Year of Faith

It seems like in some other circumstances this would be more of a confession. Perhaps if I were more devout in my monthly beliefs, if I took each to be exclusive in its control of my thoughts and feelings, then this may feel a bit more like coming out. But such is not the case, so I don’t feel that bad.

You see, I haven’t been sticking to my readings for the last few months. Instead I have been quickly (quick for me, anyway, which ain’t that quick) working my way through the latest and most popular atheist authors in addition to my religious readings. I’ve finished Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchens’ god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and now I’m reading Dan Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

It seems kind of strange that I would be trying to maintain positions that seem both for and against religion. Luckily this is not the case. As I study these religions, month by month, my interest in my own personal beliefs has escalated. I’ve never been really against religion per se, but these books are a good way of getting a look at religion from the outside, which oddly enough is something I think I’ve been missing. I’ve spent so much time trying to wrap my head around new ideas that I’ve forgotten where I’m coming from, so it’s good to get back to my roots.

When (perhaps I should rather say ‘if’, this place is looking pretty bare these days) I’m finally at the end of this year, looking back on the twelve months and the twelve faiths that I tried to practice and study, I doubt I will find myself wholly converted to one of these ideas. In fact, I kind of hope I don’t. I’ve never been satisfied with one school of thought or another.

So anyway, don’t get me wrong. I am genuinely trying to experience each of these religions, but my personal beliefs have not changed. In fact, they’re growing by leaps and bounds.

So there’s been a few hiccups this past week.

First off, there was a problem on the site and people were not able to leave comments.  Sara was good enough to identify the problem and fix it, so comment away!  You all have no excuse.

However I do, because my computer in the past few days was in a kind of limbo.  There were a few points where I thought I would lose all my data, but thanks to my father’s quick and knowledgeable tech-support everything is a-ok, and I even have more disk space!  Yay.

We will now be getting back to our regularly scheduled updating.  I’m off to Victoria for a couple of days soon, so I’ll try to check out the Sikh community there and have some updates prepared.

Still digging my teeth into the GGS, and still haven’t woken at dawn.

But I’m doing my best to put a smile on my face and be optimistic about life.   For such is the way of chardi kala, a peaceful and rather bouyant frame of mind that all Sikhs are advised to adopt.  It’s a fine way to look at life, no matter your faith.

Today a few news sites, more than a few LJ communities, and dear Andrew all brought to my attention a little bit o’ religious drama.  It occurred in the US senate on Thursday, that a Hindu priest gave the opening prayer, an honor usually given to a Christian priest.

This in and of itself is not something extraordinary.  According to CNN, priests from all manner of religions have been invited into the Senate to give their own version of a fitting opening prayer.  It seems reasonable that all faiths of the USA be given at least a bleak, vain nod to their inclusion into the lives of US citizens.  After all, the senate is supposed to be representative of the nation, right?

Wrong.  The senate should be representative only of Christians and their values, at least that is what three protesters thought when they began openly heckling and disrupting the priests’ prayer.  They asked forgiveness for the sin of upholding other gods before their God, and for betraying the name of Lord Jesus Christ.

What the hell people?

First off, what exactly are you defending?  The right, which you do not have, and does not exist, for your religion to be the only one upheld in the United States government?  Why are you concerned with the kind of invocation that occurs, when there is not meant to be any link between religion and politics?

Oh, right.  Religion in politics is fine as long as it is your own religion being preached.  I forgot.  It is such a simple solution that it is hard to keep it in mind.  After all, it seems to be working so well in the Middle East.

Oh boy… deep breathe.

Here is the prayer the poor man was trying to get across:

Let us pray.

We meditate on the transcendental glory of the deity supreme, who is inside the heart of the earth, inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of heaven. May he stimulate and illuminate our minds.

Lead us from the unreal to real, from darkness to light, and from death to immortality. May we be protected together. May we be nourished together. May we work together with great vigor. May our study be enlightening. May no obstacle arise between us.

May the Senators strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world, performing their duties with the welfare of others always in mind. Because by devotion to selfless work one attains the supreme goal of life. May they work carefully and wisely, guided by compassion, and without though for themselves.

United your resolve, united your hearts, may your spirits be at one, that you may long dwell in unity and concord!

Peace, peace, peace be unto all.

That is what they were protesting, though they didn’t bother to listen.

I’ve been a flaky pagan.

I have two new part time jobs, school, and a general lack of direction this month. The only thing I’ve been doing faithfully is studying and practicing cartomancy. But I feel inspired, thanks to this article about atheism, which is apparently a pretentious and cowardly idea. So I best get out of it now, right?

The sweeping generalizations and bad arguments were enough to stir my philosophical ire, and I won’t get into all of them here. What really bugged me are the parts that he gets correct. The “militant atheist” crowd does tend to make generalizations and avoids specific cases unless they are in their favour.  There is no central atheistic movement or set of beliefs to which the religious can compare themselves, and many of us are genuinely ignorant of the religions which we deny.

But that is why I started the Year of Faith, to become more enlightened about religion.  Not so that I can argue against religion, but so that we can create a dialog between those who believe and those who do not. So that we can start talking to each other and stop the screaming, stupid insults.

This is a chance for me to prove that not all atheists are ignorant cowards.

Yesterday, when I said I would be making posts throughout the day, what I obviously meant was I would be posting about the various vehicles of Buddhism eventually. Yes, that’s right… eventually.

In the meanwhile I had an interesting question come to mind today. Why do we not forgive God for all the evil and suffering in the world?

We, in this context is a general term, meaning those who I would imagine being in this position, inferred from the various conversations about God and evil which I have had over the years. A very classic position to take on God, as you will see. In any case, the point I want to make is that it seems that every response to the problem of evil seems to avoid making God culpable.

The problem of evil is the problem of reconciling an obvious abundance of immoral action, suffering, and general badness in a world that is supposed to be created and/or governed by an all knowing, all powerful, perfectly good deity. There are many answers to this apparent paradox- that God allows evil acts so that there can be free will, so that we may choose what to do with our lives instead of always doing good by default. There is also the argument that how we suffer just makes us better, allows us to enjoy the good moments, or better prepares our souls by building character and such. It is an old problem and has many arguments on both sides, some claiming it to be a crippling argument against such a conception of God, or of no consequence, or perhaps further proof for God.

But what I finally realized today while ruminating about the subject, is that every defense avoids making God culpable for these pains and horrors inherent in the problem of evil. If it is for the sake of free will, then it is excused. If it is all part of a big Divine Plan, then it is not to be understood, and again it is excused. When trying to puzzle through the problem of evil, why do we bother trying to make excuses for God? Why not just admit that God was wrong, that He made a mistake?

This doesn’t seem like a conceivable conclusion for those who want to hold onto a conception of God as a perfect being. But the existence of the problem of evil as well as other theological fine points challenges this concept of God. From here we have two conceivable routes- we can paint God as a being that is beyond our understanding, as something Zen that is beyond all definitions and languages, as something the defies all reason. Or we could conceive of God as something imperfect, as a being that makes mistakes and judgments, who can be just as fallible as we are.

But this is getting a bit off topic. What I am getting at is that no matter how you conceive of God or our justification of evil, you still have to come to the inevitable realization that God is responsible for evil. Whether it be knowingly allow it to happen, or through His own incompetence, God is linked to horrible things happening to us.

And now we come back to my question- if we know God is responsible, why make excuses for God instead of forgiving Him? Most of the religions we have practiced have taught of the value of forgiveness and understanding, and Christianity makes this point extremely apparent in the role of Jesus Christ. God forgave us our sins, why can’t we do the same for God’s sins?

When I wrote this post I kept imagining the stereotypical funeral or the consul of a priest as they explain that God ‘has a plan’, that our lost ones are in ‘a better place’, and that it is not for us to understand. Why would we play these games, why not just cut across the bullshit and admit the frightening and difficult conclusion- that if we believe in such a divinity, we will eventually need to forgive Him for what He did to us.

Non Trattare… by auro

Lark News has an amusing little parody article about the outsourcing of prayer lines. Lark takes the frustration everyone has with outsourced call centers for tech support and applies it to prayer lines.

Sara and I spent a few minutes reading over this, attempting to figure out if it was serious. We debated back and forth about whether or not people could really be this strange.

This either shows how gullible we are or how strange the Christian right can be portrayed in the news. I think it was the ‘For Eunuchs’ audio button that gave it away in the end.

Last month, Lori Danes, 43, called the prayer line of a major television ministry and requested prayer for her mother’s persistent ulcers. But her prayer representative, who called himself “Darren,” prayed in a strong Indian accent that “all the gods would bless her mightily.”
“I was stunned,” Danes says. “It was like I’d called a demon prayer line.”

It’s short and funny, definitely worth a few minutes of your time. I poked around the site a bit more and found a number of Onion-esque articles that I thought were worth reading.

Since starting this project, I’ve been spending more time cruising religious blogs and other interesting faith-related sites. Not a lot of time, but any time is technically ‘more time’ than zero. I’m discovering that it’s hard to find quality content. Anyone care to share any recommendations that you read?

(Thanks, Jhayne)

Bible Fight!

(If anyone knows the song being played during the menu, I would be forever in your debt.  I am a big fan of choral music)

My month of Jainism showed me just how hard it is to break routine. I’ve spent most of my life living a certain way, i.e.- without religion. Having a religion makes demands on me that I am not used to- it changes my day-to-day life. When I was a Jain I had to ensure that I spent a certain amount of time each day in meditation. Odd as it sounds, I had a hard time finding the time to just sit and be still.

Now I have to find time to pray, which had been less problematic as it takes really no time at all.  But still, it is odd how the littlest of things can really mess up your day and force yourself to reprioritize.

But it is these little changes that really get at the heart of what I am trying to do during the Year of Faith.  These new parts of my routine are what reinforce religion in people, these daily reminders that make the ideas alive.

I have never had a ritual component in my life, no sacred space or ideas.  Now I have periods of prayer and meditation to remind me of what principles and outlook I should be adhering to.  I kind of like that, a time every day to remind myself of what is important.  It is easy to forget.

More practical than a tattoo, anyway.

Just as a heads up for people, Michael is currently away in Britain. His posts will be rare or nonexistent until he returns next week. In the meantime, Sara and I shall entertain you and continue our exploration of this strange faith.

Plans are in the works for a new Discordian holiday somehow involving a feast near the end of the month. In addition, I have been approached to perform an UnWedding commemorating a breakup between two of my friends. I’ll hopefully have more details to post on these events in a day or two.

We now have an about page so we can be sure of what it is we are doing, and possibly why we are doing it.

The page on Discordianism will follow shortly so we can start the New Year off fnord.