Bible

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New Pope But Same Old Church!


The Roman Catholic Church is the elder statesman of all Christian churches. Prior to the “church of Rome,” as it is sometimes referred to as, there was the Church of Turkey. Early Christendom was kept alive there before moving to Greece and then to Rome. Like every family, there were differences in beliefs even in those early days. The Eastern rite churches, Greek and Russian among others, broke from the newly formed Holy Roman Church with its Pope.

In those days, priests of either rite married and had children. In 1139 the Roman church decided celibacy was a more proper route for its priests. This position was reaffirmed by the “Council of Trent” in 1563. But by 1563 the Roman Catholic church was under fire. It had for centuries maintained its own army and fought wars, mostly within the Italian provinces but also with Spain and France. And the power of the Pope had at least twice been challenged, first by King Henry VIII and then by one of its own bishops, Martin Luther. Each in turn formed new Christian churches, Henry the Church of England, and Luther the Lutherans. The Roman Catholic Church dug in its heels proclaiming the infallibility of the Pope and by extension, his decisions. The infallibility remains and is referred to as “ex cathedra.” This means whatever pronouncements the Pope makes takes on the power of church law. Popes have been extraordinarily careful in their pronouncements.

In 1965, during the 2nd Vatican Council, several changes were made by Pope Pius XII and his successor, Pope Paul VI. No longer would the mass be given in Latin but in the native language of the attendees of the mass. Other lesser changes were also made but people looked at this as a new beginning for the church. Unfortunately, and predictably, that was a far as any pope wanted to go. The College of Cardinals, those in charge of electing a pope, has stayed very conservative in its general beliefs and ensured those beliefs would remain by electing very conservative popes. Cardinals elect popes and popes raise bishops to the rank of cardinal. It is a very self-serving process that insures a continued conservative control. As an aside, by Catholic law, any Catholic man can be elected pope, he need not be an ordained priest but that has not happened since the earliest of days.

We now have the relatively new Pope Francis. He is the first pope elected who was not born in Europe and because of that many of the faithful thought, hoped, this signaled a new order. Francis is viewed as being a pope of the people. That is, his closeness to the poor of Argentina, where he was a cardinal, allowed him to be viewed as something other than the regal previous popes. But in truth, that is mostly hype rather than reality.

Pope Francis has reached out to gay and divorced Catholics, inviting them to return to the church. It was hoped that he would speak ex cathedra and at the very least embrace gay love as equal to any other but he has not. It was hoped that he would do away with the prohibition of divorced Catholics who have remarried from receiving communion, but he has not. I asked a priest why I, a divorced and remarried Catholic, would want to attend church services and not receive communion. A politic man, he had not good answer and side-stepped the question. I do not blame him, he is, after all, answerable to the Pope.

The Roman Catholic mass, and I believe Episcopalian and Lutheran services as well, are centered around the reception of holy communion. What is going on is like having a cake and ice cream party and inviting people to join in on all the festivities but not the cake and ice cream. It is pure silliness.

The Roman Catholic church is stuck in the 16th Century and staunchly refuses to move forward. Most church laws are founded on Biblical teachings. In the 16th Century, when most people could not read and were extremely poorly educated, that worked. But the intervening 500 years have seen the education of most Catholics far beyond just the ability to read. Educated Catholics have learned to think for themselves and that does not sit well with Roman Catholic leadership.

Even 500 years ago, however, certain beliefs of the Catholic church were challenged by enlightened men, Copernicus, Galileo, and Michelangelo. The Popes of those days could not imagine that the earth was not the center of the universe and declared heresy any who said otherwise.

Today, scholars are at odds over not just the meaning contained within the four gospels of the Bible, but their validity. You see, each of the four gospels, it is known, is an almalgem of early writings with unknown, or at best, questionable authors. And those are just the four accepted gospels. In truth, there are dozens of gospels. There are the gospels of Matthias, Mary, Thomas, Truth, Judas, Peter, and Phillip, to name a few. Many of these gospels are fragmentary at best and of debatable origin. Still, this shows the difficulty in determining the authenticity of what is written. I mention this because the four accepted gospels are referred to as the word of God when in fact they are the words of men. I am not trying to demean the gospels but simply put some perspective on them. I believe the most honest depiction of the gospels would be to refer to them as being divinely inspired.

The New Testament Bible we have today was translated from the ancient Greek. Theologians are wont to explain the construction of each. The four seldom are in complete agreement about any particular event and sometimes are in obvious disagreement. Therefore, to base an entire large religion on these texts is of questionable decision. One of the places all four gospels are in total agreement is where Jesus teaches that prime of following him is faith, not just in belief but in works. He taught basics of humility, kindness, honesty, empathy, suffrage, and acceptance as being more important than position, money and even man-made law. The Catholic Church, however, has chosen to not follow all of His beliefs. Jesus accepted all who came but the Roman Catholic church picks and choses who it will accept. How is that following the most basic teachings of Jesus? I suggest it is contrary.

The Roman Catholic Church has things backwards. It tells its membership to do what it wants rather than serving them as it should. That is, the church says, “here, come do this for your church!” Instead, it should be saying, “how can we better serve you?” The reason is does not and cannot ask that last question is because it would be required to allow priests to marry, women to become priests, gays to marry, and remarried Catholics full participation in the mass. These conservative old men, who Francis leads, simply cannot imagine such a situation becoming a reality. But it is a reality they need to embrace or they will be burying the very church they claim to defend. The percentage of participation by those born into the Roman Catholic church is falling world-wide and will continue unless changes are made.

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The Jesus I Know


The historical figure Jesus lived and died 2000 years ago. His public live lasted only 3 years. Prior to that we know precious little of his life. In his day Jesus was a religious leader and pointedly eschewed all things political. He rather pointed said that people should give the Cesar those things which are Cesar’s and to God those things which are God’s. That mean prior to people like John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and their peers, he had already separated the life of politics for the religious life.

But then he said something very curious, at least according to the New Testament. It is something I believe either translates very poorly or is otherwise poorly explained. He stated that he had not come to change the law. He was referring to the ancient Mosaic law, the laws of the old Testament. And yet, that is exactly what he did. He made the state that instead of an eye for an eye, the aggrieved person turn the other cheek. Is that not a change to the old law? He also said prior to the stoning of a fallen woman that only a man without sin could throw the first stone. Again, a long held Jewish tradition, he changed.

The Jesus I know was a man who was the penultimate radical of his day. He chastised many of the Jewish leadership for their preference of worldly things over heavenly. But once again we have a departure from the traditional belief. Jews historically do not believe in an afterlife and yet Jesus, a lifelong Jew, spoke frequently of it. What did he know that the others did not?

But all those things are merely the lead-in for his more important message. The New Testaments of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are filled with “parables.” The word parable is an archaic word for story. That means Jesus told a lot of stories. It is unlikely that most of the characters in his stories were people he had known, although that cannot be dismissed out of hand either, we simply do not know. Either way, Jesus told these stories to make a point. My favorite is the story of the good Samaritan.

In the day of Jesus, Samaria was a region in the Middle East. The Samaritans were a group of people the Jewish population felt ill towards. They simply did not like them. And what does Jesus do? He puts a Samaritan in a situation where that person’s actions can only be thought of as being highly commendable. He tells us that this is the type of person we all should strive to be like.

Jesus spoken in the language Aramaic. His words were first put into the printed work in Greek, as far as we know. The book of Matthew, for example, is not a single text but an amalgam of several ancient Greek texts pieced together to give us the best and most complete version. But we must remember, someone who spoke primarily Aramaic had to tell someone who spoke primarily Greek the actions and words of Jesus. How good are you at remembering something, particular the words, spoken to you 60 years ago or more. That is exactly the situation the early writers face.

I mention all this not to take away anything from the four Gospels but rather to suggest that the words contained within them are the very best version of what happened and what Jesus said that we have. Each is a book of concepts meant to guide mankind in the years after the death of Jesus.

Unfortunately, there are Christians who take each word at face value never considering them to be a list of ideas and ideals. They prefer exacting principles to interpretive ideas. Even more, they fail to recognize the historical setting within which these words were first said, and then translated. For example, Christians believe in the virgin birth. This concept actually did not come into being for several centuries after the life of Jesus when Rome was translating the texts, again, and struggle with the word for virgin. They knew it was synonymous in the days of Jesus for the word “young girl.” Their true struggle was the concept of sex coupled with the fact that a 30 or 40 year old man named Joseph could possibly have had sex with a girl who may well have been only 12-years-old. In today’s society that is unacceptable, of course, but in the days of Jesus, it was not all that unusual and well within the Jewish tradition of arranged marriages. This is my long was of referring you back to Jesus saying “judge as you would be judged.”

It Is not the truth of historical facts that hurts a person like Jesus but rather the half-truths and out right fantasies.

Jesus took on a very traditional and very conservative religious culture by giving them a new way of looking at things. He never shied away from taking a position which ran contrary to accepted beliefs. He was in his day viewed as a radical, a revolutionary. But more importantly, he was hugely popular with the common man, and his popularity grew as his ministry continued. And yet, he never claimed to be anything other than a Jew. Even at his death, the Romans, in what was meant to be derisive, condemned him as “King of the Jews.” Jesus never portrayed himself as being such, but he absolutely was the most charismatic figure of his day.

When Jesus died and the Apostles came out of hiding, they referred to their new form of Judaism as “The Way.” They never called themselves Christians. That was an appellation which took about 100 years to evolve.

“The Way” was quickly spread throughout the Middle East, Turkey and Greece, well before it arrived in Rome. The Apostles insisted that Jews was in fact a deity. But that did not sit well with everyone in the Middle East. In the year 610 and Middle Eastern prophet named Mohammed started a religion we know today as Islam. Mohammed was well away of Jesus, his follows and predecessors. Mohammed, like many others where he lived, saw Jesus as a prophet and so when he was tasked with how to refer to Jesus, John the Baptist and earlier Jews, he referred to them as prophets.

Jesus does have a prominent position in Islam but not as a deity. They acknowledge him as an important figure within their own religion. I think it likely that the writers of Koran used some of the principles Jesus proposed within the Koran and carrying great weight. Mankind has a long history of adopting the ideas and ideals of predecessors into their own tradition for simple reason that they are good and worthy.

The two principles Jesus espoused the most were peace and love. I think we he to once again walk the surface of the Earth he would be aghast by what he would see by those professing to be “Good Christians.” I feel he would have huge problems with the amount of wealth accumulated by the Catholic Church in Rome and by other Protestant religions at their headquarters. Jesus most certainly believed in the redistribution of wealth. He once told a man to give half of everything he owned if that man had hopes to enter into heaven. I really like Jesus the historical figure over the religious Jesus so many religions have made him into. I think the two are so disparate as to defy almost all comparison.

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Can the Roman Catholic Church Be Dragged Out of the 12th Century?


I was brought up in the Roman Catholic Church.  It was a curious upbringing because my mother was the Catholic but my father was a Unitarian.  It was the odd confluence of an extremely conservative church, Catholic, with an extremely liberal church, Unitarian.  And in those days, the 1950s and 1960s, marriage of Catholics to non-Catholics was discouraged, to say the least.  My parents were married in 1946 in the Rectory of St. Michael’s Church in North Andover Massachusetts.  Church weddings of that sort were prohibited in those days.  My mother saw to it that I was in church every Sunday and in Sunday school immediately following.  As I got older I was required to attend religious classes once a week after school.  First communion and confirmation were a given and something we all actually looked forward to.

In the early 1960s Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI oversaw certain transformations in the Catholic Church.  Prior to then the Catholic mass was said entirely in Latin.  Latin was removed in favor of the language spoken locally.  The American Catholic Church embraced the idea of bringing folk music into its services.  It seemed the Catholic Church was embracing the idea of change and was becoming a friendlier and less feared church than it had been.  In the years since the church also embraced the idea of having deacons, lay people who passed out communion, and lay people who assisted in performing the mass.  Also, most nuns’ habits gave way to ordinary clothing.

Unfortunately, since the death of Pope Paul VI, the Roman Catholic Church seems to have reverted to its extremely conservative ways.  In doing so it has once again turned its back on the needs of Catholics word-wide.  The church seems to be in total denial of its responsibility to its membership.

The Archdiocese of Boston, one of the largest diocese by membership in the country, has such difficulty in attracting young men to its seminary that it usually graduates and ordains new priests in numbers less than 10.  I suspect the reason for this is simple, the church still requires a lifetime promise of celibacy by its priests.  This is contrary to every human predilection known.  And of courses, priests cannot marry.  Some years ago I had a good friend who was a priest who had just entered his 40s.  He could no longer deny his attraction to women and observe his vow of celibacy.  He was an excellent priest but found it necessary to leave the priesthood as he found the requirements imposed upon him to be untenable.  I think this is a very common occurance.

Along this same line, I had to travel to Oklahoma City for business about 15 years ago.  My stays out there became extended and encompassed weekends.  I visited one of the 3 Catholic Churches there where I found an aging priest.  He told me he could not retire because there was no one to replace him even though he was in his late 70s.  I also found out that there are many small cities in the plains states that have Catholic Churches but no priest assigned.  They are served by traveling priests.

The obvious solution to this problem seems simple enough, allow priests to marry.  But for reasons which defy logic, the very conservative College of Cardinals steadfastly refuses to even consider such a change. Here is their logic as presented on catholic.com: “Theologically, it may be pointed out that priests serve in the place of Christ and therefore, their ministry specially configures them to Christ. As is clear from Scripture, Christ was not married (except in a mystical sense, to the Church). By remaining celibate and devoting themselves to the service of the Church, priests more closely model, configure themselves to, and consecrate themselves to Christ.”  But this was a change the Roman Church made in 1139.  The Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and others, never adopted this belief.

Pope Francis recently reminded, and reaffirmed, that divorced Catholics who had remarried and not gotten an annulment of their first marriage, are “living in sin” and therefore cannot receive communion!  I believe the Catholic Church is the only major church in the world which prohibits its member from remarrying without getting an annulment.  I once asked a priest about an annulment and he explained that in essence it is a declaration that an actual marriage never existed.  For me to have pursued, and received, such a declaration would have been essentially perpetrating a huge fraud.  I was married to that woman for 14 years and had 3 children by her.  Of course it was a marriage!  But the Catholic Church states it wants me to still attend mass but I just cannot take part in the most important part of the service.  This is like inviting me to a birthday party but telling me I cannot have any cake and ice cream.  The concept is absolutely absurd!

Next we have birth control and abortion.  I absolutely understand the church’s stand on abortion, it is entirely contrary to its most basic beliefs.  And while I absolute agree with the prohibition regardless of circumstance, I also believe it to be an entirely personal moral dilemma and that each woman needs to make a decision based on her on conscience and without the intrusion of outside influence.  It is a discussion between her and the God of her understanding.

But other forms of birth control are an entirely different matter.  The use of condoms and contraception are a modern day necessity.  For a married Catholic to follow the church’s teachings exactly, they would need to go contrary to the basic and loving desires, forgoing all sexual contact out of fear of pregnancy.  This is an absolutely absurd idea and prohibition.

Finally is the church’s stance towards gay people.  Their stance is easy to understand in the light of what the Bible says. I have two problems with that however.  First, all the various versions of the New Testament today are translations from ancient Greek.  But the problem is that Jesus Christ spoke in the Aramaic language, not Greek.  This means at the very least there was a translation made.  But was that translation from an oral tradition or the written word?  No one knows.  But we do know that Aramaic had about 5000 words total.  Now compare that with the over 1 million words in the English language today to get a feel for the problem.  Noted writer, Dr. Isaac Asimov, related how the word for young girl and virgin in Aramaic are the exact same word.  It is my belief that the first person relating the story of the birth of Jesus was referring to Mary as a young girl because we believe she was likely as young as 12 when she married the much older Joseph.  That she was a virgin was a more important concept to 10th century Rome than 1st Century Palestine, Turkey, and Greece.  The mysticism surrounding a virgin birth was more valuable to Dark Age church leaders than explaining a sexual congress between Mary and Joseph.  By the 12th century the Catholic Church was all about putting even the mention of sexuality into the closet.  What does all this have to do with being gay?  Simple, it is my belief that large portions of the New Testament are both incomplete and incorrect translations.  The Gnostic Gospels sheds some light on this with its Gospel of Mary, something the Roman Church has chosen to distance itself from.  But more to the point, it could mean the admonition of one man laying with another may have originally been a prohibition of adult men bedding boys, something which happened frequently in those days, particularly in traveling merchants.  That gay men existed at the time of Jesus is undeniable.  But so did pedophilia and I believe Jesus saw that as a much more serious problem than man’s inability to understand gay love.  One is an abuse of power, position, and children, while the other is a different sort of love.  I do not understand love between same sex individuals but I do accept it.  It just as real as any other sort of love and that is all I need to know.

To be fair, the Roman Catholic Church is not alone in favoring certain absolutes of human behavior.  Evangelical and other conservative Christian churches in the world espouse many of the same tenants.  But it is a requirement of any church to tend to the needs of its followers.  The Roman Catholic Church is absolutely failing in this respect and that is likely the primary reason it has seen church attendance plummet and parishes closes even though the number of people who identify themselves as Catholic rises.

The Roman Catholic desperately needs to make itself more attractive to all its members, not just those who adhere to its rigid tenants.  I suspect that if all those Catholics who regularly attend church today were to suddenly stop attending church because they violate one or more of these basic tenants, Catholic Churches worldwide would become empty.  The Catholic Church does not lack for theologians, both lay and ministerial, who desperately want the changes I have mentioned.  But as long as a very small and very conservative group of Cardinals are allowed to continue as they have, church attendance and membership will continue to fall.  But worse, the church will continue to ignore many of the most basic teachings of Jesus Christ.

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On Easter Sunday, I Give You the Real Jesus


Today is Easter Sunday which for Christians is the most holy day of the year.  But have you ever asked yourself what the word Easter means?  There is no apparent connection to Christian belief.  I had no clue either until a few moments ago when I looked it up in my handy dandy Webster’s.  It says: “word history:  The word Easter . . . had its origins in pagan times.  Eastre or Eostre the Old Germanic English spelling of Easter, was originally the name of a Germanic goddess who was worshiped at a festival at the spring equinox.  Her name is closely related to Latin aurora and Greek eos, both of which mean “dawn.”  Easter is also derived from the same root word as east, the direction of the sunrise.  The Easter Bunny is another story entirely and for another time.

Theologian scholars have provided us with a plethora of information of where modern Christianity formed its holy days.  Christmas is a fabulous example of this as those same scholars seem to universally agree that Jesus was born in the spring and not when we celebrate his birth.  Early Christians, the early Roman Church in particular, were wont to end what they saw as pagan practices, in this case the pagan holiday of Saturnalia.  I make mention of these two well-accepted facts as evidence the early Christian church was extremely interested in co-opting paganism, and thereby killing it off, than historical accuracy.

Conservative Christians of today have the unnerving tendency to use the Bible as their sole source for information about the ancients.  But the truth is, there exists far more than those texts.  For example, there are the Dead Sea Scrolls which refer to daily life and customs at the time of Jesus.  Even though they were discovered in 1946, a complete and accurate description and final translation of them in far from finished.  Still, they provide us with a very different view from that of the New Testament.

And this brings me to the time of Jesus.  Was Jesus the son of God, something He never actually says himself but infers heavily, an angel of God, which would be very much in keeping with ancient Hebrew beliefs, or simply a great prophet?  Maybe He was all three.  But what we know of Jesus seems to fall far short of what we would like to know.  For example, he is born, secreted to Egypt for fear of his life, disappears entirely for 12 years at which time he shows up at a Temple and declared a rabbi.  Then he disappears again entirely for another 18 years for which we know nothing.  And even those final three years of his life the “facts” given are quite thin and many beg for clarification.

As a degreed historian, I can say with authority that such books as the Gospels are to be placed in the category of folk lore.  And this is not to say that folk lore in either unreliable or untrue, but as folk lore exists, it must be, in this case, assigned to stories of faith.  The veracity of such stories must be questioned.  But as with anything of the sort, there is likely truth to them as well.

Many books have been written about the “Historical Jesus.”  I have seen a few and as books go they vary in veracity.  That is, the ability of the author to keep his personal views and his prejudices apart from his writings is not always complete.  Even so, they are attempts to find the real face of Jesus.  In this respect I will add my own perspective which I can guarantee you are entirely prejudiced by my own views and are only my own view of this great and historic man.

One final thing; we also know for certain that the Gospels of the New Testament date back, at best, to 60 years after the death of Jesus.  They are also written in Greek, not the native tongue of Jesus which was Aramaic.  This means, just on the face of it, that a translation was made from one language to the other. And regardless of whether it was translated from one written language to the other or, worse, one verbal retelling to the other,  translations from disparate languages speak to the astuteness of the translator to understand what he is translating.  Historically, societies kept people who were customs keeper, story tellers, to insure a record of their being and beliefs was passed forward.  Such existed even to the early parts of the American experience in the 17th and 18th century.  The most valuable, and recognized as likely to be correct, is the first hand eye witness account of events.  But these stories were usually, and at best, second hand.  With regard to the life of Jesus, those original stories are second hand at best.  But people of faith with tell you, rightfully so, that his was a mission of faith and thus the stories of his life must be viewed in the same light.

I find it curious in the presentation of the Gospels the claim that Jesus said he had not come to change the law, the ancient Mosaic Law is what he was referring to.  But soon after when He is questioned as to the “eye for an eye” taken of the Old Testament, he responds with “turn the other cheek.”  It seems to me that is a direct contradiction and changing of the law.  I think the New Testament is replete with inconsistencies in logic, sometime from one verse to the next.  There exist too many mixed messages and incomplete thoughts.  Did Jesus actually expand upon such thoughts at much greater length?  I think it reasonable to say that He most certainly did, and probably many times over.  But such lengthy, and probably more enlightening thoughts, are lost to the ages because they were not transcribed as they were being pronounced.

Jesus was by all accounts a radical of His day.  He struck fear into the established religious leaders of the day.  Why?  He was, contrary to what the Gospels claim, turning old Jewish law on its head and providing His followers with a completely new way of looking at things.  He advocated peace.   He was the first historical figure to suggest the separation of church and state when he said to give to Rome which is Rome’s and to God which is God’s.  He advocated for the poor suggesting in his story of the good Samaritan, that those of means give half of what they own to the poor.  He very pointedly stated that man was by his very nature a sinner and that time best spent was that in bettering himself rather than pointing out the shortcomings of another.  And to that point, Jesus never once condemn anyone to hell, as modern evangelists like to do.  For that matter, he never mentioned the place which would have been in keeping with Jewish tradition which had, and still has, no heaver nor hell.

His actions suggest that He actively sought to modify ancient traditions.  Baptism, as He underwent with John, was nothing new.  It was the symbolic cleansing of the spirit.  It also was not done with children but with adults who were ready to admit their sins and ask to be cleansed.  But if Jesus were God it is impossible that He had sinned so why do it?  Quite simply because he understood extremely well the role of the leader.  He knew that charisma, which He had in spades, was the manna which fed the souls of those who chose to follow His teachings.  I think it entirely possible that Jesus was proposing the ideal of spiritual health over religious dogma.  He did, after all, seek out the dregs of his society and only asked of them that he believe in His teachings.  Not once is he heard to say that a man must attend the temple and must contribute monies to keep His church healthy.  Why do you suppose that was?  Is it possible He believed a church was truly inside a man and not within four walls?

In the time of Jesus, and for most of the centuries which have followed, women were second class citizens relegated to the rear of the temple and denied any say what-so-ever in its conduct.  Unfortunately too much of that exists today.  And so enters the most misunderstood character of the New Testament, Mary Magdalen.  The early Christian Church had absolutely no idea of how to handle her existence in the presence of their messiah but she was mentioned in the Bible so they also could not ignore her.  Certainly, they thought, Jesus looked upon this woman as they did, a woman of low moral character who only came to beg for forgiveness and her penance was to wash His feet with her hair.  The problem with such a telling is that it bears no relationship to the truth.  That truth is theologians have never found a woman of that name or conduct.  But they have found a similar woman, or possibly several women, who can account for that personage.  Likely Mary was a woman of means who had been moved by Jesus’ ministry.  Maybe she was a woman from Samaria, people seen as only slightly better than the brutal Romans and equally hated.  But for her to seek audience with a rabbi, a man of such stature and position was unthinkable at that time and for many centuries to follow.  But Jesus, being who He was, denied no one for any reason.  And I suggest, and I think it likely, she, along with several other women, became one of His Apostles.  Remember, at the end of His crucifixion it was only the women who saw to His removal from the cross, transportation, preparation, and final burial in the tomb.  No man, certainly no apostle, was anywhere to be found.  You ask, if they were truly Apostles why not mention it?  Simple, it was an “inconvenient truth.”

A rather famous atheist, Dr. Isaac Azimov, most well-known for his science fiction writings, but also a professor of bio-chemistry at Boston University, made an interesting observation about the writing of the New Testament.  He noted that the Aramaic language in the day of Jesus had around 5000 words.  Today’s English language, in contrast, has over one million.  He observes that the Aramaic word for virgin is identical for the word for young girl.  Does this suggest the early Christian Church’s aversion to the discussion of sex?  I think it extremely likely.  How would the historical figure of Mary as something other than a virgin square with the telling of the birth of Jesus?  It would have necessarily meant that Mary had engaged in sex with Joseph.  I think it likely the church desired nothing less than something which could be passed off as miraculous.  And a virgin birth suited their interest.  They also do not mention Mary’s age, which could have been as young as 12 and Joseph as a man who could have been well into his 50s.  Not unusual in those days.

But back to Jesus.  To the established high ranking Jews of the day, Jesus appeared a threat to their power.  We know for fact that Rome had absolutely no interest in the crucifixion of Jesus, to the contrary.  The ministry of Jesus had suggested radical changes to long standing beliefs of the Jews but never once challenged the power of Rome.  And the ultra-conservative Jews of the day simply could not stand for that.  I am suggesting that this ancient Jesus was in fact seen as some sort of liberal reformist who was bringing needed change to old conservatism, a conservatism which was contrary to the best interest of the Jewish masses.  But that would have meant the illuminati of the Jewish religion would have had to accept changes.  That is something to this day conservatives find difficult if not impossible.

When Jesus died his Apostles and other disciples were at a loss for what to call themselves and they saw themselves, justifiably or not, as out-casts of accepted Jewish society.  For a long time afterwards they simply referred to their religion as “the way.”  The idea of calling themselves Christians had not yet formulated.  Those early follower quickly moved away from Israel, a place they knew they would be persona non grata, first to Turkey and then to Greece and finally Rome.  But it is also likely that these early leaders of the church were illiterate.  The only formal education of the day existed strictly for the rich and those who devoted themselves to become Rabbis.  Scribes were probably the only exception that, they being drafted into such a career by the ruling class.  The Apostles could neither read nor write but such was not a part of their mission.  None had come from background of what we might see as middle class.  All are shown as being from the most humble of means.  And a few, like Peter, were shown to be fairly rough and tumble.  It is my belief that scribes were at some point enlisted to write down what had been witnessed by the Apostles, and others, as custom dictated.  But the scribed did not write the New Testament!

When eventually these people arrived in Greece, a truly enlightened and literate society, those Greeks who embraced this earliest form of Christianity, ensured the survival of the faith buy putting it into print.  But whoever they were had to immediately been confronted with the problem of the translation from Aramaic to Greek, which is where we derive our present day texts.  If in history there ever was a more meaningful time for the expression “lost in translation,” this was it!  It stands to reason that certain words either translated poorly or not at all from the original Aramaic to Greek.  I can almost hear the conversation of the person from Israel trying to explain the concept, the word, he is expressing to his Greek counterpart, and finally the two agreeing upon a word the more or less expresses the thought.  There is no way to know how much of that happened but it is a certainty that it did.  And furthermore, what if one Gospel, say that of Matthew, had very differing views of events from that of Luke or John?  How would they deal with that.  Could it be that they simple chose the one which showed Jesus in the most favorable light?  Or could it be that they allowed their own prejudices in and chose the one which most suited them.  We will never know but it can help explain how four men who supposedly witness the life of Jesus gave differing versions.  If I were a man on that day and was sitting down to lunch with Jesus, at some point I would certainly ask what he did before he started his ministry.  Such a story would be immensely fascinating.  Was such a story told but the early authors could not see the value of including such references?

But does this also explain the large gaps which exist from one Gospel to the next.  This birth of Jesus is related at length in only one, so why not the others?  Were they simply edited out?  Did one story contradict the other leaving the Greek and Aramaic writers left to choose one telling of the other?  The same thing happens at the death of Jesus.  Also, were there records of Jesus’ ministry that were viewed as uncomplimentary which were left out for that reason?  Remember, Jesus did have a fit of violence when he threw the money men from the temple. Which bring about the question as to why that is the only story from his birth to age 30? Also, did Jesus’ retreat to the desert for reflection really last for 40 days or was that a number of convenience because it squared with other 40 days incidents of the Old Testament, Noah in particular.  And remember, the time from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday is also 40 days.  Forty was a magical number in those days as was the number 13, the 13 generations of the house of David being one.

Modern day Christian fundamentalists have co-opted Jesus to their own selfish beliefs.  They love literal translations and have little problems chastising anyone who suggests anything different.  Today’s compelling argument for them is their anti-gay theme comes from Jesus saying that a man should not sleep with another man.  They have not considered the fact that it was common practice in those days for men who led caravans to take along with them young boys with whom they would have sex and feel they have not violated their marriage vows.  Could this have been what Jesus was speaking of and that He, being God and being fully aware of the gay people of his day, had been referring to pedophilia and not homosexuality?  I think that to be much more likely.

I absolutely believe that Jesus would have a lot of problems with those who use their religious beliefs in the conduct of their political desires, ergo his give unto Rome that which is Rome’s admonition.  I suspect the writers of our Constitution felt the same.  I also believe that Jesus would have serious problems with the top 1% of wealthy today.  He might refer such people to his saying what profit a man who gains a kingdom and loses his soul.  He might ask them if they believe that what they practice is what He taught.  And while I am certain he understood that wealth had its place, he repeatedly spoke of being generous with such wealth.  He spoke of casting the first stone, turning the other cheek, treating others as you would want to be treated, judging as you would want to be judged, and absolute kindness and understanding.

If I were a part of the conservative right in this country, I would fear His saying to me, “you have already received your reward and now you will be judge harshly just as you did the least of my brethren.”

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Science Proves God Exists!


My title, of course, is fictional but I firmly believe that one day it will be science that definitely proves, or disproves, the existence of God.  The best of all possible outcomes would be a theologian, who is also a scientists, is the one who finds that proof.  It is not any religion’s task to prove God’s existence, theirs is one of providing faith to their followers.  But faith, by definition, is a philosophical belief system which works in the absence of proof.  That is a good thing.  But some religions, the more conservative, seem to believe it is their job to proclaim that certain theories and facts of science are nothing more than the work of the devil, or that such science is in direct contradiction to either the teachings of God and Jesus, or contrary to what is said in the Bible.

It seems that the Bible, of all things, is the root of some problems between certain religions and science.  Those people who believe that the Bible is the source of many absolutely which man needs to accept, fail to allow for certain conditions that must exist when dealing in absolutes.  That is, when someone, in this case the writers of the Bible, declare something to be true it is their responsibility to offer either empirical or first hand proof.  The first five books of the Bible were written by Moses.  Moses’ only first hand experience appears in the book of Exodus.  He certain lived long after the book of Genesis as he relates it and offers no proof.  The rest of the Bible was written by at least 40 different people none of whom claim first hand experience.  This includes the New Testament.  Theological scholars have dated the earliest New Testament documents having been created at least 60 after the death of Jesus.

The New Testament is full of quotes attributed to Jesus.  It is my belief, however, that most of those quotes are truly paraphrases.  The most basic problem of that day is the extreme lacking of literate people at the time of Jesus and for many centuries following.  By tradition, stories of family, history, and religion were passed along by story tellers.  These story tellers can be compared to today’s television news reporters.  They take a story reported to them and pass it on to others.  The story tellers of Jesus’ day were paid to do their job, just as news reporters are today.  The Hebrews, Romans, and all other civilizations required such people to maintain their traditions from one generation to another.  A scribe was a rare person who was usually connected to persons of political position or wealth.  The population of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus was approximately 50,ooo.  The number of scribes in that one city likely did not exceed 10, most of whom would have been assigned to Roman politicians.  And in looking at who the 12 disciples of Jesus were, it is unlikely any were literate, to include Jesus himself.  Scientists today know that human memory of any particular incident is accurate for about 48 hours.  After that, without a concerted attempt to remember, our ability to recall details quickly diminishes.  This is not to say that people living at the time of Jesus could not have remembered with great accuracy what he said it did, but that it would take much effort to do so.

Theologians know for fact, for instance, that Moses actually brought in excess of 500 commandments to his people for his supposed meeting with God.  This, of course, raises the question of what to believe.  The Bible says there are only 10 commandments, but theologians know there were truly at least 500.  Jesus lived 1500 years after Moses.  Unfortunately, whatever progress there was in creating the Bible was insignificant if you want to use it as a document for historical fact.  More moderate theologians will tell you it is a book a faith.  What is certain, in this case, is that it cannot possibly be both a book of fact and faith.  Either the “prove it” or “disprove it” argument necessarily win out.  It is best left as a book of faith to be interpreted by each person according to his own conscience.  Left in that sphere, it is an exceptional book worthy of much study and faith.

Most scientists do not deny that certain aspects of creationism have associate truth.  But conservative religions fail to give that same respect to science.  What they fail to realize is that their most basic belief, that God created everything, necessarily means God created science, and with it all the laws of science.  In His creating the universe, God created all the laws of science which scientists use every day.  God gave man the blueprint to find Him, but only if man choses to look.  For reasons which confound me, it seems conservative religions do not care to see God.  Science named the Higgs Boson as the “God particle.”  And Steven Hawking has stated that when we figure out the “big bang” we will see the hand of God.  These are not idle comments made by extremely intelligent people to poke fun at religion.  It is their true belief.

Recently, astro-physicists have offered pictures of the universe as it existed about 250 million years after the big bang.  In astronomical times, that is very close to birth.  The truth is, scientists have absolutely no desire to disprove, or prove for that matter, the existence of God.  Their job is to tell us, in as exacting terms as possible, why things are happening, and how they happened in the past.  That being the case, like a good detective novel, you eventually find and prove “who done it!”

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Mankind Versus Religion


When I was young, an adolescent or young teen, I as my father, once Sunday noon over our traditional Sunday meal, why I never saw him in church.  He responded, and rather quickly too, that “when they stop preaching politics from the pulpit, I’ll go back.”  The backdrop on this is my father was a Unitarian and my mother a devout Roman Catholic.  When they were married, in 1946, the Roman Catholic Church did not allow for marriage between two people of different faiths.  And while they did not prohibit Catholics from marrying those of other religions, such marriages were never allowed in the church proper.  And so, my parents, two really good people who genuinely loved each other, were married by a priest but not within the walls of the church.  To be fair, the Catholic Church was not alone in such practices, and while that practice no longer exists today in the Catholic Church, it does in other religions.

My first crisis of faith happened at age 15 when, having suffered a very traumatic experience at the hands of another, I sought out a priest, an Augustinian, who after hearing my story told me I should ask forgiveness for my sin.  He showed absolutely no understanding, no empathy, and to my mind, not to slightest knowledge of New Testament Bible teachings.

And now we arrive at the Bible, the basis of all Judeo-Christian religions.  I have actually read it!  Even when I was young, many parts of it did not make much sense to me.  But I was instructed that it is a work of faith, and I must have faith in its teachings.  Really?  I cannot help but wonder what is to be learned from the Old Testament teaching of “an eye for any eye” except that we will end up with a bunch of blind people!  And actually, the New Testament contradicts that saying with Jesus telling his followers to “turn the other cheek.”  Now that makes a whole lot more sense.  Except that one of Jesus’ first pronouncements was that he had not come to change the law.  I am assuming he was referring to the old Mosaic Law.  And that law, if you considered it based on the 10 Commandments, was freely lifted from the ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead.”  Such facts make me wonder about the honesty of religions.

Conservative Christians today are quick to condemn gay people to hell claiming it is God’s will.  I find that curious since the New Testaments clears states that you should judge someone in the same manner you wish to be judged.  I don’t think they believe such an admonition applies to them.  They are quick to point at the passage in the New Testament condemning one man laying with another.  But the proper historical perspective on that saying comes from the fact that traveling merchants of the day would take young boys with them who would satisfy their sexual needs.  It was not a commentary on people who were gay but upon the corruption of old men using innocents for their own selfish needs.

One of the most basic problems for all religions today is their interpretation and application of the Bible.  If you were of no religion and desirous of joining a particular religion based on the Bible it used, you would first have to read through literally hundreds of Bibles, the Catholic Bible, King James Bible, New American Bible, Mormon Bible, and so on.  The Hebrew Bible, of course, contains no New Testament, while Christian Bibles vary as to which Old Testament Books they include.  What that alone tells us is exactly how personal religion is.

Here in the United States we have many religions which do not have the Hebrew-Christian-Islam God.  Buddhists believe in Buddha and Hindus believe in an eternal spiritual truth.

Probably the most divided church today is also one of the largest, Roman Catholicism.   Millions of Americans, I am one, call themselves Catholic but cannot remember the last time they went to church.  Why?  Disillusionment with its archaic laws and teaching.  I suspect other religions are experiencing the same issues.  Historically, religion has badly trailed present-day issues its followers must face.  Unreasonable restrictions and admonishments by those church do little to comfort and much to confuse, frustrate, and cause anxiety among its followers.  It is hard to believe, at least in Christian churches, such church orthodoxy would be embraced by its founder, Jesus.

It might be good for man to consider that it was not God who created religion, but man.  Man has always searched for answers to those things he did not understand, and to bring meaning to life.  For the answers to things he did not understand he created science, and for the meaning of life, he embraced God.

If God had intended for all humans to be alike he would not have allowed for free-will, for considered decisions, or for humans to have a brain that would function on a higher level than another other animal on the face of the Earth.  And yet, there it is.  We are endowed with minds that allow us to make individual decisions and, even more importantly, allow each of us to be unique in our own way.  But it is that very uniqueness that does not allow us to think and act exactly as another other human being.  And that is a good thing because oh what a boring place this earth would be if we were all alike.

It would shock many Christians to hear that monotheism pre-dates Moses, and by thousands of years at that!  But it does not change the fact.  The fact is man has been working on the idea of one religion fits all philosophy.  If one thing the over 5000 years of recorded history should have taught us is the fact that that idea has failed miserably.  But it has always been small-minded men who have had a vested interest in securing places of power within their followers, who have usurped the God-given right to think for themselves.  To be fair, there exist a few religions that actually promote this think for yourself idea.  And if you think about, that is the only thing which makes sense when trying to ascertain “God’s will.”  Therefore, by definition, each person’s relationship with God is a very personal one and can only be defined in that one-on-one relationship.  It is certainly not the job of religions to tell us what that relationship should be defined by or look like, but our own personal responsibility.  It is the responsibility of religion to assist, the lend help, to show compassion, and to be there at the time of a person’s greatest need and without the least bit of judgment.  And on that last point it is my belief that most religions fail miserably.

This brings me back to my father.  Although he was a member of a particular church, I never associate that church with him.  I look at him as the person he was and cannot help believe, though he was absolutely of a different religion form me, he was none-the less, a literal saint of a man.  He died monetarily poor and richly loved.  I should be so fortunate.

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God’s Universe vs. Science’s Universe


For as long as man has been able to consider his existence, he has been trying to explain it.  But for most of man’s existence he has been almost entirely reliant upon the religious beliefs of his local area for that explanation.  The Judeo-Christian explanation can be found in the Bible.  It is a remarkably succinct accounting for the formation of the universe, and for all of recorded history, until the 20th century, was generally regarded as the only explanation.  This was largely due, however, to man’s inability to see either outward in the vastness of the intergalactic universe, or inward, towards the bits and pieces of the sub-atomic universe.  Albert Einstein is largely responsible for the beginning of our shifting attitudes towards understand our creation, and our creator, if there is one.

Since the time of Galileo it seems science and religion have been at each other’s throats.  The one denying the other’s ascertations.  For most of the history of man religions have feared scientists as being a threat to their tenants.  And to some extent, that was true.  But in the latter portion of the 20th century, and continuing into the 21st century, many of the larger religions have included scientists within their ranks.   This is particularly true of the Roman Catholic Church where the Jesuits seem to be leading the way, although though they are certainly not the only group within that church.  What they now espouse, and I find particularly inviting, is the idea that science actually explains God’s existence rather than dispel it.

The renown physicist Stephen Hawking states that science does not need God to explain the big bang.  Hawking is of a group of physicists who believe that the big bang, the beginning of the universe, came from nothing.  He has even made a theory of a multi-dimensional universe, 11 in all, that exists.  He theorizes that at the time of the big bang a single, but unseeable, dimension existed, and from this our physical universe came into being.  My personal problem with this is that Hawking, and his peers, are desperately trying to make 0 = 1.  This, of course, is an absolute impossibility.  But Hawking will use a combination of theoretical mathematics with quantum physics to explain how it actually can be true.  To be fair, mathematics uses two symbols that have limitless possibilities, i is the symbol for imaginary numbers, and of course ∞ which is the symbol for infinity.  For my purposes infinity is the only relevant symbol.  Mathematics can actually prove that infinity exists but its very nature says that it is without bounds.  The joke is, what does infinity plus one equal?  It is a concept human beings are incapable of understanding.  And yet most physicists will argue the concept of an infinite number of possibilities when they consider the “multi-verse” theory.  That is the theory that our universe is but one of an infinite number of other existing universes.  To understand this you need only consider a mug of beer with its bubbles floating within.  Each bubble is separate and of exactly the same size, and each representing a universe unto itself.

It is impossible for any human being to fully comprehend even numbers much smaller than infinity.  The number 1 trillion is actually a rather common number in terms of our universe.  Consider the size of the Eagle Nebula shown below.

nebula

This cloud of gas is 70 light years long.  A single light year equals 5.865 trillion miles.  Now multiply that by 70.  Now look at the picture below.

nebula

In the circle above is that same Eagle Nebula.  See all the gas around it?  It of course is immense.   If the length of the clouds within that circle are 70 light years, what of the distance invovled in the gas surrounding it.  Beyong our grasp.  And this is just a single example of billions and billions of more nebulae just like this scattered all through our universe.

What does any of this have to do with the existence of God?  It comes from the fact physicists universally agree that there is an extremely precise mechanism behind the existence of our universe and that the tiniest of variation at its beginning, one part in one trillion, and our universe does not come into existence.  Statistics tells us the our flashing into existence as the universe did, given the odds, was unlikely to the extreme.  And yet here we are.

But even that happening, the same mathematics, statistics, show the unlikelihood to the extreme that not just intelligent beings should come into being, but that a platform for their existence, the earth in our solar system, also required extremely exacting and unlikely to the extreme.  Earth had to be formed at the distance from the sun it is, have a megnetic core, and have water just to sustain the meagerest of life forms.  And yet again, here we are.

There is a large group of scientists today who believe in a theory called transcendence.  This term simply means the ability to rise above and go beyond the normal and usual human and physical constraints.   Hawking will tell you that time did not exist prior to the big bang, that another unknown dimension did.  To be fair, time is a human invention to describe our movement from what came before to now to what comes next.  But it none-the-less is a standing contradiction to Hawking’s belief.  But an even more salient contradiction to the something from nothing idea of the Hawking group is the maxim in physics that states matter can neither be created nor destroyed.  What Hawking is suggesting is even though that is true now, it was not true in the beginning.  To that I respond, what a bunch of crap!  Either the laws of physics are immutable or they are not.  You cannot have it both ways as Hawking suggests.

We are truly in the infancy of our scientific knowledge.  I firmly believe that science in no way contradicts theology, nor theology science.  In the long run, science will confirm the existence of God, and even more, that there is some true to the first chapter in the book of Genesis in the Bible.  We actually have already have done that.  The Bible states that in the beginning there was darkness and that God created light.  Modern physics states that is exactly what happened in the beginning.  Prior to the big bang there was absolute darkness.  But at the moment of the big bang when huge amounts of energy were released, there of course was the accompanying light.  This was day one according to the Bible.  And if we consider that the concept of time is an entirely manmade concept that day was actually some 400,000 of our years long before the creation of atoms, stars, planets, etc. started.  And there we have day two.

I do not, nor have I ever, considered the book of Genesis to be an accurate description of the beginnings of the universe and then of man, but it sufficed until we could fathom a more God-like rationale of its creation.  The men who wrote the Bible were incapable of conceiving the universe as we now know it.  Their divine inspiration was to put into words concepts that the people of the day could understand, and even more importantly, accept.  We are now moving beyond that.  Remember the possibility of the universe as we know it existing is of the smallest of possible odds.  And yet, here we are.