The Rev. Tim Johnson responded to my recent post on his Speaking of Faith column. He writes:
With your already-confirmed distrust of the Bible, I am not surprised that any reference that may be made to it in your mind automatically discounts the value of what is being said by the one who quotes it.
Finding a statement in the bible doesn't discount or amplify its credibility, to me. Such statements need to be assessed on their merits. To clarify: The bible says many reasonable things with which I agree. It also says many ghastly things which I reject. There are inconsistencies and contradictions within the bible, as one might expect from a Bronze Age document produced by multiple authors writing about events which occurred long before they were born--in addition to the many later emendations and historical inaccuracies recorded in the book.
And a commenter writes:
This continues a theme of yours Gavin. You seem to have contempt for institutional religion and those that practice and preach it. What was your upbringing? Did you have any faith formation? Did you break away from a church and if so why. Perhaps this would shed some light to your readers on your point of view.
We as a society have a policy toward institutional religion: socialism. Via tax policy, we effectively subsidize houses of worship on a massive scale. On this topic Erik Paulsen and I are both implacable socialists; neither of us has proposed any change in our national policy of massively subsidizing churches. If I felt--as you accuse me--'contempt for institutional religion,' why would I be so willing to subsidize it to my dying day?
And what is faith formation? If you want to instruct your children to believe that there are consciousnesses which don't have bodies, please do so. But if you learn you have a neighbor who urges her children to feel skepticism with regard to the existence of consciousness outside of any biological organism, that shouldn't justify ostracism.
The bible was written long before the discovery of evolution--a profoundly counterintuitive theory. Before evolution's discovery, people often explained mysterious phenomena by invoking the supernatural.
In 2009, many educated Americans are aware of the evolutionary origins of the natural world. But on the popular level, most people haven't really digested that natural selection--a non-conscious process--created human consciousness itself. Becoming aware of how human consciousness came into being leads many to increased skepticism concerning the purported existence of conscious beings unconnected to living biological organisms. (That means you--people in heaven.)
