Heretics - Reverend Carlton Pearson

It struck me that there is probably no obvious benefit for a member of a religious community to ever reduce the number of things he says he believes in.A member of a church claiming to be a little more faithful, a little more fearful, a little more literal will give the impression of being a 'better' member, to the extent that people associate more with better. Rev Pearson's problem could be simply that he decided to believe less than he believed before; I suspect that in the minds of people searching for deeper faith, it looked like a desertion.Put another way; we are more impressed by jugglers who can juggle six balls than those who can juggle only three. By dropping the flaming sulfurous ball, Rev Pearson just didn't impress the crowds any more.It seems to me that fundamentalist belief may often be the result of a gradual 'ratchet' effect, where people are allowed to express a deepening sense of religious feelings such as awe, faith, communion, or devotion, but where feelings of moderation or indifference are not rewarded or accepted. The idea will be familiar to evos as a memetic selection pressure.This creates problems. For honest Christians searching for truth, there is a real risk that a moderate belief, honestly reached through study and reflection, will be greeting with shouts of 'more! more!'

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And you shall know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.
-- John 8:32

An example would be "Yahweh is a really powerful god." It's moderate in the sense that a more extreme version of the statement can be conceived; eg, "Yahweh is the most powerful god" or "Yahweh is omnipotent."My theory is that other members of the faith will reward believers who believe the more extreme version, over time creating a selection pressure to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely loving, infinitely just, infinitely »anything desirable« God.[edit]I should also say that, if scripture suggests something moderate, then this force can push people away from the most obvious solution. It forces people to be unbiblical.For example; I look at the gospel and think it reads something like "Sin is pretty much a force God can't just wipe out -- he is not all-powerful. Howver, because he loves humanity, he sends his son to atone for the sins of Adam, giving us an escape hatch." This seems to me like a fairly natural reading of the gospel. It becomes unacceptable only as God's power moves from 'very great' to 'omnipotent'. By making God omnipotent, you invalidate the sacrifice of Christ. The tendency to deal with God as an infinite being makes the bible seem like nonsense.Edited by attssyf, : missed a point I wanted to express.

God commands Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit. If he were omnipotent, he would know they aren't going to follow the command, making it a bit of a show. If he really didn't know, the command is an honest request.Adam and Eve hide from God. It makes sense to think of God as neither omniscient nor omnipresent.God comes to regret creation before the flood, suggesting he hasn't got perfect foresight.In Genesis 6, many angels rebel from God, suggesting all is not in perfect harmony in heaven.In Job, Satan convinces God to plague Job with terrible afflictions, suggesting he's not perfectly loving and is even sometimes influenced by the devil.Lots of stories make more sense when you see God as powerful but limited.The biggest one is the salvation offered by Jesus; if God was all-powerful, he could, if he chose, absolve all sin, for all men, for all time, and not only that, rearrange the world such that sin were not possible. What use is Jesus's sacrifice unless God can't just absolve the entire human race?If you see God as not having that level of power, then God's attempts (often unsuccessful) to lead his chosen people in righteousness are just that; attempts by a powerful lord at helping his people prosper. Well, not necessarily. People have believed in gods for a long time, but many stories of the gods have them as imperfect or less than omnipotent. The Greek gods, for example, are very powerful in contrast to humans, very knowledgeable in contrast to humans, but not beings that manifest some mathematical infinity of power or knowledge. I think there is a useful conception of Yahweh as being very, very powerful but not omnipotent, very very clever but not omniscient, very very loving but not 'omniphilic'.This God makes the stories in the bible more reasonable; it makes the Christian message much more reasonable. God is powerful but cannot trivially defeat the devil, thus the devil is a real danger. He cannot stop all suffering, thus suffering exists in the world. He cannot negate all sin, but can offer us a way out. That is a theology I find coherent. Powerful, not infinite. Sin's a tricky concept, because it can mean at least two thingsIf I say "murder is a sin", then I'm describing a whole set of actions that count as sin. It's a bit like describing the fouls you can commit while playing a sport.If I say "The murder of abel is a sin", then I'm describing a particular time when the rule was broken.Now, when you say 'God did not create sin', there are two readings of it;(1) God did not set up the rules that define sin.
(2) God did not create anything intrinsically sinful.I think the bible suggests meaning (1) throughout; that God did not set up the rules for sin, that sin and death are forces that God doesn't have full control over, and that he is engaged in a battle with them. It also suggests meaning (2); the things that God creates are good. ("And he saw that it was good")Once you hold dogmatically to the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent, omniphilic, omnipresent God, you get into all the old theological problems like the problem of suffering, which really aren't problems if God isn't infinite.----Ultimately my point is this; here I am making a moderate interpretation of scripture. How many bishops would ordain me if I express this theology, or a better-argued version of the same? How many congregations would accept me as their priest? I'm thinking, very few.There would always be a pressure to say, today, that God is a little more powerful than I described him yesterday, and no pressure to say he is less powerful. That thrusts our description of God towards the infinite, which I believe has severe problems.

That's exactly it. To me the bible just makes more sense that way. An omni-everything God just demands too many extra explanations, requires people to explain things in more convoluted ways, makes too many stories hard to fathom.I remember reading a thread on another forum, between a Christian and an atheist, and the Christian was talking about a time when his father had been involved in an accident. The father had been out hiking when a large boulder dropped off an outcrop an caught him in the head. Luckily, he was almost entirely unharmed. This Christian, the son, had interpreted the escape as a miracle, as God saving his father. What struck me at the time was the question "well, who threw the rock?"It seems to me that if God is all-powerful, then he is ultimately responsible. You have to look at the situation and say, "God threw a rock at my head. He didn't throw it as hard as he could." That doesn't seem very loving, or helpful spiritually. How can you fell grateful because someone throwing rocks at you didn't use their full strength?Look at it the other way, though. If the impersonal universe randomly 'emits' a rock at me, and God intervenes because he's looking out for me, then I owe him a real debt, some real gratitude. He's like a friend who's got my back. But that only works if he's not the one who engineered all the danger as well.

Hopefully answering this point answers all, or at least most, of your questions.First CauseWhat I'm arguing is that if God has perfect foresight and total power, then he is responsible for every event in the universe. It's an application of the 'first cause' argument.It goes like this; I ask, what is the cause of an event, E? We say, it is a preceding event, E', or perhaps a set of causes. This leads us to ask the cause of E', and we come up with a cause E''. And so on, possibly infinitely.(In the story above, E is the dropped rock, E' is a gust of wind, E'' is low pressure in the east, etc.)Ultimately, how far back can we go?Well, God's creation of the universe is a pretty good candidate. God makes the universe. And it doesn't matter how you believe he did it, with a big bang or in seven days. The point is, God's creation of the world is the first event in a chain of events that leads ultimately to our event in question, E.In summary;(1) God created the universe, setting the world in motion.
(2) a bunch of stuff happens in between, as a direct consequence of (1)
(3) A rock drops on someone's head, as a direct consequence of (2)Therefore, (3) happens as a direct consequence of (1).God created the universe. Ultimately, he started the ball (or rock) rolling. God threw the rock.IntentionThe second part of the argument is about intention; did God want the rock to drop?Now we get into the idea that God knows everything, particularly about the future. Does God know the future, in full detail?If he does, then he must have known, at the point of creation, that that rock was going to drop on that man's head. He could have chosen to create the world differently; a slightly different spin on an electron here, a slightly different wing shape for a butterfly, and that gust of wind never happens and the rock never drops.So. God causes the rock to drop, and he knows the rock will drop. He has full knowledge of what he does, and he does it. If we were arguing it in a court of law, we could say, he knew what he was doing (mens rea) and he did it (actus reus).God's going to the Big House for Grievous Bodily Harm.Free WillFree will doesn't help you out of this one. In fact, it's an argument for a non-omniscient God. Here's how.If God can predict the choices people make, then he choses to put you on the earth at a certain time, knowing how you will act, and then punishes and rewards you. It's like God arranging the cards in a deck, letting you play one hand of blackjack, and rewarding you if you beat the house. Sure, you have the free will of hit or stick, but THE GODDAMNED GAME WAS RIGGED!On the other hand, if God doesn't know how you're going to choose, he can be at least a little surprised at how you act; either delighted or disappointed. Both these emotions are a form of surprise, a consequence of not knowing the future. It seems our choices become more significant, that our choices aren't all pre-determined before we are born. Human choice is significant only in a world where we aren't being cold-decked by God.

No, I'm an atheist. I don't believe in God.The overall thrust of my argument has been about how the stories of the Bible suggests a limited God, but that social pressures within churches make it very tricky for people to express such ideas.As examples, I've tried to show that certain views of God as an infinite being lead to logical problems, like the problem of determinism (no free will if god has perfect foreknowledge) and the problem of God being responsible for all evil (because he is the knowing cause for everything, and some things are evil). I believe that the logical consequences of an omnipotent and omniscient creator are lack of free will and a God who knowingly creates evil.These problems melt away if you accept a view of God as of a lesser power; powerful, but not infinite. That would allow humans more space for free will and to have a God who was purely loving. It also seems to me to be more in tune with the bible, where God is portrayed as being changeable, fallible, and less than omniscient.The thing that interests me is the way churches and other religious institutions affect the way theology is spread and develops. It's really a matter of questioning our own human descriptions of the divine. I'm talking about questioning those who claim authority over theology; ancients like the human writers of the gospel, St Paul, and Thomas Aquinas, or moderns like priest or fellow church members.

I think this is exactly right; when people are told to believe exactly this, and that thing has flaws, there's really nowhere else to go except to disbelieve the whole shooting match.As an illustrative example, consider something like the doctrine of the trinity. For some, the trinity simply seems a badly-argued piece of logic, the theological equivalent of the equation '3 = 1'.Now, what happens if you're not allowed to suggest that 3 =/= 1? You try to suggest something which seems more mathematically correct. You are told this is heresy, and you should not think further. But you can't help it. 3 is not 1. Given the absurdity of the original statement, and no flexibility to suggest something else, the brittle belief will snap.I don't want to start a discussion on the trinity; I just want to illustrate the point that inflexibility of belief, combined with intellectual honesty, creates atheists.

That's a little unfair. Christianity is a modification of Judaism. Jesus was a Jew, and preached about the Jewish God. Islam is also an Abrahamic* religion, and Allah is ultimately a variant of Yahweh. It's not particularly significant that all three religions, being family members, share family likenesses. Does that opinion extend to history? Do you think no-one ever expressed a different opinion because of the threat of violence or ostracism? Excommunication, inquisition, heretic burning, Christian-vs-Christian violence in Northern Island, Christian-vs-Islam violence in Pakistan, and Islam-vs-Islam violence in Iraq are extreme versions of exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, the kind of behavior that, at it's extreme ends, says "Believe what we believe or we'll set you on fire." It has sprung up, in various Christologies suggesting that Jesus was less than divine; they were very popular in the early church, and supported by some of the early emperors. However, they were condemned by orthodox bishops. The Bogomils were another Christian sect who saw Jesus as less than divine, and were punished for it. How about this? A church is a group of people who celebrate in roughly the same way; a common liturgy and other practices. Theology is the underlying beliefs which give meaning to the liturgy. As an example, a theology that says that Jesus is the passover lamb underlies the ritual of communion, which is a symbolic passover meal.--
* Abrahamic religions - Wikipedia

Probably not any more, no.Early Judaism does suggest it, telling stories about a God who is fallible, ignorant, regretful, and jealous. (See my post #25 for examples) Later Judaism has God as more powerful. This is the kind of trend I'm talking about, the ratchet effect that means that there is no ebb and flow, just a continuing increase.