For the last few days, my beautiful and sexy wife and I have been watching Sabrina, an old Audrey Hepburn movie from the 1950’s.  In one scene, Hepburn’s character makes a failed soufflé at a cooking school in Paris.  The next day I woke up, filled with the urge to cook a soufflé myself.  In particular, chocolate.  In particular, to impress said beautiful and sexy wife, whoc like most beautiful and sexy wives, loves chocolate.

Unfortunately, it took me several days to gather the requisite ingredients and equipment (finding a soufflé dish is trickier than you might imagine, especially if you’re not interested in paying a bajillion dollars for one at a specialty cooking shop), but this morning I baked a lovely chocolate soufflé which we ate for brunch.  It was light, fluffy, and sinfully delicious.  I was so impressed with myself (and the product of my endeavors), that now I want to bake another one, perhaps cheese.  Thus, the title of this post.  It has bitten me.

Incidentally, I am a devoted Audrey Hepburn fan, and currently own twelve of her movies on DVD.  I intend to own them all.  We also have a large picture of her in our kitchen, which I got from a guy who was moving out of his apartment here in the building.  The picture belonged to his girlfriend, and he personally hated it, and when I commented on it, he proposed to give it to me and tell her that it was destroyed accidentally in the move.  I went home happy.

Also incidentally, the movie amuses me because of the obvious early 1950’s portrayal of capitalism and business as virtuous and beneficial, which is interesting to me because we have been discussing the Red Scare and its effect on Hollywood in one of my seminar classes at law school.

By the way, here’s the recipe I used.  It was easy; you should try it.

I am increasingly suspicious that Christianity isn’t going to do the trick for me.  I have reasons.

First, I really do not think that that Christianity, the Bible, the God of the Bible, and/or Jesus Christ objectively represent absolute truth.  I’m just not convinced, and I think, weighing the evidence in my mind, that it is less likely than otherwise that Jesus is the Son Of God send down to be Sacrificed For Our Sins and representing the One True Way.  Absent some compelling reason to think otherwise, I just don’t believe it’s True.

That, of course, does not end the inquiry, because I’m pretty skeptical in general of the practical reality of objective absolute truth.  I’m willing to accept the possibility that Christianity is Truth even if its foundational and theological truth-claims are questionable.  To that end, I have danced around with Christianity and belief in Jesus for most of the past year.  I’ve prayed.  I’ve read in the gospels.  I’ve attended a handful of churches.  My attitude was that I was willing to set aside the objective truth inquiry and settle for asking if Christianity is meaningful to me.  I had an intuition that there was transofrmational power in Christianity that I was keenly interested in, that Christianity could turn me into a New Man, the way C. S. Lewis talks about it in Mere Christianity.  I even felt the beginnings of some kind of personal transformation in my life as I genuinely tried to live a Christian life.

So why then am I afraid to move forward?  What holds me back from asserting, “this is what I believe; this is where I stand?”  What keeps me from diving in and accepting Jesus Christ and Christianity with open arms?  What is it about Christianity that simultaneously attracts and repels me?  I know there are probably some simplistic answers from the Christian perspective.  I’m not interested in those; I don;t really find them convincing.

Am I so scarred from my disentanglement from Mormonism that I am unwilling to embrace any religion, like an abuse victim who has a hard time forming new relationships because of deep-seated trust issues?  Did Mormonism leave me with a lingering sense that I will only be satisfied when I find a religion that I am certain is objectively, absolutely true?  (If so, I’m pretty much screwed, because I’m comfortable saying there ain’t one out there).  If I say No to Christianity, will I be able to say Yes to anything else?

What is it about Christianity that appeals to me?  I like Jesus himself, and his teachings.  I find the general theology of Christianity, the picture of God made man to save fallen humanity, appealing and comforting.  I like Christian liturgy.  I like hymns.  I am comfortable with the Bible (although I have spent my life learining to see it through uniquely Mormon eyes, so in many ways I am still completely new to scripture).  I’m a western person, and Christianity is unquestionably the religion of the West–it’s the religious currency of our society and it is probably the most culturally relevant.  And like I said above, Christianity at least seems to offer something transformational that I feel like I need.  I’m a pretty broken person in a lot of ways, and I think I could certainly use a heapin’ helpin’ of healin’ atonement.

Also, I really like Christmas.  Particularly, I like the religious/sacred message of Christmas.  The juxtaposition of the darkest, coldest time of the year with the birth of Mankind’s salvation.  I love the sacred Christmas hymns.  I love the Christmas story in the gospels.  I eat it up with a spoon.  I’m not sure what I’d make of Christmas if I wasn’t a Christian (watch for a blog post coming up about this), but I am absolutely unwilling to completely give it up.

On the other hand, I have a sneaking, growing suspicion that the Jesus of history really wasn’t the Jesus of Christianity.  If Jesus isn’t actually the one true savior of fallen humanity, then I don’t really need him in any any kind of external, objective, cosmological sense (I may personally need him because of the requirements of my own psyche, but that’s a different issue).  And if I don’t need him, then what is he to me?  Even if there is truth and meaning in the Jesus myth, I don’t know that I am willing to make it my exclusive truth and meaning or even my primary truth and meaning.

I don’t think I believe in a personal god at all, and I also don’t think I belive that Jesus is a unique incarnation of God.  I’m not convinced that the gospels are an accurate depiction of the life of Jesus, or that Paul’s epistles are a univerally and objectively correct interpretation of the life of Jesus, either.  I’m not certain I think I need Jesus to save me from my sins (since I’m not really sure I belive in sin, hell, or the Devil, certainly in the orthodox Christian sense).  I’m also strongly turned off by both fundamentalist/evangelical and liberal Christians, and I have serious reservations about the emerging conversation.

I’m not certain that I want all of my life to be Jesus-flavored.  In other words, I’m not ready to devote myself completely to Jesus, and I don’t know if I’m even interested in doing so–sometimes it seems great, but usually it seems like to make it work for me I’d have to do a lot of self-brainwashing that I am absolutely unwilling to do.

What about the personal transformation that I claimed to have felt beginning?  If that’s the result I want from religion, and my intuition says Christianity offer it, and I’ve even felt its beginnings as I started to practice Christianity, then why did I stop?  They were great, I’ll admit it.  In fact, This is not an easy question to answer.  Maybe personal transofrmation isn’t really what I’m wanting after all.  Or maybe it is, but there’s too much other stuff in the package of Christianity (or even in the package of Jesus), such that I feel the need to look elsewhere for transformation.  Or maybe a part of the transformation I wanted was a connection, a relationoship with God that never seemed to actually happen.  Perhaps the transformation I want is not just into a better person, but a better person that is connected to God.  And I certainly didn’t feel like that was happening.  Not even a little bit.

So what am I supposed to make of all of this?  I’m at a loss.  On some level I have an attraction to Jesus and to Christianity, but not such that I would be willing to call myself (or think of myself as) Christian in any meaningful sense.  Does it matter?  On one level, no–I can believe whatever I want, of course.  On another level, if I could self-identify as a Christian, then it would give so much direction to an otherwise extremely difficult (and basically directionless) spiritual journey.  Maybe that’s not enough.  As usual, I just don’t know.

I’m a little bit angry with a particular aspect of Mormonism today. Mostly, I find myself just caring less about the Mormon Church all the time, but when something directly affects me or my relationships, it’s hard to just grin and bear it.  even if it means coming out of blogging semi-retirement.

Mormonism teaches that if you pray to ask with a sincere heart, that God will tell you that the Church is True. It’s a guarantee- you do x and God will do y. That seems innocuous enough, until you apply it to the real world, to real people, and discover that actually plenty of people have prayed about the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and Mormonism in general, and have not gotten a satisfactory answer. This is difficult to reconcile. God has supposedly made a promise, right? So either God breaks his promises, or the people who aren’t getting an answer are the problem. And Mormonism teaches that God is a God of truth and cannot lie. Therefore, people like me must be lying. It’s the only logical conclusion- or something like it. Either we’re being dishonest with ourselves, we’re blinded by our pride, we’re too far in sin or too caught up in the world to recognize the Spirit, or something like that. But any way you want to fold it, the result is offensive and insulting. This line of logic means that everyone who doesn’t join (or stay in) the Church is either lying or has allowed themselves to be in the bondage of Satan.

There are two ways out of this for Mormons. One is the fairly common idea that God answers prayers in his own time, and you’ve just got to have faith. That is total crap. Why should I have faith that God is eventually going to give me a satisfactory answer? How long do I wait? Forever? Why? Why would I do that? There’s a point where it just becomes more likely that the reason why God’s not telling you Mormonism is true is because it isn’t. If I don;t know the Church is true, what possible reason would I have to keep asking and persevering for my entire life until I find out that it is? If I want it that bad, I’ll wind up manufacturing it myself.

Plus, by that same logic, I should be just as persevering with any other Church or religion, if my only assurance is the testimony of others. What makes the people testifying the truth of Mormonism any more trustworthy or reliable than the people testifying the truth of Catholicism, Islam, Quakerism, or Atheism?

Furthermore, what good is a promise that will for all intents and purposes never be fulfilled, or fulfilled in a way that is completely unlike what you expect or is completely unlike what the plain meaning of the promise is, the reasonable interpretation of the promise. If God does that, then he’s wiggling out of his promises on technicalities, and that isn’t really being a God of Truth. Promising something that reasonably sounds like x when you really mean y isn’t honest, even if y is technically one possible interpretation of the promise. That’s not honesty and Truth, that’s deception, which is the opposite.

There’s one other way Mormons can escape the insulting reconciliation that forces them to brand everyone else a liar, and that is the ability to live with paradox. This is the best way, the most productive way- reconciling God’s promises with people who don’t get answers to their prayers by not reconciling it at all. By chalking it up to something they just don’t understand. This allows the Mormon to be a believer without assigning dishonest or evil motives to everyone else. It allows the believer to take people like me at face value, to not have to assume that I have a hidden motive or agenda when I say I just don’t believe the Church is true and I just don’t believe that the Holy Ghost has told me it is.

Unfortunately, not everyone can do this. Living with paradox means maintaining a kind of cognitive dissonance, and cognitive dissonance makes people uncomfortable.

So instead of just accepting the paradox, most Mormons reconcile a (God’s promises) and b (people who don’t get answers) by assigning ulterior motives, by questioning peoples’ integrity, and by assuming that there’s some hidden but grievous sin. In short, reconciling Mormon doctrine with reality requires Mormons to pass exactly the kind judgment that Christ commanded us not to pass.

O God, our King, by the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ on the first day of the week, you conquered sin, put death to flight, and gave us the hope of everlasting life: Redeem all our days by this victory; forgive our sins, banish our fears, make us bold to praise you and to do your will; and steel us to wait for the comsummation of your kingdom on the last great Day; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

-from The Book of Common Prayer

First, before you read this post and certainly before you comment, go back and at least read The Old Limbo Crossroads, to get some background. It’s better if you’re new to this blog to get completely caught up by reading What’s Going On, but the previous Crossroads is really the bare minimum.

Okay, now on to the topic at hand, which is Evangelical Christianity.

I grew up Mormon, but I grew up in East Tennessee, which means that most of my peers were Evangelical Christians of some kind. Most of my close friends were nonreligious or Roman Catholic, but most of the Christianity that I was exposed to in my formative years was evangelical.

In particular, I had one really good evangelical friend whose name was Brock. We had kind of a common understanding that meant we didn’t try to convert each other, but through him I was exposed to a lot of the people that he went to church with. This exposure was often limited, but it was significant: these were people who really believed in Jesus Christ, who lived Christ-centered lives, and who were happy about it. You could see it in their faces, that Jesus Christ had made a difference. It was something that I did not see in my fellow Mormons, and it was something that stuck with me and was not easy to reconcile, even on my mission. I often thought back to these people and wondered how, if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was really Christ’s church on earth, how these non-members could be so obviously and vibrantly Christian.

As I served my mission, my understanding of Jesus Christ developed and it drifted towards a more full understanding of grace, one which I inevitably had to try to reconcile with Mormonism (and I did it by constantly revising the Gospel According To Kullervo). Most of the doubts I had about Mormonism were laced with Evangelical concerns. My personal understanding of Jesus Christ ultimately developed into something very Protestant, with Mormonism’s specific practices and odd doctrinal quirks pretty much tacked on to the side.

Thus, last year when I finally started giving serious voice to my doubts about Mormonism, it was because I increasingly saw Mormonism as something that did not match my understanding of Jesus Christ, the Bible, and what I thought Christianity was all about.

Granted, leaving Mormonism ultimately led me to have to seriously examine, and in the end dig up and re-plant, my belief in Jesus Christ and in God. But I feel at this point that I have come full circle and I am now back in a place where I can state without (much) reservation that I believe in Jesus and I want to follow him.

Anyway, because of all of this, Evangelical Christianity is attractive to me. I have very little interest in theological liberalism (a topic that I will address in a future post), and reading some of the writers in the Emergent conversation (Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Donald Miller) within Evangelical Christianity has done a great deal to resolve many of my major theological concerns, showing me that I actually can be an Evangelical Christian without being a mindless fundamentalist or a rabid Republican. It has all been extremely compelling.

Right now my family is attending Cedar Ridge Community Church, which is a kind of emergent Evangelical nondenominational church, and it’s a really good place. It has a lot going for it. I agree with everything they preach form the pulpit, but in a way that challenges me instead of leaving me complacent. I am excited about their commitment to reaching out and blessing the world in so many ways. It is a church where I have few objections. But the more time goes by, and the more I find myself wanting to seriously follow, serve, and draw closer to, Jesus Christ, the more those objections seem to be a big deal.

Most of my objections have to do with Evangelical Christianity in general as opposed to the church we attend in specific.

The first is a question of authority, or more properly, of authoritative-ness. I guess I believe that all authority is given to Jesus Christ, like it says in the gospels, and that this authority still resides in Jesus, as opposed to being found in a book or in a pedigree of clergy or priesthood. Since Jesus promised us that when we are gathered in his name, he is among us, we have access to his authority when we are acting in his name.

That’s fine and good, and it’s actually kind of a tangent, because it’s not really my problem. My problem is that in the church I attend, there’s a real sense of all being on the journey together, like we’re all trying to be disciples of Jesus Christ in the best way we can, and we’re helping each other do that. That sounds great, but it doesn’t do the trick for me.

While there may be Authority, the kind that actually only Jesus has from the Father, I don’t feel like this set-up is very authoritative. Trustworthy. Reliable. Solid. I don’t feel like this church as an institution has much of any weight behind it whatsoever. It doesn’t feel solid. I’m not saying I think it won’t last- the church has been around for 25 years after all. But what is 25 years in the nearly 2000-year history of Christianity? What institutional experience and wisdom can there even be in an organization that is so new, especially one that is both Evangelical and Emergent, both of which in the context of church history mean some measure of rejection of broad arrays of Christian tradition?

My point is that I don’t feel like Evangelical churches are authoritative. I don’t think the Bible alone makes them authoritative, either, and I also don’t even think belief in Jesus Christ makes them authoritative.

What I’m trying to say is this- I wouldn’t feel confident going to the pastor at Cedar Ridge for personal or spiritual guidance. I feel like he’s just a guy, same as me, trying to figure thigs out. That has a certain appeal, sure, especially from the pulpit (there isn’t technically a pulpit, but that’s beside the point), but at the same time it doesn’t make me feel like he’s a spiritual leader that I could turn to. As far as I know, he hasn’t been to a seminary or anything. It’s kind of a surprise that that matters to me, growing up Mormon with a lay clergy, but as it turns out I think it actually matters a lot.

So with Evangelical Christianity, I have problems with how authoritative I feel the institutions and clergy are. My second problem is more theological. In theory, I believe in Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice, once for all. I believe in salvation by grace through faith. I believe that the price for my sins has already been paid, that I am already forgiven before I even did anything wrong.

My problem is that that sounds great on paper and in conversation, but it seems too abstract in practice. Let’s say I do something wrong, and feel bad about it. What am I supposed to do to be right with God? My theology tells me that inasmuch as I have faith in Jesus Christ, I am already right with God. But that doesn’t seem very real. I feel like I’m left trying to convince myself that I’m already forgiven and that it’s already taken care of and I should just be thankful for what Jesus did for me. But I still feel really bad, and all I can do is try, in vain, to talk myself out of the guilt.

It’s all abstract: I just have to trust that my wrongs were already righted 2,000ish years ago so I have nothing to worry about. But I have a hard time convincing myself of it. Maybe it’s because I really don’t have faith. Maybe it’s because I’m still stuck in a Mormon mindset that demands I earn my salvation. I don’t know. But at the very least, I would like something concrete to do, at least an outward manifestation of reconciliation, so I can have some kind of closure on my sins. I’m not talking about earning forgiveness; I know I can’t do that. I just mean that I want to be able to somehow make concrete the abstract idea of my salvation by the grace of God. And Evangelical Christianity, in my opinion, doesn’t really offer that. It has no real sacraments, no clergy to confess to. It seems like the whole religion is just about deciding you believe, and then being glad about it.

I see it seem work for other people, and in theory I think it sounds great. But in practice it doesn’t seem to have any effect. I don’t feel transformed, healed, or even justified by just “realizing it’s all okay.”

Maybe I’ve missed the point- maybe Christianity is about realizing, for real, that it is okay, that Jesus made it so when you believe in him your sins are gone, and there’s nothing you have to do but acknowledge and accept it, for real. Maybe my insistence on some external performance is holding me back from real conversion, real faith, and the kind of transformational Christianity that I’m hungry for. I acknowledge the possibility. But it doesn’t change anything. And reassurances from other Christians that I’m on the right track are nice and supportive, but they’re not authoritative- they’re just more people like me, in the same boat as I am. What do they know? How are they more trustworthy than I am?

I imagine that the person that I really should trust is Jesus, that he has told me himself that he has atoned for my sins, and that anything else would just be noise. Maybe. But it doesn’t seem to be happening, to really be connecting. Again, I am left feeling like I’m just trying to talk myself out of feeling guilty.

I’ve talked about forgiveness for sins as probably the most important example, but the principles apply to the sum total of religious life. Evangelical Christianity has all of the action happen in the long ago and far away, and thus in the inaccessible abstract.

My third problem with Evangelical Christianity is the form of worship. For the most part, praise bands and Christian pop music do absolutely nothing for me. I want the deep spirituality of liturgy and hymns. I’m not trying to be a worship-consumer or anything, but modern, contemporary worship just doesn’t feel like it has any weight behind it. It is sincere but ephemeral, and seems to be primarily a matter of emotional appeal. Part of leaving Mormonism was the realization that emotions are not the same thing as the Holy Spirit. Emotions are the product of propaganda as often as they are the product of nearness to God.

Evangelical Christianity (particularly, for me at least, the emergent conversation) is firmly rooted in scripture, reason (within the context of faith), and mysticism (i.e. the Holy Spirit), but has abandoned tradition almost entirely. I know the emergent conversation has made overtures at recapturing some tradition, but in my opinion it’s been barely more than a token effort, and comes across as superficial to me.

In fact, sometimes Evangelical Christianity seems altogether tacky and plastic, not anything like an ancient Middle Eastern (or even European) faith tradition, and certainly not anything like the Kingdom of Heaven.

Finally, I have some issues with Community. I feel like Christian community is absolutely critical, as Jesus commanded his disciples to be one even as he is one with the Father. I realize that the emergent conversation has tried to emphasize this, but in practice it seems ot not be happening. How do you have authentic community in a megachurch?

Even at Cedar Ridge, which is certainly no megachurch, it seems to me like the congregation might be too big for authentic community, and although they try really hard (and admirably) to foster community, it seems artificial. It’s like they’re trying to make a plant by mixing the component parts all together in a bowl, instead of planting the seeds, setting up the right conditions, and cultivating it as it grows.

Anyway, I have a strange love-hate relationship with Evangelical Christianity, and I’m hesitant to embrace it more fully than I already have, while at the same time, it has things that I want and need that I don’t know if I really can find anywhere else. And I feel like I must face the real possibility that my hesitation is because of the lingering effects of my Mormon roots, or maybe because I simply haven’t fully been able to understand and appreciate what Jesus Christ is all about.

I don’t think there’s absolute morality, because such a thing would be completely impractical. Human existence is simply too complicated to tolerate a real absolute set of behavioral guideleines. Thus, to apply a set of absolute morals, you either have to radically change your existence (which I think is pretty much impossible, at least to the extent that would make absolute morality work), or you have to radically change the way you see the world. And I don’t mean that in a good way, either. I’m talking about deluding yourself and constructing a worldview that doesn;t even reflect reality a little bit.

That being said, where’s the basis for morality? I think Dawkins is kind of circling the issue and getting close to it in this interview, but I think he missed the core.

At the core, human morality is (or should be) based on informed empathy, the basic concept of caring about other people, coupled with some active effort to find out how your actions affect them.

So, what makes killing wrong? Simply put, because being killed sucks,a nd I don;t want to be killed. Also, having people close to you be killed sucks, so I don’t want to kill some other mother’s son. But it’s not just the Golden Rule in its simplest form, because empathy means being sensitive to how other people feel about things even when it’s different from how you might feel about it were your positions switched.

It also means trying to be aware of broader effects of your actions. It’s easy to have empathy when you’re ignorant of how your shoes were made, for example. But that’s an irresponsible way of going about things. Part of informed empathy means finding out how your shoes were made, and then exercising a bit of empathy and foregoing products made with sweatshop labor.

I’m not talking about full-blown Utilitarianism, the greatest amount of hapiness for the greatest number of people. Again, that’s an absolute moral system and thus I think it’s impractical when applied to real life. I’m simply talking about taking other people into consideration when we make decisions. Callously disregarding other peoples’ suffering? Easy- that’s immoral.

Sure, things change. Mores and norms change over time. Peoples’ ways lof looking at and thinking about the world often evolve and become more sophisticated. Much of this stuff is what Dawkins was talking about, the external morality. But internally, I think empathy is natural human trait that is truly universal (except for the dysfunctional and the broken- and well… they’re broken). Granted, people often apply empathy to only their own family or their own clan, or whatever. And people can have the empathy trained out of them, by various experiences and circumstances, intentional or un-. But at the heart of it, empathy is universal, and so it seems like an easy basis for a universal (though not absolute) morality.

Informed empathy is simply a matter of extending the sphere, and is by definition universal (in the sense of “this is what everyone should do, even if it not what everyone does”) because it means applying empathy to as large a number of people (and other living things) as possible.

No, informed empathy doesn’t answer all the questions. It doesn’t solve the moral dillemmas, but I think if we’re looking for something that’s going to solve the moral dillemmas, we’re kidding ourselves. Existence is simply too complicated for that. That’s why they’re called “dilemmas.” Sometimes the situation may mean that you have to do something that hurts someone, despite the empathy you feel. Nothing’s going to fix that- if you’re looking for a moral system that never makes you make that kind of hard decision, then you’re either looking for a fictional notion or behavioral paralysis. But the point of informed empathy is that you realize and feel the ramifications of those decisions. You do them knowingly- if you have to hurt someone you feel a bit of their pain, and it makes you take those kinds of questions very seriously. Empathy is not going to tell you what to do; it’s going to tell you the factors to consider when deciding what to do. It leaves the judgment call to you without passing the buck.

What informed empathy does is give a basic moral compass, one that is natural, internal, and universal, while at the same time it invites one to step a little bit outside their comfort zone and actively try to find out how other people feel, so as to better feel and show empathy.

Empathy doesn’t give you answers, it just helps you understand the question. In the end, I think that’s all one can expect from morality. Anything more is unrealistic and out of touch with reality.

As I’ve said before, I do not deny the existence of God, but there are some things that I do deny. Many of them actually assume that God exists, so what I mean then is that “if there is a God, I deny that he is like x.”

Anyway.

I deny the existence of hell. That an even marginally good god would damn people to eternal punishment and torture for finite sins committed in virtual ignorance is absolutely preposterous. That some people do believe this makes my mind boggle.

I deny the infallibility of the Bible (or any other religious text), of human religious leaders, of religions, and of philosophies. The claim of infallibility is unbelievably arrogant, and reality usually shows the truth.

I deny the existence of Fossil-Hiding God. What I mean by that is that I deny that God would create a world that looked like he didn’t create it as some kind of test of faith. I deny that God would say x, and then purposely hide all evidence of x and in fact plant all kinds of counterevidence against x. “Test us,” my eye.

I deny the existence of any one “chosen people.” I deny an ethnocentric God.

I deny that morality is based on God’s decree. I deny that the only line between moral and immoral is the whim of deity. I deny a moral system that is ultimately based on “because I said so.” That’s elementary school morality. God is certainly better than that, if he indeed exists. And we have the potential to be better than that, and I hardly believe that God simply wants us to behave according to the lowest common denominator. At the very least, it would make God an arbitrary and capricious God, and that takes me to two sub-denials:

I deny arbitrary commandments, i.e., things that are not inherently, intuitively immoral. This is of course a subset of the above denial, because the only thing that makes homosexuality immoral, for example, is “God said so.” Or tea and coffee in Mormonism. Being harmful to people doesn’t naturally equal immoral (otherwise getting in a car would be immoral), and the only thing that would make the Word of Wisdom a moral issue would be the fact that God said do. And I deny that God ever said such a thing.

I deny an arbitrary God. If God exists, he certainly doesn’t predestine some people for heaven and some for hell. That’s cruel capriciousness. Being the supreme being doesn’t mean he can just do whatever he wants, and if it does, then I deny the existence of a God who would just do whatever he wanted even if he could.

That’s all I can think of. There are more nit-picky things I deny, but those are specific religious doctrines that I reject, as opposed to these kinds of overarching universal denials.

Today I read Ebon Musings’ very excellent All Possible Worlds.  It’s an essay explaining the argument from evil, which is an arguyment I typically pooh-pooh.  Normally, the person proposing the argument is not resting on good logic.  They have religious-like faith in the solidity of their assumptions, and they fail to see how any possible refutation could even come close to undermining their argument.  Trying to explain that the assertion that “a morally perfect god would not allow evil” is too simplistic to be a given is often an exercise in watching water flow off a duck’s back.  Too often, the person making the argument is clearly substituting their own sense of idealized morality and expecting that God would unquestioningly abide by it.  Which is silly.

In contrast, Ebon Musings carefully considers a truckload of strong and weak positions against the argument from evil, and he rejects them carefully.  I don’t necessarily think that in the end the whole thing proves the existence or nonexistence of God, but it is hard to argue with the author’s very reasonable conclusion that the evidence seems to be strongly in atheism’s favor.

Incidentally, this is one of the features that I like best about Ebon Musing’s work.  He (she?  I don’t really know, so look how I make sexist assumptions!) isn’t arrogant, and he doesn’t claim that his reasoning proves more than it actually does.  He fully acknowledges the possibility of being wrong.

Anyway, my brother (Racticas) read the article and said that he felt it neglected some possible explanations.  Chiefly, what if there is indeed an omnipotent and omniscient God, but he is a mean son of a bitch.  What if God is evil and capricious, and the exact opposite of “morally perfect?”  Ebon Musings suggests that such a God should be opposed, not worshipped.  But what if such opposition is completely impotent.  This evil god is omnipotent and -scient, after all, so you have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

The conclusion seems to be that in such a case, it would be best to simply grovwl and serve evil god in the hope that he will not kill you horribly and damn you.  Of course, there’s no reason to expect that evil god would deal with you justly; in fact, there’s every reson to expect that evil god will be definitively unjust.  It would be like working for a super-villain.  You never know when he’s going to capriciously kill his own minions.

And how would you know that evil god doesn’t like a good fight, or favor those mortals with the cajones to oppose him?  You don’t; that’s the problem!  You know nothing!  You have no reliable standard on which to base your actions in regard to god, since you have no reason to imagine that im- or amoral god won;t be capricious and arbitrary.

Thus you’re left functionally in the same position as the atheist.  Since there’s no basis on which to decide how to serve or placate god, you may as well simply ignore him.  This might seal your doom, but it might not.  You have no idea, really.

In discussing this with my brother, I said “you know, if there’s no god, or a totally unreliable god, you may as well do whatever suits you best in regards to god.  If you want to be an atheist, whatever.  If you want to worship your stuffed animals or something, whatever.”

It was about morality. Often when you say you don’t believe in God, but you believe in right and wrong, you get the “well, then how can you possibly have a basis for right and wrong without God?”

Let me translate: “an action’s moral rightness is determined solely by the whim of an authority figure.”  Or, more simply: “what makes something right or wrong is that the guy in charge said to not do it.”

What are you, six years old? Right and wrong determined solely because “I said so,” and because you get punished for doing what’s wrong? Give me a break. Child development time.

Lawrence Kohlberg posited a theory of moral development that I think is spot-on. It involves stages that a child progresses through while they develop morality. There are three stages that each have substages. The three stages are pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional.

The pre-conventional stage is broken up into first Obedience and Punishment Orientation, and then Self-interest Orientation. When babies start out, right and wrong are determined by what you get punished for. Then, right and wrong are determined by what reward you get for doing the right hing or refraining from the wrong thing.

Next come the conventional stages: Interpersonal Accord and Conformity (the good girl/good boy attitude), and then Authority and Social-order Maintaining Orientation (law and order morality).  In other words, as you develop, your sense of right and wring is determined by the way others perceive you: being seen as a “good boy” validates you personally and gives you personal satisfaction, so you act accordingly.  From there, you develop into a stage where morality is based on its functions- an authority figure dictates the rules, and everyone is happy if they obey them, because society works smoother and life is easier when we are obedient and follow the rules.

After that come the post-conventional stages, which are Social Contract Orientation and then finally the apex of Universal Ethical Principles.  At the social contract orientation, your morals are based on societally agreed-upon norms.  it’s like the law and order orientation, except it relies on a general consensus instead of the dictates of an authoirty figure.  You follow the rules we have all more or less agreed on because we have all agreed on the rules, and life/society/everything is better when we play together well, and we can expect and rely on reciprocal adherence to the social contract.

At the top is the idea of universal ethical principles, which mirrors Kant’s categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”  In other words, morality is defined by its universality.  It’s not morality-by-committee and it’s not democratic.  It’s acting morally based on principles that can be applied universally.  If it would be okay for anyone to do it, it would be okay for you to do it.

The other way to formulate it?  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Fear of hell and a wish for heaven are pre-conventional morality and I reject the idea that God, the highest of all beings, if he even exists, functions on the basest level.  “It’s wrong because God said it was wrong” is at best, conventional morality.  It’s mediocrity, nothing more.  If God exists, I likewise reject the idea that he is not the highest, most advanced of all beings.  He invites us up to his level, not the other way around.  In other words, he invites us up the the supernal realm of universal ethical principles.  The funny thing is, once you get to post-conventional morality, morality is no longer dependent on an authority figure, e.g., God.

But ditto for the Golden Rule.  If it’s true, it’s not dependent on the will of deity for force and effect.  It’s simply true because of its universality.

So, does post-conventional morality, not needing God for morality, mean we don’t need God?   I don’t think so.  That presumes that the only function of God is to dictate morality to us, and I think God is a lot bigger than just that one role, if there is a God at all.

A good argument can be made that God and morality are malleable enough so that no matter what our own moral development is, we can still no right and wrong.  In other words, heaven and hell are there for people who need to be scared into doing what’s right,  and lists of commandments are there for people who never quite make it to post-conventional morality.

There’s something to be said for that, since it’s avery inclusive view, and since Kohlberg’s theory assumes that not everyone develops all the way up to the post-conventional stages.  If not everyone can reach post-conventional morality, then it makes sense for God to fashion a system that still compels those people to act morally.

What doesn’t make sense, though, is the idea that God would invent commandments and punishments at those lower levels that actually conflict with post-conventional morality.  No universal ethical principle is violated by homosexuality.  Homosexuality does not implicate the Golden Rule at all.  So if God operates on Universal Principles, it would makes sense for his conventional commandments to be in line with those universal principles, not arbitrary ridiculous stuff.

If some people need commandments in order to act morally, then it would make sense for those commandments to be things like “don’t rape people,” i.e., things that are also universal principles.  Not things like “don’t drink coffee,” that don’t even come into the Golden Rule’s analysis.

And I have spoken my peace on it.

For a few days I’ve been thinking about the possibility that there is no God.  For my whole life, I have assumed there was one, but I’ve never experienced him or had any kind of spiritual relationship with him.  So I have no personal basis for claiming that I know or even suspect that there is a deity.  I mean, I’d like there to be one, but that’s not really enough for me.  I’m too skeptical to be satisfied with believing based solely on the desire to believe (sorry, Alma- it’s just not going to happen).

What if there is no God?  What then?  Is there morality without God?  Of course there is.  Morality, to me, is instinctive and universal.  True morality at least.  Every religion teaches respect and kindness towards fellow humans- we don’t need a god to tell us that.  The things that aren’t universal, like whether God forbids the eating of pork or beef, are in my opinion clearly manmade morality.  Arbitrary garbage that has to do with human institutions, not with what’s really right or wrong.

What’s “morally wrong” with coffee?  Nothing; the very idea is preposteroous to everyone but Mormons.  But to them, it’s a moral issue because they believe God commanded it.  This is the kind of thing that I gleefully abandon.  We need God to tell us to not drink coffee, to not eat pork, and to adhere to specific religious observances.  We don’t need God to tell us to not be jerks.  We know to not be jerks on our own, and we manage to do it regardless, even when we’re told to not do it by “God.”

Anyway, I digress.  I don’t feel like  I need God to have morality, and anyway, that’s beside the point.  If there’s no God there’s no God regardless of whether we “need” him for something or not.

So if there is no God, what is there?  I don’t believe that the science we have describes everything, and I don’t believe that the material is all that is.  Maybe that’s ignorant and superstitious of me, but it’s who I am.  Does that mean I believe in spirit, or in mind that is separate from body?  I’m not sure.  Does it mean I believe in magic? Unfortunately, no.  As cool as magic would be, I don’t think it exists (unless you define it so broadly that it can’t help but exist, and then you’re not saying anything useful).  Likewise, in believing that there is something more than the material, I suppose I could formulate what I do believe in and call it “God,” but that would actually only confuse and mislead, since I would be talking about something that is a far cry from what most people mean when they use the term.

I’m not so sure I believe in a distinct divine being  with consciousness and personalty.  I certainly don’t believe in a God with a physical form (of flesh and bone or otherwise).  The thing is, the more I think about it, the more I think I may be comfortable with the idea of no God.  Not because it gives me license to do whatever I want or anything, because like I said, I still believe in morality.

I certainly do not have all the answers, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else does, either, no matter how adamantly they claim to have them.  I believe in mystery.  I believe in the unexplained, and perhaps in the unexplainable.  I believe that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.  But I don’t know if I believe in God.