Dexter wrote:Is there another atheist in the world like Robert Tulip, speaking to a church about Christ? I'm not sure about that!

I might have asked before, do the people there know your views?

There are probably a lot, but most find the dialogue about theology between faith and reason is difficult to find any venues for. An earlier related thread is http://www.booktalk.org/dutch-christian ... 11129.html

I am happy to talk about my views if I find anyone who is interested. No one at my church has ever really asked me much about my views on atheism. I did comment once from the pulpit that Christ was not born of a virgin, and some one said afterwards they had never heard anyone say that in church before. I also gave a sermon about zodiac symbolism in Revelation, but they have not invited me to preach sermons recently.

It's admirable what you're doing, Robert, but doesn't your tongue hurt from biting it after a while? What you say on this forum is far more blunt than your more diplomatic church talk (and I'm not calling that two-faced; I understand how that works). I have to agree with Dexter and say that you are almost certainly a singular fellow in your atheistic Christianity. When we look at the atheist clergy such as the Methodist who came out, how many of them do we suppose take your path, deciding to remain Christians while taking none of it literally and not believing in God? At best, they might still profess a lingering fondness for some of the ritual and for the fellowship. But I can't imagine that any feel that they can continue to participate in the faith. It's over for them. That it isn't for you is what has had some of us scratching our heads.

DWill wrote:It's admirable what you're doing, Robert, but doesn't your tongue hurt from biting it after a while? What you say on this forum is far more blunt than your more diplomatic church talk (and I'm not calling that two-faced; I understand how that works). I have to agree with Dexter and say that you are almost certainly a singular fellow in your atheistic Christianity. When we look at the atheist clergy such as the Methodist who came out, how many of them do we suppose take your path, deciding to remain Christians while taking none of it literally and not believing in God? At best, they might still profess a lingering fondness for some of the ritual and for the fellowship. But I can't imagine that any feel that they can continue to participate in the faith. It's over for them. That it isn't for you is what has had some of us scratching our heads.

I have a completely original attitude towards religion. Starting from my BA Honours thesis back in 1985, I developed the hypothesis that Christianity originated as an interpretation of the cosmos, specifically of the slow change of the position of the stars due to precession of the equinox. This movement of the heavens, caused by the wobble of earth's axis, is the scientific basis of zodiac ages such as the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius. Where Galileo is reputed to have said 'but it moves', the precession paradigm shift is based on the observation 'but it wobbles'. The claim is that ancient writers used their observation of the effects of the spin wobble to construct an accurate theory of time, but this accurate vision was suppressed, forgotten, ignored and denied as the degraded view of historical Christianity emerged.

I remain of the view that this cosmic hypothesis is correct. In researching evidence for it over the years I have made some extremely interesting findings. Firstly, the New Testament and related literature are full of cosmic symbols, but these are usually carefully concealed. Secondly, there is deep cultural antipathy towards this hypothesis. Factors behind this hostility include its incompatibility with Christian supernaturalism, its links to the irrational folk traditions of astrology, its capacity to explain Christian theories of end times within a logical empirical model, and the sheer difficulty of articulating a theory that involves a substantial paradigm shift towards reconciling science and religion. This antipathy against natural explanations led to the massive destruction of pagan wisdom by early Christianity, leaving us with the difficult task of reconstructing the fragments.

A big part of my view is the hypothesis that miracles and symbols in the Bible generally originated from an enlightened understanding of the then-observable reality, especially regarding precession as a framework of time, but this understanding encountered massive opposition when they tried to explain it. Popular ignorance, delusion and vested interests meant that this accurate cosmology was rejected out of hand.

To respond to this problem, the Bible authors decided to conceal their observations within parables, allegorical stories that hinted at the real meaning by presenting it as something more accessible. The main result was the historical Gospels. Beginning from the myth of Jesus Christ as a cosmic symbol for the shift of Ages from Aries to Pisces which occurred in 21 AD, the authors steadily shifted towards a historical parable, firstly with the placeless discussion of Christ by Paul, and then with the specifically located discussion of Christ in the Gospels. Against this framework, Christ had been long expected by cosmic seers who understood the turning of the ages, and his failure to appear meant he had to be invented.

Against this framework, I find that the ethical story of the Gospels makes complete sense as a critique of social norms, with Jesus presenting a transformative vision grounded in an accurate cosmology. A big part of the accuracy derives from the assumption that scientific observation is the only real way to discover anything true. All the unscientific supernatural veneer of faith thereby becomes a degraded cover for the real accurate story.

Against this new framework, the conventional ideas of a transcendent God as a real entity are just folk fables, serving to institutionalise human power relations and distract attention from the possibility that the Bible could have a true message that is compatible with real evidence. To counter this conventional error, it is essential to respect atheism as the only religious view that is based on the ethical centrality of evidence. I regard criticism of atheism as ignorant and immoral, because atheism is the only religious view that is completely consistent with evidence and logic. I started my thinking from observation of real evidence about astronomy, and since then have only consolidated this scientific approach as what I regard as a coherent and compelling explanation.

My experience has been that these ideas are so removed from conventional opinion that I have generally not been able to find any points of engagement for discussion with others, except to explore implications of things that others can understand without a shift of mindset. I welcome Booktalk as a freethinking oasis, where I can regularly test and expand my views in dialogue with others, seeing what people understand and what they don't, and with standards of intellect and courtesy that enable constructive conversation.

The problem with the popular debate is that people fail to understand the meaning of words, and assume that their incorrect views are the only possible ones. This is as true for popular atheism as it is for popular religion. So for example, the idea of God as cosmic symbol is incompatible with the conventional myth of God as entity. There simply are no such entities that exist behind observable reality. But there are regular patterns that give rise to mythological symbols, and these can be studied and understood to explain the real meaning behind the allegory. Other ideas such as faith and grace seem completely obscure from a conventional scientific reading, and indeed they often are used in a corrupt way, but my view is that these ethical ideas have a deep natural meaning that can be recovered and explained.

Ralph Waldo Emerson went through a struggle similar to yours. As a young man, he had a plum job as the minister in the big Unitarian Church in Boston. He quit because he could not accept the doctrine that communion was a historical reenactment of sorts. This was a time when Unitarians were still Christians. Some time later, he goes before a graduating class of Harvard divinity students and tells them, essentially, to reject historical Christianity. I think of your ideas when I come upon certain passages. Speaking of Jesus, he says:

The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.

And:

In this point of view we become very sensible of the first defect of historical Christianity. Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love. But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man is made the injurer of man. The manner in which his name is surrounded with expressions, which were once sallies of admiration and love, but are now petrified into official titles, kills all generous sympathy and liking. All who hear me, feel, that the language that describes Christ to Europe and America, is not the style of friendship and enthusiasm to a good and noble heart, but is appropriated and formal, — paints a demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or Apollo. Accept the injurious impositions of our early catachetical instruction, and even honesty and self-denial were but splendid sins, if they did not wear the Christian name.

He elaborates fully on this theme, and comes in the end to telling these students who thought they were headed for the Christian ministry, what they should do.

And now let us do what we can to rekindle the smouldering, nigh quenched fire on the altar. The evils of the church that now is are manifest. The question returns, What shall we do? I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. All attempts to contrive a system are as cold as the new worship introduced by the French to the goddess of Reason, — to-day, pasteboard and fillagree, and ending to-morrow in madness and murder. Rather let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing. For, if once you are alive, you shall find they shall become plastic and new. The remedy to their deformity is, first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul. A whole popedom of forms, one pulsation of virtue can uplift and vivify. Two inestimable advantages Christianity has given us; first; the Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world; whose light dawns welcome alike into the closet of the philosopher, into the garret of toil, and into prison cells, and everywhere suggests, even to the vile, the dignity of spiritual being. Let it stand forevermore, a temple, which new love, new faith, new sight shall restore to more than its first splendor to mankind. And secondly, the institution of preaching, — the speech of man to men, — essentially the most flexible of all organs, of all forms. What hinders that now, everywhere, in pulpits, in lecture-rooms, in houses, in fields, wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, you speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation?

He rejects making a new religion or cultus as inevitably forced and sterile. His admonition to inject new life into the current forms sounds like you. But then what are his examples of the forms? The Sabbath and preaching--nothing about what anyone would see as the core concepts of Christianity. The students must have been saying, "What the heck? Now what do we do?"

The problem, if there is one, with taking Christianity symbolically is that it becomes released to the minds of every individual to do with as seems congenial to those particular minds. I've had the impression that you are interested in imposing a standard symbolical interpretation on the elements, to replace the standard literalistic one. But that is merely another theology. It's an understandable objective if the goal is to keep something like a Church going. But it doesn't have any authority behind it, and Authority is what made the old way work.

Emerson is certainly an interesting figure in American religion. I had a chat with my father about him today, and he said Emerson was his greatest inspiration. My dad lectured on American spirituality and poetry for many years, with quite a focus on Emerson. He suggested Francis O Matthiessen's American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941), a book which also analyses Melville, Thoreau and Hawthorne.

The mid nineteenth century was a great time of romantic transcendental idealism in American literature, a spirit that has been rather lost with more recent changes in intellectual fashion. Emerson's shift away from narrow dogma is shown well in his 1849 essay Nature, a celebration of observable divinity.

The inability to discuss this sort of material in a bigger public audience seems to me to be a big part of the malaise in American Christianity, with congregations expecting preachers to deliver an other-worldly magical fantasy as a form of entertainment that is disconnected from real life. It is hardly surprising that many preachers reject this hypocrisy and refuse to be part of it, and react against its basic false concepts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson as mentioned by DWill wrote:the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.

This is a powerful line. Emerson's Nature essay expands this naturalistic view of miracle, seeing life itself as divine, and rejecting the supernatural.

Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus.

Again, 'noxious exaggeration' is a precise diagnosis. Acceptance of blind authority is a big part of the problem, and Emerson opens his Nature essay by asking

"The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

And then a line that I can strongly relate to

All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. ... We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena.

Your father must be an interesting man to talk to, to say the least. Thanks for the book recommendation. I'd recommend Robert Richardson's Emerson: The Mind on Fire. Emerson is a hero of mine. He is sometimes opaque to me, in "Nature" and other places, but somehow I don't mind not having full understanding. I have a great nostalgia for the period of the New England Renaissance, when Emerson, Thoreau, and many others worked the Lyceum lecture circuit and common people took an interest in philosophy and literature. I've knocked around in Concord, Mass. several times.

Emerson and the rest were affected by the scientific spirit, but they they weren't afraid to freely use the parts of their minds that were less strictly rational, and to trust them. Maybe we scientific rationalists now distrust these parts of the mind and have our own "malaise" as a result.

There is a book called "Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion" by Alain de Botton in which "de Botton calls for a reorganization of our public institutions and articulates his philosophy of everyday life, advocating a secular use of religious rituals as a path to wisdom"( bookmarks magazine)
Hmmmmmmh, might have to get this one.....could be an interesting read if it isn't simply another manifesto.