Letters to the Editor
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PREPARE FOR THE DELUGE!!!
Of letters that is...
Here we go again. Arguments from this one, that one and the other one responding to why and why not god is real. And in the meantime, the universe keeps on functioning just as it should.
"But its an important topic... THE most important one!..." you may or may not say...
War will happen because peace will happen.
Hate will happen because Love will happen.
Light will occur because dark is available.
God will exist to some because God doesnt exist to others.
The neverending balance continues and we're hopeless to contemplate it. And our hopelessness begets all these inifinite questions with no answers.
And in the meantime, the universe continues to operate just as it should.
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Altaira99
From _Forbidden Planet_ , no?
Fundamentalists of any stripe range from the merely annoying to the truly dangerous, and I've read a lot of "christian" rant that doesn't seem to correspond to the "cast the beam out of your own eye" teacher, but even Richard Dawkins can't logically prove a negative.
Dawkins knows full well and admits that it is impossible to prove that there is no God.
What Dawkins sets out to do, successfully IMO, is to show that the likelihood of a God is vanishingly small.
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G of Judas a Gnostic text
The gospel of Judas contradicts Christianity only insofar as it is a gnostic interpretation of the story of Jesus, written 150 years after the crucifixion. Why would Jesus ask judas to betray him? Jesus need only show up around Jerusalem to get arrested (they were looking for him), there was no need to subplot Judas.
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A Point Missed
People continue to miss a valuable point in scholars like Pagels work. What she tells us is that religious texts and practice are not at the bottom of the "religion" of "science vs. religion." The religion of this contention is itself a misnomer adopted as it is perpetuated by the so-called religionists. Their failure to accept scientific ideas about how things work in favour of "religion" is, much more than a failure to be a scientific human being, a failure to take their religious texts and practices, as Pagels says, seriously but not literally.
So, when the oft used criticism that religious texts are "fables" and "myth" is bandied, the only intelligent answer is: "Of course they are; this is how humans convey meaning and worldviews. There is no human meaning that is not metaphoric and symbolic, that is not told in its time as part of a fable or myth." The problem of religionists, as much as many contemporary atheist-scientists, is that they forget this, and treat their respective worldviews as unambiguous, transparent and unmetaphoric.
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relief!
Easter approached, and I was worried. What would Salon.com do?
James Cameron's wacky documentary about the supposed bones of Jesus had fizzled; repudiated by scholars from all different corners of belief. What could Salon.com do now? How would it try to work their usual publicity-stunt magic during one of the highest-profile periods of the Christian year? How could it draw the Religious Right -- its sworn enemy -- into giving it the condemnation in which it reveled? Would there be time to devise yet another incendiary way to bring in the notoriety, the basic attention it craved? Could it find another story that it could point to and say, "We don't ignore religion," while yet reassuring its readership base that it only covers religion the way smart people think about it, skeptical of all the established doctrine and history?
Thank (insert preferred deity here -- if you don't prefer any of them, then just keep going) for Elaine Pagels, a religious scholar who's never met a non-canonical gospel she didn't favor over the four accepted by Christian teaching. Although much of the uproar over the "Gospel of Judas" from fall 2006 had died down, Viking publishers concidentally had timed her book about that text to be released less than a month before Easter. Pagels and co-author Karen King had saved the day!
Everything was as it should be. The world was round. Day followed night. And Salon.com had maintained its well-earned tin ear for its coverage of religion.
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The holy grail
Pieces of the real cross, magic water from the Sea Of Galilee, and the gospel of Judas. They all belong in the exact same category. Distractions. Nothing more.
"I spoke with Pagels by phone about the bitter quarrels among early Christians, why it's a bad idea to read the Bible literally..."
Considering the multitude of possible motivations on the part of Ms. Pagels, it's probably not a good idea to read her writing literally. I find the supposed luminance of such writers ironic at best. The book she disparages has held it's own for going on two thousand years. I wonder where her writing will be in the equivalent. One thing is certain, education is not an indication of intelligence, though it may have some direct correlation to arrogance.
Poco
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It's a Gnostic "gospel"
For those of you who are interested in the topic at large and not your basic atheist vs. the religious "debate," check out "Judas and the Gospel of Jesus," by N. T. Wright, which takes the topic head on. It's a great read. The punchline is the so-called "Gospel of Judas" is a Gnostic gospel, and therefore bogus.
http://www.amazon.com/Judas-Gospel-Jesus-Missed-Christianity/dp/0801012945/
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God is for children
Like Santa, for those who are scared of life.
God is a big binkie, for wusses.
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Jonathan
While I see your point in saying that an omnipotent and omniscient god leaves no room for free will, I think there's another way of looking at it. Wouldn't it be possible for an all seeing, all knowing, all powerful god to know the possible outcome of every possible action, decision, thought, etc. made by it's creation(s)? Meaning omniscience and free will aren't necessarily diametrically opposed. Just my two cents.
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Pagels always provocative!
To seek another paradigm-shift, consider that Western Christianity is top-down with all of its dogmas, prescriptives and absolutes; whereas Eastern Christianity is bottom-up with everything a matter of one's faith. The latter's cultural linchpin is the Russian concept of "Sobornost" or love, collective consciousness or brotherhood. The Baltic German theologian Walter Schubart forecast that in time Russia will transform the mentality of the West and be Europe's "salvation!"