(Que announcer) Producer James Cameron, creator of Titanic, is teaming up with provocative director Simcha Jacobovici to bring to light a startling new discovery that will shake the very foundations of Christianity. Deep in a hidden cave, 10 stone coffins tell a shocking tale about Jesus of Nazareth — founder of the Christian religion. Did Jesus really rise from the dead like the church says? (Tone of voice hints no.) Was there something going on between him and Mary Magdelene? (Tone hints yes.) And is it possible Jesus had a son? (Hinting yes again.) Cameron is willing to boldly dig up the truth in this daring documentary and peal back church cover-ups and a conspiracy that has ruled the world for two thousand years. Watch the Discovery Channel to find out about these amazing new discoveries….

Continue reading Jesus is dead?

Sometimes I try to tell stories in a roundabout fashion in attempts to explain what I mean. This is one of them.

Continue reading Naturalism, An Intermission

When Confucius entered the Grand Temple, he asked about everything. Someone said, ‘Who said Confucius is a master of ritual? He enters the Grand Temple and asks about everything!’
Confucius, hearing this, said, ‘This is the ritual.’ (Analects, 3:15)

Religion – belief in a supernatural entity inhabiting a supernatural (non-natural), transcendent dimension of reality – is either epistemologically justifiable or unjustifiable. The alternative to naturalism is supernaturalism; for supernaturalism it is naturalism. If one is incorrect, the other must be correct. This is a two-part series on why I chose to follow naturalism both methodologically and philosophically. I hope to stay out of a convoluted argument, and instead I intend to show a bit of candor about what I believe, and why.

Continue reading Naturalism, pt. I

Up to this point on this blog, I have been cautious to be honest but not say too much about my experience as a follower of Jesus. The order of first importance was establishing a base we might call “trust,” as far as that is possible in the cyber world. To those outside of any religion, the theology and practice of the faith seems foolish. Even a great deal of what a Buddhist thinks escapes me, and more about how their practice has any real benefit to them or the world. Therefore, to speak too soon in any mixed crowd is to come off foolish. Now that we have engaged in several “conversations”, I hope that, even though not all would agree with me, most would not think me stupid in what I have to say. With that said, I am going to begin introducing more of my thoughts and experiences of faith open to the general friendly critique and questions of all.

There is a key way that I think I experience God. It might be termed “emergence,” but really I have no good terminology for it save the theological term “revelation”. Over the course of a day or several days or a week or more time, a pattern of experiences and thoughts will emerge that are interrelated. They seem to be saying something to me. Usually it is something of immediate relevance to my life and development. Often it will be needed in the next conversation or in engagement with an issue in coming hours or days. It is seldom anything I am thinking about before hand - before the first occurrence warms me to it. And then, while I am still pondering the first, more will occur in astounding frequency and clarity.

Continue reading The IS/OUGHT Dichotomy

Some time ago, we didn’t know where we came from. We didn’t know how things worked. We had to protect ourselves from the unexplained. There were options available to us, early on. We could either keep things the way they were and maintain the village or … suffer exile. Today we see exile as a way to find what the world is really like (i.e. The Beach); these people – us – thought exile was impossible: we couldn’t survive, and if we somehow did, we couldn’t pull it off to actually live on our own. Tradition would hold us together. Even if we could survive, as it went, we would have to rely on the village. Socrates could choose between death and exile, and chose Coniine. Just yesterday, the 18th century, crimes were punishable by either death or exile.

Exile: thrown out into the maelstrom; chaos. With exile, we wouldn’t be able to cope, and would be reduced to less-than-human. We would be cut off from the world, for outside of the community – the village – there was no support system. England’s criminals were first shipped to Georgia, then to Australia, forced into exile halfway across the Earth. We had the sense that outside of the community was so frightening as to be like death, for exile was a death of sorts. The outside of the village was darkness.

Continue reading A Brief History