to believe else we cannot function. Whether or not the likes of Richard Dawkins agrees, it is clear to me that even atheists have to believe / have faith in their tenets.

Of people set in their ways Jesus remarked: neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead. And such conviction apparently comes only as a result of action taken by God on our behalf. Which places me in an unenviable position if I happen to doubt, as I do.