God Is Not Great – but sometimes I wonder…

God is not great.  Must be an atheist.  Doesn’t believe in spirits, let alone God.

I just finished reading Christopher Hitchen’s book, titled as GodIsNotGreat.  You find me sitting in the quiet of early morning. Reflecting on all his conflicting thoughts. Contemplating an existence and end without spirits and souls.  Without God.  Though sincere, sometimes funny, but not entirely convincing.  Mr. Hitchens claims that he has been writing this book all his life.  His conclusion: there is no God, there are no spirits, and your soul is dust in the wind.

There are conflicting thoughts and quotes.  If you are in the dark, it makes sense to follow a blind man who knows the way.  But once it is light, you are foolish to follow a blind man.  He is referring to the scientific knowledge and discoveries of the present era.  However, he also infers that if you only believe in that which can be proved, you eliminate everything else.  I sat in my ghostly quiet living room, with darkened hallways, pondering a life of false beliefs, of unproven gods, of no proof that a spiritual dimension exists.

Moments later, a familiar sound startled me.  The laundry room came loudly alive with sound.  It’s 5 a.m.  My wife still in bed.  Me still in my easy chair.  Up I stood.  In I went.  The washing machine running.  But no lights indicating washing cycle. These new electronic contraptions!  Couldn’t turn it off.  Couldn’t change its cycle.  Could only unplug it.  Quiet.  I could tell you it kept running after unplugging it but that might give you the impression that this anecdote is fabricated…

When all else fails, read the instruction manual:

Top Load Washer Motor Reset (i.e. washer turns on by itself)

  1. Unplug the washer for 1 minute from the electrical outlet.
  2. Plug the washer back in and lift and lower the lid 6 times within a 12 second period.
    • You have 30 seconds to start lifting and lowering the lid.
    • The lid must be raised a minimum of 2″ ensure the magnetic connection on the lid is interrupted.
    • Make sure you close the lid completely each time.
  3. The motor has now been reset and is ready for you to start a cycle.

DIDN’T WORK!  Washer still churning. Spirit skeptic starts to wonder.

Next, I called the GE Customer Service Hotline.  Eventually, a reassuring female voice told me that “we” would fix the problem over the phone.

Voice: Ok, let’s go through the Top Load Washer Motor Reset.

Me: I already did this.  Maybe I held my mouth wrong.

To myself I think: Ok girl, here “we” go.

Voice: Step one, “We” unplug the washer for 1 minute from the electrical outlet…

To myself I think: Yeah, it will work for “us” this time.  Maybe “we” held “our” mouth wrong the first several times “we” followed the washer reset instructions.

To humor myself during this futile exercise, I opened my mouth wide and turn my head into a hideous tilt.  “We” follow the instructions, the same instructions.  “We” finish the sequence. “My” belief remains hopeless.  Miraculously, the lights come on.  Divinely, the washer then stops.  Now, I’m a believer. But I’m still agape.  The Voice says one last thing:

Voice: “We” can close your mouth now.

Pub Theology Getaway, Got a Way, Possession, Procession, Craft Singles 01/30/2018

Icebreaker:

The human species is an animal species without very much variation within it, and it is idle and futile to imagine that a voyage to Tibet, will discover an entirely different harmony with nature or eternity.  What harmony have you discovered on “getaways” to foreign lands, religious sites or nature’s kingdom?  Do you find anything disagreeable in this Icebreaker statement?

Question of the Night

Religions form around great shards of fabrication adhered together by thin layers of profundity and empirical truths while being coated with miraculous and unprovable myth.

Does this statement sound like other religions or your religion?  What tenets in other religions sound fake?  What preaching in your religion sounds profound?  What provable truths evidence themselves in any religion?

Other Questions:

From Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood ~ A psychologist analyzing a murderess, theorizes that she has been possessed by a dead friend, who orchestrates the murder without the actual murderess’ knowledge.  Ha, if getting away with murder were only that simple!  Do you have acquaintances possessed by long “dead” friends (i.e. traumatized by the transgressions of family, teachers, preachers, jeepers, creepers, etc.)?  Do you allow that “the Devil made them do it”?  How long will you endure this “possession” before cutting them off?

Northern Uganda 2005, kidnapped village children are tortured by their cruel captors and converted from innocent wretches into a stone-faced zombie army.  A grieving tribal elder portends ~ Children who have felt cruelty know very well how to inflict it.

When have you been a witness to the conversion of an innocent to an inflictor by way of cruelty?

Just as spilled milk can never be recovered, lost innocence can never be found.  What is to be done with the spilled, the spoiled and the subjected?

To know a person, don’t watch the mouth but watch the feet.  Do the preachers and prophets also believe, or do they too just “believe in belief”?  When leaders implore you to follow, are their feet going the same direction as yours?  Discuss.

Do you think irritating people should only be discarded from your relationships when they have full awareness of their malicious behavior? If so, how do you decide when to move them OUT?  Is it by severity of injury or by accumulation of bad behavior – to a breaking point?  With the arrival of your new friends with better benefits, do the burdensome and vacuous soon depart of their own accord?  Or does it take a long while until ex-friends in low places get the hint?

Craft Singles (One sentence with questions)  Take a bite!

What if there is an afterlife but no god? What if there is a god but no afterlife?

What happens when a plain racket turns into a serious religion before your eyes?  Vice versa?

Dalai Lama ~ You can visit a prostitute as long as someone else pays for it.  Who gets the change?

Is a high moral character a precondition for great moral accomplishments?  Examples?  Exceptions?

When priests go bad, they go very bad.  When lay people go good, they keep bad as an option.  True? False?

Pope John Paul II ~ An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.  Discuss?

Holy Cow Part Deux

Pious Jews are at this moment trying to breed the spotlessly pure “red heifer” mentioned in the book of Numbers, chapter 19, which if slaughtered again according to the exact and meticulous ritual will bring about the return of animal sacrifices in the Third Temple and hasten the end of time and the coming of the Messiah.  Where is more money spent: On proving religious beliefs?  Disproving secular science?

The Guide for the Perplexed, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon’s book seeks to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with Hebrew Bible theology, by finding rational explanations for many events in the text.

When you try to rationalize theology with philosophy what do you get?

When you try to rationalize philosophy with theology what do you get?

Just like one can take vengeance only to its extreme, so it is also with deception, exploitation, and abuse.  Is it exhaustion or loss that cures the morally corrupt?  What extremes in human degradation can cause such bromides as “honesty is the best policy” and “to forgive is divine” to root profound and grow within?

Sierra Alpha Alpha Bravo

Last Thursday, I came into the house after plowing the garden.  Lunch smoked and sizzled and simmered and my wife said accented things. With her soft little hands and insistent invitation, she coaxed me to sit and eat.  I seldom knew what she said but I usually knew what she meant.  Sated from an unusually satisfying meal, I headed out.  To the couch.  For a sit and a snore (this she will tell you).  Leaving my worries in the pasture, I began counting sheep.

Later, I heard honking.  Insistent.  Not like the geese but like a birch trumpet poorly played.  Sounds emanating from other than goose.  The far front gate beckoned me.  Ha.  I recognized the iron.  The trapezoidal grill.  An old foreign relic.  Scandinavian, maybe.  Feeling hurried, slipping on my clogs, I trundled out to the rumpus.  An old acquaintance stood stiff, adding oil to the gas tank.  I lurched forward to stop his craziness.  Then halted.  Oh, yeah, it’s a three cylinder and requires oil in the gas.

The man turned and frightened me with a smile.  His familiar face featured a fresh scar, cheek to chin and across his mouth.  Speaking slurred, showing only a partial tongue, he either greeted me or cursed me.  No, it sounded more like he’s selling me peaches.  My well-developed translation skills served me well, despite his alternately pointing and poking a walking cane – at the road and then at my head.  I didn’t know what he said but I knew what he meant: Let’s go for a ride.

Scooting in, I wrestled with the frayed shoulder seat belt, finally latching the rusted relic – just in time! As we sped off, I figured I’d feel sorry for this ride later, but I felt safe for now.  Even with my window open, there was a foul small.  Like swamp.  Like a flood vehicle?  Was this new car smell from wherever and whenever they manufactured this foreign object?

This fella’s reckless reputation filled my memory.  Not for long.  Something jolted my inquiring mind back into the present moment.  Veering off road and off-roading in a farm pasture.  Freewheeling downhill toward a farmer’s stock pond.  Several feet from the pond, tires skidded.  Wheels stopped.  Engine off.  Column shifter in gear (now days we have an emergency break).  The car pointed down… heading toward the pond.  My battle-scarred driver got out without comment. Wobbled across the cow pasture.  Sat on a tree stump.  What next?

I pushed down on the seat belt latch.  I couldn’t figure out any of this mystery auto’s contraptions. My angry elbow hit the column shifter, popping the car into neutral.  Tires started to roll. I pushed again at the belt latch.  Jerked and yelled for help.  My former friend sat agape.  Tongue partially tied.  In a moment of clarity, I looked down.  I saw the decal on the glove box – SAAB.  That’s it, I knew it!

I cried noisily, making loud, convulsive gasps. Suddenly, a soft hand reached through the moving open window.  The little fingers lifted the latch, freeing me.  The delicate hand shook my right shoulder.  Then the other hand slapped my left cheek.  I heard a far-off voice calling my name.  I couldn’t understand the last word.  But I knew what it meant:

“Wake up!”