When I was in first or second grade and had just been introduced by the nuns to the concept of a limitless God, I lay awake at night driving myself nuts by repeating over and over, But how could God have no beginning? And how could he have no end? And then I thought of all the stars in the sky: But how could there be a last one? Wouldn't there always have to be one more? Many years later I know the answer to the second question, but I still don't know the answer to the first one.
I took it up with a favorite nun, Sister Marie Donald, who led our rhythm band and was our basketball coach. "Roger," she said, "that is just something you have to believe. Pray for faith." Then I lay awake wondering how I could pray for faith to a God I could not believe in without faith. That seemed to leave me suspended between two questions. These logical puzzles seemed to be generated spontaneously within my mind. They didn't come from my school or my family. Most of my neighborhood friends were Protestants who were not interested in theories about God, apart from the fact that of course he existed.
I bought the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church lock, stock and barrel, apart from the God problem. We started every school day at St. Mary's with an hour of religion, and it was my favorite subject. We were drilled in memorizing entries from the Baltimore Catechism, which was a bore, but more interesting were the theoretical discussions about what qualified as a sin, what you have to do to get to Heaven, and "Sister, what would happen if..." Those words always introduced a hypothetical situation which led the unsuspecting Catholic perilously close to the fires of Hell.
Looking back, I realize religion class began the day with theoretical thinking and applied reasoning, and was excellent training. To think that you might sin by accident, and be damned before you could get to Confession in time! What if you had an impure thought at the top of Mt. Everest, and couldn't get back down? We were exposed to the concepts of sins of omission, sins of commission, intentional sins and, the trickiest of all, unintentional sins. Think of it: A sin you didn't intend to commit. But Sister, is it a sin if you didn't know it was?
Some of my classmates and I would lie on our backs in the front yard, ponder the stars, and ask ourselves, if some kid started to play with himself but he didn't know what would happen, would that be his fault? Only if he did it again, we concluded. I remember one night a kid asked, "But what would happen if you played with yourself?" We told hjim, "Just don't ever try it!" "Then how do you know anything would happen?" We decided you were allowed just one time, to find out.
I have the impression that all of my Dominican teachers were New Deal Democrats, and that for them Franklin D. Roosevelt had achieved a species of secular sainthood. Of course they were fervently anti-communist. People in the USSR could be thrown in jail just for going to church, and there was brave Cardinal Menzenti, who was tortured by the Hungarian atheists. For many years I visualized the Soviet Union as a land where the sun never came out, and enslaved Catholic peasants labored under lowering skies for their godless rulers.
But our theology was often very practical: All men are created equal. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you. The Ten Commandments, which we studied at length, except for adultery, "which you children don't have to worry about." A fair day's work for a fair day's wage. A good government should help make sure everyone has a roof over their head, a job, and three meals a day. The cardinal acts of mercy. Ethical behavior. The sisters didn't especially seem to think that a woman's place was in the home, as theirs certainly was not. You should "pray for your vocation." My mother prayed for mine; she wanted me to become a priest. "Every Catholic mother hopes she can give a son to the priesthood," she said, and spoke of one mother at St. Patrick's, who had given two, as if she were a lottery winner.
I was an altar boy. Even in the dead of winter I rode my bike to church to serve at the early morning mass. In those days parents thought nothing of a grade school kid riding his bike all over town. One morning early in my service I got confused and didn't have the water and wine where they were required. I was maybe nine or ten When we got back to the sacristy, I burst into tears and Father McGinn took me on his lap and comforted me and said God knew I had done my best. If a priest did that today, he would be arrested, but no priest or nun ever treated me with other than love and care.
I no longer lost any sleep over the questions of God and infinity. I understood they could have no answers. At some point the reality of God was no longer present in my mind. I believed in the basic Church teachings because I thought they were correct, not because God wanted me to. In my mind, in the way I interpret them, I still live by them today. Not by the rules and regulations, but by the principles. For example, in the matter of abortion, I am pro-choice, but my personal choice would be to have nothing to do with an abortion, certainly not of a child of my own. I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do. Above all, the state does not. Popes come and go, and John XXIII has been the only one I felt affection for. Their dictums strike me as lacking in the ability to surprise. They have been leading a holding action for a millenium.
Catholicism made me a humanist before I knew the word. When people rail against "secular humanism," I want to ask them if humanism itself would be okay with them. Over the high school years, my belief in the likelihood of a God continued to lessen. I kept this to myself. I never discussed it with my parents. My father in any event was a non-practicing Lutheran, until a death bed conversion which rather disappointed me. I'm sure he agreed to it for my mother's sake.
Did I start calling myself an agnostic or an atheist? No, and I still don't. I avoid that because I don't want to provide a category for people to apply to me. I would not want my convictions reduced to a word. Chaz, who has a firm faith, leaves me to my beliefs. "But you know you're one or the other," she says. "I have never told you that," I say. "Maybe not in so many words, but you are," she says.
But I persist in believing I am not. During in all the endless discussions on several threads of this blog about evolution, intelligent design, God and the afterworld, now numbering altogether around 3,500 comments, I have never said, although readers have freely informed me I am an atheist, an agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist--which I am. If I were to say I don't believe God exists, that wouldn't mean I believe God doesn't exist. Nor does it mean I don't know, which implies that I could know.
Let me rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men. That some men believe they have been spoken to by God, I am certain. I do not believe Moses came down from the mountain with any tablets he did not go up with. I believe mankind in general evidently has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body. But these needs are hopes, and believing them doesn't make them true. I believe mankind feels a need to gather in churches, whether physical or social.
I've spent hours and hours in churches all over the world. I sit in them not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe. I am aware of the generations there before me. The reassurance of tradition. At a midnight mass on Christmas Eve at the village church in Tring in the Chilterns, I felt unalloyed elevation. My favorite service is Evensong. I subscribe to Annie Dilliard, who says that in an unfamiliar area, she seeks out the church of the oldest established religion she can find, because it has the most experience in not bring struck by lightning.
I have no interest in megachurches with jocular millionaire pastors. I think what happens in them is socio-political, not spiritual. I believe the Prosperity Gospel tries to pass through the eye of the needle. I have no patience for churches that evangelize aggressively. No interest in being instructed in what I must do to be saved. I prefer vertical prayer, directed upward toward heaven, rather than horizontal prayer, directed sideways toward me. I believe a worthy church must grow through attraction, not promotion. I am wary of zealotry; even as a child I was suspicious of those who, as I sometimes heard, were "more Catholic than the Pope." If we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must regard their beliefs with the same respect that our own deserve.
I'm still struggling with with the question of how anything could have no beginning and no end. These days I'm fascinated by it from the point of view of science. I cannot know everything, but I approach matters in terms of what I do and can know. Science is not "secular." It is a process of honest investigation.
Take infinity. We know there must be an infinite number of numbers, because how could there be a Last Number? The more interesting puzzle is, how did there come to be a First Number, and why do many mammals other than man know how to count, at least a little? I don't believe the universe counts. Counting is a mental exercise, and mathematics is useful to the degree it helps us describe and understand the universe, and work within it in useful ways. A Last Number is not important; only the imposibility of one.
I know there cannot be a Last Star, because we know the universe to be curved. At least, that's what mathematicians tell us. I can't form the concept of a curved universe in my mind, but I think I know what they're trying to say. Nor can I imagine one, three, five, many additional dimensions. Nor do I understand the Theory of Relativity. Growing up I used to hear that Einstein was the only man smart enough to understand his own Theory. Now countless people do, but I suspect few have a literal vision of what it means. What they understand, I think, is their mathematical proofs of it. If I'm wrong about this, I'm encouraged.
That the universe may expand indefinitely and die is a concept I can imagine. That all of its matter would cease to exist I cannot imagine. That the universe, as was once thought, expands and contracts indefinitely, one Big Bang collapsing into another one, seemed reasonable enough. But in both models of the universe, what caused the first Big Bang? Or was there a first Big Bang, any more than a Last Number?
If there was a First Cause, was there a First Causer? Or did Big Bangs just happen to happen? Can we name the First Causer "God?" We can name it anything we want. I can name it after myself. It is utterly insignificant what it is called, because we would be giving a name to something that falls outside all categories of thought and must be unknowable and irrelevant to knowledge. So it is a futile enterprise.
Quantum theory is now discussing instantaneous connections between two entangled quantum objects such an electrons. This phenomenon has been observed in laboratory experiments and scientists believe they have proven it takes place. They're not talking about faster than the speed of light. Speed has nothing to do with it. The entangled objects somehow communicate instantaneously at a distance. If that is true, distance has no meaning. Light years have no meaning. Space has no meaning.
In a sense, the entangled objects are not even communicating. They are the same thing. At the "quantum level," and I don't know what that means and cannot visualize it, everything that there is may be actually or theoretically linked. All is one. Sun, moon, stars, rain, you, me, everything. All one. If this is so, then Buddhism must have been a quantum theory all along. No, I am not a Buddhist. I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer.
¶All art is based on Strange Attractors generated by Chaoscope, a Windows program downloadable here. No, I don't believe they're pictures of God. I believe they can't be described in words, which pleases me. All of the art can be enlarged by clicking.
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The Big Bang as a fractal:
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Renderings of Strange Attractors;
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An unexpected pattern:
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I hate to break it to you, but if you "don't believe god exists", you're an atheist:
http://yrif.org/2009/04/17/two-thumbs-down/
Ebert: Where did I say I don't believe God exists?
Excellent article, as always. I always did wonder how exactly you felt about things, since I knew about the Catholic upbringing you had (I came from a similar background) but that you did not exactly identify as one religion or an agnostic or whatever.
Especially interesting is how you bring up humanism, in particular "Catholicism made me a humanist before I knew the word." I pretty much had the same realization years later.
I guess what I am trying to get at is that I sort of went through a lot of the same things you did, except that in the end I still actively believe in God, the Church, and so on.
I am grateful that I ended up with the same kind of teachers and nuns and priests and so on that you had, because I like to think that they have made me a better person. Everything you talked about, to me, is the most important part of the Church's teachings (All men are created equal, etc). It does not matter if God exists or not, that is inconsequential, I suppose. I apologize if I do not make total sense, as this sort of thing is hard to put into words. You are much better at this then I.
Forget Buddhism or atheism..this all sounds very Unitarian-Universalist to me.
You're a Buddhist, Roger. Sorry, but it's true.
I've loved your work all my life but I STILL don't want to see "Knowing."
f
Atheist in the Name Of God, perhaps?
(Alan Watts said it before me, and he probably lifted it from somewhere else).
Can I tell you a story? This is something I wrote about to speak to the concept of faith vs doubt. I hope you will read all the way to the end.
A Story
I’m a jazz fan. It’s the music that brings me home to my self. If I’ve been exposed to a day of really bad music, on hold for minutes that seem to be stretching into hours, and it’s been Kenny G, or rock (“Classic” or not, I can’t take much of it) or the boring and predictable Bam! Bam! Bam! accompanying the rap, hip-hop noise emanating from our 16 year old’s room, after a time I need my head and heart cleared and jazz is where I go.
Sometimes I will find myself needing to explore an old piece that has drawn my attention once again and I will play the same track over and over and over, hearing something in it I haven’t ever heard before, though I’ve listened to it a hundred times. Miles Davis and “All Blues” will catch me like this on occasion.
Some poetry is like that for me too and I will re-read a piece again to recapture what caught me the first time, or to hear it afresh to awaken me to what I missed in the first go ‘round. “The Road not Taken” is one like that.
I have a story of my own that I re-tell now and then because I think it will help others to hear it, even though some I know have probably heard it ten times over the years. In reality I tell it more for me, because I need to re-visit the emotions that were present when the story was born into my life those many years ago. It’s a “touchstone” of sorts, a place to which I return to reawaken faith and hope.
This is the story:
But first…just a bit of background. This story didn’t spring entirely from the moment, there were many “tributaries” that fed into the stream of it. It’s often true that a spiritual awakening, or a “miracle” happens when the ground is already prepared for it.
Not always, but mostly.
To be brief I will just say that I had been looking for a way to understand and believe that there was more to life than our just being, as my brother-in-law contended “animated pieces of meat”. But I was deep into “proofs” about this. I wanted the facts not just hopeful leaps of faith or assurances from people who burned a lot of incense and meditated all the time. I wanted to be convinced!
I’m still that way about most politics and “Best apple pie!” claims.
I had come north from my apartment near El Paso to the mountains outside of Albuquerque. I’d come to visit friends and to gather some shreds of cedar bark from the trees that grow in the area,. I was using six to eight inch lengths of it to create small smoldering fires for the daily ceremonies I was committed to performing at the request of a medicine man I was working with. This was part of my personal spiritual quest. One of the “tributaries”.
He had taught me a little ritual to perform with the trees in order to gather the bark in a “conscious” manner. This was simply a process of taking a pinch of tobacco up to the tree selected and offering a prayer about why I was gathering the bark and that I would be using it for good purpose, and wouldn’t be taking much.
This seemed to me to be a nice way of keeping a person aware of conservation which is what I figured it was really all about.
I like to keep things “rationally” based.
Another tributary was this; I had been seeking a name. I wanted some sort of spiritual identity and through a series of very odd events occurring over the preceding months I had come up with “coyote” a name which carries many levels of understanding….but this is another story.
The events which led me to this name could be considered “magical” by some, but for me, they might have simply been random occurrences and I thought I might be making more of them than they deserved. The real dilemma was that I was the one doing the “interpreting”. Since I didn’t trust anything I might come up with as coming from “The Source”, my interpretations didn’t amount to any kind of proof I could consider valid.
So to prove that; the name was real and therefore purposeful, and thus, that there really was a Creator spirit running this show and all of this ceremony and ritual was worth the undertaking, my criteria was this; someone, unbidden, would one day hand me a coyote skull as a gift. That would be the proof I would need.
Kind of a tall order but not unusual for a skeptic.
The scene was set….and there I was doing my obligatory ceremony with the tree of my choice, one chosen at random from among thousands of possibilities in the Cibola National Forest at the foot of the Sandia mountains.
In the midst of this undertaking I was suddenly struck with this thought; “This isn’t the right tree.”!
This was a very uncharacteristic response for me because I’m a point-A-to-point-B kind of guy. I don’t reflect much on “feelings” about right or wrong trees. I was just doing a ritual after all. But there it was, and the feeling of “wrongness” persisted until I looked around at the forest of cedar trees and picked one that, and this is my memory of it, was “greener” than all the others.
I walked over to it and began my ceremony again, feeling “right” this time.
But midway through something in the branches, deep inside and right up close to the trunk, something glowingly white, caught my attention. I moved some branches aside and stepped inside the shade and saw, hanging in the fork of a main branch, a skull.
A coyote’s skull.
All these years later I can still feel what I felt then though time has lessened the impact. Tears flooded my eyes and my legs could not hold me up. I could only cry and say, “My God! It’s all real! It’s REAL!” My shock at that realization was only equaled by the guilt I felt that I could ever have doubted…and then came the pure joy of the reassurance that this tangible gift represented.
Then I wanted to tell someone, anyone…to reassure them, to spread the news of this experience. But there was no one near to tell…and, after I sat with all of it for a time, I determined that keeping it all inside seemed important. Letting it permeate every cell to purge the doubts felt like the best use of this miracle. And I had no doubt then, nor do I have now, that that’s exactly what this was.
I have chosen to tell this story again now and then but only when I felt the time was right to it revisit that feeling, to bring it back to life in me and share it with those who need it. There have been many other “miracles” since then, but nothing so clear-cut, so out of the “could be explained away” category. And of course, I could, if I worked very hard at statistics, probabilities, and permutations, explain even that one I suppose
Well, considering the odds, maybe not.
Sometimes, when I am feeling unloved, or more accurately, unlovable, I will finally whittle all of those who might possibly love me down to my daughters of whose love I am absolutely sure and then I stare at a picture I have of my wife Elizabeth and, once again captured by her warm soul eyes, I will be brought back to my center. From there I can rebuild to a place of balance.
This coyote story never fails to ebb the tides of doubt which rise as hours of facts begin to overtake my moments of faith. Just as the sure love of my daughters and my life partner, the poetry of jazz and the depth of prose bring me back home to sanity, it reminds my doubting brain and my cautious heart of what I came upon in that forest of cedar. It was not something imagined or dreamed, it was a tangible gift I could, and still do, hold in my hands. A reality that brings me spiritually alive once again and without the specter of doubt to cloud my hope.
And this is also true; I know, that despite my strong intent it is impossible to convey the power of this story to another to instill the same response I had to this experience. How can I paint a sunset so that you can see it or send my experience of deep love to you so that you can feel it? The Bible has never convinced me of virgin birth or resurrection and though Carl Sandberg has told me of the “Wilderness” he cannot take me there, I will have to put on my own hiking shoes for that. And so it is for “miracles”. All I hope to do by telling this story is say that it is possible for any human being, searching for something to believe in, to find it.
The method is simple; fight to keep your own mind and heart open to all the potential for magic. But don’t wait for it, actively seek it out….just as it has been said: “Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.” It takes work, whether that be doing the ceremonies and rituals or just walking in the woods, to overcome the inertia, but the rewards for those efforts, if you believe in the worth of hope, are priceless.
Occam's Razor says to seek the simple solution to a problem..it could certainly be that I "simply" stumbled upon the skull of a dead coyote. Long odds or not. However, the other side of this "simple solution" can also be that it was a "miracle". One solution removes cynicism from the equation and admits "possibility". Though I might still struggle with this tension, I prefer it.
Ebert: A fascinating story. But in the sense that anything is a miracle, everything is.
Roger, I appreciate your honesty and respect. I also have little appreciation for manifestations of Christianity that are more concerned with being American than Christian. I'm sure you've read the Bible enough to know that, when you write "I have no interest in megachurches with millionaire jocular pastors..." you're in close keeping with many of Christ's teachings or Paul's vision of the Church. It's frustrating that you see with more clarity the real value of religion and the meanings embedded in the scriptures than many believers do.
I half-expect journalists who embrace a secular humanism worldview to see Christians through the same lens as Bill Maher. Perhaps your respect is wrought from your early schooling? In any case, thank you.
Fascinating comments Mr. Ebert. I am reminded of the numerous fantastic strips from Charles Schultz's 'Peanuts' where Charlie Brown lies awake at night asking the questions we all want, or think we want, answered about the nature of our existence. As you point out in your closing lines, the question is often more rewarding, and certainly more stimulating, than any definitive answer could ever be.
Even as I try to write a thoughtful reply, I find myself unable to do so. I'm not a writer. However, I would like to say that in this single blog entry, you have said most of what I’ve been wanting to say concerning God, the Universe, and the questions connecting the two. I guess you could say that I’m like you in that I don't want to be attached to a group, naming me for what I believe. For me, the best thing you said was, “I believe in free will, and I believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do.” Of course this should extend to: “I don’t believe I have the right to tell anyone else what to believe.” Because everyone has that right to believe whatever they want. Personally, I think the concept of God as a Creator is true, but I don’t think humans have the capability to understand the Creator as a "person" because it isn’t. It is otherworldly, it is alien, and it is far above even Einstein’s way of thinking.
An interesting, personal essay. Through all the years that I've read your reviews, I always wondered what label you might fall under. I knew from your background and anecdotes in several reviews that you had an early Catholic background, but that later on you did not believe in quite the same way, if at all. Opening this blog post, I had a suspicion you wouldn't conclusively choose any one label as appropriate for your beliefs or disbeliefs. I was right. So, in the end, you're content to wrestle with the many timeless questions without a definite answer. I suppose ultimately that's what we all have to do.
Still, I don't think there's anything wrong with a label as long as you feel it accurately describes your beliefs. I feel it is appropriate to describe myself as an agnostic. I share many of your uncertainties, with the exception that I think it's safe to say that there is no personal god, one that intervenes in the affairs of the universe (or human existence, for that matter.) But as for the abstract idea of "god"--of some unknown force or entity responsible for the universe--then all I can muster is a big fat 'I don't know.' I'm content not having a solid answer, and maybe we will never have it. But I wouldn't mind knowing it, if such an answer even exists.
As for some kind of afterlife, I doubt that there is one. I know you didn't bring it up, but it always seems to be a topic inherently linked to the question of god, though I suppose such a link doesn't have to exist. With all that we thus far understand about physiology, everything that makes us "us" appears to be a result of our physical brains, and nothing more. Like the computer relation of software to hardware: one cannot perform of even exist without the other. But is that all there is to it? I guess we will all find out one day, won't we?
"The beginning of the spiritual journey is the realization, not just the information but the real interior conviction that there is a Higher Power or God or to make it as easy as possible for everybody -- that there is an Other, capital O. Second step, to try to become the Other, still a capital O. And finally, the realization that there is no Other. You and the Other are ONE. Always have been, always will be. You just think that you're not."
Father Thomas Keating --
Hi Rodger,
I found this post to be a well written deep introspection. Your second grade teach should have given the correct answer to you questions about God's infinity. She should have not though it too complicated for a second grader.
Can the universe have always existed without a first cause? No. If there was an infinite number of moments before the present we could not have reach the present moment. It would have taken an infinite amount of time to get here. This logic was well known to thinkers in the middle ages but it was not proven scientifically until the Big Bang theory. So one definition of God is Gos is the un-caused cause.
You said, "I believe mankind in general evidently has a need to believe in higher powers and lives not limited to the physical duration of the body." This was also said in Confessions of St. Augustine, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." the fact that we are made for God can only be denies by those who insist on doing so.
I recommend, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, which discusses these topics in detail. (http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Christian-Apologetics-Hundreds-Questions/dp/0830817743)
My wife and daughter accuse me of being an Ebert obsessive. I'm not, any more than she is a Neil Gaiman obsessive or she is a Trey Parker/Matt Stone obsessive. But I'm a fan. I'm a particular fan of your blogs because you seem to care about some of the same things that I do, and worry them the way a puppy worries a soft leather shoe.
This discussion of God and the Universe has a particular resonance. Your sleeplessness over the How--perhaps unresolvable, but I get a little comfort in the mantra what could or would there be if not this?
I have friends who pray for the Godless and roster me in there, and that's fine. Like funerals, prayer seems to be more for the praying than the prayed-for. Even so, I don't like being one-worded any more than you do, and I totally identify with your stance.
About the first/last/whenever issue: I never see the phrase "the detectable universe," and I think that's a shame. Even in our detectable universe, space is vast; and who is to say that beyond our instruments, beyond the grip of local gravitons, reality doesn't constantly demand fresh birth?
Reckless optimism tells me that if there is any purpose, any non-absurdity, Reality serves as a cradle for thought. Since finitude would render the cradle moot, my recklessness extends to the notion that there might be continuity.
I "cheat" on the URL sometimes, and have it point not to a blog but an image. I did it again today. If you ever say "don't do that anymore," I won't do it anymore; but I found it irresistible today because my daily journal page, finished hours before I saw this latest blog of yours, addressed a most similar theme. Coincidence? Of course--but one that makes me happy.
Wow. Apart from being exceptionally articulate and well argued, this is a deeply moving discussion of spirituality that dares to find contentment, comfort, freedom, and even joy in being able to ask questions that might not have answers. I also appreciate how you identified the philosophical overlap between science and spirituality, since after all they're both about asking questions that are bigger than ourselves. The last sentence of your article resonated especially strongly with me. Thanks for this post, and for all the other thoughtful entries you've included in your blog.
I grew up Catholic as well. Raised by strict Sicilians.
After attending college, I'd say more than 75% of my friends, new and old were atheists.
I will be forwarding your blog entry to each of them, not only because I find it to be a great piece of writing, but because it encapsulates my feelings about the Universe, God and human existence better than I ever could.
The question itself is indeed more interesting than any answer could be.
Thanks for this.
I find myself in a similar boat. I was raised an Anglican; I accompanied my mum to church every week, and sat in the choir stalls reading Richard Scarry at her feet while she sang hosanna. I went to Sunday school, and learned all I could about the Bible. I had never heard such wonderful stories, full of depth and meaning. I'm not sure I've heard their like since, either.
But they never felt any more real than Busytown, or the Pie Rats. Even then I think I realised it was the layers of moral purpose beneath the stories that was most important.
And as I grew older, the sunday school teachers who had so delighted in my endless questions grew cautious, then reluctant, then defensive. I think that,more than anything, was what turned me against religion. I was a child, and I wanted to know more. I wanted adults to explain the world to me. But here they were, ignoring my earnest inquisition.
I still go to church, every now and then; for Easter, or for midnight mass on Christmas Eve, my mum and I driving or being driven. It's difficult to say which.
But for me, it's always been the stories. Christian, pagan, classical greek, norse; it didn't matter how people chose to clothe the world, I wanted the wardrobe-full.
Even when I was at university, mocking the sincerity of the evangelical Christian Union and railing against the double standards of the Uni administration in forbidding an Atheist Union (what is the collective noun for atheists, anyway? A humbug?) I still couldn't tear myself away from the stories.
Still can't. And they've worked, I think; they've done what they were intended to do. I live my life (or try to - only human, after all) to the guidelines I learned when I was young, the same compass my mum's faith gives her. The same compass I imagine your nuns used to navigate, Roger, and the one they've handed down to you. The map might look a little different, but if it gets us there...?
It'd be a tad congested if we all took the same road, after all. And the stories might start to get old.
I wonder if being educated as a Catholic, as I also was, has anything to do with asking those questions (in Mexico there are still not too many people of religions different to Catholicism, or at least there were not that many around in my childhood for me to know). What I know is that one of my brothers and I would also lie awake at night, talking about those same questions, especially infinity, or rather, an infinite God. Then, of course, would come the question ¿what is time?
Anyway, a few years ago, pondering on this yet again and probably after watching a very good movie I guess, I thought that God must be Humanity's perfect McGuffin.
At some point, those humans must have realized that rather than trying to comprehend fire, they could have faith in it and just use it to advance. Hence, fire became one of the first gods, if not the first. I think that is the reason the first gods were the elements. Of course, later on people understood fire but the wheel had started to turn, so to speak... Humanity had advanced to another level and turned their eyes to a new incomprehensible "fire", which in turn would become the next God, all the time bypassing trying to understand that new fire now labeled God, that is until we were ready to understand "God" and move on to the next stage of human advancement. And then, we got to that great unkown: man himself. And then we made God into our image. Will we ever reach the next level? Of course, that implies the great question, What is Man?
Without the idea of God for that we cannot comprehend, we would probably still be sitting naked, eyes fixed on that accidental fire in the woods, trying to figure it out.
Wonderful blog Roger.
I can relate to what you said about agreeing with the principles of the Catholic religion. I grew up protestant - that religion for people who kind of, sort of wanna be religious - and then I went to a Catholic highschool. (Long story why which I'll spare you.) I took a religion class there and, to this day, it is a class I remember lovingly. The principles of what we discussed moved me to want to be a better person. Not because of the idea of a 'God' but because the principles felt so humane compared to so much of what I saw around me growing up... (I don't know how to explain that last part except to say that I can relate to many of Ed Tom Bell's worries and observations.)
My grandfather is... extremely religious one might say. I remember having a talk with him in Grade Nine about my religion class. He was happy I was in it. He asked what I was learning. I said many things and that, overall, it's just about trying to be a decent person and that's what matters. He replied, "No, no, no, that's not it. You have to accept God into your heart."
...
Every time I see him now he seems desperate to convert, like his life will have been wasted if I don't believe. Both his parents died before he was a teenager, his four older brothers were shot by communist soldiers (from as far as I can gather from his stories), he was on his own at 12 years old and survived living in Russia after WWII, he came to Canada with nothing, he eventually was able to run a successful laundry mat business, he raised a family, I'm born because of it. All things considered, if I were him I'd feel pretty damn accomplished. But he gets so worked up about religion as if it's the end all be all. I think it's because he believes God saved him during the days when he had nothing and maybe he has to pay Him back now? He's always told me stories about how he'd look up to the sky when he was starving and pray for strength. He feels he got it. That's always made it difficult for me to disagree with him. He's insulted if I think otherwise.
Religion has obviously helped many people through difficult times and I think that's why it has survived. But it's also the cause of much unrest and we should be hoping for a day when it's really unnecessary because people care enough about each other that they don't need to make up imaginary friends to help them through their darkest hours. Just my opinion.
And, while I'm here commenting, as far as I've encountered, the two greatest preachers were George Carlin and Alan Watts. Maybe Gandhi too. His quote "I like your Christ but not your Christians" is a great one.
Roger,
You consistently move me with your honesty, and I was fascinated by your logic here. I know you are not alone in your insistence on being outside a given label, and in seeking transience more than a destination when it comes to truth. You've essentially arrived at step one of true systematic theology: to recognize the limits of natural knowledge. Though I believe your assessment of "secular" as an unfair slur in a sense, science has indeed been secularized, taking into account its history of the last four hundred years.
Also, your insistence on the inability of something outside our knowledge to reach inside our understanding and impart Truth with a capital "T" to us seems a break with the consistency of your logic, and feels more like reticence to acknowledge and respond to truth, and a preference to simply pursue an impossibly elusive subject. Perhaps that is the thing we as a species fear most: the lack of authority to carve the parameters of existence, and a lack of space in which to do so. It would explain the almost belligerent diversity of our creeds and cultures to an extent, at least to my mind. Keep thinking honestly, Roger, and I'll gladly continue to benefit from it.
This was beautiful. Thank you. I don't know that I could've put it better myself.
Roger,
You have no idea how long I've been laying in the weeds waiting to respond to one of your posts. Remember the character Larry in the classic book Razor's Edge. What a great book. I've read that book probably twenty times over the last 30 years. I have never related to a person as much as Larry. I have a few advanced degrees. I like to use my brain a lot. I dropped out to find God 19 years ago. I lived at a yoga center for 1 1/2 years which was a great learning experience. I've been doing yoga everyday for the last 19 years. It's a godsend.
I've thought about God as much as you have thought about movies. Serious. I've was raised a Catholic and was an altar boy too. I spent a few summers when I was young living at a rectory while I stayed with my Uncle a priest before we went on our roadtrip and his vacation. I felt completely at ease and at home in the rectory with the priests even though I was only ten years old. I guess you know your calling at an early age. I've never had brushes with death like you have, but I imagine it makes one ponder the infinite or God or whatever you want to call it.
I absolutely love what you write. You are my favorite writer -- period. I am a licensed acupuncturist and want to teach the masses Chinese Medicine. The realtionship to yoga and Chinese Medince is very close. But to those not into them they probably appear separate.
I wanted to get my ducks in a row some more on my website that educates others about Chinese Medince, yoga and dream analysis which are my three main tools for connecting with spirit or God.
I am responsing now because I read your post and I have a strong feeling about one part of your post.
You wrote:
At a midnight mass on Christmas Eve at the village church in Tring in the Chilterns, I felt unalloyed elevation.
Based on what I have learned over the years. The only way to truly know God exists with an certitude is to experience the mystical. St Augustine was tied up in mental God knots until he had the experience of God. The experience you had in the church was the mystical/God flowing through you. The point of my path yoga/Chinese Medince/ect is to experience that same experience every moment.
Remember towards the end of Razors Edge when Larry experiences the mystical on the top of the mountain. And he comes down and explains it all to the Somerset Maugham. Larry's answers to Somersets questions are pretty lame but by then Larry, who has read everything under the sun about God, realizes that God was an experience that he wanted to keep with me him all the time.
Thanks for all your writings. They have inspired me to be as simple, clear and hopefully accurate as your movie reviews. I love movies too. Razors Edge with Bill Murray I'd give it 2 and 1/2 stars because Bill never understood the characters. But it's not an easy one to grok.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism
Your Catholic upbringing mirrors mine so closely it's uncanny, though I wouldn't call being whipped with paddles or forced to kneel on my knuckles 'anything other than love and care.'
My Catholic education taught me how to think while it taught me what to think and they ended up teaching themselves right out of my life. When I had my long, dark night of the soul (inspired by a comic book, of all things), I realized that the question was more important than the answer.
And the Sisters who taught me loved the doomsday scenarios. If the Russkie was pointing the gun at your head and demanding that you denounce Jesus, you were to take the bullet for Christ. Express train to Heaven.
They taught me this when I was five.
Can God create a rock too heavy for himself to lift?
Ebert: If he wants to.
My problem with the organized religions I have encountered has always been that there's always some clause that says we must shun some people for their version of beliefs, their chosen lifestyle, or any number of other reasons. It's not enough for some of them to say, "My way is the right and only way;" they also say "those who don't believe as I do will lose." If that's the case, we had all better invest in asbestos suits, because we're all going to Hell.
We've all marveled at the images from astronomical sources such as the Hubble telescope. It's the next best thing to being positioned there in front of the awesome spectacle with a camera in hand. I find the same wonderment in microscopic images of insects that might be nesting in my skin follicles.
There is also plenty of wonderment to be found in sound; the music of Mozart never made sense to me until I saw "Amadeus." The way Salieri described the intricacies of how the music was put together gave me a new insight into classical music that no music teacher I had ever had was able to explain. Years later, when I took a music class on the history of rock & roll, I discovered what the 12-bar-blues were and how it was the staple of most rock songs, and I was amazed. I'd been listening to those songs for most of my life and I never appreciated the way they were constructed until then. Even now, there are pieces of music that make me tear up and I don't always understand why, but I revel in the appreciation of the sound.
Smell has its wonderment as well: everything from the fragrant odors of the forest to the seashore; the hustle and bustle of a city street; the pheromones of a newborn baby.
And touch is the most fundamental sense, as Robert A. Heinlein once said ("Time Enough For Love"). When my little girl jumps into my arms and holds me tight, I am overcome with emotion.
To me, that is the work of Jehovah, or Allah, or Buddha, or any of the other Nine Billion Names of God. Other people may call it what they wish. I have my personal view of it, and I'm content with it. If that sends me to Hell in someone else's eyes, I smile and go on my way.
Or, in the words of Dennis Miller: "My self worth is decided by fiat, not consensus. And I'm sorry, but the polls are closed and you are not eligible to vote."
Thank you again, Roger, for so eloquently expressing what I'm sure that a large number of individuals probably struggle with on a daily basis. Cheers.
I once read this question: "You weren't anything before you were born. What makes you think you will be anything after you die?" That addressed my doubts about an afterlife about as well as a pair of sentences could.
And nobody's ever seen the Tooth Fairy. But with some effort, I'll bet I could get a group of people to argue about what color shoes the Tooth Fairy wears -- based on myths and stories we all heard growing up. That same chunk of our minds makes us able to be certain not just that there is a God, but also to speculate what God thinks and why he did what he did on such-and-such day. But like the Tooth Fairy's shoes, it depends on who is talking. If the Christians are right, then why have they never been right? The prediction of a Rapture or "end times" is not a 20th century phenomenon. They've been "seeing it coming" it for centuries -- and even the more sane-minded among them were inclined to go along. But they ended up wrong.
So what's the harm in abstaining from religion? Based on the evidence, I say nothing.
Enjoyed this a lot, thanks Roger. But here's the question for me: why rule out a God who has spoken to human beings? If there is a God, wouldn't it make sense that he/she/whatever would possess the ability to reveal him/her/whatever-self to us? In fact, I would think not only the ability, but the desire. That makes God a revealed being, rather than a discovered being, which I think is a difference the scientific approach fails to appreciate fully.
I was raised first in the United Church and then the Anglican(Canada), went to church/Sunday School every week, memorized verses for prizes and basically didn’t question too much. As a young adult, upon leaving home, I became “born again”, although I do have to admit I tried really hard to keep my Christian life separate from my partying/sex life because that was just too complicated. Have fun and then feel the guilt later. Again, I didn’t really question too much, even having a good friend who was a lesbian, I just accepted that it was okay that she was in the closet because the “old” people at the church would never accept her the way she was. As I had my own family and carried on in an evangelical church I started to pay a bit more attention and began to wonder about the God that I heard preached from the pulpit that apparently would damn that lesbian friend to hell. That made no sense to me because it was so obviously who she was, not something she had chosen. Many other things didn’t make sense either, like abortion – when the reality was that women have always found ways to get rid of unwanted pregnancies and so why would it not be better to have it be safe and clean whether I would choose it for myself or not. And why did you have to look like me and sound like me and spout the same doctrine to be right, to make it into heaven? For that matter, why was getting into heaven the reason for the choices you made here on earth when the truth was that nobody really knew, knew, knew what happened when someone died.
It took some time and a lot of processing but I eventually came to the point like you Roger, where I don’t want a label and I am more comfortable with the question than the answer.
My daughter was a little freaked out when I said that I no longer considered myself a Christian, having been raised in it all her life but it really didn’t seem like a useful word anymore. Whoever or whatever God is I just don’t see her or him being concerned about just the one group that has the right label. It seems like all organized religion is about trying to making known the unknowable and explain the inexplicable. I think a little mystery is a good thing. I also think if we were to focus more on how we each live our own life and our responsibility to care for ourselves, each other and this world we have been given and less on being so sure we have the right to tell someone else how to live their life that would be a good thing as well. Organized religion is also about having a place to belong, as you said, mankind feels a need to gather in churches. It feels good to be with others who think the same as you and so you pretend to think the same as them because for some, there’s a lot of scary (read different) people out there.
In a recent discussion I heard “heaven” described as connectedness, the “All One”. It was said that is what we strive for, that oneness, that connectedness, that is our goal in life, often without us even realizing it. It makes as much sense as anything else I’ve heard, more than a lot and it doesn’t require a label.
I forgot to mention, I love how you compare there being no last number to there being no need for a first. I've always felt that religion was for people who couldn't comprehend the concept of large numbers plus time.
"To God, there is no zero. I still exist!"
Maybe all seekers are lapsed Catholics; what would Fulton J. Sheen think?
Religion fills a void that science cannot address (why and/or who?). When we think of things such as 'what was here before the universe was created', or 'who created the creator'; they cannot and probably never will be provable. The scientific method cannot be applied. While I would describe myself as leaning toward athiesm, a true skeptic can only await proof... Is absence of evidence, evidence of absence?
As i jumped out of bed to catch a morning train which takes me to delhi for my first journey abroad for spiritual reasons purely I come across your honest and beautiful essay,wordsmith and honest that you are . In any event I won,t get into the dialogue just now. Thank you ,I learnt much here the last seven months i shared your blog space. Man himself is the higher power,much higher than himself. Sanskrit says "Thou art That".Ebert isthe treasure tower and the treasure tower is Ebert.Any other knowledge is useless."said our founder Nichiren Daishonin.
I ponder these same questions, and I too feel uncategorized. Why must the human mind force things into categories? I think that the universe had to be formed with some loving vibration. The more quantum mechanics delves into this mystery we call universe, the more we realize nothing is real and all is vibration. A spark had to start the fire, or does the fire have no beginning? Ugh. I would also like to thank you for the inspiration you give me. I am almost 15, and have no one to talk to about film or anything deep, and if your blog is the closest I have to that, I am grateful. I hope to be a film critic someday, but who knows? I love philosophy, english and many other things. But I digress. Thank you for this wonderful blog and for your wonderful contribution to the world.
Ebert: I can't think of two more interesting subjects than philosophy or English. Well, maybe I can, but look at it this way: They actually give you a diploma just for reading those great books!
I think the issue is that of understanding at an intellectual level, and grasping the consequences at a emotional level. The universe does not have to conform to a barely evolved primates notions of logic. As you say, that is why mathematics are useful. We cannot grasp the concept of a galaxy with two hundred billion stars and a universe of two hundred billion galaxies, not really. But we can use math to describe it. I think theory of relativity is just the tip of the iceberg, some of the things you mentioned regarding quantum mechanics are far weirder.
Richard Feynmann said that if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics. And he is right - human beings can't really grasp the idea of one particle being in two places at once, or time itself slowing down(relativity). But we can sure describe it using math, and just as importantly, we can experimentally test it.
As for the Big Bang, as you know, time slows down when you go faster, but it also slows down in the presence of a large gravitational object. So 'before' the big bang may not be a valid question, as time itself may have passed at an infinitely small rate before. Remember that the Big Bang was not a explosion in space, it was an explosion of space. Space itself is what blew up (we don't know how exactly), causing the molecules to have more distance between them. The difference may be subtle, but it has important consequences.
As for your atheism, I'm not sure why you wouldn't call yourself as such. You certainly seem one to me. It's not a matter of labeling, you're a human, you're a man, etc. Most people are atheistic with most of the Gods that exist in today's world - e.g, Vishnu, Zeus, or Yahweh. Christians are atheistic to all Gods but one. As Richard Dawkins like to say, an atheist just goes one God further.
One must not be a prisoner of the past, because in eternity there is no age and every moment a fresh beginning, A cavern unlit for a thousand years is illuminated instantaneously by a candle.
Ebert: Now I'm worried. Don't miss that train to Delhi.
Roger,
Brilliant article! I definitely understand what you mean when you say: "I am pro-choice, but my personal choice would be to have nothing to do with an abortion, certainly not of a child of my own. I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do."
I would, however, if you certainly don't mind, like to know your personal stance on homosexuality and the even more hot topic of gay marriage, since the ultimate visible opponent there seems to be religion, for most.
Cheers,
Andrew
Ebert: Homosexuality is a part of human nature. Gay marriage should be treated as any other marriage.
Ebert: A fascinating story. But in the sense that anything is a miracle, everything is.
Why does an apple fall to the earth? An apple could fall up from the earth. Why is grass green? Grass could be blue. Science can tell us how gravity works and how light refracts to make colors but it can't tell us why the universe happens to work the way it does.
You can look at the world as a mechanical series of causes and effects or you can take a deeper look and ask not just how but why. Why does anything exist at all and not just nothing? When you can see the miracle in every aspect of the universe around you then it's true beauty and power comes through.
"Most of my neighborhood friends were Protestants who were not interested in theories about God, apart from the fact that of course he existed."
Describes me perfectly.
Saludes! From Honduras
if i may, i think we humans make things too much complicated than they are, heaven and hell, i just told my mother in law yesterday that i do not believe in hell, that hell its just like to be turned off, like when you turn off the tv, just a tiny dot in the center that rapidly fades away, and its gone. now she sees me a little bit different that others days.
we like to believe the bible, sometimes literally others not so much, fine with me, but we have to remember that it was written by men, and they could have put anything they please to make people fallow them, or they future leaders. hell could have been a very nice way to tell people what to do or see the consequences of not fallowing the law(theirs).
i believe in God, i do not believe in churches but in this aspect i take the Benjamin Franklin approach that if it does good to you, fine go to your church all what you want. just don't try to impose any faith unto the ones that don't want it, (free will anyone)
the universe, most people don't believe that it may have started like a tiny tiny dot, but if you see when we are conceived, we are just a tiny dot, just scale that and you have an universe that is still growing, or so i think. to me the universe is like a cell, surrounded by other cells that form another body which lives in another universe an so on, like that scene from Men in Black. At the end that lady could have had the reason when she said: there are turtles all the way down.
Señor Ebert, I like your posts in this blog, but this one i really like, so much that i dare to write to you. hope you keep posting interesing things like this which put us to think a little bit and use that other universe that we have inside our skulls.
Ebert: And inside our skulls, my friend, is one place we can be pretty sure the universe exists. I think the name for that is solipsism. But I am also pretty sure things exist outside the mind. It's just that, using a certain kind of logic, I will never be able to prove it.
Some kid asked me once, "How do you know where your mind is?" I said it was in my brain, which was in my head. He said, "Maybe you only think it is." I love this stuff.
Having just recently just climbed down from the trees how can this ape known as man define, let alone understand God, or the divine, the purpose of being?
We can’t, religions are simply poems expressing a cultural or personal perspective of that experience, a guide book direct one to that place which has no direction.
But God, or divinity, Nirvana or transcendence, what ever limited and insufficient word one must place on that which has no place can be experienced.
You Roger experience God when you stare up at the sky and wonder.
That are Roger the wonderer, that there is being rather than nothingness to wonder about is God.
We all one number, together an arthithmatic adding up to God, that last number which never is with us but commands us to think on the infinite.
Hi Roger.
I was raised Catholic (very Catholic - Catholic school, three masses a week, my mother a failed nun, my uncle a missionary in El Salvador, etc etc), but abruptly stopped sometime in adolescence and have since gone in an endless loop thru - Buddhism, Hinduism, Stoicism, and something like anti-rationality, in which I think Oh to hell with what's true, and in those moods the Karamazov I choose is Alyosha, who tho the least convincing, is the most appealing - at least to be, if one would have hope.
Ultimately though, and even with quantum sciences involved (and in my philosophical meanderings I've returned again and again to natural and more theoretical sciences, whose implications are - everything), I think Marcus Aurelius, who wrote the bleakest book in human history, is the most likely to have been right of all the philosophers. Which is not comforting at all. I mean I have logicked my way, or attempted to logic my way, out of that, towards some mystical Far Eastern conception of the universe (Hinduism, pantheism, etc are all very appealing - and Buddhist ethics and Stoic ethics are almost indistinguishable), but it's failed the Truth test every time. Just very gloomy. But I have to honor truth, I've cast my lot with it, and that's it. I'm unable to lie to myself even to console myself. Catholic school did not warn me about this.
Anyway good luck on your continued search. Assuming you're searching.
I used to be a declared atheist, but somehow, without shedding any of my firm materialist beliefs, I lost sight of what that word "atheist" even meant. This began when I began following one particular thought.
It had always perturbed me when people I knew said that they were lucky to be born as, say, an American, or, for that matter, to be born a human or to have been born at all. But this seemed like a meaningless statement. Since I believed consciousness was something that emerged from the material world rather than something that was inserted into it, their assertion was meaningless. It wasn't as though some pre-existing self had won a cosmic lottery and got to be me. Before "me" there was no "me." Therefore, one's existence as oneself was necessary and unavoidable rather than a stroke of luck. And yet ... and yet ... I can't shake the feeling of strangeness at being a specific person, existing in a particular moment of time, having a private set of experiences. I can't shake the feeling that the realities underlying the existence of consciousness are strange, inexplicable, and beyond comprehension. Though we may just be bundles of memes and instinctual impulses following some sort of deterministic imperative, still the fact that we have feelings of subjectivity is perplexing and wondrous beyond anyone's ability to articulate.
I guess where I am going with this is to say that for me the ultimate question of being seems so inexplicable and bizarre that I really wouldn't be surprised by anything. I don't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but if he flew down out of the cosmos one day and announced himself, all I could think would be "I guess that is no weirder than anything else."
The term "atheist" has at least two correct definitions. This confuses a lot of people.
By one definition, an atheist has a belief that God does not exist. Actually, that one's pretty easy, because if you take a serious look at all of the evidence, there's not a single reason to say that God does exist. And IF there was a God, there should be evidence all over the place.
but there's also a second definition to consider.
a + theist.
A person who rejects the beliefs of others that a God exists. A person who rejects theism. A person who says there is no proof for a God, and in the absence of proof, is a non-theist. A person who rejects the necessity for "belief" as a substitute for a Correct Answer.
Reply to: I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic.
Reply to: I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer.
I think this is consistent with the idea of there not being a God. I think this is how an intelligent person might respond to the total, complete absense of any kind of a God.
Why? We have parents. For the first years (let's say three) of life, we don't have a clear understanding of what "parents" are, but we know certain things about them. Everything that a child learns about "parents".... has been distorted by con men into the idea of a "God" that they can sell. ie, if there is a universe, it must have come from God.
Reply to: Did I start calling myself an agnostic or an atheist? No, and I still don't. I avoid that because I don't want to provide a category for people to apply to me. I would not want my convictions reduced to a word. Over the high school years, my belief in the likelihood of a God continued to lessen. I kept this to myself. I never discussed it with my parents
this is why atheists have support groups. They think they're all alone in the world... and they're NOT.
On one Christian site, someone wrote, "If I know the secret to eternal life and I don't share it, that would be a criminal act."
And that's how a con game works. Convincing your victims to ignore the facts and sell the sizzle.
I am truly sorry that you find the words "atheist" and "agnostic" to be so limiting that you don't want to apply them to yourself. I blame it on bad PR from atheist groups. Madlyn Murray O'Hair took such a delight in insulting the religious, she left a taint on the word "Atheist" that remains.
www.samharris.org
www.skeptic.com
Definitions of agnostic on the Web:
someone who is doubtful or noncommittal about something
a person who claims that they cannot have true knowledge about the existence of God (but does not deny that God might exist)
a religious orientation of doubt; a denial of ultimate knowledge of the existence of God; "agnosticism holds that you can neither prove nor disprove God's existence"
agnosticism - the view that absolute truth or
ultimate certainty is unattainable,
especially regarding knowledge not based on experience or perceivable
agnosticism - From Greek, a- meaning without and gnosis, meaning knowledge, agnosticism is the contention that we cannot know whether or not there is a God.
I've never worried about the definition of "agnostic" because I felt the proof exists. However...
.... if you do the math, run the numbers, and look up the definitions, I'm pretty sure you're an agnostic. Today.
Since I'm not into recruitment or sales, I'll leave it at that. (If I twisted your words into something you didn't mean with my editing, I apologize. I just wanted to get everything right.)
Ebert: Studs Terkel liked to say, "I'm an agnostic. That's a cowardly atheist."
Atheist or agnostic is irrelevant. I think what you really are is a philosopher. By this I mean that you have philosophical problems. Not everyone has them. For example, when I was a young child in school, I sat in a desk with the chair attached. I would swing my feet up so I could see them over the desk. And I would wonder, how do I know that my feet are still attached to my legs? I couldn't see my legs and once my feet were up and I was sitting still, I didn't have any real sensation between my upper body and my feet. Maybe my feet were temporarily disconnected whenever I sat in my desk. How could I ever know? Most people when I tell them this story can't understand why it would ever occur to me to think such a thing or how I could genuinely wonder about it. Most people don't have philosophical problems.
This post reminds me of two major problems/theories in the history of philosophy. First, the way you describe human beings inability to grasp the true reality of the universe reminds me of Immanuel Kant's distinction between the phenomenal or actual (the way we perceive things) and the noumenal or real (the way things really are). Second, the idea that all things are one is ancient. The Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea demonstrated it through the paradox of motion. If you measure a line between two points A and B and then cut the line in half at line C and then cut the line between A and C in half at D and on and on. In order to travel between A and B you must travel through C. To travel between C and A, you must travel through D. But this goes on infinitely. You'll never get there. One explanation of the paradox is that the separateness of objects in the world is an illusion. Everything is one.
I'm always a little surprised at how little the subject of consciousness comes up in this type of conversation. It's interesting, if you check out "consciousness" on wikipedia you'll find very little in the way of meaty information. Why is that do you suppose? I wonder, is it possible that the mystery of consciousness is a sort of microcosm of the mystery of the universe? When we stare at the stars in mystery and awe isn't that the depth and mystery of our own consciousness being reflected back to us? If this is so then isn't the universe and consciousness connected, communicating instantaneously at a distance?
Roger,
It is always wonderful to find that someone has similar thoughts and can articulate them far more clearly than you ever could.
Thanks for this!
Roger,
Thank you so much for this blog. My wife's comes from a devout family who practice the most bigoted, disgusting version of Christianity I have ever encountered. I was raised Lutheran but have lapsed since my college days. I have constantly tried to explain my feelings on God to her since we met five years ago, and have consistently failed to properly express how I both believe and don't believe. This essay more closely mirrors my own beliefs than anything else I have ever read, and it is written more beautifully and articulately than anything I could ever produce. I will be showing this to my wife as soon as I can. Thanks, Roger, and please keep writing.
Fantastic article.
I've been listening to the podcast version of Radio Lab, which is absolutely fascinating. They examine the kinds of questions you pose in your article, from a strictly scientific point of view. The fascinating thing to me is that the more we learn about how things are and how they came to be, the deeper the mystery becomes. If you haven't heard this excellent program, I encourage you to give it a listen.
Roger,
I'd like you to check this link out, because it seems to touch on the issue of religion. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Denial-of-Death/Ernest-Becker/e/9780684832401#EXC
It is pretty challenging so, I need to go into a little more, as the link suggests to do. I read three Ernest Becker books (his last ones) but with almost no sleep and returned them to the library. It was a little hard for me to understand.
But, one interesting thing it says is society is religious, whether it thinks it is or not. This may not be sufficiently related enough, but in one of the books, "Escape From Evil", it goes into money. The first things people used as currency were things like shark teeth, bird feathers etc. that gave people a feeling that they were getting something from another dimension. Coins are round because they are shaped like the sun, and had pictures of gods on them. Today we have god-like presidential faces on the coins. Money is kind of the new other dimension, also machines,... I think is what the book was saying. When our computers break down, or with the financial crisis today, it's like the gods are punishing us.
"Let me rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issue instructions to men. That some men believe they have been spoken to by God, I am certain. I do not believe Moses came down from the mountain with any tablets he did not go up with."
That's an astonishing admission from someone I've always defended as being a Christian, but thanks for being clear about it.
By the way, what DO you say about Jesus? His name didn't come up at all in your post.
Sorry to be so blunt, but why beat around the bush? That's the question I always like to have answered. First movers and creation conundrums have never really done anything for me. But that's just me.
Ebert: I agree with the teachings of Jesus, as I understand them. Unspeakable things have been ascribed to him. It has gotten almost to the point that when someone mentions the name Jesus to me, I know they are not talking about the one of my understanding.
Dear Roger,
Absorbing, as all your blogs are. You seem to be on your own voyage of discovery, pushing yourself a little further each time by carefully tackling bigger and bigger questions as fairly and thoughtfully as you can. This is as about as close to a living definition of the search for wisdom as I can imagine. Thanks for sharing it with us all.
I'm 58 and have reached few solid conclusions about the big questions, although like most people I've thought a lot. It always seems to come back to the same thing - people who are sure that they are right never are right and instead just seem to be demonstrating a kind of aggression. I think aggression underlies so many of our thoughts and actions. "I want to dominate and defeat you by showing you that you are wrong and I am right!" Kindly or winningly or forcefully or even unintentionally, they all seem to be trying to do it - the proselytizers, the priests, the politicians, the parents, even perhaps the sport fans. Always allowing the possibility that perhaps you are not right, or that (better still) you just don't know and can therefore only give one point of view amidst many possible others seems the only noble way to deal with issues as volatile as religion.
Late thought: Okay, child abuse (for example) will always be totally wrong. There are not two sides to that argument. But few other moral issues have only one truth.
Thanks for helping us all think.
Roger, I'm fantastically grateful that the internet and the state of the world at large makes it possible for to be able to share and connect with you like this. Articles like your comedy posting from a few days back are absolute treasure to me.
I am particularly intrigued by one point you make in this posting though. Midway through, you mention that you believe in free will. I've read and thought a lot about this too, and would be interested in hearing more from you as to how and why you believe we have free will. You're an intelligent and insightful guy, and you can write as well as anyone else on the planet, as far as I'm concerned. I'd be very interested to hear your perspective on this question.
Ebert: Free will is the freedom to choose what I will do next. It is limited by the things that are possible for me to do. It is also limited by my inheritance, both biological and intellectual, and by my physical abilities. But within the range where I am capable of action, my choices are not Written or Determined, but made.
How do we know there is a god? What evidence is there for it? I'm too pragmatic to believe in god because the evidence is not there. Metaphysical philosophy such as Heidegger and others can argue their positions but there is no concrete evidence. But we love to use the idea of God because we believe that we must come from something. Many ancient civilizations believed that there is a creator for the earth because they did not have scientific discoveries. This was through the middle man, as they always have, to bring the message of God to others where it is corrupted by man. Ancient civilizations were theocracies using the unexplained as a means for power control. This is the same through Jesus, Muhammad, and others. Then mankind creates organized religion as a basis for exploitation and the control of people. They claim the origins stories of the earth and the afterlife. How do they know that? We throughout history always relate to God through these middle man but can't God just communicate us through a 'megaphone' to us on earth? Why does God need this approach? Can there be a God? Yes but the evidence is not there. That is why the term atheism is misguided because it makes people think that they do not believe in God because of other reasons than the main point, evidence.
I was raised in a devoutly Catholic family and took religion very much to heart as a youngster (much more than my sister, who says she sorta believes in God but "never really took that stuff seriously" and "never gave a damn") and did sincerely believe in it-but I too can't think of a time when I didn't have some very, very good questions that my parents were at loss to answer. I loved reading my children's Bible, prayed on my own and liked religion class and paid close attention to it but as far as I can remember, I had severe doubts.
At about 12 years old, I declared I didn't believe in God but had a renewed interest in religion at about 13. A lot of teenagers go through that. I considered myself quite devout and something of a born again Christian until I was 15-16 (even then, though, I think I was kidding myself, telling myself what I knew wasn't true and acting partially out of adolescent contrarian rebellion- to be religious in my hometown was to be going against the status quo).
I read a lot on the subject suring this time and after all I had read about religion, the arguments for and against it and going back and forth with myself until it drove me almost mad, I decided I was an agnostic. All lingering belief in God evaporated within me at about 17- it simply stopped being the central question in my life- but I still find myself drawn to Catholicism and still don't feel quite comfortable calling myself a nonbeliever. The novelist Anne Rice was raised Catholic, stopped going to church at 15 and spent her adult life as an atheist before she went back to the Catholic church. I know what that's like.
I asked my mother almost the exact same question when I was very little. I asked her something like "If God created everything, who created God? Where did God come from?". She said that no one created God, that God has been around for forever and had no beginning and will have no end, which blew my little mind. I similarly plagued my father with questions like "If there was only Adam and Eve and their sons, where did their wives come from? Did they have other kids and Cain and Abel married their sisters?", "If God created Adam and Eve and all the animals and plants, what about the dinosaurs?" and "It says here that Jesus had brothers and sisters- how is that possible?".
It was the same thing with the concept of the universe being infinite. How can it never end? Go on and on and on? Well, but then, how can it not? How can there be an end? Surely there's no wall at the end of the universe. There has to be something beyond it.
I came across this very concept in a children's book Jerry Spinelli wrote and was stunned to see that someone had his child protagonist thinking the exact same thing I had as a kid.
Hypothetically, you could know under certain circumstances. As much as you could know any other thing, that is. Descartes would say that all you can really know for sure is that you exist. But if there is a God, I would require some very hefty proof, but it could be provided. If God came down before the whole world, said "Here I am," proved to rigorous standards that he had powers unexplainable by all scientific methods and was not an alien with extremely advanced technology -- which would be extremely hard to do, but if he's so almighty, he can figure it out -- then I would be convinced and say that I knew he existed. Of course, it is impossible to know that he doesn't exist, and some people get a lot of mileage on that. And yes, it is possible that he exists in such a way that even he could not prove his existence to mortal men. And some people would say that this does not fit their definition of what a god is, but there you have it.
As for having no beginning and no end, the way I see it is that God (in whom I disbelieve) is not bound by rules. He can live within contradictions. He can both create a boulder so heavy he himself cannot lift it and simultaneously be able to lift the boulder. This is God we're talking about here. He has powers far beyond those of ordinary men. He can turn water into wine and spin straw into gold. That's gold: atomic symbol Au.
As for a curved universe, if that does preclude a last star, it precludes it by redefining time and the meaning of "last." You have to handle it as an abstract idea, really. But yes yes yes, I too am unable to truly comprehend five spacial dimensions! And it drives me crazy just trying to! I cannot conceive of a brain that could understand it either! And things like this bug me just like they do you.
Superposition is what they call it, isn't it? A piece of matter existing in more than one place at once. I think I learned about that from What the Bleep Do We Know?, which has some things of fantastic value for those who can sort the science from the pseudoscience (it's really not that hard to do.)
Brilliantly and eloquently put. I understand exactly what you mean. Even after reading all that it's sad that people are still leaving comments to label you. They obviously missed the point completely, which is the tragedy of society, it's blindness. You are a good man, keep writing, I love to read what you have to say. I also believe in free will sir and you words should never be stifled. Peace be with you.
Just a random bit that is off-topic, the "Big Bang as a fractal" video's music is a piece of the "Akira" soundtrack. It's an interesting melody. I believe the title is "Winds of Neo-Tokyo."
The last time I looked you were a Borscht Belt comic! This time the big questions. Amazing. There is nothing like "Roger Ebert's Journal". Richard Dawkins is attempting to raise consciousness regarding religion and children. I hope to accurately portray his opinion. Basically he does not want children to be referred to as "a Catholic child" or a "Protestant child" since children are not capable of understanding these complex subjects. One would not refer to child as a "Democrat child" or a "Supply Side child". I think he feels that subjecting children to religious instruction at a young age is a form of child abuse. You and I both received Catholic instruction at a very early age. I feel that it is basically an "R" rated story and should be saved for later in life. Am I reading you correctly? You thrived on the catechism very early in life. It sparked an inquiry into the big questions that continues to this day. Looking back do you wish that your childhood had been allowed to roam free without all the guilt and talk of sin? Without the nails and the cross?
Ebert: I don't think the guilt and damnation stuff, and its obsession with sex, did me any good.
Hi Mr. Ebert.
Fascinating as always, but I have a question: You mentioned that your wife has "a strong faith," but leaves you to your beliefs. Was your description of her faith meant to be ambiguous?
I have an atheistic friend who is married to a Christian, and their marriage may fail due to their differences. Yet another way in which religion destroys.
Any advice on how a couple with drastically different religious views can coexist?
Ebert: Her faith is interior. She resists anyone trying to proselytize her, and has never proselytized me.
You know, Roger, I have to say that the strangest part of your blog, for me, is the fact that I am yet to disagree with you on a truly meaningful level. People ask my religion; my answer Is that I am spiritual, not tied to any one religion. As a child, from age six, my mother would drive my younger sister and I to an ashram in upstate New York. My dad thought it was some sort of cult, but what my guru was teaching me differed from your nuns' teachings only in the names used. I was taught the basic tenets of being a good human being, surrounded by people of all the world's religions. Yes, it was (and remains) an Hinduist ashram, the guru never excluded anyone because of religious leanings. So, I wouldntind myself meditating and chanting with devout Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and more. These people, and the surroundings, showed me how to choose the very best aspects of all the possibilities around me.
My particular view of the Universe is one that has room for many interpretations. There is a saying; "all roads lead to Rome." The Earth is big. The Milky Way is bigger. The arm of the spiral galaxy which contains our galaxy is even bigger, and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Who is to say that we don't contain universes within ourselves? We know that our bodies are ecosystems for various microorganisms which break down our food, protect us from infections, and more. If we could get close enough to the very atoms that make up our exhistence, we would separate like the colored dots that pigment our Sunday funnies. Could there be planet-atoms within me that see DNA spirals and call them galaxies? No, fellow readers, I do not reek of patchouli. Nor am I stoned, drunk, or hopped up on any substance, legal or otherwise.
I believe that the story told by Richard Presapio earlier (gorgeous, by the way!) is a perfect example of what I call manifestation, and is known by many other names by other people: coincidence, miracle, God's grace, instinct, dumb fucking luck, etc. It could be explained scientifically by Quantum theory, as well. When he issued the ultimatum to the universe, while undergoing a search for self, his intent created a coyote in the past, which has no bearing in the quantum field. That coyote exhisted simultaneously with the thought, and died in that tree, in order to furnish Richard with that skull. I think Quantum theory (Buddhism definitely does) allows that Richard was that coyote in a previous incarnation, and purposely died in that spot in order to prove to his future, less elemental self, that there is more to this crazy roller coaster that we call llife than can be easily explained by the frail tongue of Man. In my mind, one of the greatest jokes in creation is the sentence: "And God created man in His image." We as a species have ever attempted to explain EVERYTHING. I can't blame our nameless ancestor, expelled from the womb of a semi-conscious missing link, suddenly assailed with hunger and thirst not just for food, water and shelter, but also for meaning, knowledge and a sense of "How and Why?" for creating a feeling of an ever-watchful higher power. Little kids need a night-light to keep the monsters at bay. Our earliest humans created gods to sleep at night; and you know how hard it is to quit smoking, let alone quitting the idea of limiting ourselves and our children with engrained inferiority complexes (Original Sin, my ass!) which only serve to maintain a state of fear.
Hoo, went off on a rant, there. All this to say that I don't care how you worship the divine, just as long as you follow the basic tenets of being a decent human being. This is precisely why I enjoyed the documentary "Lord, Save Us From Your Followers." It's not about who or what you worship, it's all about how you do it. There are atheists who are better people than Catholic priests.
Within each of us is contained the very building blocks of the universe. Our bones contain the same basic minerals that make Everest and the oceans. When gurus and priests and scientists say "We Are All One," it's not just a figurative statement. At the most basic, all all of us are, is space and spinning bits of matter and vibration. Good vibrations.
Ebert: All of this is giving me excitations.
Roger,
A mistake you make is to align mathematics with numbers and counting as if they were equal sized sets. Mathematics is a far larger superset of ideas than numbers. Never confuse good math with numbers. Numbers and counting are mere bastardizations of math. Math exists independently of numbers. The classic example is Euclidean Geometry. It requires only "constructs". Its core idea is the axiomatic method. Euclid constructed all math from 5 axioms. He surmised that these 5 axioms must be held as truth and could not be explained or proven to be true. If you do not hold them to be true then you cannot show anything else to be true. The fifth of these axioms proved to be problematic. Centuries passed. Ultimately the fifth axiom was not shown to be false but rather it was shown that if another alternate explanation were true it gave rise to all manner of new mathematics and in fact new "realities". This is called non-Euclidean geometry and ultimately leads to things like relativity. The instigation of this was caused by the Saccheri quadrilateral. In attempting to prove Euclid's the "parallel postulate" related to the fifth axiom, Saccheri opened a huge new avenue in mathematics. Ultimately however it is still true that all math is based on a finite number of assumed "truths". If you cannot "believe" in them then the rest of mathematics (and numbers) cannot exist. Strangely the classical mathematical logic that humans apply is nearly identical to the great long standing religions (and dare I say governments) of the world. "We hold these truths to be self evident..." is thousands of years old.
Thank you for the moving essay, you have put in wonderful language many things that have been meaningful to me, but that I lack the eloquence to put across. You speak to that part of me that wants so dearly for there to be more than just us, yet can't accept a personal God.
There's horror, tragedy, and pain in this world, but every day something fills me with wonder. I get the idea it's the same for you.
I find it impossible not to ask myself the same questions you do on an everyday basis, whether I want to or not. How could anybody never do so ? Still, the only thing absolutely clear to me is that there is too much happening well beyond my understanding and besides, everything I so understand points to a higher order, one who had to come up with the universe. How could even a rock come out of nowhere, just because ? That makes the least sense of any other conclusion I can ever come up with.
My personal point of view: I believe Jesus Christ left too many signs for me to ignore his existence and nature. To important a message to ignore. I realize life would probably be easier if Good and Bad were not so well defined by my religion but this are things I can believe on and bet the significance of my existence on.
Based on this I believe gay marriage is wrong, not because of "personal hate" as such groups have come to define those of us who disagree with them but also because I honestly sense something wrong in it, period. No purpose in trying to offend anybody but that's is simply the way I feel and, like you state, I believe I have a right to do so, without hating anybody of course.
For my feelings on abortion I don't feel I have to involve God. How can anybody not see it as anything less than the murder of an innocent ? How can it possible seem any less evil than something like the Holocaust which we are remminded by the media on a constant basis ? (at the very least every year at the Academy Awards). A "doctor" digs into a woman's womb, smashes a tiny human being and sucks it out. Should goverment involve itself in such matters ? It should certainly never sponsor it.
Thank you for sharing your beliefs Mr. Ebert. I don't share most of them but regardless, your excelent writings make it very plain the undeniably good nature of your heart. As your reader that's all I can ask for and wish you the best.
I've already written thousands of words on my feelings about God and religion on this blog in other entries, so I'll try to keep this entry short, and limited to what I feel are the most salient points.
When I was about 7, my mother (unwittingly I think) enlisted me in a Christian day camp, which consisted mostly of games, activities, arts and crafts, and religious brainwashing. I clearly remember lying awake at night fervently offering my soul to Jesus. About two weeks afterwards, I realised what had happened to me, what had been done to me. What I felt most keenly was how I had lost the power to make rational decisions on my own. And I felt that I had been greatly diminished as a person, and I had a strong, subconscious, need to regain my dignity. It led me to creating a fantasy religion, to which I recruited my friends. To my great shock, it actually worked, and I became an 8 year old priest, selling my friends on things that could not be disproven (especially not by an 8 year old!). I made up rituals and rites, I wrote a small bible and illustrated it myself. I had a great time with the whole thing. But as time went by, I began to appreciate the power this fantasy religion had given me over my friends. When they were apart from their parents or teachers, my word alone was law. And even when they were with their parents or teachers, they would look to me for approval constantly, and I would give them a little nod, or shake my head. I could have asked them for anything--candy, money, toys, favours--and they would have willingly given it to me. Luckily I had enough of a rudimentary sense of morality to not take undue advantage of the situation. When I was about 12, I finally told them that I had made it all up. They were understandably devastated. I remain friends with only one of them. He's now a devout protestant evangelical--clearly his need to believe in something greater than himself has remained with him. But I did learn a LOT from the whole experience, as I'm sure you can well imagine.
I once read a quote somewhere that God is Santa Claus for adults. This strikes me as completely correct. Another quote, better known I think; 'If God did not exist, man would have to invent him'. Equally true. Anthropologists explain that the thesis of God, or spirits, or what-have-you, arises from the fact that people's brains are hardwired to look for patterns. Most of the time, this leads us to making correct predictions, assumptions, connections; for example, the connection between filth and disease. But where the link between two things is too tenuous to make a solid rational connection, oftentimes religion fills that gap. So we have the source for religion. And the reason for religion's persistance? Religion, in the past, proved to be an excellent organiser of society; the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent being that would enforce justice and punish wrong-doers and reward believers was much much more effective at controlling populations than any limited, fallible, individual ruler could ever be. Those societies that organised themselves around a religion proved much more efficient than those that relied purely on secular values. About the only exception was the ancient Greeks and later the Romans--but they had a powerful replacement for religion: nationalism; which is cut from the same cloth and works on the same portions of a person's brain. And ultimately the Romans went back to religion.
What concerns me about religion in the modern day is the same thing that concerns me about nationalism, racism, and all other forms of tribalism. It serves most effectively to organise societies into 'us' and 'them'. And religion, just like nationalism and racism, is something that is ingrained into very small children over a very long period of time and very often left to fester without any self reflection. I was fortunate, I believe, in that my parents did their best not to brainwash me. They took me to church, they took me to political rallies, but they never answered a direction question about their own beliefs. They told me that religion and politics are personal and it's not polite to discuss them, even with your own family, and that everyone has to look at everything themselves and make up their own mind; even children like me. Perhaps that's why I felt so robbed of power by that Christian day camp--because I had been raised by my parents to have the power and the responsibility to make up my own mind.
What religion, nationalism, racism, tribalism in all its forms does is it gives people a reason to act against others even if acting against others also hurts oneself. The term 'the global village' has a lot of implications, but one of them is that people need to start treating all humanity just as they would treat their next-door neighbours. We are all in the same boat; you would not want your next-door neighbour to die just because your priest or your president tells you they are the enemy; so why would you feel any differently about someone on the other side of the world? Hatred of 'them' is manufactured; in the past it served competiting societies well, but the increases in technology and population of the world are turning us into one, big, world-wide society. Tribalism is one of the forces acting against that trend, and it is being driven by our own evolved predilections towards it, and by unscrupulous individuals who profit from it. Rationality is key to resisting it.
Inasmuch as religion motivates people to do charity, to help others, to give people hope and strength and community, great I say. But religion, like anything, is a double edged sword. I feel that everything that religion gives people can be gotten just as easily by secular values, a secular education, a secular upbringing, and with the added bonus of avoiding the pitfalls. I am greatly encouraged by the fact that the world seems to be moving in that direction. As much as I am able, I will continue to push for that state of affairs.
Ebert: Your childhood memories might form the basis for a novel or film. I think you have described the way many religions have been started, although not at such a tender age.
Thanks Roger. Good post.
We're Earth beings. We are "designed" to percieve things from this POV. We were made to see Earth light, hear Earth sounds, feel Earth objects, navigate an Earth environment. Our sensory and perceptive abilities are tailored for an earthbound existence. What we can see, observe, understand is limited to who we are. So perhaps, unfortunately, we're blind to much that might otherwise be obvious. One of the challenges of life is to accept that limitation. Many people are frightened and/or threatened by that notion.
"People like you and me never grow old. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."
-Albert Einstein in a letter to a friend
I think that pretty well describes people like you and I.
I have too many thoughts on this to gather right now. In the meantime, have you ever read the complete Bible? Not verses here and there, but cover to cover? Any other religious books you have read in their entirety?
I am ashamed to call myself a Christian and admit not having read much of the Bible. I have been preoccupied with Dickens and Wodehouse, and I want to really go into Shakespeare at some point, but I also want to read the book of my faith.
There is that story about Jesus walking into a cemetary and seeing a naked man cutting his flesh open with rocks, possessed by demons. "I am Legion. We are many." Jesus expels the demons, which require a host, and transfers them to swine, which go running and fall into a river to drown. Those are the kind of stories from the Bible seldom spoken about in churches I've attended. Hardcore and fascinating.
One of my favorite verses from the Bible, from Song of Songs, and one which I actually memorized:
Place me, like a seal on your arm,
Like a seal on your heart,
For love is as strong as death,
Its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
Many waters cannot quench love,
Rivers cannot wash it away.
Ebert: I've worked over the Gospels thoroughly, and am pretty familiar with the epistles. I've dipped into the Old Testament but often find it alarming. The prose of the King James Version is as influential as Shakespeare, and to be raised on it is a gift. Modern translations are pale and said.
I've often thought that athiests are making a statement about their faith when they say there can be no God, just as much as those who assert the opposite.
The universe may or may not have a beginning and an ending, all we can personally know is our own limits. Is it really such a stretch to imagine a deity that's hard to address using mere words?
All of my most important ideas arrive without words, it's only in wrapping words around them that I'm able to talk about them.
To my mind, religion is really about being OK with things that are outside our own control. It's when we imagine that it gives us an inside track on reality that religion gets us in trouble.
It doesn't serve ourselves or our deity to shrink it down to something small enough to issue direct orders to us.
I have more problems with anti-religious bigotry than the other kind, but that's probably just where I live.
Thank you for the thoughtful post, and the chance to spout off.
Mr. Ebert,
I am actually not a huge fan of movies, but read your reviews because of the quality of your writing. It is excellent.
I am a Christian, and believe Jesus Christ was who He said He was, God.
I would be happy to go into why I believe this, but I just wanted to make clear my beliefs.
My point in this post is to respond to your claim that you would rather wrestle with the questions than have answers. I understand the point, as I would rather stare at a rose and appreciate its beauty then know who planted it, or how the plant reproduces. But in contrast, after watching Road To Perdition I wanted to meet the director, because I thought the movie was so splendid. Im sure you understand my point, that if the questions are so wonderful, how much better must the answers be.
What has always concerned me in life is whether I am wrong. I have been an atheist, a theist, and a Christian. All three scare me. I have no reason to like the church, as my family has been greatly harmed by it. So what draws me to it? I think its true. But what if I'm wrong?
Well, it seems logical to me to cry out to God, if He can here me, or if hes there, and ask Him. I don't want to go through my whole life pondering the great questions of life, without pausing for a minute, even if it seems foolish, and asking God if Hes really there, and what His truth is.
Maybe this is foolish, but it seems wise to me.
I hope you regain your ability to speak, if only for selfish reasons that I loved your show. Thanks for your time.
Ebert: So far, I seem to have had a better experience with organized religion than all but a few people in this thread.
I love how people are trying to "diagnose" your religion. "Well, given these symptoms, ..."
Anyway, if it's any consolation, here's what the eminent samba musician Richard Feynman had to say about quantum mechanics:
I sometimes give an introductory lecture on relativity and quantum mechanics at the local community college for a philosophy of science course. When the students listen, they leave with minds blown. Aside from the lack of equations (which are necessary to make things look like science), you're understanding of entangled particles is pretty close to that of the physicist. Entangled particles don't have separate identities. One description ("wavefunction," if you want to sound smart) suffices to cover both. A quantum financial cryptographic system has actually been implemented in Austria between the mayor's office and the bank.
There's money involved, so it has to be real!
It's incredibly refreshing to hear someone talk about modern physics, admit to not understanding it, and not immediately conclude that it's all bunk. I admire that.
Then again, I wonder if "understand" is the correct word, rather than "get used to."
A very thoughtful and interesting piece, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
I find it interesting that you say you were always more interested in pondering the question than finding the answer, because I've always noticed that you take the same outlook on films and how you review them - that you are less interested in the conclusion or how the film ends than you are interested in what themes and ideas the movie as a whole makes you think about.
Similar to you I am also a Catholic school kid but I've always felt the need to have that answer and comfort to know God is there. Like how I watch movies, how the film concludes and wraps things up is important to how I view the movie as a whole.
I think your Sister Marie Donald hit it on the head when she said that faith "is just something you have to believe." The whole point of faith is that there is no proof to it, that's what makes it important – it’s not something that can be proven or physically shown to you. You just have to believe it, you have to have that faith and trust that something is out there, no matter how hard it is to believe that. And, not to sound judgmental, I hope someday that you can find that faith, that inner trust and belief.
Once again I thank you for a stellar article, it not only gives us a better understanding of who you are but makes us think deeply about ourselves and our own beliefs. Thanks your work continues to amaze and inspire me
Beautiful piece, Roger.
I was raised by my Lutheran father and Anglican mother in the Lutheran church. As a young child, I was captivated by the beauty of the Sunday service and the stories of the bible. I love music, and to this day, I still believe the most beautiful music in the world is in those green covered hymnals popular in Canadian Lutheran churches. My favorite service was always the Christmas Eve candlelight service, in which I could belt out " The First Noel" at the top of my lungs. I went to Sunday school every Sunday, and studied diligently for my Confirmation when I was thirteen.
I know the exact moment where my relationship with God changed. It was shortly after I started my Confirmation studies. It October. My mother had just celebrated her 38th birthday. She had just been diagnosed with stage three breast cancer.
The disease was rapidly progressing, and she went in for her surgery on Halloween. Being a thirteen year old girl, I was feeling enormously selfish in thinking that God was punishing my beautiful, saintly mother for my own sins at the time. I began to blame God, especially when our priest was unable to give me any true comfort about what was happening. I was being mocked at school ( more so than usual) because I was now the girl with the sick mom and the emotionally absent father who had to run the house and raise my two younger brothers instead of sneaking to a friends house to steal from the liquor cabinet and smoke weed. I was angry at God because I lost my teenage years and became an instant mother figure.
My mother was sick for ten years. I saw her die a drawn out painful death. I couldn't believe that the God I was told was so loving and wonderful would do that to my family.
She died on February 18, 2000. She lived just long enough to see my first born daughter show signs of the beautiful human being she continues to be. I've discussed my eldest here before. Even then, she was a drama queen literary genius, recently confirmed by extensive testing and a sudden interest in the fact her provincial test scores were so high. My mother, a librarian with a masters degree in Library Sciences, would be enormously proud of her.
I spent my years after my mothers death in free fall, as I abandoned my faith. People would tell me it was God's will, and I would grow irate. I didn't want to associate with a being that would be so hurtful to someone who had began life with so much faith. My brothers, like myself, abandoned faith all together. My father, never the warmest man, became a radical Christianist, alienating us even further by declaring all the humanist beliefs my mother had taught us were the work of Satan.
As my children have grown with little religious direction, I have come to learn something. My eldest is a believer in God, but has no respect for what she considers the human folly of religion. My younger two often go to a Lutheran church with my aunt, a strong believer herself.
Me? I'm coming back to God, slowly, without someone telling me to believe a certain way. I believe he's there, waiting for me to come to terms with the challenges he has given me, and to stop blaming him, myself, and the people in my life for my troubles.
Will I ever be religious? Probably not. But I can say I will probably never be without faith again.
Ebert: There is a human tendency to believe God does things to you or for you. But every single one of us eventually gets sick and dies, sometimes suddenly, sometimes after a long illness, unless we die in an accident or a crime. I loved it when Jari Jackson, my mentor on the state desk of the News-Gazette, taught me the form for obituaries and then observed: "And remember--no one dies 'unexpectedly.' "
I was lucky enough to be in my 60s when I got cancer. A lot of people get it younger. I feel sorry for those who believe God "gave" it to them. I feel sorry for the child you were, who came to believe it was your fault. What a terrible thought to be tortured with.
Roger - I have read and admired your reviews for 25 years now. You included 'Detour' in your first book of greatest movies...enough said!
Having once been a 9-year-old laying in bed before falling asleep and imagining my own tombstone and being consumed by feelings of how incredibly odd that was, and now...a full professor of psychology in upstate New York...I find your delightful musings completely consistent with your thoughtful treatment of life's vagaries through your years of film reviews. I always thought that reducing your thoughts to a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" was rather like Sam Clemens giving Italy a star rating in "Travels Abroad." His work (and yours) transcend "ratings" and "reviews."
Anyway, regarding this god and meaning-of-life deal....I would like to recommend a couple things. Philosophically, nothing has affected me more than Schopenhauer. In your review of the film "Lost in America", you said that it made you want to drop everything, get a Winnebago, and just take off, put on the headphones, and read. If you ever do that, read Schopenhauer. Scientifically, Richard Feynman and the evolutionary biologists William Hamilton and Robert Trivers will give you meat to chew and the consequent pleasure of really finding important things out.
Bon voyage, Roger....
Ebert: Judging only from the last year of comments on this blog, which is visited mostly by intelligent, curious people, their favorite writers, in no order, are Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Richard Feynman, George Carlin, Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse. Who am I missing?
You know, you first have to know what something is before you can find out what is the real cause of it. Do you actually know what anything is, if you really examine it? You'd be the only one, then.
People use the words "matter, life, the world," and so on, when to them these are essentially unexamined, but then go on to muse about what might be their cause, God, no god, Big Bang, and all that rot.
No one really knows what even such an elementary thing as matter is, right? Does it really exist? You say your hand gives evidence of the material nature of a table, but the hand belongs to the same dimension of phenomena as the table. So this "evidence" is nothing more than self-validation, which cannot be accepted as evidence of anything. It merely says "the thing is because I say it is," which is as bad as any pope.
All serious examinations into the nature of matter have actually found no such thing. Any findings, as such, are always conditioned by the instruments used in the examination. Just so with queries posed solely by the mind. The answers, or non-answers (even if one is contented with that), are conditioned and conditional.
So mental musings are not really examinations. They are only propagations of themselves, not in the least interested in surpassing the limitations of mind itself. Just more stuff, eh what?
On the other hand, a true question puts an end to questions.
Ebert: Now ask one, and put me out of my misery.
I am impressed by the fact that so many are so willing to apply a label to you which you so stunningly, beautifully and marvelously, decline to seek.
For me, I believe that the human brain is an enormously complex organ which has yet to even come close to fulfilling its evolutionary promise - it simply has not been around long enough to be refined to the point of reliability. That it is fraught with design and engineering errors and that the results of these errors are fairly self evident.
One of those flaws seems to be our utter incapability to accept things for what they appear to be - that we insist on insisting that we, and the perceptible reality outside of ourselves, are the product of supernatural forces.
Fascinating post, thank you.
To me, questions of religion & scientific philosophy come back to us trying to understand our place in the universe. Religion & spirituality, even mysticism, seem to rely on "feeling" or emotional understanding of our unity with the world. It is a very comforting feeling to be a part of the eternal at a basic level. Being animals on the planet, we are alive in the cosmic web... for a while... and for me, that is enough. I don't have the need to extend my humanity through some cosmic god anthropomorphism. My life simply is, and I try to make the best of it. The purpose of life? To be altruistically happy.
Science takes the approach of logic, mathematics and physical understanding of the universe. It is a recognition of unifying principles and processes, requiring effort and study to appreciate. What we know now is built on centuries of improving clarity. What amazes me is that science seems to "work"! It seems possible to eventually grasp the workings of the cosmos and know where it came from, what it's eventual fate will be.. all questions vastly larger than humanity. It is a bit like the universe is in a way understanding itself, through our evolving monkey brains. In fact, understanding of of consciousness itself may be possible. Knowing the process well enough to create a machine consciousness - would that not be proof that we "got it"? Mind, this takes nothing away from the wonder - and neither does realizing the illusion of free will.
I don't scorn religion or the faith of my ancestors. I try to stay connected with mother earth and reach for the stars.
Sarah
St. Paul Minnesota
"Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right” -- A. Lincoln
Your experience, Mr. Ebert, is quite similar to mine, though I was not raised Catholic, nor did I attend a religious school. I went to a small rural, baptist church, the shout and holler kind. I dutifully went to a basement classroom every Sunday, learned about creationism, the Resurrection, and all the rest of it, and then, at 16, I was introduced to Carl Sagan, Darwin, and Einstein, and I began to reason that just about everything I had ever been told by religion was demonstrably false. No virgin birth, since parthenogenesis is not possible in humans. Humiliating scientific errors in the Bible, like the classification of bats as birds in Leviticus, or whales as fish, or that plants could have existed before the creation of the sun. I think of the Bible as a fictitious work, and sincerely doubt that any of its characters ever existed, including David, Moses, Abraham, and Solomon. The Old Testament tells of a God that authorizes genocide, infanticide, rape, and slavery.
The New Testament introduced the idea that if you are not a Christian, then you will be punished for all eternity in hell; Jesus himself associates Jews with the Devil, and the NT also serves as the origins of the malicious deicide charge that has been thrown at Jews for centuries, and incited pogroms against them in tsarist Russia and many other places. I don't know if God exists or not, as such a thing cannot be definitively proven, but I believe, as Christopher Hitchens does, that it would be worse if he DID exist, since it would mean that you may be judged even for your most private thoughts, and are expected to live a life of abject servitude, which will continue in heaven.
Religious ideology is by its nature totalitarian and solipsistic. Religion often brings out the worst in people; see what the parties of God do in Iraq, or what Joseph Kony does in Uganda. I label myself an atheist, unavoidable since I clearly state, if asked, that I do not believe in God, Satan, or any other kind of supernatural force. Of course, I also state that our Consitution prohibits the federal hiring of chaplains for the military, and would also prohibit support for any country that does not have a totally secular government (Israel is the main focus here, given the influence of Orthoox rabbis).
Thank you for the always enlightening essay.
I was raised Baptist on the South Side of Chicago. I attended Sunday School from birth through high school, and again during graduate school. I was in the children's choir, and on the youth usher board. Now I only go to church when I visit family in Chicago, Mississippi, or friends in California. Mainly to see family, and the people who helped raise me. I still pray. I still abide by most of the principles I learned as a child. Even the anti-adultery part. But, like a lot of people, I only agree with parts of the Bible. I chuck the parts that don't make sense - slaves be happy, wife obey your husband.
I think things started unraveling before I graduated high school. The fiancee of the pastor of the church I grew up in was seven months pregnant when he married her. I was young and didn't notice she was pregnant (although all the older women, including my mother, did). But I could count well enouth to know the pastor should not have a full term baby two months after the wedding. He now leads the largest church in Chicago. One of those megachurches you don't like.
When I bought my house the agent told me the address may not be what was written on the contract because the city would set the number. I told her I did't care what the house number was with the exception of 666. I didn't want to live in, next to, or across the street from 666. That's the mark of the beast. What beast? Not sure. But I dont't want to live in a house with the number 666 on it. Sometimes things just stick with us.
Until the next time,
TL
Ebert: When Playboy Enterprises moved to its new offices on Lake Shore Drive, wouldn't you just know the address was "666?" Now rounded off to "680." :)
I urge you to consider taking a look at the evolutionary biologists that I mentioned (and some others that I didn't but would love talking with you more about). Modern - really modern - evolutionary biology will give a perspective that is unmatched by literary, philosophical, or other treatments of meaning-of-life issues. Many critics of evolutionary biology as it applies to humans have completely muddied the intellectual waters. Personally, it has completely and irrevocably changed my life...
"I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do. Above all, the state does not."
Therefore you must not believe in social programming, environmental regulation, governmental taxation or national defense. I only bring this up because, I consider myself a "liberal" (though I hate political labels) on the basis of your free will argument, which I have used multiple times in conversation which other, more politically conservative friends. Upon reflection, the logic doesn't appear to "hold water" to me anymore. Certainly (forgive me for speaking for you) we want the government to overrule individual free will in certain circumstances (like the ones I listed above) when we feel it benefits the greater good. But isn't that the same "absolute" logic that the evangelical/conservative community uses to inform its perspective to argue against what liberals believe the government should be used for? I think we need to refine our thinking.
Ebert: I have free will to vote for the policies I support. I live in a democracy. Its government in theory does not have free will, but expresses the opinion of the majority.
Ebert: All of this is giving me excitations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDrrqMhQ0oI
By bronxcyclone@yahoo.com on April 17, 2009 10:56 PM
There is that story about Jesus walking into a cemetary and seeing a naked man cutting his flesh open with rocks, possessed by demons. "I am Legion. We are many." Jesus expels the demons, which require a host, and transfers them to swine, which go running and fall into a river to drown. Those are the kind of stories from the Bible seldom spoken about in churches I've attended. Hardcore and fascinating.
In one of my favorite books, "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal," the story of the expulsion of Legion is followed by an enraged swine-herder railing at a young, self-satisfied Jesus for ruining his livelihood. The book is actually not as sacrilegious as it sounds. It follows all of the points of Jesus' life as told in the Bible, but finds a very humorous way of filling in the 30-year gap. Wouldn't you like to find out what it would be like if Jesus learned kung fu?
To all searching for God, or THE ANSWER...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ6h84ZsuW4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmOZFAYeurY
And, for those with whom we'll agree to disagree, I love you. How would I know what I felt, if there were nobody to think differently?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf2S7kKLtEQ
Roger, I'm going to love reading the comments on this one. Each one is a novella! You're a harvester of words, man. As ye reap, so you sow. Do you sew?
i believe that jesus was a brilliant man, and we should all follow his teachings. however, i'm not convinced that his father was anyone other than joseph. in college i was told that this is called "neo-christian," but i later learned that this is also known as judaism.
for a humorous take on how god created the universe, read my short story. here are links to it on two different websites:
http://www.pikerpress.com/article.php?aID=3483
http://brainsnorts.blogspot.com/2008/08/sweeper-short-fiction.html#links
my brother's name is joseph, and his wife's name is mary. they recently had a boy. i regularly refer to their son as "jesus," "savior," "the chosen one," etc. however, those wimps named him andrew. how do you pass up an opportunity like that? joseph, mary, andrew? although i'm not a religous person, i would have named the kid jesus.
Mr. Ebert,
I've been reading your reviews since I was a kid (my parents bought me a '1990 Home Companion' for Christmas at age 10) and I feel like I've read them all, and they've had a big impact on my intellectual development and understanding of what it means to experience a film, and the potential films have to inspire people, maybe even to change them. I'm in film school now, and I continue to refer back to your reviews and refer others to them, and discuss them and mull over them. The same goes for your blog, maybe even more so. This week's entry is as great as ever.
Ebert: Judging only from the last year of comments on this blog, which is visited mostly by intelligent, curious people, their favorite writers, in no order, are Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Richard Feynman, George Carlin, Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse. Who am I missing?
Steve Martin, whomever wrote the Bible, Rumi, Studs Terkel...
Mr. Ebert,
I've been reading your reviews since I was a kid (my parents bought me a '1990 Home Companion' for Christmas at age 10) and I feel like I've read them all, and they've had a big impact on my intellectual development and understanding of what it means to experience a film, and the potential films have to inspire people, maybe even to change them. I'm in film school now, and I continue to refer back to your reviews and refer others to them, and discuss them and mull over them. The same goes for your blog, maybe even more so. This week's entry is as great as ever.
By Terry Davidson on April 17, 2009 11:25 PM
I am impressed by the fact that so many are so willing to apply a label to you which you so stunningly, beautifully and marvelously, decline to seek.
For me, I believe that the human brain is an enormously complex organ which has yet to even come close to fulfilling its evolutionary promise - it simply has not been around long enough to be refined to the point of reliability. That it is fraught with design and engineering errors and that the results of these errors are fairly self evident.
One of those flaws seems to be our utter incapability to accept things for what they appear to be - that we insist on insisting that we, and the perceptible reality outside of ourselves, are the product of supernatural forces.
Don't tell me our brains are stll operating with Windows '98!
When there is no being able to perceive the movement of time, an infinite amount of time up until that being's creation could have taken place. An infinite amount of possibilities; trials and errors; successes, but unexpected random disturbances. It's so difficult to comprehend the correct conditions that led to the cohesion of organic chemicals and the ability of non-living material to self-replicate and to acquire a need to self-replicate. But humans were not there to perceive how many prior attempts were required to create the correct conditions to give them the ability to look upon themselves and to think that the universe has a place for them. A task. A reason.
Great article. I felt like I could have written it about me, but you beat me to it. Considering your obvious propensity for the cosmos, I suggest reading the book "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene, if you haven't already. It's a great read, and afterward hopefully you can claim an understanding of Einstein's theory of relativity.
In a speech reprinted in the wholly remarkable book "Salmon of Doubt", the late Douglas Noel Adams (DNA to his admirers) described his concept of the artificial God. His premise was that man, tool maker and builder had naturally assumed that if he shaped his world to his needs then their must be a greater builder who had made the world and the people living in it. In the eons before physics, the theory of evolution by natural selection, computers, and blogs this idea made sense. Of course in our era, the question arises "Who built God?" and that makes everybody cross.
I won't presume to label Mr. Ebert but as for myself, I prefer the term pantheist to atheist or agnostic. It has that nice soothing "p" at the beginning.
In a speech reprinted in the wholly remarkable book "Salmon of Doubt", the late Douglas Noel Adams (DNA to his admirers) described his concept of the artificial God. His premise was that man, tool maker and builder had naturally assumed that if he shaped his world to his needs then their must be a greater builder who had made the world and the people living in it. In the eons before physics, the theory of evolution by natural selection, computers, and blogs this idea made sense. Of course in our era, the question arises "Who built God?" and that makes everybody cross.
I won't presume to label Mr. Ebert but as for myself, I prefer the term pantheist to atheist or agnostic. It has that nice soothing "p" at the beginning.
A "true" question has to penetrate to the nature of the questioner, i.e., realize the conditioned nature of thought, because "mind" is the questioner. Just as no microscope or other scientific instrument can reveal substance essentially unlike itself or beyond the limits of its capability, no question put by thought produces an answer that is anything but another thought. Seeing the futility of that should be enough to put an end to questions, and if one remains awake, one finds oneself in the realm of "suchness," or the inexpressible mystery where all is, paradoxically, obvious.
I agree with the teachings of Jesus, as I understand them. Unspeakable things have been ascribed to him. It has gotten almost to the point that when someone mentions the name Jesus to me, I know they are not talking about the one of my understanding.
Now Jesus has always been the most interesting of figures to me, not so much in himself (tho he's interesting), but in how people treat him. Free thinkers as diverse as Jefferson, Nietzsche, and Vonnegut have - while declaring Christianity a fraud, and seeming to know the whole true history of it - stuck up for Jesus, saying what a brilliant ethicist he was. Even these daring fellows seemed unwilling to put Christ under the microscope and say what he might really have been, as they did with the religion that grew up after him.
Now in an odd twist - to me - the one major figure who has gone on record as saying what Christ actually was, and was about, is Albert Schweitzer. Who is as Christian and as devoted as it gets. But he, for whatever reason (and I honestly don't know, and I've read a wealth of material by him and about him), had this innate need to find out and report what Jesus was likely to have actually been - a large part of which is his social and historical context. And according to Schweitzer, Christ was actually a preacher of the imminent apocalypse, and all his teachings (think: Beatitudes) are to be interpreted in light of that, and are therefore not necessarily to be understood as suggestions for men who would live long lives in an on-going world.
Now how Schweitzer reconciled his knowledge of that (which I believe to have been entirely correct) with his professed and obvious love for Christ and Christian ideals, I have no idea. Frankly I think Schweitzer was a hell of a lot better man than Jesus - and I also think another Christ-lover I've mentioned already, Dostoevsky, wrote three or four characters much more consistently and convincingly saintly than Christ ever was.
Jesus is more a phenomenon than anything by this point. With all the additions and subtractions (for instance: "in spirit" after "blessed are the poor" is a Matthein addition, as is "after righteousness" following "those who hunger and thirst" - in other words, Jesus was concerned in those passages with social causes, not spiritual ones), we have no way of knowing what he actually even said, let alone what he actually was. But he's inspired examples, both in life and in fiction, far better than himself. And this is valuable.
But anyway I'm not sure what my point was, sorry. I have always found it weird, tho, that everyone seems afraid to, if not criticize Jesus, at least say what he might really have been. Everyone praises him as an ethicist while bashing the religion that followed him, seemingly unaware or unwilling to say that Christ himself might have been a preacher appealing to a resentful, oppressed minority who longed for nothing more than the imminent End of Days/ judgment, wherein the evil Romans would be wiped off the map and the righteous, long-suffering Jews restored to glory. Seen thus, the entire later history of the religion is perfectly in line, regardless of the out-of-context moral gorgeousness of the Beatitudes.
Another excellent post as usual Mr. Ebert. Thanks so much for your continuing contribution to modern Art and philosophy. I'm a high school Fine Arts teacher, and I pass on much of the knowledge that you've bestowed upon me to the next generation of artists and thinkers.
I love the way the "primitive" religions such as the aboriginal Australians and Africans seem to get so much right, when considered within the constraints of contemporary science. The Australian Aboriginals believe in an ancient, pre-historic Dreamtime when the Earth was created out of nothing - yet they also believe this ancient dreamtime still exists and is active today; we can commune and interact with the ancient creators, and they are still active in much the same way that they were when the Earth was created. A lot of these ideas have been born out by modern scientific theories about the creation of the universe, the nature of time, and the nature of the "self."
It took the "Modern Religions" to come along and attach names and faces to these ancient beliefs.
It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places.
When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting.
It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing -atoms with curiosity- that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders.
Well, these scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge at uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.
Richard Feynman Lecture 'The Uncertainty of Values' 1963
Roger, I admire your writing. This is good stuff,too.
Roger,
Thought-provoking journal-entry, as usual. I can sympathize with your resistance to labels. Spiritual beliefs are as complex and unique as every individual who holds them. I don't think (and I certainly hope!) they can't be contained within a narrow descriptor. And I've always thought labeling someone else shows a great deal of disrespect to their beliefs, as the labeller is usually just projecting their view of that set of beliefs on that person.
Personally, I am an agnostic and quite happy at it, but I do get extremely irritated when that's conflated with atheism. Given the complexity and expansive nature of the universe, I do believe there has to be /something/ greater behind it. But I haven't the faintest clue what that could be and I don't think anyone is either wise enough or far-seeing enough to have figured it out yet. I suppose I do believe it CAN be figured out, if we keep asking 'Why?' That question is why religion (and philosophy, and even science) exist at all, really.
I always find religious explorations fascinating, and your no less, Roger. Another great piece of writing. My experience with religion has been positive. I'm a Catholic, with far more happy memories of my religious life and upbringing than negative ones. I happen to think that some (including many on this thread) are far too quick to pin blame specifically on religion problems that are consistent to humanity in general. Yes, religion has been responsible for many a war. However, it's naive to assume that a world in which religion never existed would be peaceful. Humans will always find a reason to fight, it seems.
That said, I can't blame those who hold that view. Sadly, too many of my fellow Christians willfully ignore the basic teachings of goodness, forgiveness, and kindness that I think are at Christianity's core, preferring to enforce their religion on others, or use it as a tool of hatred. That, I think, is where the trouble starts, and always has for religion.
Roger, I am ever glad that you are so willing to bring your universal struggle to light. Though I am much younger than you, I feel that we have had a similar journey through spiritual thought. However, my mind has led me to God, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind of his existence and the sacrifice of Jesus for us.
My view is that there is no free will outside of God. Without God, people tend to be trapped in their culture, with no conceivable reason to be freed from it (I'm not saying that all culture is bad, just that not all culture is good). However, the claims of the New Testament are that there is a universal struggle going on for our souls, and that there must be participation from us for the reunification of the world to be fulfilled, because God had created us to be "freely" in his "will". I think the fact that we were created to "run" God's world (as it says in Genesis) is the ultimate mark of a masterful creation. The fact that we, as humans, can simply fulfill bodily functions like animals, but also can choose to lay our lives down for other people we don't know, is way too fascinating for me to leave alone.
There is a young Woman I know who is doing Tuberculosis research for Afghanistan. The reason she is so interested in that place is because her parents are missionary doctors who have spent a lot of time with medical patients in 3rd world countries. There was recently an article about her on the University of Texas website (http://www.utexas.edu/features/2009/04/06/tuberculosis/), and one of her professors was quoted as saying: ""Her unique and amazing ability is to be able to understand the rather deep science involved in antibiotic resistance, and to transition it to a place I can't imagine even visiting." That statement is absolutely striking to me. Why would we reach out to a place that is in a bad mess? Because they need to be saved! And we can't wait until we get things right, or until we are professional. If you read the article you will see that I am not conflicting with my argument, because she gave up quite a bit of schooling to work over there.
I had a significantly longer argument written here, but I feel it is not the right time to print it. I hope and pray for you that any restlessness you may have over the grand scheme of life will not hinder your life. To respond to an earlier post, I do believe that praying is more for the pray-er, because it helps them to understand what is most prevelent in their life, and what should be. God bless you.
I was born and raised a pastor's son in a protestant church (luckily a socially conscious one), and I remember having my first questions about God around age 9 or 10. They were the same questions that you expressed, but it devestated me. Not so much because I had doubts or questions, but because I thought it would crush my dad if he ever found out. I internalized every one of those thoughts until I was a senior in high school. I was filling out scholarship applications and writing essays for scholarship competitions. One in particular was called "The Faith in Life Scholarship." I would have to write an essay on how faith had impacted my life up to that point. I had no idea what to write about since my entire Christian experience had been full of doubts and questions - anything but a Moses-like faith.
But I wrote an essay anyway and sent it off to the scholarship foundation. A few weeks later I received a letter saying that I had won the scholarship and would have to read it aloud at our Baccalaureate service. I was shocked. My essay had consisted of me expressing all of the doubts, questions, and disbeliefs I had and how I felt that I was in an on-going debate and struggle with God over his existence and meaning and purpose. Now I would have to read this essay not only in front of the entire school but also my father who had no idea about any of this!
I remember going to the service and sweating profusely waiting for my call to the podium to speak. Once on stage, there was no turning back. I had to read the essay. I read through it as quickly as I could hoping that somehow I had said everything too fast for anyone to understand and I rushed off the stage. After the service my family came up to me with tears in their eyes. I knew I had crushed them. My dad walked up to me, put his arms around me, and told me how proud he was of me. We stood like that for awhile, hugging and crying. And finally he told me that he struggled with the same things every day and that questions had made his faith stronger. He had come to his own conclusions and answers and felt that it didn't lead him farther away from God, but rather, closer to him.
I'm not sure my questions have made my faith stronger, but I do know that I'm content with them now. There's a story in the Old Testament that I have always like about Jacob questioning God and the questioning turning into a physical wrestling match. I know that my questions will never go away, but I think that if God exists, he's enjoying the struggle. And honestly, so am I.
Ebert: Judging only from the last year of comments on this blog, which is visited mostly by intelligent, curious people, their favorite writers, in no order, are Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Richard Feynman, George Carlin, Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse. Who am I missing?
You're missing you.
god is a simple and unjustifying and unrealistic realsm.
very scary too.
knowying is an interesting film to watch. althought lots of cheesy acting.. :)
Who are you missing in terms of favorite writers? How about mine, William Faulkner. However, he conflicts with my love of film due to the difficulty of his work, making it rather hard for adaptations.
Here's a pitch: Light in August directed by David Gordon Greene. It could happen. Speaking of adaptations, whatever happened to Terrence Malik's plan to adapt Walker Percy's The Moviegoer or Greene's plan to adapt A Confederacy of Dunces (were there rights issues on that one?).
Ebert: "A Confederacy of Dunces" was blown out of the water by Katrina.
I do consider myself formerly (or, informerly - take your pick) nonreligious - but, I've always found Ecclesiastes to be the most logical, sound book in the Old Testament, and one of those examples of holy writ that more would do well to examine, and live by. It really does stick out, among the rest of them, in tone and content.
"6:12 For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? for who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?"
"9:2 All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath."
"9:4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion."
One of the most interesting group of verses that I've been mulling over of late are these, however -
"3:19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.
3:20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
3:21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?"
Apparently I was having a lot of parallel experiences in Chicago that you were having in Urbana, except that my mother was the protestant (Methodist) and my father the pious Catholic who made sure all the kids were thoroughly indoctinated in Catholic school. I remember my existence being attributed to god by my mother, in response to the question of a curious two-year old, long before encountering a nun. Since she said he was everywhere, I used to keep an eye peeled for him, even as she carried me on our walks to my grandmother's house. Since she said he was basically always spying on us (er, looking over us), I gave particular attention to anyone lurking under a stairway or in the shadows of a gangway. I also figured he must be skulking around the church during mass on Sunday, since it was his house. I never could catch a glimpse of him hiding behind a pillar or up in the grand dome of our great basilica. (And, let's face it, the Latin service was boring, so gawking around the great edifice was more satisfying and natural for a little kid.) I figured I'd recognise him without much trouble because he was not a mere person but, you know, supernatural. Never caught a glimpse. I think my mother's early introduction to the concept of god, from her Protestant prespective, tempered the strict authoritarian portrait of him later received from the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth.
You say that, as a young kid, your mind was blown by the concepts of infinity and eternity. Of course, I found them imposing as well. However, the realisation that used to impact me like an acid trip was the very fact of my existence. I guess I was about four years old when I would obsess about this whilst trying to sleep, just as you dwelt on infinity and eternity. I knew that I hadn't existed forever (though it certainly felt like it), since I was apprised that I had been born on a date certain (and there was a long well established history preceding that date). I knew, or rather concluded, that I did not have to be born as myself (into my family, with my identity), and did not even have to be born at all. I could just as well be the non-entity I had been forever, until a few short years prior. My existence was strictly contingent (on what I knew not...nor know to this very day over six decades later) and quite tenuous (I knew people die). As my mind transfixed on this paradox, I could feel my awareness dissolving or fading away, as if to answer, "what's it like to not exist?" That fade to oblivion shocks the system and causes one to struggle back, like a drowning man desparately reaching for the surface of the water. After a few go-rounds with this, I would not permit myself to entertain these thoughts for many years. I possibility that I might just disappear, because there is really no imperative for my existence, was to scary for that little kid.
I've now lived a full life and non-existence, while regretable, does not seem scary. It is, however, always disconcerting to undergo surgery under general anaesthesia, which I've had to endure three times. You know the drill, they either put a mask on your face or turn on an IV drip and tell you to count backwards from 100. When you get to 99 you are waking up (or trying to wake up) in the recovery room. When your neuronal membranes are depolarized by a chaotropic agent you lose all higher brain function. Being anaesthetized is not like sleep. There is no awareness of the passage of time. There are no dreams, no hynogogic state, no hallucinations, no white light, no loving arms of Jesus or your mother and grandparents. There is not even blackness. There is just personal non-existence. I suspect that the experience (or, more properly, the lack therefore) is like being dead. Nothing to dread, no pain or suffering, but nothing to look forward to either. Believe me, I'd much rather be in Philadelphia.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Roger, that our Catholic education taught us to think critically, especially the religion and theology courses offered in high school by the Jesuit-trained priests (Resurrectionists in my case). However, the logic and philosophy that they drilled into us, essentially to knock down the straw men of atheism, agnosticism and competing religions, are tools that just as easily dissect the dogmas of Catholicism (nay, all religions). In retrospect, the imposing, well-oiled machine of the Chicago Archdiocesan school system sowed the seeds of its own destruction by "over-educating" its students. I don't think it was just sex, drugs and rock-and-roll that caused most of my Catholic school cohorts to forsake the religion, at least in the way the church hierarchy would like it adhered to. It must be admitted there are still a fair number who identify themselves as "cultural Catholics" and engage their family in church activities for social reasons. Then there are the "cafeteria Catholics" who still claim to belong but believe only in those teachings that suit their preferences. I would reckon that together these two groups must outnumber the "true believers" today in the United States.
I suspect that a very large percentage, if not most, Catholics have become agnostics, but are simply reluctant or uncomfortable to say so. To be agnostic is merely to admit that you do not have certainty on the existence of god. (Ah, what is the definition of "god?" Since we are dealing with Catholicism, you have to go by their dogma in this case. You can be agnostic about the Catholic concept of god and still quibble about the nature of god posited by other faiths.) I think many fewer Catholics have transformed into full blown atheists. Being an atheist requires as much willingness to believe (i.e., faith) as does any form of theism or deism. As an atheist you actively believe in the non-existence of god (yes, I know, we can again quibble about definitions of god). Point of emphasis: you BELIEVE. As an agnostic you do not believe. In one case you say I know this is not true. In the other you say, I don't know whether that is true... I don't think so, but I really don't know.
My personal stance, if anyone cares? From a formal perspective, I have to say I am agnostic because the question is untestable by science and unanswerable by philosophy, though I suspect the atheists are right and my long dirt nap will be without dreams. That said, I realise that there are two forms of knowledge attainable by humans (and presumably any other thinking entities): so-called public knowledge and personal knowledge. Public knowledge is what we can demonstrate and share with one another. It includes science, history, philsophy, mathematical proofs, and so forth. People can make claims and contentions and other people can put those claims to the test using their own sensory modalities and rational thought. Personal knowledge is that which you may acquire (or not) but cannot demonstrate or prove as valid to anyone else. You can prove to me the validity of the Pythagorean Theorum, which makes it public knowledge; but you can never prove to be that you had a conversation with the Archangel Gabriel last night. You may very well have had a nice chat with Gabe, but you can't prove it. You and the pope may have had a personal revelation from God Almighty that he (Benedict) is the vicar of Christ on earth, but neither can you prove such revelation to me, nor can I disprove you had it. It is strictly personal knowledge, which you are free (actually constrained) to believe, but without demonstrable basis for belief by anyone else. Do I believe that god is going around speaking to selected individuals? No, but that's just me. LOL.
Ebert: Those who require proof and those who dismiss its necessity. Two categories.
Hi Roger:
Perhaps in an effort to convince you to read the rest of what I have to say I too have to mention that I think your movie reviews are the best. You're always at the top of "external reviews" on imdb even though that's alphabetically incorrect, and there's a reason for that.
So here's my perspective: I too grew up going to school with nuns running the show. This was in Chilliwack BC in the 1950's and you were in, I take it, Chicago about the same time. So we were in largely the same Catholic culture (e.g., we were fed on the Baltimore Catechism too).
I had a pretty good experience with the nuns, and the priests were OK too, then the sixties came along and it was apparent that some of the priests didn't believe that strongly in Catholicism anymore, they believed more in sociology, or psychology or something. This didn't have much drawing power for young people or anybody else for that matter, so a lot of people drifted away. After all, you can get psychology from a psychologist or by reading "Psychology Today" and you don't have to get up early on Sunday morning and go to Mass.
Now psychology or walking in the woods and feeling good about nature is all very well, but when you're in trouble they don't help all that much. A crisis or two helps snap you back to reality and if your conscience is still flickering you may just call out "God help me!" in spite of yourself. And if God actually helps you, you sit up and take notice.
Of course the standard answer to this is that this is just a person in trouble creating a loving God who helps him because he is so desperate. The problem is, if you've been slipped some well-known hallucinatory substances that everyone knows take hours to wear off and the answer to your prayer consists of going from wildly smashed to instantly dead straight, you’ve got some objective evidence of a cause and effect miracle.
Now miracles don’t happen every time, as your reader whose mother died of cancer can attest. Why? I don’t really know. What I do know is that despite my sinfulness the God I called out to proceeded to lead me to his son, Jesus, whose coming to earth as a powerless outcast makes perfect sense, if you think about it.
Why isn’t God’s existence more self-evident? When I was a kid I wondered why God didn’t come down in all his power (like Superman) and straighten out the mess the world is in. Just come down here and prove to us you are real, set up your regime, and everything will be fine! Why not do it?
Roger, you’ve stated that you believe in free will. If God came down and established a government with himself as head, where would your free will be? Instead he sent his son, who shared his father’s divine nature as well as his mother’s human nature—but he sent him as someone who was powerless and therefore had little chance of forcing himself on us. We are therefore free to follow him or not, without coercion.
If we choose to follow Jesus, we’re not primarily choosing to follow a set of rules. We are choosing to follow a person through a trust relationship that is sustained by person to person contact (better than just reading an ethics text, yes?) between you and Jesus’ Holy Spirit, who was sent by Jesus’ father when the son left Terra Firma so that everyone can experience a “one on one” with the creator of the universe! When you know you are loved by someone, following the rules of the relationship is a lot easier.
I think, Roger, that this is where the Catholicism of the fifties, which had it right in many ways, was deficient: it gave us all the rules and arguments for faith, but it wasn’t always that good at introducing us to the one who made faith and rules make sense by animating our existence and giving genuine meaning to our lives by warming our hearts with his love for us.
I found this “on my own” by reading the Bible after my supernatural (above nature) experience and by “fellowshipping” with Evangelicals, who are as you know big on the “personal relationship” aspect of Christianity.
But there was a logical problem with remaining a “Bible-only” Christian. We may be in a relationship with Jesus through his Holy Spirit, but we are still subjective human beings and we might think the Holy Spirit is telling us to marry 3 women (at one time, I mean) and who’s to say that’s wrong, especially in our day when anyone’s opinion is as good as anyone else?
That’s why God established an authority on earth to “lead us into all truth,” as the scriptures say. This in spite of the fact that priests and nuns haven’t always been perfect. (It’s an ad hominem argument to say Christianity is no good because some or even all of its followers have done bad things, and ad hominem arguments are invalid as any scientist knows. Think of it this way: “by their fruits you will know them!” Them, not the Church; not its teaching; not God or his son Jesus. If a Rotarian gets drunk and kills a kid with his car do you blame the Rotary club? Only if the 4 way test commands him to kill kids with his car (it doesn't).
This led me back to the Church of my youth (and yours). To fully know Jesus, you’ve got to hear him speak with authority.
But I’ve rambled enough. Let me recommend 2 books: C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity for good arguments for God’s existence, and Ronald Knox’s The Belief of Catholics* for a good understanding of the Catholic Church (the latter is greatly colored by early 20th century polemics, but we are grown-ups and can get past that).
God bless you Roger.
* just google it--there's a free text version on the web.
As always, a fascinating essay. Let me share with you a book that I think you'll find pretty amazing, written by one of the foremost Jewish thinkers, Harold Schulweis. This is the book that basically convinced me God does exist, and then I promptly joined Schulweis' congregation and never looked back. A quick and profound read, "For Those Who Can't Believe"
http://www.amazon.com/Those-Who-Cant-Believe-Overcoming/dp/0060926511
Thanks for writing the article. It gives voice to much of the restlessness and wonder my spritual journey has comprised.
"Ebert: Free will is the freedom to choose what I will do next. It is limited by the things that are possible for me to do. It is also limited by my inheritance, both biological and intellectual, and by my physical abilities. But within the range where I am capable of action, my choices are not Written or Determined, but made."
Ah, but made how and by whom?
First, run time backwards and everything appears strictly deterministic. Even a "random" event like a coin flip. And, I mean starting with the neurons that stimulate your finger muscles to propel the coin with some specific velocity and angular momentum causing the coin to turn over some specific number of times and interact with the air currents in a precise fashion to make it land and, after maybe bouncing some precise number of times, come up heads or tails. If you had knowledge of all the relevant forces and vectors ahead of time, you would be able to precisely predict the outcome. Your brain is a similar physico-chemical system, with just a few more layers of complexity added on.
Are you aware of the numerous ways that neuroscientists can scan the brain for highly localised activity? They are now able to corrctly predict objects or activities being thought about by test subjects based upon what speck on a lobe or crenulation "lights up" during the scan.
Using this technology, scientists have put the concept of free will to the test. Just to keep it simple, let's say the decision requested of the test subject was to raise his right hand or his left hand. Age old test used by philosophy professors, right? When did you decide which hand to raise, and what were the mental antecedents you were or were not aware of? Most people "think" they "decide" to raise one hand or the other moments before they actually do so. How and why they decide remains a mystery to them. However, it turns out from experiements using the brain scans, in which changes in brain activity can be followed over a time course of milliseconds, the part of the brain necessary to activate one hand or the other "lights up" well before the subject is aware of making his decision. Something happens first at the subconscious level and the information is only later imparted to that part of the brain "housing" consciousness. Consciousness thinks it made a decision, but something else happened. Either someone or something else "decided" for us. You can posit an overarching universal mind exerting free will on the material world, if you like, or simply an uninterrupted chain of causality perhaps dating to the first interval of Planck time. (The second hypothesis is simpler and hence more likely. Occam's Razor and all that. Positing a more complex system controlling this one merely means you have to explain the workings and origin of the controller.) Alternatively, there is a true random event generator at work in the brain, but as we established with the coin flip, this can always be argued against. What seems random may simply represent a lack of information...and it all comes back to determinism.
Ebert: No wonder you HALs are so smart. There are so many of you.
Somebody for godsakes turn off the italics!
M. Twain, K. Vonnegut. Carl Sagan!
Belief in free will? Man can believe anything. That is why they call him man!
(FOR THE SHORT VERSION OF THIS -- SEE BOTTOM)
If there's one problem with discussions of infinity, it’s that they're predicated upon the notions that there is "nothing else" to it all. That instead of a hope of something greater or more important, life and the universe it seems is reduced to a dichotomy of total reality vs. probable reality. In other words, whether the world has an end point or whether there is a God vs. this notion that the universe is actually never ending and a series of random accidents or chemical reactions.
I wouldn't doubt that the universe consists of an abysmally abstract array of space and dimensions that I cannot fathomably comprehend. A continually abstract multitude of contracting or expanding matter; or at least, what we believe matter to be in the "thinking sense" of what we as human beings know it to be. That would be wishful thinking for an atheist, or as you so elegantly put someone who is not burdened by human labels but instead surrenders to the notion that the question of such things is vastly more important than the answers would be. However, despite these realities, such things are problematic for the so-called believers.
Deep down, no matter who we are I'd like to believe that we all believe in God. Perhaps not in the Christian or theological sense or what we can imagine God to be, but rather in the human sense. Beit, the idea of God. It is human nature to explore. Our entire lives are based upon this notion of reaching out to something, beit one another, other planets, other people, other souls; whatever that may be. And no matter who you are or what rock you crawled out from, this notion that you are alone is not only unlikely but an immeasurably depressing concept.
When the first amoebas crawled out of the sludge of the Earth or early planets, it’s not likely that they developed a level of consciousness; but then again, perhaps there level of consciousness was present. Maybe it was so infinitesimally small, that it wasn't really worth mentioning or measuring in any verifiable degree. You've probably heard countless times about the comparisons between people and insects. The fact that insects are a collective race of animals with shared characteristics. Perhaps human beings are no better or intelligent than those legions of ant hills waltzing around the planet's soil. We just have fancier ant hills and methods for gathering our food. This brings to attention the notion that we are not an all important race.
If that is true, then the only explanation that remains is the existence of higher or more dominant beings that inhabit the universe around us. For all matters concerned, we will likely never be able to see those people. And even if we were able to send a signal to the far reaches of outer space, it’s unlikely that such a signal would come back in a format we could use or calculate. It's likely it would take several millenniums.
The vast concepts of particle acceleration, cosmological inflation, sound wave patterns and expanding matter have more or less always fascinated me from a lamen's standpoint. However, at the same time, the many investigations into their deeper meanings and the explorations of these sciences puzzle me on a purely intellectual level. I am neither smart enough nor knowledgeable to comprehend the perplexing matters of science. And yet it seems that for every monumental human discovery there exists an implied contradiction. As for the many events of the universe of matter (such as the deterioration of subatomic particles at gargantuan velocities which are entrapped into vortexes and chasms of energy too small to fathom), the existence of hypothetical radiation (which permeate within the vastness of conceivable space; as structure and form itself begin to cease), the ever-growing mysteries of the nucleus or ultra small universe; all are examples of events perhaps too vast to comprehend. All of this of course amounts to a bunch of words from a bunch of guys in expensive suits, whom all may or may not be able to prove any of these theories or studies to be correct. In order to understand them, you would have to go to the source and discover it for yourself. I imagine that in order to do that, you would have to be God himself.
I cannot fathom it, but I think it is somewhere along these lines of this idea of the expanding universe imploding and reaching back onto itself. That for all the concerned mesh of what is, IS is somehow interconnected into this sort of perplexing multitude of unfathomable proportions. Or perhaps the pattern is so ridiculously simple that we as conscious beings fail to appreciate its innate simplicity. For fun, let’s throw this concept out there. Maybe when you reach the outer realm or other dimensions of the universe, you simply return to the starting point, yourself. In the end, perhaps it is consciousness itself which makes up the vast stretch of all known worth. In that life itself is the universe, which would have to make up your own body, the vessel of the heavens; in other words, as we gaze out into the world we are looking at the whole universe or rather our own selves. It is said that we were once all star matter. Maybe everything is star matter, maybe we're just seeing it through different eyes, another dimension, another lifetime; and that somewhere out there in the vastness of the outer stretches of all known existence, there exists ourselves, waving down at us. A ridiculous concept, perhaps; but conceivable when you imagine the vast principles of what is.
It is believed to be the case that no known matter can escape the chasm of a black hole. In that, the existence of black holes themselves greatly contradicts any human concept of space or gravity. For if black holes are the very absence of matter or close to approaching it, what immense force would be required for surviving the huge force or nothingness in a remote void of space? A distance so grand and so far that it escapes our imaginations of identifiable worth. The answer is nothing, force itself or pull has no meaning that far out. In order for humans to ever go beyond these notions, they must first eliminate these primal mathematical concepts from their thinking. That alone, may be an impossible task, for we see the world through the eyes in which we live it. Any other perspective would be vastly inhuman. Do we really want to be anything other than human? Is it possible that what we believe to be every conceivable shape, or every conceivable calculation or every conceivable color, spectrum or multitude, sound or force pales in comparison to the catalogue of options required to see time and space the way God sees it? I really don't know, but I'll leave it up to you to decide.
If there's anything beautiful in life that I've learned it’s that we have the luxury to pause for a moment and listen to our own thoughts. From a standpoint of life on Earth, this is my space and it cannot be taken away. In other words, I inhabit my own space; my thoughts are my own. It's up to me if I want to share them. And yet, there's an element of loneliness to the whole thing. That is to be expected. It is part of who we are. We cannot expect every mind in the world to be inter-connected to our own. If that we true we would have no reason to fear, because then we would know everything. That my friend would be a living hell, and the end of all exploration. As for God, isn't it better knowing that we may never find him? The search is what's important. Everything else is just a magic act with nobody watching in the stands. If God were a human being, I would imagine he'd be the loneliness person on the face of the Earth. In the end, I'm glad I'm not him and that I am simply me.
(SHORT VERSION OF ABOVE -- By Paragraph Number)
1) Believing that the universe is just endless and accidental while plausible is also disappointing and depressing.
2) It's important to pursue scientific truths but we shouldn't totally disregard the possibility of God.
3) It's only human nature to reach out for something greater than yourself. It's also important to reach out to one another.
4) In a way, the human race can be equated to a legion of insects. We shouldn't think ourselves too intelligent or so all-important. Our technology has changed but we haven't really.
5) If it's true that we're not that smart or special, then that would mean there are other smarter beings out there. Even if our technology advances to a point, we may never learn the truth.
6) While I am fascinated by the prospects of science and discovery I am also overwhelmed by them. The universe is so vast that it seems impossible to understand it even with science. I think you'd have to be God.
7) Maybe the universe doesn't go on forever; maybe it's just so large that it simply loops back. Like time or consciousness itself, the universe is connected to all things and we to it. Such notions are inspiring if not fathomable.
8) Trying to understand black holes is like humans trying to understand the math of aliens using their own mental concepts. It's impossible. What force could demolish a black hole for instance? Can we fathom it?
9) In the end what makes us unique is that we inhabit a space unique to ourselves. This is not depressing but inspiring; it forces us to understand that we are constantly searching.
Ebert: Although anything like a human being or a star would be pulled to bits by the gravitational force of a black hole, it is theorized that matter itself might continue to exist. Lee Smolin wonders if it might emerge as another universe.
"Ebert: Judging only from the last year of comments on this blog, which is visited mostly by intelligent, curious people, their favorite writers, in no order, are Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Richard Feynman, George Carlin, Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse. Who am I missing?"
Try Douglas Hofstadter, a computer scientist, for true insights into the working of the mind and the nature of reality. (Goedel, Escher and Bach and The Mind's I are his best known works.)
Any of Rudy Rucker's books on mathematics (Infinity and the Mind; Mind Tools; and The Fourth Dimension, to name a few). His many scifi books are very entertaining but not classic.
Phillip K. Dick for science fiction. With many dozens of novels and a hundred plus short stories, there's something for everyone.
Carl Sagan was an excellent science writer, in spite of the backbiting he suffered. He deserved to be in the National Academy of Sciences, but jealousy and politics kept him out.
Innumerable old masters: Dostoevsky, Mann, Hesse, Steinbeck, Hemingway... where does one end? Gunter Grass, Joseph Heller and Saul Bellow if you want post WWII writers.
Let me peruse my bookshelves and I'll come up with dozens of names. I wish I could have written one such book. All I've authored are several dozen research papers (in science) and a couple of lab manuals. They'll have to do.
Ebert: Great writers. I was trying to summarize those names most mentioned spontaneously by posters here. It's gratifying how often Mark Twain's name comes up. Surprising that no one in this thread has brought up the theological musings he was afraid that his wife would see.
For someone who has written several dozen scientific research papers, you have an impressive knowledge of literature. I appoint you the C. P. Snow of this blog.
To be a sage, one has to have (I believe) three things... age, wisdom and experience. Age, because by definition, a sage is never a young man but one who has lived a long time: the medicine man, the guru on the mountain top, the ancient one of the village. Wisdom is the second ingredient as with age comes wisdom, having lived such a life one picks up nuggets of truth that by their very nature need to be passed down to others. And finally the experience of life itself, surviving the trials that life itself gives each and every one of us, turning what may be difficult into simplicity.
I say this to begin my letter because I have come to the conclusion that you are perhaps in some fashion a sage. The commentaries that you've posted here in recent weeks providing such a level of discussion that you rarely find in public is evidence of that. This discussion on the nature of God, reality and how we interact with that reality is no less interesting than a discussion on the the reasons why a filmmaker chooses a particular scene for his movie. It's a joy to read these discussions, even if I'm merely an observer on the curb, watching the parade going past.
It may be that Michael Valentine Smith (from Stranger in a Strange Land) has it right, that no matter what you believe, they all come back to the same place. Point your finger in any direction and the curving nature of the universe will bring you right back to the same spot. And that we are indeed differing manifestations of God, no matter what we may think or feel. My God is different than your God, and is most definitely different than what Catholicism views as God, but it is still the same God.
Just a thought... it's early, and a glorious sunrise awaits outside my window.
Thanks for writing this. I'm glad to read in your own words a searching assessment of what has for a number of years been clear to me, at any rate, from your writing. I'm glad, in a sense, that you resist the labels of "believer" or "unbeliever"; that's pretty much exactly what I would have said about you.
I agree completely with the connection you draw between Catholicism and humanism, though I find in my own case that my humanism points me to Catholic faith, or perhaps my Catholic faith points me to humanism, I can't be sure which. The shallowness of the critique of "secular humanism" leaves me cold as well; give me the Christian humanism of Erasmus and Thomas More.
You say you "rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men." I understand your skepticism. I wonder whether you are open to questioning it, or whether "rule out" really means "rule out."
The great Anglican New Testament historian N. T. Wright has written some provocative historical analysis of the early Christian church in his "Christian Origins and the Question of God" series. The question he sets out to address is "Why did Christianity begin, and why did it take the shape it did?" It makes intriguing reading from a critical, questioning point of view.
Ebert: I suppose "rule out" is rather an arrogant statement. Let me say it this way: I do not believe that God has ever spoken to anyone in an audible voice in that person's language. Whether people believe he spoke to their minds is a personal assertion. His communications in any event seem to be in the terms of the culture and values of the person spoken to, which is disappointing; perhaps some truths are indeed self-evident.
If I had been Abraham, told to sacrifice my son, I would have asked for something in writing.
Mr. Ebert,
When the conversation rolls around to whether I am atheist or agnostic, I always say that I'm a person who thinks it would be really cool if there was a God.
I don't think there's a name for that.
Very thought provoking post, Rog. Like you, as a kid I would ponder infinity, and really focus on it, only to be overwhelmed by the concept and literally have to shake my head to get the incomprehensible thought out of my finite thinking brain. Like you, too, my thoughts on religion have evolved to something similar to yours. I attend church a few times a year, and at times find comfort in the tradition. Although I can't say I have a "relationship" with God, I do believe in some sort of nebulous higher power. I don't discuss my religious ambivalence with my mother, because I know it would needlessly upset her, and why would I want to do that? I am content to passively pay homage and respect to family traditions, while pondering these thoughts privately. Isn't that what religion, at its core, is really all about-one's individual intellectual struggle with the big questions of life?
In a box on the right of the the page is an advertisement for a DVD, The Last Temptation of Christ. I remember the review for that movie with Gene Siskel.
It was a "religious" movie for me too, to the extent that I felt deeply moved, troubled and hopeful, and intellectually stirred. I saw the movie (on video!) shortly before going to Jerusalem and I listened to the soundtrack by Peter Gabriel over and over again.
When I sat on the Temple Mount looking at the mosque, the wall, the scattered columns and pediments I thought not about the movie but, for some reason, the book Master and Margarita, which also provides a realistic and gripping account of the Passion. The Russian version of the book (in a multi-part TV series) is quite well done.
Mulling over these experiences years later, I realize what a child of the media I am (although not a child for many, many decades) and that my spiritual understanding of religion is firmly rooted in my visual and emotional experiences. Such is the predominance of my right brain, I conclude, and get on with the task of living life and surviving.
Mr. Ebert, your comments, as they have always been, are refreshing engaging and a source of reassurance in troubling times. A big hug.
Kevin
Thought provoking article. I really enjoyed reading it. I've been watching videos, debates, and reading articles similar to this from Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris lately. I find them all very interesting. I wanted to mention also that when I have trouble picturing something that has no beginning or end, I think of a mobius strip. It helps me visualize it and perhaps it will help you too.
I also recently read A Theory of Power by Jeff Vail, which makes a lot of sense to me. It focuses more on history and society than religion.
I was reading a wiki section on Robert T. Kiyosaki and on the criticisms and controversy section he mentions about how he met many people(but he calls them "losers") who pray to God and give them gold. "God helps those who helps themselves" Do you believe this to be true?
Ebert: No. A god who does not help the helpless?
The quote is from Benjamin Franklin, by the way. It is routinely attributed as "Hezekiah 6:1." Tell me on which page of the bible the book of Hezekiah begins.
I share a similar story, though through the lens of an ardent Lutheran upbringing. I had a great childhood in the church, but the idea that the questions could all be answered left me disconcerted.
After years of exploration, I have found that I agree with Huston Smith's assertion that you can't draw good water from many shallow wells. I return to the traditions of my childhood, but these traditions are colored with the appreciation of other paths and other seekers. I also try to daily meditate on the five remembrances that the Buddha taught:
I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill-health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love of of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.
That last one especially feels linked to the Golden Rule, and I think they all help to encourage mindful living. And, I'd like to think I belong to the church of perpetual amazement.
Ebert: Yes. Those who cannot reconcile themselves to illness and certain death will only add mental anguish to their other troubles. That doesn't mean you have to enjoy them.
Great essay. One quibble, though:
"I don't believe the universe counts."
Sure it does, Roger. The universe is intelligent and self-aware. I'm talking about us. We are part of the universe - not separate. And we can count.
Religion colors your world view. I used to listen to a fascinating radio program when I was a kid, maybe about 10. "Religion on the Line" hosted by Dennis Prager. It came on Sundays at night and the show always featured three or four guests, a Rabbi, a Catholic Priest, and sometimes a Protestant, sometimes a Muslim, sometimes both. People would call in with questions and everybody would tackle them from their own point of view. It was awesome. I really miss that show. What I recall most vividly is the feeling hey everybody can really get along. Every religion has to tackle the same questions with regards to God, the Universe and everything in between.
I think atheists are stupid. Not all of them, just the "knee-jerk reaction" atheists. They lump all these incredibly beautiful, absolutely entrancing, ancient narratives about the origin of life and death, the essence of being humble and humane, into a simple logical clause:
RELIGION FAILS BECAUSE
(a) The Bible is fake.
(b) The Bible is contradictory, therefore (a).
(c) The Preacher uses The Bible, see point (b).
(d) The layman listens to The Preacher, see point (c).
(e) Anyone that listens to the layman is plain dumb, but see (d).
I used to think that those kind of atheists were misguided. They are not. They have an active ignorance that makes it impossible for them to swallow even one micro particle of anything related to divinity. I wonder if an atheist can appreciate something as wonderful as "Sita Sings the Blues." I've watched the movie several times and each time I get a different little nugget of life. "Knowing" was a great topic and it was funny to see the knee-jerk reaction of some of the atheists to the religious overtones. But, there were other people on your blog that contributed with their knowledge of religious symbolism and that made the movie a lot richer for everybody.
I ask the knee-jerk atheist, do you want to live in a world with no religion or religious symbolism? I think my life is richer because of my religious upbringing. It allows me a comparison. I can compare my values to my fellow man's. Religion also allows a form of ethics shorthand. I can talk about Daniel in the lion's den to a Jew, a Muslim, a Mormon, a Hindu and even an atheist. No one would have any problem understanding what got Daniel in the den. Only the atheist would have trouble grasping the ethical implications of Daniel getting out.
Like me, my children will know all the Christian Bible stories. But, I value the spiritual truths evident in every religion. I believe they contribute to a greater understanding of our fragile humanity. I want my kids to know about the man from Galilee, and the power of that old rugged Cross. Like in every vampire movie, when you are in trouble you have to run as fast as you can to holy ground and latch on to a cross and some holy water. Just be afraid of the secular vampires, though, they'll eat you wherever you are because they don't give a damn about anything.
"I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do. Above all, the state does not."
So, for you, all criminal laws are null and void? Laws against murder or drunk driving are nothing more than the government telling us what we cannot do. It seems to me that a statement like that is convenient for someone who is pro-choice, but it really isn't very well thought out. I'd be curious of Roger or anyone can defend that statement.
Ebert: The state does not have the right. It has the responsibility to reflect the will of a majority of voters exercising their free will. That is the difference between democracy and dictatorship.
I was raised Lutheran. The church never did but right by me, but I think my faith started to slip away the day my Sunday school teacher told me my dog didn't have a soul. No cosmology can long stand against the intransigence of a young boy's unconditional love.
These days, I call myself a "practicing agnostic," largely to mess with the people who keep asking me. I haven't set foot in a church, other than for weddings and funerals, in over ten years. I still have the Bible my grandfather gave me at my confirmation (NIV; sorry, Roger), and I remain deeply interested in Biblical history, theology, and the dueling scriptures of the Jewish and Christian faiths. And I maintain a deep respect for genuine faith of all stripes, and a disdain for the numerous, tedious poltroons who mask their bigotries, flimflammeries, and self-aggrandizing agendas with faith-colored gauze. And, the gospels of Sam Harris and Chris Hitchens (whom I consider to be mere atheist tribalists tooting their own horns as loudly and bellicosely as the Inquisition ever did) aside, I think faith, religion, and all the rest of it are here to stay. We seem to have belief ground into our fiber at a level that goes even beyond genetic. (And since I'm sure that's got someone asking, no, I don't believe in the Singularity either. Rapturism as an eschatology bores me with its venal simplicity.)
Roger,
I read that it encourages you to know if you were wrong about whether people have a literal vision of the Theory of Relativity. We sure do! Ask any undergrad university teacher in Physics; all of them are at least twice a year conceptualizing the theory in a practical sense with their students. So they're really well-versed.
For special relativity, you can rest assured on light, whose speed is the same no matter how fast YOU'RE going. In fact, light is more reliable than time and space, both of which, relative to you, experience dilation and contraction respectively ~if you move~. The effect is magnified several orders as you approach the speed of light. That's why we don't notice while driving to work every day.
For General Relativity, Large masses cause space-time curvature which thereby induce gravity (again, unreliable space and time) Other than that, it also explains why if you travelled constantly in one direction forward in space, you'd end up right back at your starting point. Kinda like walking in one direction on a "flat Earth" that "continues forever". Thank the stars for pioneers like Christopher Columbus, and Nicolaus Copernicus daring to better inform us. Then later, Kepler and eventually Dirac and Einstein! And we're STILL trying to wrap our heads around their ideas and their meaning.
Finally, your mention of Annie Dillard made me smile. I just hope that lightning doesn't strike while I'm inside. For all I know, God is capable of showing signs of having a sense of humour!
Cheers!
Josh
This is the first cause.
Great post and thread. My two favorite quotes on he matter, the first from Mr. Twain, the second from Mr.Hitchens:
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so"
"What can be believed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"
OK, first the obligatory I-was-raised-Catholic-too comments:
I was raised Catholic, too. Started in Catholic kindergarten in 1960, finished with Jesuits (St. Joe's in Phil.) in 1978. Baltimore Catechism, Vatican II, not much on the evils of sex--just VD--and a brief scare in grade school when I was informed the Chinese Communists might torture me if they got the chance. Had a nun in 8th grade who convinced me I needed to write, a high school religion teacher who showed us Pasolini's Gospel According to St. Matthew, Solider Blue(!), and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and ran into a few Jesuits in lit., phil., & theology who hammered at me (in the nicest possible way) until I learned to think. More or less.
Since then, it's been Springsteen, Flannery O'Connor, and the occasional transsubstantiated snack.
*****
Roger, your tone reminds me of Marx's apocryphal comment: "Je ne suis pas Marxiste." Seems you're in good company.
*****
A few additions to the favorite writers list (aside from Flannery O.): Raymond Chandler ("You're not human tonight, Marlowe."), Bradbury, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Dickey, Yeats, and Fritz Leiber. Non-fiction honorable mention: David Halberstam. And a must-read, obscure little book by one Tom Kromer, from 1934: Waiting for Nothing. Imagine if Hemingway were a homeless stiff during the Depression.
*****
A quick Jesus comment: C.S. Lewis says somewhere that the argument that Jesus was a wonderful thinker is silly if He isn't God. The ethics are screwy--loving enemies, being perfect, thinking as bad as doing. Not sure I agree with Lewis, but given the strange cultural proximity between him and Freud (I recall a PBS series that drew them together), it's worth considering.
Congratulations, good man! Well, in retrospect, I suppose. You deserve to be commended for turning the Church's practices in reverse by applying rationality to them. You must have been an incredibly bright or talented child.
I loved what you wrote. I don't know who you are but youre thoughts must speak for many of us. These are the great questions that probably have no intellectual answers. In deep meditation when time and deliberate thought stop .......
Gashho and thanks for the great thoughts.
Lee
Ebert "Where did I say I don't believe God exists?"
Answer one: in paragraph twelve, when you said this: "If I don't believe God exists, that doesn't mean I believe God doesn't exist."
This statement implies that you do not believe God exists, which is one of the formal definitions of atheism.
But, you say, implications don't matter. Only direct statements to. Then why are you concerned about implications in the very next sentence? "Nor does it mean I don't know, which implies that I could know."
Answer two: in the entire article, you are essentially struggling not with your faith, but, clearly, with your atheism. Perhaps because of your tenderly conducted, and fondly remembered, childhood training, which is no doubt such a deep part of who you are, it is particularly difficult to admit that you have come to a conclusion that is escapable only by a lot of twisting and turning. And, with you being an honest intellect, all that twisting and turning is uncomfortable for you, so you are struggling with it. Now since you accuse readers of telling you what you think and what you are, I'll add that I'm not claiming to know you - I'm just saying that this is what I believe about you, given what you've written here.
I also see what you did with your headline. You threw a bone to your religious friends, who, mostly being terrified to tread into discussions involving the universe, physics, evolution, and scientific theories of origins, will not read your longish article, but will still smile at you at social events because having read the headline, they will think you are still making their case.
Ebert: I'm discussing there whether I am an atheist. The crucial word is if: "If I don't believe God exists, that doesn't mean I believe God doesn't exist. Nor does it mean I don't know, which implies that I could know." I know I'm splitting hairs.
"I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do."
I have never understood this argument. Isn't a person who believes abortion is wrong making the wrong choice by sitting back and letting other people commit abortions?
Ebert: I believe in choice. I know what my choice would be.
Philip Larkin - Church Going
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
I love reading stuff like this. Atheists/Agnostics/Unbelievers (rather than nonbelievers) can have an equally attuned sense of the profound as the religious - great art, poetry, and even your writing above (and occasionally elsewhere) hits that same spot.
Ebert: Larkin is so good.
For those interested in a conception of God wholly unlike the Judeo-Christian God, read Spinoza: Theologoical-Political Treatise and The Ethics. His monism is brilliant, is my faith. Deus sive natura.
[i]This temporary dance of forms
From higher up seems nothing much.
From underneath a conflagration;
In the middle, exclamation:
Here I am! Or something such.
No matter, save because it warms.
Formless flux or automatic,
Selfish-bound or all ecstatic,
Still life or the arts dramatic,
No dancer, but the dance performs.[/i]-Paul McEnery
Whether or not we can know the existence of God depends on whether one can formulate God as a testable hypothesis. As it turns out, the God described in the Summa Theologica and most subsequent Catholic theology can be formulated as such, and the hypothesis fails (see J.L. Mackie's "The Miracle of Theism" for the in-depth; short answer being that Russell's Paradox, Godel's Incompleteness Theorems and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle proscribe omniscience, relativity proscribes omnipresence, and linguistic analysis reveals "omnipotent" to be a meaningless term, not even getting into evolutionary biology, quantum mechanics or information theory).
However, there's something referred to in Hinduism as atman/Atman, a term I find more useful than "God." Because at the root of your classical religious experience there is the realization that all is connected, and that our linguistic descriptors can only approximate reality but never truly map it with 100 percent accuracy. This experience cannot really be described, only pointed to.
As Francis of Assisi was fond of saying, "What you are looking for is what is looking."
All of us have many labels. You can be a writer, and a movie critic, and a television personality, and an atheist.
I wonder - If you don't want to be labeled, do you also rail against the people applying the label "movie critic" to you?
The troubling thing is your implication that there is something wrong with being an atheist.
Many of the most caring people I know are atheists, and I say they are caring because they care about this world, not some imagined fantasy afterworld. Rather than striving to get me, myself, and I into heaven, atheists strive to make the REAL afterlife, the one we leave to our children, better for everybody. I don't understand why anybody would not want to be labeled atheist, unless they are ignorant of what atheism means.
Mr. Ebert,
I want to express my opinion on your blog. You are obviously a very intelligent man. I am more what you would call street smart or I prefer to say it comes from wisdom from above. You see when you found that skull I see that as a message from God. Until people have their wn experiences with God it is hard for them to have any type of faith. I myself received the gift of the Holy Spirit without asking for it or really believing in it. I too was raised Catholic but never really understood too much of it, I just went to church because I was told to. I am what you would consider a born again Christian except for one thing, I am not judgemental. I believe everyone has a right to their own beliefs and the only thing we can do is inspire them by telling our stories about how we were brought to the Lord. I was in the middle of deep depression, acting out on all typoes of sinning when all of a sudden I had a crucifix next to my bed and the next thing I knew I was on my knees crying asking God to forgive me. I said to him if you loved us so much to sacrifice your only son what in the world I am sinning for. I coulld not imagine sacrificing my only son for the sake of saving other sinners. From that moment on I had such a conviction to live a rightous life. I had such a beautiful experience with the Lord that I to this day can tell you without a doubt there is a Heaven where you live an everlasting life. You see he revealed things to me I would have never known or thought about. I say this to anyone who has doubts try putting Jesus into your heart and pray about it and see what happens. It's like trying it before you knock it. (smiling) I also don't believe in these mega churches and the millionare pastors because the Bible clearly states you are not supposed to make a profit off of God's word and I believe that is what turns a lot of people away from worshipping God. Before I received the Holy Spirit I had one other encounter with God and it hsppened after I spent an entire day in my room forgiving anyone that ever hurt me as I went through a lot of sexual abuse in my life. What happened after that was three days of complete bliss. I ddin't want for anything I was completely happy and loved everyone, I enjoyed every minute of those three days. Most refer to it as a Spiritual awakening. I sometimes wonder if everyone forgave everyone what a world this would be!! Also remember we will never have all the answers I believe that will be saved to we meet our creator and only then will this life and universe make any sense. If we had all the answers that would be like peeking at your gift it would take all the fun out of it.
Lot's of love and blessings sent your way,
Sandy
Our unanswered questions are our impetus for science.
Our unanswerable questions are our impetus for religion.
We are taught both, we only need 1
Hi Elbert,
I just wanted to make a comment on your blog. you are a very intelligent man. For myself I am considered what people would consider to be street smart or I would like to say wisdom from above. Before I share my story I want to say this, we will never have all the answers and that is where faith comes into play. It would be like peeking at a gift someone bought you it would take all the fun and suprise out of the giving. I was in a deep depression for some years and living a life full of sin until one day I was in my bedroom where I had a crucifix laying on my bedside table. All of a sudden I got on my knees and started crying and praying to God telling Him how sorry I was for my sins and how sorry I was that He sacrificed His Son for us. I could never imagine sacrificing my son for the sinners of the world. What happened next was I was given the gift of the Holy Spirit, my life was changed for ever for the better. I was able to start healing form all the sexual abuse I suffered as a child and then I began to feel complete joy in my life. I do believe we are all entitled to our beliefs and that we should respect others beliefs. But I also believe we can be an inspiration for others in showing them the way by our won experiences. I also had another encounter many years before this where I had a spent a day in my room crying and forgiving those who hurt me. For the next three days I encountered total bliss, I enjoyed every minute of those three days and loved everyone. Most refer to this as a spiritual awakening What would the world be like if we all forgave everyone for everything we would live in harmony forever and I believe that is what Heaven will be like. Unless you have had an experience with God I can imagine it would be hard to have faith in God or His Son. I ask people to try it before they knock it (smiling)
In love and blessings from above,
Sandy
An interesting article
You might want to know why more and more Priests and Pastors are embracing Islam
http://www.usislam.org/converts/converts.htm
Cheers
I'm convinced that not only did Moses and Mohammed believe they were speaking to the infinite, but that their results, in context, were for the good.
If one could register one's opinion with the everything-for-all-time, and have it confirmed, that's the same thing. Impossible, sure, but the same thing.
Passover has recently passed and a local "mega"-synagogue had a sign which said that it should remind us how we all can be free, like the Egyptian slaves, and I thought how "When was the last time God killed all the firstborn of our enemies?" and "Was this synagogue against slavery in America?"
I had a non-religious upbringing - all I remember from my one summer of Sunday school was making paper. But I did learn to appreciate the wonder of the world around me. Its complexity is astonishing, all the more so when you learn a little about the simple rules that make it work. But I think there's a trap there: it's easy to romanticize mystery. Mystery is when your computer crashes and you don't know why, when you get sick and die for no reason the doctors can figure out. It's not a good thing. I think it's basically foolish to think that understanding that the stars are blazing spheres of incandescent gas makes them less wonderful, rather than more.
It seems like people like to see God in the things we don't know: before the Big Bang, in the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics and relativity, and so on. But I think to the extent that those are mysterious, they're like your computer randomly crashing: we don't know why, because we don't know enough about the circumstances and mechanisms - yet. But, for the physics if not for your computer, we're working hard on it, and there's no reason to think we won't find an answer. So it seems a bit untenable to base religious beliefs on not knowing these things...
IS there such thing as a 'first number'? If you start at .01, and then follow to .00001, and continue on in that fashion....you get infinitely smaller, without end.
(this brings to mind the whole ".9 repeating = 1" thing, which my brain still seems to subconsciously reject)
Also:
"I've spent hours and hours in churches all over the world. I sit in them not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe."
And here I thought I was the only one who does that :)
"I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do."
john told me he was going to kill my best friend. i have no right to tell him not to.
i guess its ok to murder unborn babies, but not ppl who were born. thats kind of like a prejudice against ppl who arent born yet.
"Well, he cant talk or do much of anything. so its ok to brutally murder him."
"GOD" is just a three letter word. Without any evidence, there would be no definition either. If I were to say "KUZ"; Before we can say "KUZ" exists, there need to be a definition. And definition really require evidence.
If definition doesn't require evidence, then anyone can effortlessly and accurately name and define anything and everything. Can you?
Lastly, a prayer is simply a self-brainwashing technique. People are taught to repeat it again and again until it becomes true in their mind (and this is regardless of the intent).
If one is to repeat "there's a leprechaun sitting on my shoulder, protecting me", every day since childhood; One day, it might as well be true.
IMO, Mr. Ebert, you are an atheist, because lack the belief in what they call "GOD".
This is a pretty interesting article, and I'm not sure I've ever found someone in my personal life with quite your views.
I've posted on your blog, and Emerson's, a number of times, and thought that it might be fun to qualify myself a little here. Labels don't always work, but I have, for some time now, considered myself to be a Christian Humanist. By this I mean that I believe in both things completely. I believe in Christianity and all of it's orthodox teachings. But I also believe that my knowledge of God, and his plans for this world, is extremely limited by the very fact that I'm a human being. I want somehow to be able to embrace all of the majestic theological beauty in God, and at the same time embrace all of the flaws and chaos that make up humanity.
I'm not sure if this makes much sense, or if it's that truly different from most professing Christians. Many of the fellow Christians that I encounter seem comfortable with God, but not so comfortable with their own humanity - as if God doesn't factor your humanity into the equation. I have tried in my own way to be comfortable with both. I'm rarely successful, and generally find that I'm less comfortable with God than I am with mankind. Maybe that's because I know him less.
Reply to: The great Anglican New Testament historian N. T. Wright has written some provocative historical analysis of the early Christian church in his "Christian Origins and the Question of God" series.
NT Wright is a second-rate scholar at best, and more accurately, a simple man who has fallen for a ridiculous con game. I had the pleasure of confronting him at a conference at Chapman University a few years ago.
Wright’s case for the resurrection:
(1) The Jewish theological beliefs of the early Christian community underwent 7 mutations that are inexplicable apart from the bodily resurrection of Jesus. These mutations are so striking, in an area of human experience where societies tend to be very conservative, that they force the historian… to ask, Why did they occur?
(2) The timing of the resurrection changes from judgment day (Judaism) to a split between the resurrection of the Messiah right now and the resurrection of the rest of the righteous on judgment day (Christianity).
(3) The Messiah was not supposed to die, and he certainly wasn’t supposed to rise again from the dead in a resurrected body! (end)
For a guy with a name like Wright, NT gets a lot WRONG.
For almost two centuries before Jesus died, a group within Judaism called the Pharisees had been trying to ADD new ideas. They said that the OT scriptures were open to interpretation, and the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel actually described a day when the dead would be brought back to life.
It took a while for the concept of resurrection to be added to the story of Jesus. The Gospel of Mark was rewritten after the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, to make it appear Jesus had predicted it. Paul, raised as a Pharisee, had a strong belief in resurrection. He was ready to die for it.
The idea that Jesus was an ordinary human being who had been brought back to life by God... was a Christian belief for decades BEFORE Jesus was called "Messiah." Among other things, Wright's got the time line wrong.
Reply to: Ebert: Studs Terkel liked to say, "I'm an agnostic. That's a cowardly atheist."
I don't think there's anything cowardly about being an agnostic.
Today, America is 70% Christian. A few years ago, when the number was 85% or higher, it took a LOT of courage to stand up and say, "I think the Bible is wrong."
Genesis 1 The earth was without form. The spirit of God hovered above the waters. On the third Day, God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let dry land appear. And God called the dry Earth.'
Genesis 2:4 This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created. For the YHWH Elohiym had not caused it to rain upon the earth, but a mist went up and watered the whole face of the dry earth.
These are two different creation MYTHS that were written by different cultures. Genesis 2:4 was probably written in a desert region. But my point is, they can't BOTH be true. They contradict each other. It doesn't take a great scholar to realize one of them is WRONG.
But it does take a lot of courage to walk away from an institution like the Catholic Church. The brainwashing is so pervasive. If you talk to priest who have given their lives to "God," of course you have the impression that it's a good thing.
but the brave person goes back and reads the Bible, and thinks about it, and comes to the conclusion, "No matter how you twist this around, it's WRONG."
The story in the Bible is WRONG. The dead do not come back to life. the only "savior" was Augustus Caesar, and the early Christians simply borrowed the language of the Emperor cult to use in their story about Jesus.
For many years, I didn't appreciate how much courage it takes to walk away from Christianity. Or to even discuss it like an adult. As many have pointed out, it cuts down on the dating pool. If 85% of american women are Christian, and they insist on marrying a Christian man, where does an agnostic get a date?
Christianity is tremendously appealing because it promises "after you die, God will bring you back to life in a perfect body. Just wait and have faith." It takes a lot of courage to walk away from THAT promise.
Thank you for a thoughtful and thought-provoking post. I also attended Catholic school as a child (though my family was not Catholic) and began questioning religion at an early age. Your tales of the hypothetical sins made me laugh, because I spent hours trying to wrap my young mind around mortal vs venial sins.
During a visit to Chicago to see my decades-older brother, nine-year-old me asked my mother if he went to church. No, he didn't believe in God, she answered. And I remember it clear as day, sitting in the back seat as we drove down Milwaukee Avenue, just south of Damen: I suddenly realized that it didn't make sense that my kind, honest brother would have to burn in hell forever simply because he wasn't a Christian. That was the moment when I began to think that maybe there was somethin' unfair about this whole religion thing.
That idea evolved over the years, and I began to question the idea of a creator in general. Now I am a happy atheist who sits in awe of the grace of evolution, the mysteries of the sky, and the knowledge that human kindness does not need faith to exist. I find so much peace in my atheism, and am encouraged by the increasing number of people who share similar sentiments. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts.
And since I'm feeling saucy this morning... Religion — which I think is related to but different from the idea of "god" or a creator — is poisonous. Women are routinely oppressed in the Muslim world, gay people are beaten because of a few lines in the Bible, and HIV spreads in sub-Saharan Africa because a former Hitler Youth member in Prada slippers declares that condoms are wrong. In some places, merely questioning religious belief means that you can be imprisoned or killed. Yet it's considered impolite to point these things out, because oh no, we musn't offend the religious. Instead, we let people suffer and die. Ironic that religion, that smashup of sky-bully fairy tales, is considered "righteous" when its results are terribly unethical. But I have faith (zing!) that reason and logic will ultimately prevail, and that our collective consciousness will evolve into a new Enlightenment.
Great blog Roger. A succint statement of much of what I too feel. Coming from a religious background like yourself I find it strange how religion continues to guide our lives whether we follow the scriptures or not. I remember as a child working myself into a religious frenzy on whether or not I was truly saved and berating myself for every transgression committed. Finally, I had a Huck Finn, "All right, then, I'll go to hell!" moment and relaxed considerably afterwards. But even though I now doubt the existence of a personal God and an afterlife, I find myself unable shuck to the ideals in Christianity and many other religions of caring, compassion, and acceptance. I think at times I underestimate how engrained and pervasive those religious teachings are and continue to be.
Great post. I have been pondering this (these) concepts for a very long time. After reading some of these comments, it is clear to me that the idea people have the most trouble with, and the reason we have a belief in a God, or whatever that might be, is to give our lives purpose. But the way you and I see it Roger, none of it really matters. Like you said, it doesn't matter what 'God' is called, or what the big bang is called, whether it happened once or a thousand times, or especially what your religious views are called, it doesn't change the fact that the universe is still going to be doing what it does. The universe doesn't wait for human approval to expand or contract. Fascinating post Roger, really mindblowing if you get the concept with an open mind. I like to call myself a "free thinker." Not a religion or belief, just a way of looking at the mysteries of the universe in awe, trying to make your own theories of how it all came about, almost like the greatest fairy-tale ever.
You are both atheist and agnostic. You have no belief in God so you are an atheist and you do not claim that God is known so you are an agnostic. Stop being afraid of words and labels. The correct definition of atheist is one who has no belief in God, NOT one who claims God does not exist. There are some who do, but most do not.
I've long ago given up stopped worrying about things that can not be known and have learned to embrace what is real and can be proven and express awe in how much we already do know. I've lived a much happier life since.
This very beautiful post truly fits the expectations I'd formed about what you believe Roger. I've read alot of your past work so you must be as consistent about this as you say.
The side art on this post is breathtaking and your early idea of Russia is mesmerizing. I believe you must be wrong about the imaginations of physicists though.
Ebert: I have a lot of fun finding art and video for the blog. I learn things, too.
Here a link to a film, a documentary, that is trying to give insights into the science of man. I haven't watched it yet, but am about to. And I suggest everyone to watch it quickly lest it may be removed for copyright infringements. Go now! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J65DR589NhQ
Roger, thank you for another (unsurprisingly) excellent article. I am a computer scientist by profession, with a strong penchant for thinking about the things you're discussing here. Although it might sound a bit goofy at first, I think one factor that needs to be considered is that we may be living within a simulation, a dream if you like.
Nodding to the movies, consider The Matrix or What Dreams May Come. The outer reality of these movies was semi-familiar of course, so that the audience can follow the story, but here, where we are, our outer reality could be almost anything (just as a computer can calculate/simulate almost anything).
In a general way, this idea has been around since Plato and his cave, and as far as I know, it's impossible to rule out. The difference lately is that it's becoming more and more obvious that we will soon be able to carry out such compelling simulations ourselves, and if we can create the matrix, who's to say we're not already in one? (Among other things, this would answer the question of how particles at a distance can "communicate" instantaneously.)
Along mildly similar lines, if you have not already read mathematician Raymond Smullyan's essay Is God a Taoist?, you must. I guarantee you will find it five minutes well spent.
Anyway, having considered these things, like you I am generally unwilling to describe myself even as an agnostic, technically appropriate though that might be. In our current society, choosing such a label seems about as meaningful as declaring which baseball team one is rooting for. If nothing else, it seems like almost a blasphemy to so trivialize our great mystery.
The film is called "Flight From Death: The Quest For Immortality." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J65DR589NhQ
Go now, everyone!
I love this thread!
I grew up in a strong Protestant background. And while I have grown up and my beliefs have changed--I don't believe evolution/Creation have to be at odds and I think most of American Churchianity is antithetical to the Gospel of Christ--I still hold firm to the belief that there is a God and Jesus was God incarnate come to save the world.
That said, I'm always leery of those who just accept everything on blind faith and don't wrestle with it, question it and often be on the verge of throwing it away. I have found the works of CS Lewis, John Piper, Donald Miller and others to be helpful in strengthening my thoughts...and the more I learn the more I realize that we'll never know anything.
So I love reading essays like this, Roger. I may not agree with your thoughts (or maybe I agree more than I think) but I thank you for the respect and thought you show on this topic. Just out of curiousity, what are your thoughts on CS Lewis' "Mere Christianity"?
Rusty Kaplan, (or anyone that is "pro-life", oppose abortion laws)
The ones who are against abortion want it outlawed with exceptions in the case of rape, incest etc. Well, let's stop right there and look at rape. A woman has to prove that she was raped before she can have an abortion? We have enough difficulties convicting rapists already, let alone to have to add another subset. Or look at it like this. A woman can just give herself a beating, and say the rapist had shaved pubic hair, and who are they not to "believe" her? It would all come down to the doctors word over the patients word. To make matters worse--and conservatives are always talking about less government--, well, you'd have to create more government to investigate the rapes from the aforementioned subset that would have parallels with nazi Germany-prying into the lives of the citizenry to weed out the "cause" of such an abomination. What would we need, cameras all over the neighborhoods to see, if there really was a person that broke into the womans house. And can we really trust those cameras, or could that just be the womans friend posing as the rapists to ensure approval of her abortion? It's endlessly going to infringe on our civil liberties.
I still stand with Bertrand Russell. See his famous debate:
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p20.htm
Causality exists inside our universe, and it is closely relate to the concept of time. The effect follows the cause (see Hume). With no Time, the concept of Cause loses meaning. And since the Big Bang created space and time, the question of what caused the Big Band is unintelligible.
We evolved in our little planet, and never had any evolutionary reason to develop the ability to reason intuitively about higher dimensions, space-time curvature, or absence of time and space. Too bad.
Modern physics, via the formalism of mathematics, has verified these theories, so too bad for our intuitions.
So, deist claims are at best unfalsifiable (having zero predictive power).
"If I don't believe God exists, that doesn't mean I believe God doesn't exist. Nor does it mean I don't know, which implies that I could know."
Being agnostic does not imply that one COULD know about the afterlife or a higher power, as you suggest. Quite the opposite, it implies that there is no way to know. There is no evidence either for the existence of a God or the non-existence of a God. It is the difference between saying "I don't know X because I am ignorant about X, although X is knowable" and saying "I don't know X because there is no way for any human being to know X."
Of course, I believe most agnostics are not so rigidly ideological as to dismiss some earth-shattering advancement in quantam mechanics or physics should such an advancement shed light on first causes, or initial movers, or some such thing. In the end, I think you're pretty clearly an agnostic, even if the label offends you, which I certainly understand.
I think your hesitance to be labeled might be warranted, but probably (hopefully?) isn't. True, naming your beliefs, or even more generally naming aspects of yourself, creates a space for criticism. The ones doing the criticizing will of course supply their own understanding of the term, be it atheist, agnostic, or something else, instead of using the one you describe. But I sincerely hope this isn't the primary reason you avoid calling yourself something. I'm sure you have lots of words to describe yourself (like humanist) that are valuable to understanding what you represent in your own eyes, and you probably wouldn't want to sacrifice. Well, don't sacrifice them. Your definitions will undoubtedly differ from someone else's, but the importance of self-definition far outweighs the consequences of making oneself vulnerable to criticism.
Ebert: I believe in choice. I know what my choice would be.
I'm guessing there must be more than that behind your pro-choice reasoning. I mean just because you would not personally choose to murder someone doesn't mean we shouldn't have laws against murder. So I think that statement in and of itself is on pretty shaky logical ground. But then, abortion is a big enough topic to warrant its own entire blog post, so I understand why you haven't gone into any detail so far.
Ebert: ..."If I had been Abraham, told to sacrifice my son, I would have asked for something in writing"
But God did not make him sacrifice his son. It was just a test, and it was a response to the other religions that did want human sacrifice. Christianity wanted to show that God was their father and would die for them and breathed life unto them with his spirit as opposed to the Babylonians who were slaves to God or the Islamic Fundamentalists who don't even believe in free will. God did however make Abraham sacrifice an animal instead.
Primitive cultures had a very rich existence. Death was seen as the highest next step. Every single thing you did had meaning. Whether you are toiling or any mundane thing, you had meaning coming from another dimension, when you die you have meaning coming to another dimension. Imagine how even Twittering would have rich significance..haha. It seems that this kind of believing had evolutionary psychological benefits that are missing today and that we ascribe to things like the piling up of money and passing it onto kids or things like science. Back then, they sacrificed animals to fix the machine of life to bless them with sunlight and abundance. Today, we have the computers and cars that when they break down, it can only be human error. Sorry, if this thought is incomplete, but it rather is.
If there were no God, there would be no atheists.
Ebert: Would there still be believers?
I wish I had time to read all the comments because they are as fascinating at your blog entry. I'm certainly repeating what many have said, but I know where you are coming from because I grew up Catholic and had the same obsessions and fears about the rules of sin and redemption. I went through a period of time where I felt the need to go to confession weekly because I couldn't avoid the trappings of mortal sin (as we all know, the no-playing-with-yourself rule was tough to adhere to).
I went to a Catholic university, and we were required to take classes on Greek and Roman philosophy, learning the underpinnings of Western ethics beyond the Bible. So I know what you mean by saying Catholicism is humanism. As an aside, we had to take a Bible class, and it was taught by a priest, and he insisted that the Bible is not history or science. He even gave us a time line of real history and Bible history. So I find this whole evolution-vs.-creationism thing bewildering.
I don't know if there is an afterlife, but my idea of heaven is an eternity of learning. I would acquire the knowledge to understand all these mysteries. That and I'd get to have sex with a young Ann-Margaret.
On the topic of God, I refer to my favorite theologian, Billy Connolly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJBO7DKqPM
A perfectly stated sentiment, methinks.
Roger, have you read the works of John Shelby Spong? I'm curious on your thoughts in his interpretation (or his joyfully non-interpretive) thoughts on God. If you haven't, "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" and "A New Christianity for New World" are good places to star.
Hi Mr. Ebert (Roger if you don't mind),
I have a few friends that believe in God and some that do not. Personally my beliefs in religion do not exist as they seem more man-made for mans purposes. I do however find myself believing in a higher power.
I find it impossible to convince anyone of my reasoning in this mainly because it has been through my own experiences that I have developed my belief. Some people try to use God as a genie in the lamp and think they can ask for anything, but when they do not get what they asked for they claim a lack of God. In my life I have indeed prayed for things and have noticed the seemingly answered prayers when they happened; not immediate in nature or perhaps how I thought I would prefer them to be answered, but something more than coincidence has been happening all through my life that has gotten me this far.
When I look back through my life, especially the toughest parts, I can see a pattern of help all along the way, like someone behind the scenes setting up experiences so that I may continue on and even grow stronger. Some people call this sort fo thing fate, but how can fate dictate what happens to a free thinking being? There would have to be something greater at work to alter things in such a manner.
I have once stated on here that far too many people want to stick to religion OR science and seem afraid or just plain stubborn about combining them. The one thing about science that disturbs me is that time is measured by a man-made equation and this is how they claim the bible to be inaccurate in how old the earth is. If man wants to truly see if a God exists, no matter how God may exist, then how can we do so by not looikng into God by constantly try to look around God. Much like Religulous many people know how to ask tough questions and mock things, but even they do not have the courage to be open minded and move from there own comfort zones.
As long as you are living a life that is of no harm to anyone and you have an open mind that will allow for new theories and thoughts to be entertained, I think that is fine. Some people use the term faith to eliminate the need for explaination, but one needs to ask questions to believe. What higher power would discourage the very freedom that they have supposedly given to us?
I hope these ramblings are not totally worthless, but at the very least I hope you continue to ponder the brilliance of a question and find the thrill in the astounding nature of your own answer. No man can tell you what or how to believe, but in life I have discovered the reality is simple: the mroe difficult something is to do, the more likely it is to be the right thing and worthwhile. To me believing is far more difficult than not believing, if I am wrong then the worst that has happened is I have lived a good life.
God bless you my friend.
Regards,
Jonathan
Ebert: I find it possible, even probable, that there is a Higher Power in the universe than we even guess. I don't believe it has to be supernatural.
I once tried to needle a Christian friend of mine by extolling the wonders of seeing Ancient Roman rituals in the HBO series Rome. "It makes you think," I said, "that they were just as sure as their faith as anyone, and now we call their religion 'myth'."
"I suppose," she replied musingly. Then: "Did the ancient Romans and Greeks really believe all that stuff?"
We both go to a very respected university; I had to stammer to contain my shock at such an ignorant question.
...
Roger, it would be nice to believe that even if Jesus (as described in the Bible) wasn't a living god, that he would still be a great, "good" man and a valuable teacher. But as C.S. Lewis and Christopher Hitchens agree, this just doesn't wash. He was a cult leader who spoke in absurdities, and a fanatical believer in the Old Testament - which, as you yourself noted above, is a vicious and anti-humanist document. It's time, I think to put the sentimental inanity that "Jesus was good either way" to rest.
"All men are created equal." - Declaration of Independence, 1776.
"Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world." - Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.
These two statements are more humane and just than any found in any Western canonical theology or doctrine, and it is high time we acknowledge this.
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Ebert: Evolutionary science has provided us with an inescapable answer to this ancient question:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/05/26/chicken.egg/
I was born in Ireland in 1990. Religion is something that seemed ingrained in life. Thankfully, it was now okay to be angry and oppose the Catholic Church, but here in Ireland, things were much different than in the US. Catholicism was ingrained totally in everybody. The only thing that it can be compared to is the brainwashing of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. Leaders like Eamon De Valera ensured that Catholicism was to be totally defended under the Constitution. I've heard and seen stories about the Magdalene Laundries where unmarried mothers were sent too, to be used and abused by the Catholic Church. Its censoring of films and books was intense. Films like The Life of Brian were completely banned. Priests spouted from their pedestals that Jayne Mansfield was evil and the hand of God decapitated her, even though she was not decapitated. Homosexuality was made legal in 1993, only because of the efforts of one plucky Senator. The sexual abuse of children came to light to already show the Irish people how evil the Church actually was as a whole, compounded by the face they thought that they could do what they want and get into Heaven. What effect has this had on the Irish people? In my class of around twenty in the last year of primary school, I was the only one who was not an altar boy or involved in Mass in general. The brain washing is still prevalent today, but thankfully less so. I believe all organised religion is evil. Humans have no right to tell other humans what to believe. Here is a story/legend I picked up from Wikipedia.
"St. Oran was a druid living on the Island of Iona in Scotland's Inner Hebrides. He became a follower of St. Columba, who brought Christianity to Iona (and mainland Europe) from Ireland in 563 AD. When St. Columba had repeated problems building the original Iona Abbey, citing interferences from the Devil, St. Oran offered himself as a human sacrifice, and was buried alive. He was later dug up and found to be still alive, but he uttered such words describing what of the afterlife he had seen and how it involved no heaven or hell, that he was ordered to be covered up again. The building of the Abbey went ahead untroubled, and St. Oran's chapel marks the spot where the saint was buried."
So, there you have it. St. Oran died and saw what the afterlife was. When it didn't conform to the Church's views, what did they do? Did they reform? No, they buried him up. I'm sure the story is a myth, but it illustrates my point exactly. I have studied long and hard on the topic of Christian religion, and come to a conclusion. I believe there is a God, but the Churches have absolutely no idea who or what he is. They say "God works in mysterious ways" or "pray for faith". These are simply ways to stop you from asking questions they don't know the answers to. They simply do not know. Everyone from the man in the local shop to the Pope simply do not know whether or not God exists, unless He were to speak to them directly. They may bleive he does, but they do not know. We may not know now, but as Lester Burnham so wonderfully put it "you will someday".
On the subject of abortion, I am pro choice, but like you said would never have it done to a child of mine. If I was in power however, I couldn't in my right mind make it possible for people to choose abortion. Having said that, I wouldn't be able to go to war either, so thankfully the choice is not up to me.
Oh, and as I side note, I attend a multi denominational school. This year, my last year in secondary education, we are having a Graduation Mass. Not a ceremony, but a Mass. I won't be attending.
I'm thankful to see no one brought up St. Anselm's proof of God. Everytime I see that, it conjures an inward groan. Especially when I see it on the internet.
I, too, raised Christian, do not consider myself Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, or Secular Humanist. What is it about some people that they resist labels so much? Speaking for myself, it's alarming to have something so important, complex and unresolved reduced to one word, lumping me with other one-worders even if it's a fair description.
I too had all those questions very early in life, and somehow I had them answered when I was close to death(I wanted to kill miself at 18) Now I have grown children and try to help them with their struggle. It's hard not to be personal here but I will pray for you and in my faith I believe He might answer you.
Keith Carrizosa: "Ebert: ..."If I had been Abraham, told to sacrifice my son, I would have asked for something in writing" But God did not make him sacrifice his son. It was just a test, and it was a response to the other religions that did want human sacrifice."
Its been eons since hermeneutics class, but good Baptists that those teachers were, they prescribed that we interpret according to the authors intent to the audience whom it was written at the time. One can infer that the story of Abraham sacrifice is a Christ prophesy, but it also remains a request by God to sacrifice a son.
However, Ebert may be inferring a moral paradox that is contemporary to our day and age. Is such a request murder (and hence is Abraham left only with the defence that 'God commanded it')? And would God testify in Abrahams defense?
Im not an expert, but I recall that a patriarch had discretion to kill their own children (usually if they were brazen and ill behaved to a degree; infanticide was practiced in the ancient world). If objections were raised, people would have accepted Abraham's divine attribution of motive; the community would have no reason to question Abrahams "sanity", he did not behave immorally in terms of his reputation, he was demonstrably God-fearing in his life. Therefore, there was nothing immoral about sacrificing one's own at that time under certain conditions that Abraham clearly met. Certainly, it is the supreme test.
Ebert: That alibi would work if Abraham had wanted to murder his son.
A man who loved his son, and heard a voice commanding him to commit such a deed, might conclude, "I need professional help."
Roger, the latest evidence from cosmology suggests that the universe is flat, not curved. Matter curves space on the small-scale, but on the large-scale, and at any moment in time, space appears to be remarkably Euclidean (which would have made the ancient Greeks happy).
As for what this implies about the size of the universe, well it depends on how literally you take the model. Mathematically, a flat universe implies an infinite universe, except for bizarre cases where we have a complex topology (curvature is an aspect of geometry; shape is an aspect of topology; they are not the same thing).
But in all likelihood, the universe is more complex than our relatively simple models. We receive many clues about the nature of our universe, but the crime was committed long ago, and the truth is that cold cases are hard to solve.
I hate to keep flaming, so you don't have to respond to this, and this one is going to hurt, maybe....
But when God made Abraham sacrifice an animal (sacrificing his baby was just a test) instead to help the sun shine and the crops grow, I don't really see that big a difference in Obama rallying troops to die in Afghanistan to ensure life to go on. Ouch.
Ebert: One difference between Bush and Obama is that Bush believed God had told him to invade. Obama is trying to find a sane way to get us out.
But God did not make him sacrifice his son. It was just a test, and it was a response to the other religions that did want human sacrifice. Christianity wanted to show that God was their father and would die for them and breathed life unto them with his spirit as opposed to the Babylonians who were slaves to God or the Islamic Fundamentalists who don't even believe in free will. God did however make Abraham sacrifice an animal instead.
But what is Jesus' symbolic function if not as the ultimate human sacrifice? Christianity in the course of defining itself went back to the well, and gave maybe the greatest human sacrifice people could conceive of. So it's certainly not above the fray, it's right in line (or was, anyway, in its origins) with more primitive religions. I mean at Catholic mass they're still doing the "This is my body, this is my blood" stuff. It's one step above the Aztecs.
Wonderful post. I've been reading your blog quite frequently lately, but have generally avoided leaving a comment, since you get so many it's bound to get lost in the shuffle. However, your recent entry, on the loss of all artwork and all traces of humanity (and eventually all existence) over time reminds me that this concern is paltry next to the larger ones - and they certainly don't render me inactive. So here goes nothing...
I too was raised Catholic, albeit in the post-Vatican II era (and I went to public, not parochial school), and while this was a large part of my identity as a child I have drifted away from the faith. And yet I'm thankful for having grown up in this context, much as you seem to be. An earlier commentator noted Richard Dawkins' view that a religious upbringing is tantamount to child abuse. Funny, even without subscribing to a particular religious bent at this point in my life I would still want my (entirely hypothetical) children raised in, or at the very least exposed to, a religious upbringing. I would tell them doubts and skepticism were ok, and that I myself no longer subscribed to the limited dogma of a particular church, but that I wanted to give them a certain structure and belief system which they could then embrace or reject as adults.
And strangely enough, I would want it to be Catholicism. I have major problems with the hierarchy of the Church and the way that institution invests some human beings with an authority that others do not have. And yet the "culture" of Catholicism, if that is the right word, the way it combines a humanism with a belief in a transcendent God, the way it is steeped in rituals and tradition, all while hinting at a mystical being and experience beyond (this aspect of religion is the one which most fascinates me today, the one I most "believe" in so to speak) are all, I think, qualities worth discovering in your childhood.
Whatever my ambivalence about the church, and lingering feelings of guilt and anxiety, I am thankful I was brought up in that context - if I'm going to be exposed to the void and chaos of the universe in a less-tethered adulthood, I'm relieved to be coming from a familiar place I can call home, in terms of values. Even if you can't go home again. Just my view on things.
As for God Himself (or rather, itself) I count myself as a believer in a Beyond and a Ground of All Being, and like to call it God for historical resonance and for the rich metaphorical connotations. I am agnostic on the question of whether the God which mystics experience (and they certainly experience something) is immanent or transcendent, and severely skeptical as to the existence of an afterlife, which seems far too convenient to be true (I am not at all convinced that God cares a whit for humanity).
On another note, not to delve too far into politics, but since you brought it up...I've never quite understand the "pro-choice, but pro-life personally" position. If a fetus is a human being, doesn't it ipso facto become a concern of the state? And if it isn't, doesn't it become completely and totally the moral right of the woman to have - free from personal disapproval, as well as societal? In other words, do you view abortion as an unseemly personal choice, like drug abuse say, or as something involving the termination of a life (or in more complicated terms, of a potential)? Admittedly, my own feelings on the issue are complex (I use the impracticality of enforcing an abortion ban as a loophole, but if pressed I would lean towards saying that during the first trimester, the fetus is not yet a human being) so I'm hardly in a position to enforce absolutes. At any rate, I'm curious as to your thinking on the matter, if you care to elaborate.
Ebert: I don't want to debate abortion. There is no end to it and nobody chsnges their mind.
Pauline Kael said the most interesting American directors (when she was writing) were Altman, Scorsese and Coppola, because they were raised in a church of incense, ritual, archetype and imagery. She didn't mention Jews. Protestants I guess were out on the golf course with Ike.
I have found the works of CS Lewis, John Piper, Donald Miller and others to be helpful in strengthening my thoughts...and the more I learn the more I realize that we'll never know anything.
Agreed. We'll never know anything if we keep reading CS Lewis.
Keith, aside from the practical considerations you allude to in excepting rape from an abortion ban, I've never understood the moral reasoning. The pro-life position, if I'm not mistaken, is that the fetus is a human being, a person, whose life must be protected the same as any other person. How the fetus came into existence much be a moot point if this is your position. The fact that many pro-lifers many exception for rape shows that they are either not really serious about their thesis or else have not thought it through.
That's it on that subject, I don't want to see Ebert's compelling thread hijacked in this direction, but I thought it was worth pointing out.
"But in the sense that anything is a miracle, everything is."
This I think is the crux of everything. What you believe in or dont believe in exists in a world that is unbelievable itself. Your words about your questions that you had as a child ring so true with my own as a young irish catholic growing up in Dublin.
Immortality confounded me. How could you exist forever? What was in the beginning before the beginning, no, before that beginning. What if I grew up in Arabia and was a muslim, would I go to hell even if I had never heard of catholicism.
?????
I think these are the greatest questions a child can have because if anything they had defied all of my attempts at becoming dogmatic in my life and for that I am eternally grateful, if not eternally childlike.
Thanks again for a wonderful read.
Ebert: Children sometimes view the world with a clarity and logic they lose in adulthood.
A bird inside a cage... is not a bird anymore.
The real question is : Did you just link to a Windows program?
Blasphemy.
Ebert: I had to force my fingers to type the letters.
Hi roger
From your response too "Roy on April 17, 2009 9:22 PM" you say that you may choose to take action within the range of your capability and that these choices are not determined. I would like to ask what you think the origins of these choices could be?
For example, you have the capability to publish a journal post on any subject you wish. How did you come to decide upon posting about this topic?
I believe this choice is indeed Determinable. A combination of all experiences you have ever had will go some way to influencing your decision, no doubt more recent events such as reciving your 3500th comment will have had a greater affect.
If you do not agree with me, do you think the computational abilities of your brain are only but a part of what makes your mind what it is. You can't expect a super computer which is give access to limited information and experience about the world to make anything but a predictable decision when prompted to make a choice.
Every new neurone is a physical scar of your experiences. These are pathways for which unavoidable choices will be made.
Roger you don't have Free Will! your going to respond to this comment and there isnt anything you can do about it.
"If I had been Abraham, told to sacrifice my son, I would have asked for something in writing."
Yet Abraham did not, and his obedience was "credited to him as righteousness" (he also didn't lose his son). The Jehovah of the Bible is clearly an entity that expects to be taken on faith, instead of proof as so many men demand. Fearing such a demand as the life of one's son is human nature, but it also reflects a refusal to believe in the love and provision of God. The Old Testament evidences this; I'm less alarmed by the actions of God in that portion of the Bible as I am by the atrocities and injustices the Israelites themselves committed for hundreds of years before God finally said "enough".
Ebert: Where did he say "enough?"
Thank you for coming out and saying this. It takes guts in a world that is so caught up in the definition of things. I know exactly what you're talking about in this article, especially near the end. It seems as if you are on a path of true awakening. No matter how you got to this point and what you had to learn before you got here, it was necessary.
It's something you just feel and know. Sometimes I see it when I look at blooming dogwoods. It's just something so simple yet so massive nothing can contain it or describe it.
Anyway I don't want to ramble because there is no point. Once a human sees this and begins to ponder it there is no going back and why would they want to?
Hey Roger.
I have an odd story that may or may not make sense, but I think it fits in comparison with those fantastical "what if" scenarios. What if you are about 7 or 8 years old and bare the experimental tendencies of a child at that age? For example:
When I was really young, I had heard a phrase that said, "If you look up to God and claim 'fool' you will be forever cast into the fires of hell." When I look at it now, it was pretty much the church telling me "this is a big red button that you can't press or you'll die. I am showing this to you for no other reason than to tell you that you can't touch it." That was the first time I've really "tempted fate" with God. I went home right after church and into the bathroom where no one could hear me, and I looked up to the ceiling and whispered "fool."
Now that I've grown older the thought makes me uncomfortable. Not because I'm scared for my soul, (which I actually maybe a little) but because I now wonder if I was talking to a whole lot of nothing? I took a philosophy class out in Tahoe and after reading books like 'Tao Te Ching' and 'The Heart of Understanding,' I find it difficult to accept what is described as 'the answer' as 'THE answer.' Was I calling God a fool? Was I calling Shiva a fool, was I calling Siddhartha a fool? Was I calling The King of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy a fool?
Or was I calling out to nothing, making me the fool?
Now that I've tried expanding my conscience beyond what I've learned philosophically (which I suppose in comparison to a lot of people really isn't that much) I've tried to develop my own ideas about an all-loving, all-knowing diety ... but I find myself much more afraid of dying now than when I did 10 years ago.
Ebert: Maybe you were just like a lot of people and were talking to yourself in the bathroom.
When I was 8 years old my grandparents and I visited some friends at a Christian retreat. We spent the whole day there. At the end of the day they were having a show with a faith healer. The friends begged me to go to the show but I was so tired that we had to go home, For the next few weeks I felt....guilty. Didn't I owe it to my grandparents to at least try?Was God trying to help me ? This bothered me for months. Now I know all the worry was for nothing. But the question is, if there is a God why would He put that guilt in my head?
And since I'm feeling saucy this morning... Religion — which I think is related to but different from the idea of "god" or a creator — is poisonous...
And since I'm feeling even saucier:
Here we have it again: EVERY thread on this (or Mr. Emerson's) blog about belief in God always seems to devolve into the same, "religious people are execrable idiots" rhetoric.
I for one am sick to death of so-called "enlightened" folks like Annie or Mr. Ebert assuming, with all the confidence in the world (which they would never in a billion years provide to any conservative argument), that if someone is a conservative or evangelical Christian, or an observant Jew or Muslim, they must of course be a bigot.. or worse. I've also become quite sick of the preeminient leftist meme re Pope Ratzinger (whom I personally have no more or less respect for than any other human being, seeing as I'm not Catholic) being dismissed as a "Hitler Youth in Prada slippers," as it's quite well known that kids like he was in WWII-era Europe had quite the stark choice given to them by the occupying Nazis: join or die.
Don't get me wrong, in that IMHO there's a lot to be said for the argument that religion is the bureaucracy that gets in the way between individuals and their relationship with God. Nor am I a young-earth creationist or a fundamentalist; I don't even have that big of a problem with the hot socioreligipolitical bugaboo of the day, gay marriage. But, if people want to go their entire lives assuming the absolute worst about religion and religious people, while absolutely ignoring the good (weren't most of the early and great European and Ameican universities begun as divinity schools, Roger?) and great of them-- while that may be their absolute right, it's an awfully myopic way of viewing the subject at hand, or the followers of said movements.
Ebert: Search as you will, I don't believe you'll find any hatred of religion in my entry.
My family and I have never talked about religion on any basis. There has never been a need to do so. Fresh air of the outdoors, a sunrise and sunset, family and friends, a good tune, a fine book, and a great movie…that’s all you need.
The concept of a God just makes no sense to us. It is not a question of being an atheist or a believer: that would require you to register religion altogether. It does not show up on my radar except times like this.
If there was a God and he threw the concept of infinity and eternity at us, in terms of his creation and punishment, all I would have to ask him is “why?” If that’s the case, life is like a reality game show and God is the host.
I've believed in God my whole life, but never could communicate that belief in few enough words. About a year and a half ago, I took Philosophy at my college. The teacher was a man named Dr. Wolf, who is the highest recommended teacher in the school. On the first day of class, he had us take turns introducing ourselves, and asking him a question about philosophy. When my turn arrived, I asked him "Does God exist?" He responded "If there is a shoe, there is a shoemaker."
That simple answer pretty much confirmed by beliefs.
These comments are not random.
In response to "can God create a rock too heavy for himself to lift?"
This is a very interesting question - perhaps I'm just out of the loop, but I've never heard it before. It seems to provide a rather convincing argument for the nonexistance of any omnipotent being. Consider:
God (or any other omnipotent being) can do whatever he wants. Thus, he should be able to create a rock too heavy to lift. However, this defies his own omnipotence - if there exists a rock he cannot lift, then he is not omnipotent. Thus, it is impossible for him to create a rock too heavy to lift, as such a rock would disprove his omnipotence. But now we see that since he cannot create such a rock, he is in fact not omnipotent - if he were, he could create anything.
Perhaps a counterargument lies in what he wants at a particular point in time. In any case, it's an intriguing thought.
Ebert: If he wants to.
This is a great article. As a Christian, however, I disagree with the idea that the name of 'God' is inconsequential. The crux of defining God in the way he presented himself through Christ is the fact that there is power in a name. There is so much power in a name. Take disease for example; once you know what it is and call it what it is, you can work towards curing it. I believe the same is so with the concept of sin. And with social problems like 'rape' or 'domestic violence'. Having it named gives power to the victim. Having a name for a problem like 'alcoholism' is the first step to treating it.
As it is so with all the negative things in this world, so it is true with the positive. God came to earth and said Who he was... to deny that is to continue to believe in an inconsequential and impersonal god who doesn't care one way or another whether or not we believe. Or to believe in no god at all... something I cannot fathom. Once you accept God, or more importantly, the name 'Christ', He begins to reveal Himself to you. Seek and ye will find... how can one seek if they haven't a defined "named" to which the search is directed?
i beleive phillip glass said that he "doesn't believe that any one culture has a copywrite on big ideas"
to narrow yourself to one religion seems to limit your perspective when perhaps the best thing to do is to try and see reality from as many points of views as possible.
my 5th grade teacher demonstrated this by setting his nalgene water bottle in the middle of our class room and explaining that every single child could only see a fraction of the true form of the nalgene bottle (substitute whatever you may for the water bottle).
anyway my point being that if budhists were the first to understand the unity of quantum mechanics, hindus were the first to understand the cyclicar nature of time and space in astrophysics ie. big bang...
Great post, Roger. I was surprised by how closely much of what you said aligns with my thought process and questions about these issues, especially your points about the beginning and end of the universe. I can't imagine that there wasn't a beginning to everything, but at the same time, I can't imagine how there was. I, too, have come to the realization that there's no way that I (or anyone else) can know these things, and I'm perfectly okay with that. Thanks again for writing this, because it's nice to see your thoughts, which are so similar to mine, articulated so wonderfully.
I am an agnostic and an atheist. By the definitions I use, an a-gnostic is one who does not know if there is a god or not, and an a-theist is one who lacks a belief in any particular god. The 'a' in these words is being used in the same way it is used in 'asymmetry', that is, as a negation of the rest of the word.
Although I do not know for certain, I would be happy to bet everything I own that if the universe has some sort of sentient creator, that creator has no personal interest in humans beyond an abstract scientific one, and does not consider us in any way special. My feeling is that such an entity would be farther above me intellectually than I am above an ant, and while I consider ants as somewhat interesting, I do not love them, and I would not go out of my way to make their lives easier or more difficult, or to reward or punish them. As for giving humans an "afterlife" in some alternate universe, after all the effort I (speaking as the creator) went to to provide the opportunities of this universe - forget it. They have a universe capable of supporting their form of life for a number of years. They should be grateful for that, without demanding more. They want their problems (poverty, disease, etc.) solved? How about working together to solve them?
To think that everything from sub-atomic particles to galaxies and all the rules of physics (most of which we will probably never discover or understand) was created for our benefit out of love for out specialness takes a kind of arrogance that puts your famous "Squeaky the Mouse" to shame, it seems to me.
Mr. Ebert,
Thank you for the honest expression of self. Thank you for another blessedly beautiful piece of writing. To me, your entire career has been full of humanistic intent. If you and I have both sat through more than one dry homily or sermonette, then you, for your part, have at least saved me on many an occasion from having to sit through a terrible movie, which can be like a complete butchering of two hours of our your life. And we both know that you never get those two hours back...
I will tip my hand and reveal that I am in love with the mysterious figure of Jesus of Nazareth, though I am perhaps more comfortable calling him Yeshua, at least to distance Him as far as possible from the Americanized version that has become the dominant image of Him, at least in the mind of the popular imagination. If you ever get the chance and haven't already, please read Mailer's The Gospel According to the Son. Though uneven, I'll think you'll find some thrilling passages there, and you've just got to love the cajones on Mailer, being that the book is written in the first person. Mailer has the Nazorean describing Himself as miscast as Mr. Nice Guy, when in reality He was often "pale with rage." And that is what I see in the Gospels, as deeply flawed and inconsistent as they can sometimes be. More than anything, I see a rebel who was in love with human life and deeply skeptical of some of the more powerful institutions of His day.
But I digress, so back to my main point: You have been a beacon of light in a world of darkness. Few movie critics have your talent as a writer and formal training as a critic. You have helped to lead people to what was good, what was amazing, in a world of schlock and passionless film making. And it has been rare that I have disagreed with your observations. At the time, you were one of the only critics to enthuasiatically embrace the film Natural Born Killers, when now it plays like prophecy. You rewrote your review of Forrest Gump, dropping half a star, just so Pulp Fiction might have a ghost of a chance to win an Oscar for more than just Best Screenplay. On the other side of the coin, you were deeply opposed to Fight Club, though my Christian training has since allowed me to forgive you. Perhaps you were betraying your ultimate love of man by condemning a film so hopelessly infected with mayhem if not outright nihilism. Perhaps you believed and still believe that the world can right itself without actually having to deconstruct the Grid and start back over from the Stone Age. And I love you for that sensibility, even if I am totally putting words in your mouth and/or projecting my own sensibility all over you.
Your essay made me think of my own childhood mind trying to grapple with such mighty abstractions as God, even if the miracles of Creation were scattered all around me in plain sight. I tried to imagine what it was like for God before the act of creation, at least the version of creation that was first pitched in CCD class. I felt my psyche/soul/whatamacallit slip into this space of absolute White, as if an out of body experience were even possible to a little kid not trained in meditation, not under the influence of heavy psychotropics, and nowhere close to death. And what was it like in that great empty space, which I think I recall being able to visit twice, only to fail on a third attempt? It was very lonely? Very frightening in the existential sense, though I wouldn't have to carry the cross of that word until my study of Herman Melville my junior year in high school. Despite my failure to ever again achieve such a mind numbingly prophetic state, I have been permanently impacted by it. When I feel at my best, it is me trying to fill that White emptiness, like a mad blogger filling up the white space on an Old Master's blog.
Thank you for teaching us the value of sitting in the dark and having the faith that art is out there somewhere, like a transmission sent out long ago with the belief that the message would be finally, blessedly, miraculously received. Sincerely, Brant Osborn
I wish I had more time to share my thoughts on your blog. You'd be a good teacher. Not that I agree with your positions, but because you'd know how to engage your students and get them thinking. I haven't dealt with much of these issues since college. There are not many interested in such topics, and so this is an outlet. Hopefully if I can find time later, you'll still be reading...
Mr. Ebert - I, like another of your readers, am the son of a Protestant pastor. In fact I was a Protestant pastor myself for 20+ years. I then converted to the Catholic Church.
That anyone can decide what god image best suits him or her is a little like disagreeing with the law of gravity; we may do so but we will inevitably live with the consequences of our decision.
I did not come into full communion with Mother Church because of reading Chesterton, et al (I was more a Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, René Girard sort). What I experienced was (a) a longing for the Holy Eucharist, (b) an utter ontological need for the Real Presence; and (c) an epistemological need to know that I could know anything for certain.
In short, I took the Church's truth claims seriously, tried them, and found enough "illative" proof to make the jump. I swam the Tiber. Poped.
Now, eight years later, this faith has seen me through kidney CA, bladder CA, chemo ... you know the drill.
My mind, and even a collectively bargained agreement by politicos, academicians, or other sincere fellows, are all too puny. The Church, for my money and my life, has the multitudinous answers for the Big Questions that all humans must face. Best/cheers
Ebert: Merton'sThe Seven-Story Mountain is such a fine book. I also admire his poetry.
Ebert,
Have you considered the fact that, you having the ability to consider whether or not God exists, could be the proof that you are looking for, that God, the supreme intellect does exist. Good article. Keep looking for the TRUTH. It will probably lead you back to where you started.
Mr. Ebert,
Long time fan here.
If I were to label you, the label would read, "doubter." But of course, as Luther said, "the doubter makes the theologian." So maybe you are really a theologian at heart.
For me, I would say that the only real life proof of God's existence is that my wife still thinks I am attractive and still wants to hold my hand at the movies... Maybe you can relate. Surely we can't believe that they love us because of some brain viral infection. Wait a second... that might make the most sense... No, I like the God answer better. Now see? There's already one reason for faith!
I appreciate all that you have contributed and continue to contribute to film and now beyond. A rare gift. You are an artist, and being an artist is truest human quality we have. It also happens to be our most God-like quality; if one believes that we are made in God's image.
Some favorite reviews: The hilarious review of the Ghost and the Darkness... The throw-down between you and Roeper over Yoda in episode 2... and the commentary on Citizen Kane is just awesome. Now, lookit, I'm getting all sentimental and off topic.
Peace be with you,
Seth Ward
... and since everyone else is offering poetry, I'll offer one as well.
"There is no Cake"
There may come a day
when Einstein's E=mc2
is synonymous with "the world is flat,"
and thrown by the wayside
like a bad recipe for a sinking wedding cake: “too much salt,
(Besides, you’ll soon find that there is no cake
and there's no such thing as a wedding
or its feast, only mostly
empty
space.)
and every other finite revelation of math will follow suite,
forever set in a constant confederacy to usurp the existing gods -
cloaked in their splendorous quadratic robes -
until we reach that blessed shore of true human enlightenment,
The Great Ocean of ONE Blessed Light.
“At last,
having travailed the never-ending jagged mountains of trial and observation,
our weary feet will be healed in its warm sands and foaming crests!”
the sun parts the clouded firmament
we open our arms wide to bathe in the new and final truth to our journey;
so many have died to bring us here;
Now, the solstice of human doubt has ended
the equinox of pure knowledge has come.
And we see it,
Yes! Forever Yes! It all makes sense!
All this way to lastly and firstly find
that ultimate truth:
And here it is,
the world is:
indisputably
and profoundly
FLAT.
I don't necessarily believe that "our reality" is a product of a supernatural source. I don't think any of us have a clear understanding of what is natural and what is not. The unknown is only that when it is not discovered. Many can say God, or the afterlife for that matter, does not exist. I would ask how they could possibly know that. They have no more information on that matter than a person with a bible and belief in their heart. The problem here is man's obsession to be God, whether or not there is one. We have to know everything on both the scientific end and the religious. We have to come to terms with the fact that we don't know everything and probably never will, but like Roger, we must work with what we do know. There are many things out in the universe and here on Earth that have not been discovered yet; that does not mean there is no answer for it, we just don't know it yet. And if we were to come to a supernatural result I believe it is only SUPERnatural because it is unusual. Just because we can't conceive of how or why something works the way it does, it means that it belongs in a ghost or horror story or a fairy tale book. It may very well be natural, but it may take some time to see it that way (whether or not because of a lack of scientific understanding). We just don't understand what makes something natural, even a larger than life idea like God.
Mr. Ebert,
**I apologize, this post turned out much longer than I anticipated.
Fascinating article. There's too much finger pointing and closed minded noise in this ongoing debate, and I really appreciate your willingness to be open and humble about it.
Personally, I've looked at this debate over whether or not God exists and who he might be from every angle I can find and I keep coming back to my own experiences.
Allow me to expound on this point.
When I was 5 my eyes were diagnosed with astigmatism and farsightedness. When I was 12, I attended a church service in West Monroe, La. There was a man there talking about how Jesus could still heal and all you had to do was ask Him. So, I did. In short, I was actually healed right then. My mom took me to a doctor the next day and nothing could be found wrong with my eyes. I had this condition for 7 years, and suddenly I had perfect vision. It was well documented, and my doctor couldn't explain it. For me, this seals the deal. I've bounced back and forth on the questions, and I don't have all the answers I want yet. For instance, I still don't understand the concept of eternity. I relate to the wonder attached to the question of, "How?". Not everything makes sense to me. I don't exactly what's going to happen when I die. I have a lot of unanswered questions. I do know, however, that there's gotta something to this Jesus thing. I know that astigmatism is not life threatening, but it certainly doesn't just go away over night. I can attest to other similar situations. I won't go into detail here, however, for lack of time. I guess, Mr. Ebert, I'm just wondering how you would respond to this. Forgive me if that sounds forward. I'm not trying to be sensational or make indictments or anything like that. It's just that I have this experience and many others that I won't divulge here that require explanation. If Jesus isn't that explanation, if God did not personally affect my life in this capacity, then what did? I've heard some people say Jesus was a good man, a wise teacher, even a great prophet. I don't think that's true if he's not who he said he is. According to C.S. Lewis, if Jesus is not who he said he was then he was a lunatic at best and a liar at worst. Unless, of course, he never said those things about himself. But then, why did his followers die for what they knew was a lie? They didn't die for something they had heard, but for something they claimed they saw. It would seem to me that they could in no way deny what they had personally seen, just as I could in no way deny what I have personally experienced in lieu of the healing of my astigmatism.
What are your thoughts Mr. Ebert?
Ebert: The faith healer was the catalyst, whether the healing was supernatural or not.
"I swear to God I'm an atheist!"
- Brother Dave Gardner (Rejoice dear hearts!)
I am sooooo on the same page! My mother wanted me to be a nun! I now consider myself a "recovering Catholic." I absolutely believe there is life after death and that we receive messages from the "other side" if you will. There are so many mysteries that we do not understand at this stage of the game and I am not sure we are meant to know their meaning as of yet. The options and possibilities are infinite. I do not believe in God as a white man with a beard, but I believe there must be a great being. This belief gives me hope and peace. Thank you for writing this on this, of all days. It means much to me. All is one!
Interesting. I feel a strong connection to the thoughts and questions you grew up with. I ended up in a different place. I believe God speaks to me as he does to everyone. This is a matter of interpretation. If God is all things and in all places and greater than the sum of all the parts- then seeing and listening to God is simplicity itself. Really look about you and you will find miracles quite commonplace.
Beliefs are deeply personal. I distrust proselytizers instinctively. The charismatic and evangelical churches bother me for many reasons- but mostly because they don't even know the bible. I mean, Christian religion comes with a program. How can you know the game without a program?
To your many musings, I have also come to a different place. God is purely a matter of faith. I look within myself and ask if I believe God exists. I do. The rest is just chaff.
When people tell me they believe in God because... (fill in your selfish reason), I doubt them. If you believe in God, you believe no matter what happens to you on earth and whether or not you will go to heaven. If God is a matter of faith, the rules do not matter.
For the record, I really want to believe in heaven, but don't. I tell people I believe in God when they ask me. Sometimes, I answer more questions. They tell me I am an atheist because I do not believe in some point of dogma or another. Is god really so sear?
I think not. So, I believe in God- but I do not believe that my belief gives me more or less than any other soul on earth. Faith is just that. Add anything more to it and it is rationalization or bargaining.
Oh, and I also am pro-choice. I have said that I, personally, I will never have an abortion. [I am a man.] I really don’t get a deciding voice with anyone else if I believe that they are entitled to their own thoughts and beliefs. And I do.
Ebert: We're on the same page.
It's unfortunate that the question is often stated as "pro-abortion vs. pro-life ." Another way of proposing it is "pro-choice vs. anti-choice."
Now I know you actually read these, since you rejected my comment.
Good luck with that cancer thing and your mortality, bub.
But if you want to look past your resentment, I would be willing to send you a word.doc of a MS I wrote for those of us in the Pre-death Club who would rather not be.
Cheers
It's a very American trait to believe that one's personal "testimony" matters. Ask most American's about their "faith" and you'll get a biography. But truth is truth. Many of the folks who have written here are not troubled by the law of non-contradiction. I am - and, as an adult, I felt compelled to research, consider and decide. I came to agree with the Lutherans, because Luther let the mysteries stay mysteries - and he freed Christian thought from the tyranny of Catholicism. If C.S. Lewis had started a church, I might attend there. When we read the question that Jesus asks, "Who do you say that I am," how do you answer? If the Apostles Creed doesn't cut it for you, that would tend to indicate what you're not - at least for the time being.
Ebert: Another way of looking at it is that he freed the Catholic Church from its own tyranny.
I think my stand on religion and God is best summed up by an episode of "Seinfeld".
Jerry (to George): "I thought you didn't believe in God?"
George: "I do for the bad stuff."
Reply to: qdpsteve: EVERY thread on this (or Mr. Emerson's) blog about belief in God always seems to devolve into the same, "religious people are execrable idiots" rhetoric.
If you check back, you'll discover that I'm responsible for the lion's share of the "execrable idiots" rhetoric, not Roger.
Here's the offer: show me that I'm wrong.
Reply to: Ebert: Search as you will, I don't believe you'll find any hatred of religion in my entry.
Roger has been extremely careful to avoid... what you accused him of.
When I went to Michigan State, many years ago, I ran into the full force of christian recruitment. Organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ, Intervarsity fellowship, and Christian Athletes had full-time student pastors on campus.
I was challenged, over and over, to provide an intelligent response to their claims. I had to learn A LOT in order to prove they were wrong. In order to prove Christianity is no longer credible. (Before Darwin published in 1859, many of the claims of Christianity were reasonable explanations for human existence. No more. More than a century has gone by.)
Here's MY challenge. Nothing here goes beyond the level of the challenges issued by Christians to college students every day. (Well, every Tuesday, that's when they hold meetings.)
Luke 11:14 And Jesus was casting out a pnuemati (demon?) and it was mute. When the demon left him, the mute spoke and the crowd was amazed. Some said, "Jesus casts out demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of demons." Jesus said, "If I cast out demons by the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.... When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places... when the demon returns, he brings with him seven other demons more wicked then himself...
So, in the gospels, Jesus appears to be an authority on the inner workings of possession and demonic spirits.
After Jesus is resurrected,
Luke 24:36 Jesus himself appeared in the midst of the eleven and those gathered with them. They were frightened and thought they had seen a pneuma (spirit). Jesus said, "Behold my hands and feet. You may touch me, for a pneuma (spirit) does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."
In Lee Strobel's book "The Case for Christ," his seventh interview is with a professor of psychology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
Strobel: Jesus was an exorcist. He talked to demons and cast them out of people. Is it really rational to believe that evil spirits....
Collins: From my theological beliefs, I accept that demons exist. People who deny the supernatural will find some way, no matter how far-fetched, to explain a situation apart from the demonic. I think Jesus really did drive out demons, and I think some people do that today.
When it comes to the execrable idiots" rhetoric, this is WHY. A college professor, interviewed for a best-selling book that claims to investigate the "evidence" for christ, can't give a more intelligent response than "I think Jesus really did exorcise demons and I think christians still exorcise demonic spirits today."
I'm really interesting in reading an intelligent rebuttal to MY position. But primarily, I don't want anyone to think that I'm speaking for Roger.
Mr. Ebert,
I'm sorry but I don't think I accurately communicated what I was asking. Point taken that the catalyst was the minister. No argument there. He was the one who encouraged me to believe. However, my question was not whether or not he was a catalyst. What I'm asking is how does one account for the healing itself? Are you suggesting that I imagined it or hoped for the healing so much I deceived myself? Just hoping for some clarification.
Thanks,
Seth W.
Ebert: I believe you healed. I believe the minister was the catalyst. The healing was possibly psychosomatic.
I'm a nurse who has felt like I've known too much for too long; saw too much too early and the harsh truth of real life can leave one's beliefs tattered. But I can tell you one thing for certain. Whatever force you choose to think of as God or universal spirit or whatever, it shines with full force through you, Mr. Ebert.
When my faith is battered almost to extinction, you help me believe in goodness and humanity. And here is where I actually get to say thank you to someone who helps sustain me in a world that is harsh and difficult, and that makes me happy.
Ebert: Speaking of people who have helped sustain me in a world that is harsh and difficult, nurses are my heroines.
Greetings,
A well written and articulate article as usual. I see you have heard and understand the implications behind Bell's Theorem. While it does not provide proof of anything, as someone who was already a Pantheist it did make me smile when I first learned that it had been proven experimentally in 1972.
If I understand you correctly, what you are saying is simply that for you it is impossible to know. You find the questions and the search of philosophy to be enough for you. Since I believe that whatever Gods or Goddesses there may be will surely not be so petty as to hold your lack of belief against you, and since you seem content, I can't see that it matters much.
If you have not read "The Cosmic Trigger" books by Robert Anton Wilson you might enjoy them. He had a sharp wit and discussed the implications of quantum physics on religion along the same lines.
My very best regards.
It's mind boggling. I beleive in God, but I'm ashamed of the church.
Roger
I like you but most of this article was gobblygoop. You are some form of pantheist or agnostic (maybe a deist) but since you wrap your ideas in pseudo-scientific and 'spiritualistic' jargon, that's as specific as one can be.
As I said, at some point it just comes out as gobblygoop.
Max
Have you ever considered ignosticism? You'd make a wonderful Dread Rabbi Wine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism
"We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different from the usual one. When one views the matter historically, one is inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events - provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.
It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people."
Einstein, 'Ideas and Opinions.'
Mr. Ebert, to respond to your response to me earlier:
I wouldn't say there's been hatred expressed here via religion, no sir. But some of the themes shared here and in so many other similar threads I've read-- a la that religion in general amounts to not much more than a boatload of yesterday's psychobaggage, and wouldn't it be nice if society could just Titanicize (geez, I'm in a word-inventing mood today) it once and for all-- well, it's just become awfully tiresome, to me at least.
Anyhoo... after I posted my thoughts earlier, I recalled your three-star review of the following flick featuring a real-life Christian heroine, which I believe fairness would dictate that I link here:
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
C.S. Lewis writes books for children with much wholesome struggle, triumph, and merriment. No jokes! No deep ironies!
Prayer, if done correctly, is meditative! Mindfulness! Be here now! (see "The Relaxation Response", Benson, 1975)
Wherever I was before, wherever I will be after, I am NOW! You too!
I love this pebble, and it me!
B.F. Skinner! M. Sidman! K. Pryor!
Fractals, fuzzy logic, object-process methodology!!!
"All men are created equal?" Who knew?!! Read Judith Martin's 2003 book "Star-Spangled Manners : In Which Miss Manners Defends American Etiquette (For a Change)!"
I'm not sure I can express what I'm trying to say but I'll give it a shot. I understand one of the best ways to not believe in God is by not being able to understand God. How can he be immortal? How can something have no beginning or end? And being told to ignore those questions and go on faith isn't particularily reassuring.
On the other hand, we're not smart enough to understand a lot of things we do know. We don't know why our spouses do certain things, we can't talk to our cats. (I'm not trying to be glib. I am often times confounded by things my wife will do. I can't be the only only one). I can't understand why anyone would vote for Bush.
So, if you understand what I'm trying to get at, why should we be able to understand the life or motives of an omnipotent being? I'm pretty sure we can never 'understand' God, but that doesn't mean he doesn't exist. (Nor does it mean he does). When you've prayed to him over the years, do you think he's answered you? I think that would be a better way of trying to understand your relationship. I know you asked for our prayers when you were sick. Did you really want them or were you just hedging your bets?
In any event, a liberal lutheran is hoping you find what you're looking for.
Interesting read, but I'm still not really sure why you don't consider yourself an agnostic. As an agnostic, I too ask how, and am more content with the question than I would be with an answer. I don't think we can know, and I believe that makes me (and, dare I say it, you) an agnostic.
Labels may often be too confining, but I think this one fits just right.
After such a thoughtful post, I was surprised by the first commenter, who was so insistent that you apply a label to yourself (no doubt the label that he uses on himself). What you wrote here is wise and reflective; it's not possible to summarize it all in one word, which is what labels like "atheist" and "agnostic" try to do. But as you pointed out, humans have a need to find some kind of elevating meaning outside of themselves. Some people find that fixing labels on themselves and others helps them to achieve that.
When I was in high school, I wanted to get spy gadgets that would allow me to record every single thing that happened to me. I had no religion, so didn't believe in a soul that would last forever, yet I had the same desire for some kind of permanence that is peculiar to all humans. Now I satisfy that need through writing. Even though, as you said so well in "Ending up in a kind of soundlesslyspinning ethereal void as we all must," eventually anything you or I or anyone else writes will completely cease to exist. It's potentially a depressing thought, but I think about it a lot, and it doesn't depress me. It fascinates me. And it also is liberating in a way. It would be nice if I succeed and make a career of writing, but if I end up spending my whole life writing screenplays that are never produced, well, anything I would have achieved was temporary anyway, so I can't be too upset about it.
Have you read "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker? Your "ethereal void" entry reminds me of it, as does this entry.
Ebert: I have been certain for several years, ever since I saw the brilliant blog you created in high school, that you would be successful in the film world.
Great article, Mr. Ebert.
I won't comment on the religious ruminations (I basically share your views) but I recently learned of an interesting example of Relativity at work which can be seen by the naked eye. Perhaps you've heard of it--it involves a precious metal: http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/golden_glow/
I don't know if it helps one to 'understand' Relativity more, but the fact that Relativity is also routinely used for GPS calculations, helps to bring the theory 'down to earth' a bit.
Anyway, I learned of the gold observation in Stephen Baxter's 'Manifold: Time' which I'm currently reading. I recommend it if you love 'hard' science fiction.
I have a few books on Einstein. I read them occasionally and can then visualize and sketch out element(s) of his theories on bar napkins. After about three months, the theories begin to fade and eventually are lost to me. The math of his theories, I'll never be able to grasp.
i cant possibly find one single reason for someone to be pro-choice. how could someone support murder? its boggles my mind. how absolutely insane do you have to be? telling someone he has the choice to kill his son or daughter if he chooses. how absolutely sick is that? we, as a people, are somewhat civilized, are't we? Abortion is murder and nothing else!
You call yourself pro-choice, but your absolutely the opposite. i say we let the kid grow up then ask him if he would have rather not been born. Thats the real choice.
Another thing, people need to take more personal responsibility! Abortion is just an easy way out, a reason for people not to be responsible.
Mr. Ebert, you realize you are supporting a holocaust of the unborn right? Thats right, you and everyone else pro-death are no better than Hitler.
This is actually extremely inarticulate and unacademic. Your assessment of Roman catholicism is childish. You're exploiting your readership by posting base 'opinions' that seek to undermine particular faiths without giving any substantial argument for your own beliefs.
P.S. I am not Catholic. I just think that this is a very dishonest way to explore your beliefs.
Roger, what do you think of the mystics (both new and old) such as Teresa de villa or John of the Cross, Francis Assissi? It is documented that they all experienced divine consolations or ecstasies while in the throes of devotion to Christ, with such manifestations as levitating, talking to animals, having visions and hearing personal instruction. All lived humble, productive lives both of interior faith, ministry to the poor, and have left behind some beautiful works (Merton, who is a new mystic of sorts is one such example). It seems they all possessed the same inquisitive, albeit devoted, passionate, characteristics as you possess, especially in regards to their writing and sensitive, thought-provoking intellect. I wonder if belief in the supernatural is so far off for someone as you given these historical precedents?
Ebert: I believe they could have experienced these things fully persuasively within their own minds without the need of the supernatural. I doubt levitation. If they spoke to animals, I would be curious to learn what the animals said. Having visions and hearing personal instruction are not uncommon.
David, you can't critize him for voicing his opinion!
Reply to: What I'm asking is how does one account for the healing itself? Are you suggesting that I imagined it?
Reply to: When I was 5 my eyes were diagnosed with astigmatism and farsightedness. I had this condition for 7 years, and suddenly I had perfect vision
The explanation is pretty simply. You were twelve.
Between the ages of 5 and 12, you do a lot of growing. Especially your brain. Your brain's ability to interpret the information sent by the eyes can change.
As an experiment, wear a pair of glasses with the wrong prescription for a few weeks. At the end, you'll be able to see much better than at the start. Why? Your brain compensates for the distorted images.
http://www.eyerobics.com.au/index.html
(1) Wearing glasses can make your eyesight WORSE.
Have you noticed your prescriptions getting stronger and stronger each time you visit the optometrist? Do you ever wonder why your eyesight seems to be continually getting worse?
Eyes are controlled and focused with the help of muscles. If you put a lens in front of your eye to do the focusing work that your eye muscles are supposed to do, then your eye muscles won't do it!
*** The eye muscles then get weaker from lack of use ***
and so next time you go to get your eyes tested, you'll probably need a stronger prescription.
And what does a stronger prescription do? Even MORE work that your eye muscles would normally be doing.
(2) You said the doctor described your initial condition as Astigmatism.
This optical condition is caused by an unevenly curved cornea or crystalline lens. Actually, in a "perfect" human optical system, both the lens and the cornea have astigmatism, existing equal in power and opposite in direction.Thereby canceling each other.
One explnantion says the lens is stretched or twisted due to uneven contractions for the near focused position. As this is
*** a stressed-induced condition, ***
*** relieving the stress can remove the induced astigmatism. ***
... by learning to allow the eyes to shift focus and position while engaged in concentrated near vision activities. Constantly staring at a computer screen may cause an induced astigmatism in susceptible individuals. (Note: This happens to me a lot.)
Another suggested cause is that the muscles that turn the eyes in and out play a role causing astigmatism by stretching the eyeball.
*** Relieving tension caused by the muscles may relieve the astigmatism. ***
This mechanism of action is not proven nor accepted by many eye doctors, although some of us believe that this may be at least contributory to the process,
*** especially in young children. *** (end)
There are several possible explanation, but the OBVIOUS one is that you were 12 years old. As the shape and thickness of your cornea changed, so did your vision problems.
It is EXTREMELY unlikely that the "power of prayer" did anything. the power of suggestion or positive thinking doesn't change our vision.... but making certain muscles stronger can.
if you were suffering from blurred vision, you might have forced the muscles of your eyes to work harder, to hold the image... and as a result, the problem disappeared.
I'm confident that if you do some research into childhood astigmatism and other conditions with similar symptoms, you'll find many cases just like yours.
"I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer."
Beautiful statement. Most Christians I know are doing the exact same thing. I am one of them. Unfortunately, there are many others who are trying too hard to provide us with the answers. You keep lying awake at night asking "how?". Your fascination is encouraging.
To get down to the nub of it:
Peace of mind.
Ebert: I believe you healed. I believe the minister was the catalyst. The healing was possibly psychosomatic.
So, I'm delusional? I imagined I was healed? I think I can acquire a medical record for proof.
With all due respect, I feel like you're just kinda sweeping the whole thing away. Maybe I'm mistaken and that's just not what you meant. But, psychosomatic? I don't think so. That's just too convenient an argument, don't you agree? If someone comes to you with an extraordinary report and they have no prior history of any form of mental disorder, or they aren't known to be liars, shouldn't their report carry some weight? Please tell me you'll consider this further than it just being simply psychosomatic. Also, you should consider the many documented cases of healing. Surely many may be false, but what are the odds that they would all be delusional or otherwise so easily discredited? I believe there's a better answer here than simple delusion, Mr. Ebert. I appreciate your thoughts.
Seth W.
Ebert: I of course cannot know what happened. A reader named Bill Hays just posted a speculation, a few messages above.
Following your argument, we could also label the positions "pro-life" and "anti-life."
I say that only to make a point. At least "pro-choice" and "pro-life" indicate that both sides of the argument stand FOR something. Unfortunately, people in both camps love to label and throw inflammatory language around.
This blog is a wonderfully spaced novel. Thank you for doing this. As it happens, you've just identified the sop that's clogged my brain - the sewage of my neurons. I'm stumped, and here you've arrived as a character in my religious odyssey. I can only wonder who will be next. After Annie Dillard's naturalistic fervor and Roger Ebert's calculating curiosity, I imagine it will be some other Pulitzer prize-winner - not a cynic, I hope.
In seriousness, though, I am grateful. I have just had a long discussion with my dad about religion; whether it came to any fruition remains to be seen. At the moment, things have gone beyond confusion. I'm not even trying to extricate the mess any more. It's like I've swallowed a great mouthful of air the size of a goldfish bowl and let it bubble inside my skull - there's no more sense. When I was talking with my dad, my thesis - a flat, thoughtless thing - was that I can't stand saying "God" or "Jesus" because of the images they bring up. I see people in pews, fixing their hair and ignoring the pastor, looking over shoulders, thinking about brunch (the lazy ones, breakfast). They're there to socialize. Nothing like downing communion and beating the rest of the congregation to the parking lot. The rush is really something you want to avoid.
Until I find a good balance, I can't call myself a Christian without looking down and clearing my throat. But your mindset as stated in this post elicits a peculiar response from me; obviously your intellect reaches something beyond my grasp, but I feel like I'm getting a taste - a smacking. I can only describe it as how a blind person might feel if he were to suddenly see a teasing medley of hues. They're all so beautiful, but not quite enough to substantiate anything.
Anyway, I will continue reading this novel of yours. It's a good one. It's a damn, damn good one. (If I come off as obsequious, I apologize, but it's true.)
Here's to not being afraid of thought, and not giving in to those who remonstrate against it.
Science is not "secular." It is a process of honest investigation.
As a form of honest investigation, science is required to be secular in order to work properly. I do not mean that it is anti-religious or sets out to disprove religious belief; rather, that religious beliefs, or personal beliefs of any kind, need to literally be taken out of the equation when it is undertaken. Because science works according to criteria of prediction, repetition and explanation, it is important that they be able to do so across the entire community of scientists, who run the gamut of belief systems. Since you seem fascinated by fractals, I recommend that you track down the TV program The Colors of Infinity, hosted and written by none other than Sir Arthur C. Clarke, and featuring a great Dave Gilmour score. It explains the Mandelbrot set far better than Jurassic Park did.
qdpsteve: I'm an avowed atheist, but I'm in the vein of Santayana, someone who respects it along with other social institutions, although science is the institution I hold in the highest esteem. I would never berate or degrade a person for their religious beliefs, anymore than I would for their tastes in movies (considering some of the movies I like, I'd be on shaky if I did!) I'm friends with people from every conceivable religious background, and many of them not only see no conflict between their faith and science, they're some of the most avowedly pro-science people around. I don't consider myself a humanist; like Stanley Kubrick, I'm too cynical about human nature to be one. I'm more Matt Ridley than Richard Dawkins, if that helps put my views on the matter in further context.
mutt: For bringing up The Incredible Shrinking Man, #3 on my list of the greatest science fiction films from the greatest decade for SF films, you get my nomination for Best Post So Far.
I think you'll find that you and Joss Whedon have some similarities on the matter. Words from those articulate with their reasoning, and not those who preach irrational conviction, are the ones we should be thinking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTY8-XPhTzQ&eurl;=http%3A%2F%2Fskepacabra.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F04%2F13%2Fbuffy-creator-joss-whedon-talks-humanism%2F&feature;=player_embedded
Sorry, I mislinked the previous comment.
I consider myself to be fairly inquisitive, and I did enjoy this post, and many of the comments, but only up to a point. Then I felt like Austin Powers as he contemplated traveling through time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8w95xIdH4o&feature;=related
But your reminisces of the Catholic upbringing you had as a child were tender and poignant. Twenty-five or so years later, I had similar experiences, so not TOO much had changed yet. And the priests and sisters and cathecism teachers I came into contact with were all, for the most part, well-intentioned, good people. The pastor of my parish when I was a boy, Father Plesa, is someone whom I have always greatly admired, even to this day. Just a decent, gentle soul who absolutely radiated, dare I say it, spirituality. And yet, I wandered away.
Perhaps it was the silly rules and strange rituals. I mean, come on, wearing a condom is a sin? And what's with the stinky incense they break out every so often? Perhaps it was the disconnect in logic I felt with some of its most basic tenets. I do believe in God, and that Jesus was sent by Him to be a teacher of men. But He also sacrificed His only son so that our sins may be forgiven? How does that even BEGIN to make any sense? To me, it never has. And yet...
And yet, I will probably raise my children as Catholics. They have all been baptized. I feel I owe them at least a foundation of faith, and if they so choose to wander off also, so be it. At the very least, Catholicism places great value on the quest for higher learning.
That tiff about Galileo is just SO-O-O-O seventeenth-century!
"I wish to remain a child of mystery." Einstein
"We will only know what God wishes us to know. We will only go as far as God wishes us to go." me
The question is interesting, but the answer seem irrelevant. What if there is a God? What if there isn't? So what? What changes?
My opinion: the pursuit of the answer is worthy only to satisfy a human itch rather than to reveal information that humans can use to benefit society at large.
So I think.
I had considered that but thought it too easy a conclusion.
Don't forget that the King James version was the requested re-written version at the request of England's King Henry VIII. This was done so that he could circumvent the Catholic teachings of divorce and re-marry.
This is not only a philosophical or spiritual question, but one of
historical value as well.
Roger, I just discovered your blog and the bloggers. I haven't "blogged" before. You and your strength are my "God."
Ebert: But it is so well-written.
Roger wrote "Did I start calling myself an agnostic or an atheist? No, and I still don't. I avoid that because I don't want to provide a category for people to apply to me."
Huge, heavy weary sigh; Americans and religion!
That was my initial reaction upon seeing your latest blog entry. For here we go again, another round of "pin the belief system" on the critic; how dare you use freedom of speech Roger Ebert! Hold still while I pin my labels onto you, etc.
For what it's worth, I've always assumed that you were a typical Gemini - with a dualistic nature (intellectual and emotional) allowing you to be in more than one place at the same time, on an issue or subject. And driven in general, by a love of good conversation and restless intellectual curiosity - which informs your understanding of the universe, unseen forces and your relationship to all that is trippy and mysterious. :)
Or I could be wrong. Either way, that's how I see you from the outside looking in; as akin to a house with all its windows open. Stuff can fly in, fly out, or it can stay and make a home for itself. There's a foundation and a roof, but unless you're rude enough to creep uninvited into the basement or to crawl around the attic - some aspects of "Roger the house" will always remain private and rightly so. However that doesn't mean you can't sit on the porch and have a wee chat, eh?
Is it a Canadian thing, this lack of interest, 'cause I've never wondered if you believe in a God; it's irrelevant. I only require that you've got a curious mind as it means then you're worth talking to. :)
I was raised a Catholic but then excommunicated myself when I was around 12 yrs old; I liked God too much and didn't want to say goodbye - so I got rid of all those patriarchal misogynist troublemakers instead! This how I personally feel about Religion - except for Buddhism, as that one doesn't suck...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BliMK_pbrGE&feature;=related
So where does that leave me...? Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzQeur_-Xgw&feature;=related
I believe that God is spirituality and the Universe and everything in it - all at the same time! And I can talk to God if I want to (although usually it's more fun to play and stuff!) And the proof of God (as I define it) lies in life itself; when you feel connected to life, that's God - although that drop of dissolving ink was pretty cool, too!
And you can tap into the Zen and surf it, or not. :)
I don't think God is a person. That is, not unless I'm totally freaked out 'cause I've just seen a scary movie about Aliens leaving me to die on a doomed planet, then, yes, I will pray to a God that looks like a British actor in a bed sheet.
But only to hedge my bets!
Ebert: I don't subscribe to astrology, but I am indeed a typical Gemini. :)
I pasted my earlier comment and your response below - this is even more interesting to me now though - let's test it out. Suppose the Supreme Court decided that abortion wasn't a protected right under the US Constitution, and let states decide whether to allow it. Further suppose that a majority of voters decided to ban it. By your logic, you'd be just fine with that, because it would be the government reflecting the will of the voters. But this is at odds with your earlier statement about the government having no right to tell anyone else what to do. I'm not sure how to reconcile these points. And, as an aside, my comments are applicable to any law, not just abortion. And one final point: this is a really great blog - few are the times online when thought is required.
"I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do. Above all, the state does not."
So, for you, all criminal laws are null and void? Laws against murder or drunk driving are nothing more than the government telling us what we cannot do. It seems to me that a statement like that is convenient for someone who is pro-choice, but it really isn't very well thought out. I'd be curious of Roger or anyone can defend that statement.
Ebert: The state does not have the right. It has the responsibility to reflect the will of a majority of voters exercising their free will. That is the difference between democracy and dictatorship
Ebert: Then I would abide with the majority, but disagree with it.
As I read your piece, I was reminded of the writings of Tolstoy particularly the connection between your idea of universal oneness and Pierre Bezukhov's pulsating globe from 'War and Peace'. To have your thoughts line up with Tolstoy's is a big plus in my book. I am LDS, or in other words a Mormon, and before anybody tries to explain to me what I believe, I'd like to describe what I see as the basic tenants of Mormonism: First, that the Bible is the word of God. Second that there is no closed canon, truth is truth regardless of where it is found. Third, that people can and should use prayer, study and meditation to develop a personal relationship with God, and through the reality of this relationship, a person can come to know the reality of His existence. The Bible, largely due to the difficulty of translating from Greek, is ambiguous in many instances. If it is taken as our only frame of reference, there are bound to be problems. And there have been. You mentioned a few, such as the question of how a merciful God could punish his children who were unaware they were sinning. It helps to consider the audiences the epistles were written to and the information they may have understood that is lost to us (such as books and epistles referenced within the epistles, such as the 3 that are mentioned in Jude alone). That explains why they often seem cryptic, but gives us little in the way of answers. The key for me is understanding that faith is not accepting what you are told, but rather being willing to humble oneself sufficiently to sincerely ask God, and receiving answers from the source. As far as I understand it, Einstein and Newton, and to a lesser degree Feynman, were drawn closer to a belief in God through studying the nature of the Universe. I believe in the universality of truth, and to me it is unimportant what path one chooses to reach it by. I think there is an ideal path for every individual though, and a knowledge of this path can only be found by approaching God, and being open and willing enough to accept what he gives us, even if it means changing our beliefs or behaviors. Who knows, maybe God wants you to win a Nobel prize in physics. Ask and you shall receive.
Gosh, I forgot (for the cynical, yes, 'gosh' may still be used rather than, perhaps, WTF! etc.) - Walker Percy.
Even your choice of graphics (swirl of chaos, fractals, inter-gallactic distances - routine intellectual stuff of agnostic evidence) reminds me of Percy's Lost in the Cosmos
or
Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos - novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes - you are beyond doubt the strangest
If you haven't read Percy's non-fiction, it is a must. A medical doctor and convert to the Catholic Church. Cheers/best
Here is my story about my encounter with Catholicism I grew up Jewish in a predominantly Jewish suburb north of Chicago. Since I was a child I always loved the Catholic Church and its services. I begged my parents to take me to Midnight Mass (of course they wouldn't take me) One sunny afternoon on a Jewish Holiday my friend Debbie and I came home from synagogue had lunch and went to play in a public park across the street from a Catholic School. We went on the swings and were not noisy or anything. Suddenly the doors opened and a whole classroom of what looked to us like giant girls came out like a herd of angry bulls and swarmed us in the park and pulled our hair and punched us and kicked and was screaming at You Killed our Lord, G-Damned kikes, die and all kinds of other hateful things.The nun watched all of this from the school doorway. We had been at Jewish services that morninng teaching us not to hate our enemies because they were god's children too. It was a young age to realize how the holocaust had happened but that was the lesson I took away from my encounter with Catholic Parochial School girls at 8 years.
Ebert: Despicable behavior, in particular by those nuns. My nuns taught me that the Jews gave us Jesus, that they sincerely believed in their religion, that I should pray for their conversion. Of course, we prayed for everyone's conversion. It was made clear that the Jews were not the killers of Jesus. Would they have mocked him with the term "King of the Jews?"
Few things can be more alarming than a swarm of giant Catholic girls.
Roger,
As a little Catholic kid, the concept of God having no beginning and no end really bent my mind. I was frustrated that I just couldn't wrap my head around it.It kept me awake too. No one could answer my question"Well then who made God"? The only way I could calm my mind was to tell myself my human mind couldn't handle the answer and only after I croak will it all makes perfect sense. Hey,at least I was able to put myself to sleep each night.
Did you post this on Bill Hays' birthday?
I struggle with understanding an expanding bottomless universe, too. Last summer at the Jordan Science Hall at Notre Dame, I saw a presentation by one of our group leaders.
He used the digital visualization theater, which is just incredible. He went beyond the point where radio waves from earth have gone, illustrating how incredibly insignificant we really are. Using an artist's depiction, he showed us how the expanding universe would be seen by "Someone" outside the universe itself. It looked like a set of multicolored jacks, or maybe tinker toys. A bunch of "X's" over and over. The pattern kept repeating itself. Our instructor told us the repeating pattern made him believe in a higher power.
http://science.nd.edu/jordan/about/digital-visualization-theater.shtml
The Jordan Hall also has Dobzhansky's famous quote embossed in the floor outside their biodiversity museum. Inside the museum, an archaeopteryx model greets visitors.
I don't know if I believe in a God. I know I don't believe in a God that intervenes on behalf of his believers. I don't believe in miracles. There's just too much suffering in the world. In the time I took to repond to this blog, thousands of "God's" children died horrible deaths while their mothers cried out for His help.
Our last President wore his faith on his sleeve and insisted that his staff pray to his own personal God in the people's house. This is the same man who shrugs and smirks when reporting the death toll due to his incompetence.
I can't remember the name of the Roman philosopher, but the gist of what he says stuck with me. It was something to the effect of, "It is the height of folly and conceit to believe that there can be only one path to such a profound truth."
It's a paraphrase, but I think it captures the idea. I think that as long as people seek truth and understanding of the world without judging, they should do it in whichever way makes the most sense to them. If you simply go along with whatever someone else tells you to believe without examining it, or use faith as a kind of protective coloration to help you blend in with your neighbors, you aren't seeking truth or understanding. Anyone doing that might as well be an atheist for all they're getting from the exercise. By the same token, proclaiming yourself an atheist just for the sake of controversy and contrariness is more political than anything else. You'd just be looking for an argument to entertain yourself, and interfering with the freedom of others to seek truth in their own way.
I think of religion as having started as man's way of understanding the forces at work around him. Then it became an agenda. Nobody should have sanction to enforce their point of view on someone else in a matter which should be personal. When one school of thought is allowed to impose their rules on everyone regardless of personal freedom and the need for spiritual growth, we end up with things like blue laws and sharia. Perhaps it was a very humane and altruistic aim with which the founding fathers of our country instituted separation of church and state. You can cite any number of political reasons to do with state churches, but maybe they felt that the freedom to seek the truth should not be interfered with by legislating one point of view or another into law.
Roger, I think you're one of those people who would examine a thing for its truth regardless of the format. I'm pleased to see that you can take away something of value even from something you may not agree with in its totality.
Ebert: The founders separated church and state because they and their persecuted ancestors fled Europe because they were not separated there. Those who would join them are unAmerican. That's why we must not pray in public schools.
Mr. Ebert, after making such a fudgey statement as that I think you are qualified to run for a political office, perhaps even president of the U.S.A.
Ebert: What part of it is not crystal clear?
Cole, I'll agree and I use the modern writings of Stephen Hawking in a similar way. I've read through "A Brief History of Time", "A Briefer History of Time", and "Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything". I find elation in trying to visualize in my mind the concepts he and his co-writers (in the second and third books) present, and my brain feels sore after every reading. Not in a bad way though, but as if I've just exercised it and stretched into new dimensions. I only hope I can hang onto the concepts better when I attempt to get my children interested in science and the universe...
Interesting article. Ever read GK Chesterton's "Orthodoxy"?
I understand your difficulty in finding a 'label' for your beliefs...or lack of same. Personally I now describe myself simply as a 'Humanist'.
'Agnostic', 'Atheist' and 'Secular Humanist' all are descriptions which, in essence, compare ones beliefs to a belief in God. I prefer to use 'Humanist' alone, feeling that it is a more positive description. I do not need the dictates of religion to care about, and try to be good to, my fellow human beings...and to the earth and its other inhabitants, human or not!
Bill Hays --
Jesus was an incredibly profound human being. It's quite easy to argue that Jesus did in fact exorcise demons, if you look a little deeper. You have to remember, all the conundrums of human existence, that many have thoughtfully commented on right here on this thread, were prevalent in more archaic forms two thousand years ago. And way back then these conundrums were experienced with a dread and madness that you can't possibly imagine, Bill. And then Jesus comes along and guess what he does? Well, basically he teaches them (at least those that are receptive) that they are deeper than their thoughts. He nudges their sense of self in the direction of the sacred and holy. Whereas before their sense of self was centered in their own agony, Jesus moves their center into a holy space outside of their own pain. And so peace. Given the magic or mythic structures of consciousness of that time, this would have indeed appeared as if Jesus were casting out demons. Now, the original teaching of Jesus have been strayed from to the point that they are no longer recognizable, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.
Look man, God is there, he is. Look at your hand - how many fingers are there? Perfect. Look at a grape, round like the earth, that blue floating marble perfectly calibrated, perfectly balanced, floating through space and time, giving us life and nourishment...Blood flows through your veins like the oceans through the earth, like the winds cool the ground and like rivers nourish life.
Wow, I've totally freaked myself out, man.
New Deal Democrats being anti-communist? interesting.
Ebert: Most of them were, starting with Roosevelt.
I think the egg came first. Only something other than a chicken originally laid it. What emerged that first day was just slightly more chicken-like than its parents. That little guy grew up and sought out other chicken-like critters for his "relations." Finally, one chicken-like thing laid an egg and a full-blown fryer emerged. He was more delicious than his ancestors, so chains of fast-food restaurants determined this species would hang around for many years as our modern chicken. Hopefully, I'm the first to come up with this theory. Maybe they'll name it after me. Is this blog considered a scholarly journal?
Ebert: Your theory is very close to the explanation of the ToE. The egg came first.
Dear Roger,
I'll have to write a longer post later, as I must hustle off to work in a few minutes (on a Sunday!) but I had to thank you for your latest post.
I am in no way a theological scholar, but am a non-church going Christian. From my earliest memories I have belived in God, and Jesus Christ. Not in any kind of "taught" way, but the belief was just there, like my hands were. So that's the perspective I'm writing from.
I have a much longer post planned but here's one story:
As a very young girl and early reader, I was given a "kid's" version of many of Jesus' parables, and one that terrified me was the parable of the wise virgins. The last line, "stay ye therefore awake, for you know not when your Lord cometh", had me praying frantically at night when I was too exhausted to stay awake any longer that Jesus wouldn't show up while I slept and overlook me. I clearly had no concept of the idea of spiritual awakeness and preperation.
Sounds like your typical "Man, religion did me wrong" story, right? But my obsession with that story led me to thinking, and luckily that thinking progressed (rather than circling itself) and to longer, more sustained thought about Jesus in general.
So terror isn't all bad, as long as you don't toss the baby onto its flames, along with the bathwater.
Dear Roger,
Good stuff. I hope you'll write more posts on these very deep, meaningful reflections.
May I ask -- if you're willing and able -- at some point to expand on this point: "Let me rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men."
I think I understand the rest of that paragraph, in that much of what we make of God (and/or the human experience) is what *we* make of God (and/or the human experience). I tend to agree there.
I'm not challenging the quoted text, but am asking for more. It's just that the quoted text seems to be rather categorical in an otherwise inquiring post. Meaning, it seems that for much of the post, the spirit is, "It doesn't make sense to me," or "I don't know how this works." But, here in the quoted text, it is, "No, this cannot be true." Perhaps I am misunderstanding?
In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how to make that fractal software thing to work. :)
I hope all is well.
Omer M
Ebert: I just don't see any evidence of it.
Roger,
I have been waiting for this entry for sometime, especially after reading a portion on your wikipedia page which claims that you supposedly refer to yourself as either agnostic or atheist. I had never heard you confirm this, so I remained skeptical about that section, until now.
What interested me most about your entry, though, was this section:
"I no longer lost any sleep over the questions of God and infinity. I understood they could have no answers. At some point the reality of God was no longer present in my mind. I believed in the basic Church teachings because I thought they were correct, not because God wanted me to. In my mind, in the way I interpret them, I still live by them today. Not by the rules and regulations, but by the principles."
What I gather from your comments here is the conviction that the mysteries of God's nature and existence are of little importance when considering the basic principles endorsed by the Catholic Church. Ah, but I must draw your attention to a discussion my 6th grade class had back at St. Wenceslaus Parish, in Omaha, NE. Sister Ann Morgan, one of two nuns at St. Wenceslaus (this was back in the early nineties, when nuns had all but disappeared from Catholic schools), provided a brilliant counterargument to your claim. Echoing the theology of C.S. Lewis, she asked our class one morning, "If Christ walked around claiming to be the Son of God, His claim was precedence for his overall message. In essence, Christ asked us to take His divinity seriously so that His message could be taken seriously. If we claim that Christ is not the Son of God, that God in fact does not exist, then we are in effect calling Christ a liar. What's most troubling about calling Christ a liar about his divinity is the implications this has on His overall message: if Christ lied about his divinity, then his message is bunk. Thus, the legitimacy of Christ's message depends on Christ's divinity."
Grant it, this is not a verbatim quote, but this discussion did take place in our 6th grade classroom, and such a discussion silenced our fears about God's non-existence, since we believed so fervently in His message.
What do you think about this? How would you respond? Personally, I don't buy it, but it is interesting. Something to be considered, I think. Perhaps this is just another one of those thought exercises that is worth having, which seems to serve the same purpose as prayer. As Socrates perpetually testified, perhaps the question is more intriguing than the answer.
Ebert: The teachings of Jesus would have been as useful whether or not he was the son of God.
After your four-star review of Gibson's "The Passion of The Christ" and disapproval of Brown's infamous "Da Vinci Code", I would've guessed were a Christian. Thank you for the article, very insightful. I'm a fan and appreciate your honesty. I'm a Christian, but many questions have recently filled my head as well.
Off the subject, I'd love to someday see reviews on "Borat" and "Apocalyto". For some reason, I'd suspect you'd give the latter a two-star rating. Visually, it was beautiful, but plot-wise, the picture was thin. God bless you, Rog.
Reply to: Bill Hays -- Jesus was an incredibly profound human being.
I sincerely doubt that's accurate.
Jesus went to a religious festival across the border in Jerusalem, in a Temple where the Romans had built a Tower so they could look into the courtyard. Jesus attacked Temple employees, stole money, overturned tables and used a whip to disrupt the Festival events. That's not profound. Most people are able to attend festivals without being arrested and charged with treason.
You know NOTHING about the person named Jesus. All you know are the myths that were created after he died. Admit that.
Reply to: It's quite easy to argue that Jesus did in fact exorcise demons, if you look a little deeper.
Hmm. I was looking for a response that beings with, "Since we all know demons do NOT exist, it was impossible for Jesus to have performed real exorcisms."
Reply to: Jesus moves their center into a holy space outside of their own pain. And so peace. Given the magic or mythic structures of consciousness of that time, this would have indeed appeared as if Jesus were casting out demons.
The Gospels give dialogue for the demons. Your theory has to include their speeches.
Here's a BETTER answer.
When Julius Caesar died, a comet appeared. His followers said it was a sign that his spirit, or pneuma, was rising into the sky to sit among the gods.
When the story of Jesus was rewritten, they added confrontations between Jesus and "unclean pneumas" who claimed "Our name is Legion" as a way of denying the claims of the Emperor cult.
http://www.livius.org/caa-can/caesar/legions.html
LINK: The Roman Demons - The Twin Legions
Legio X Gemina, "the twin legion", was one of the four legions used by Julius Caesar in 58 BC, for his invasion of Gaul.
Luke 8:30 And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him.
http://formerthings.com/praetorian.htm
The persnon named Jesus wasn't an exorcist. He wasn't a wise teacher. He was a Galilean who thought he could make a protest against the high priests turning Temple funds over to the Romans and get back across the border before he was caught.
There was probably a proto-Gospel before the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, but it was only half as long as our current Gospel of Matthew.
(2) I forgot to mention the most common cause of childhood astigmatism.
If Chuck Norris delivers a roundhouse kick to any part of an opponent below the shoulder, all the children that man conceives for the next two years will suffer impaired vision. Very few doctors take a case history detailed enough to discover the real cause.
Or, when I was a Michigan State, fellowship groups would have their members sit in a circle and "describe a miracle that happened in my life." Any childhood condition that resovled itself was attributed to "a miracle." Just part of the brainwashing process.
For my birthday, please put on Ricky Nelson's "I'm A Traveling Man." Followed by some John Barry.
Ebert: What part of it is not crystal clear?
If I were to say I don't believe God exists, that doesn't mean I believe God doesn't exist. Nor does it mean I don't know, which implies that I could know.
Mr. Ebert, that sentence stood out. I read it twice, then read it again and several more times. Perhaps my reading comprehension skills are not up to the task. It's a tricky sentence and is worded the way politicians speak when trying to avoid taking a definite stance on a position to avoid offending anybody.
If I were to say I don't believe God exists, that doesn't mean I believe God doesn't exist.
First, you start with a conditional/hypothetical: "I'm not saying this (I've never said it! Nowhere!) but if I were to say it..."
This first part seems to be some kind of disclaimer of "I'm saying it but I'm not saying it". With you starting out in the hypothetical it just seems evasive, a refusal to give a definite answer. The correct term for someone who claims to not believe in God but allows for the possibility of God existing is agnosticism. I have to side with Chaz (where you say it but don't say it):
But you know you're one or the other [atheist or agnostic]," she says. "I have never told you that," I say. "Maybe not in so many words, but you are," she says.
The fact is, God's existence is a binary choice: either God exists or God does not exist. There are only two choices, and only one can be true and the other false. Either the light is on or the light is off. It's Cut and Dry. It's Black and White. It's Yes or No. You can say "I don't know" but not knowing does not negate
the truth that God either exists or does not exist.
But you insist on not being labeled as an agnostic "because it's more complicated than that". I guess I understand. Your "God Conclusion Pending" is a private, personal belief you don't want minimized or trivialized by a single term that for you is the result of hours gnashed over in your head and heart, not something to see packaged away into a little word like a label on a popcorn carton.
Nor does it mean I don't know, which implies that I could know.
This is where I get confused. You either know something or you don't. God exists or God does not exist. If it doesn't mean you don't know then it has to mean you do know.
I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer.
Matter in the solar system came from somewhere. It exists. We know it exists. Has it always existed like Robert Ingersoll says? Did it pop out of nothing? Was it created? Who can prove conclusively where matter came from? No one. All we know is that it is here and we are here.
To go through life content with just questions and not answers would make me miserable so that is why I paired down the questions starting with God/No God then going from there.
Ebert: It is badly written. I would rewrite it like this:
If I were to say I don't believe God exists, that wouldn't mean I believe God doesn't exist. Nor does it mean I don't know, which implies that I could know.
I just finished reading Thomas Cahill's wonderful book "Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus." I am a Unitarian Universalist and an agnostic, but I loved what Cahill said at the end of his book: "Jesus taught compassion, it was always compassion." Amen, Mr. Cahill.
My 16 year old son seems to understand Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and not from a mathematical viewpoint, because he does not know enough math (yet) for that to be true. Having discussions with him (my son) hurts my brain at times (and I am pretty smart-he is just smarter.) I think he holds your world view (cannot swear to that.) very interesting blog, glad my friend referred me to it. BTW, have you read "The Time Traveler's Wife"? That more than anything helped me understand the concept of time having no meaning (and I have read scientific papers on the idea.)
I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic schools for a while too. I had similar problems understanding basic teachings. To this day, I have a problem taking things on 'faith.' We don't do this with anything else, why do it with religion? What if we taught kids two plus two equals four 'just because?' On the other hand, a belief in God helps explain the beginning of the universe, to me anyway.
Your part about the first cause was quite interesting. I just want to know why you assume the first cause is unknowable. If it wanted to be known wouldn't it be able to?
Ebert: Doesn't it seem to you that such a cause would be outside all the categories of knowing?
Ebert: One difference between Bush and Obama is that Bush believed God had told him to invade. Obama is trying to find a sane way to get us out.
I didn't know that. But I based my writing on what he said in France. He clearly said his goal was to destroy terrorism in the region, not to get our troops out. http://www.scribd.com/doc/13936886/President-Obamas-Town-Hall-Meeting-in-France-April-3-2009-TranscriptVideo-Link It's in there in teh question and answer segment (about 3/4 into it).
Here are some snippets from that excerpt:
"And I think that it is important for Europe to understand that even though I'm now President and George Bush is no longer President, al Qaeda is still a threat, and that we cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as President, suddenly everything is going to be okay."
"Al Qaeda is still bent on carrying out terrorist activity. It is--don' fool yourselves--..."
"We have to work with the Pakistani government so that they are more trusted by their populatoin and have more control so that they can then go--help us go after these terrorists."
It is said in this New York Times article that fighting terrorism is pretty much impossible (when isn't it? That's why it's called terrorism) and that all the troops will be there to try to secure a Presidential election. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/world/asia/12kabul.html?_r=1&partner;=rss&emc;=rss
P.S. I'm working on a paper over Friedrich Nietzsche, and when I came across the second section in the first part of his "On the Genealogy of Morals," I noticed a passage that reminded me of your final paragraph of this entry, where you say, "In a sense, the entangled objects are not even communicating. They are the same thing. At the "quantum level," and I don't know what that means and cannot visualize it, everything that there is may be actually or theoretically linked. All is one. Sun, moon, stars, rain, you, me, everything. All one."
Well, Nietzsche said something similar: "For this alone is fitting for a philosopher. We have no right to isolated acts of any kind: we may not make isolated errors or hit upon isolated truths. Rather do our ideas, our values, our yeas and nays, our ifs and buts, grow out of us with the necessity with which a tree bears fruit - related and each with an affinity to each, and evidence of ONE will, ONE health, ONE sun -- Whether YOU like them, these fruits of ours? -- But what is that to the trees! What is that to US, to us philosophers?"
Roger Ebert, an unintentional Nietzschean. I wonder if Sister Marie Donald would call that an unintentional sin. Hahaha.
Be well!
Mr. Ebert, I hope you'll take the time to read my reply to this article.
http://thereemerging.blogspot.com/2009/04/open-letter-to-roger-ebert.html
You've written an excellent piece that deserves serious thought. Thank you!
Ebert: I posted this comment on your blog. I couldn't tell if it "took."
As well-argued a response as I can imagine. In simplest terms, I do not believe God has spoken to men because a god in my terms would be vastly, infinitely, beyond such behavior. I believe men believe they have been spoken to. But our beliefs differ, and yours have obviously been carefully-reasoned, so I respect them. As for the quantum business: I don't understand it either. I do believe that an actual experiment, repeatable, has demonstrated to respected scientists that two entangled particles can interact instantaneously, and I was speculating on the implications of that. It may well open a window in my reasoning by which a higher power might enter.
...I believed in the basic Church teachings because I thought they were correct, not because God wanted me to...
It's funny that you used that exact phrase because this week I planned to ask my devout catholic father this question:
Let's assume I am more or less like Einstein and believe that God created the universe but that's it. He doesn't know we exist and he doesn't care. This means that therefore I do not believe in Jesus as a religious figure, as a philosophical one yes but not a religious one.
Even though I don't believe in Jesus/God I still live my life by the principles he taught to the masses. Not because he taught them but because they are right and I do so on an unconscious level.
Now the day that I die if I realize that I am wrong and that God/Jesus do and did exist will I still go to heaven even though I didn't believe in them but still lived "by their rules"?
Now i am pretty sure of what you answer would be but what I am looking for is his answers, even though my father is not the proper subject for this question, he is so liberal he might as well be a Quaker.
Your post also reminded me of a powerful phrase I heard recently by Richard Dawkins in one of his documentary. I don't like his haughty attitude but he makes a point when he says: "For early humanity what was unexplained and mysterious was so vast that an equally vast higher being, an alpha male in the sky, could fill that gap".
You mentionned dimensions Here's a nice video that will gobble your mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjsgoXvnStY
Philippe
Fduquette,
Re: One can infer that the story of Abraham sacrifice is a Christ prophesy, but it also remains a request by God to sacrifice a son.
As I said, God was willing to die for us, as in through Jesus who was born by a God--not a human, therefore, not human.
However, Ebert may be inferring a moral paradox that is contemporary to our day and age. Is such a request murder (and hence is Abraham left only with the defence that 'God commanded it')? And would God testify in Abrahams defense?
To dismiss the question as not pertinent to our times, dismisses the question as not pertinent to our times. Back sacrificing people was very common, and they did it to make the crops grow and nothing less than nurture the universe lest it may collapse. Today, we have science or money that takes the place of that job. What would we do if all the money and science just disappeared without a trace today? Would we want to start some sacrificing. I don't know, maybe put Bernie Madoff's head on a stick to see if that would fix the problem?
Im not an expert, but I recall that a patriarch had discretion to kill their own children (usually if they were brazen and ill behaved to a degree; infanticide was practiced in the ancient world). If objections were raised, people would have accepted Abraham's divine attribution of motive; the community would have no reason to question Abrahams "sanity", he did not behave immorally in terms of his reputation, he was demonstrably God-fearing in his life. Therefore, there was nothing immoral about sacrificing one's own at that time under certain conditions that Abraham clearly met. Certainly, it is the supreme test.
Now it's pertinent again.
Dear Roger
I find myself wondering about the exact same things, I live in Egypt where society is maybe less accepting of anything that challenges the notion of god. I especially find it annoying when people try to make the argument that if we exist then there must be a creator and how perfect sense that makes, however when applying the same logic to god himself, as to how god came to being without being created himself I'm never presented with a convincing answer, somehow as if god exists in a realm outside of this wold and so the rules don't apply to him.
I also find the theory of the big bang to be void of answers as well, since it assumes if i know correctly that the universe started as a speck of matter that exploded into the universe that we know, which still doesn't explain how that tiny bit of matter materialized in the first place, however negligible it's weight
was. So the question of how non existence turned to existence still stands.
You also mention you believe in free will which i do too i guess although i can't help but wonder if we really have it, I mean do we really control our thoughts? It's not very clear, I mean we all have thoughts and impulses that we can't control but free will i understand is the choice you make to act on those thoughts or not. However isn't that choice motivated by a thought as well? I mean why do we think we can control one thought and not the other? it's almost as if we are just witnesses to our thoughts and counter-thoughts you may say.
Anyway thanks for the great blog, I always enjoy what you have to say and I'm sorry if my English is not up to par.
bye
Ebert: All is thoughts.
Your English is precise, clear and eloquent. And you use apostrophes, which a surprising number of people, even on this blog, have abandoned. I dont know why.
Fascinating Post Roger.
And as always, Thank You for incorporating such thought provoking videos into your entry.
I, fellow spawn of the Catholic school system, strongly identified with your childhood questioning. And recently, I have been strongly interested in the theories of parallel universes and realities, finding these abstract scientific hypotheses to be very applicable to universal questioning.
Once in class, my logic professor proved the existence of God only with the evidence that it is possible for God to exist.
I never understood his argument and simply dismissed it as faulty reasoning. But after a brief introduction to parallel universes, my professor’s argument checked out for me.
According to the theory, everything that is possible, is true in some unique parallel universe. So by it, our universe may be one where God hides himself until the last minute and then at Armageddon divides the good from the damned. Or God may not exist in this universe. And in another one, he is a giant donut that sits on a throne. This is of course only assuming a theory which is not positively proven, but is nonetheless interesting.
I personally like the sound of Harold Bloom’s “The Religion of Literature.” And though I don’t exactly understand everything he says in that chapter of his book, Genius, If I had to pick a holy canon, mine would include Shakespeare, Emerson, and Emily Bronte.
So I will conclude with one of my favorite poem’s by Miss Bronte.
Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:
To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.
Ebert: The glorious Emily.
You write: "According to the theory, everything that is possible, is true in some unique parallel universe"
How do you prove that God is possible? If so, why would God's power vary from one universe to another? Did he not create them all?
I was like you when I was younger. Constantly thinking about what is god, how could it not have a beginning, etc. Then I just came to the conclusion that it is pointless to actually discuss god in logical terms. If there is an all powerful being out there, isn't it kind of logical to assume that we would never understand it? It would be like ants trying to comprehend the human standing over them getting ready to put his foot down and squash the whole ant colony. We are but ants in this universe. I just say go with the flow and go along for the ride that is life.
By the way Mr. Ebert, there was really no separation between the church and state. The original documentation was purely an establishment clause. It is rather difficult to separate religion and state simply because a lot of our laws are based off of some religious context. If you break it down to the basic idea, our politicians are breaking the separation clause all the time. Both parties use religion as a way to get votes or help pass a certain legislation through congress that they feel is a "morally right thing to do". If they are being paid from tax payer money and talk about god, isn't government technically going into the religious realm?
I remember pelting my Sunday school teacher with questions too--normally, something like "Well who created God then?" "Who created the space where God was?" I was raised Methodist, so I'm at least one example of a Protestant who wrestled with this stuff. Although I'll admit that Protestants don't normally get wrapped up with the legalistic sin questions.
I think the closest thing I've ever had to a religious epiphany came when I was about 14 years old. It was around 1996 and there was all this talk about fossils of bacteria on Mars. I was swimming in Lake Michigan, and imagining how an entire planet's life could evolve just from some simple microbes. Then I looked back onto the Michigan coast and it just kind of hit me, how incredible it was that there were these millions of plants and animals living in a complex ecosystem, all evolved from simple parts.
That lead me to a semester of daydreaming and wondering about the universe, which finally lead me to another train of thought that scared the crap out of me. I remember thinking, I can imagine the world without the United States. In fact, I can imagine the world without humans. I can imagine our universe without earth. But could I imagine the universe without the universe? Could I imagine existence without existence? Just lots and lots of nothing? That's what it must have been at some point, right, before the Big Bang? So how did we go from limitless and unending nothing to the very definite, solid world we have now? What if whatever happened had never happened? Maybe it didn't actually happen! What if I'm just imagining all this. If so, what does that make me?
This line of thought left me sad and unhappy for at least a few days -- I think, at least partly, because I was imagining death. I still don't have a very good answer to the question, or even to an explanation of why it left me so upset.
So I more or less define myself as an agnostic now. I still believe that something -- let's call it God -- is responsible for the fact that we have a concrete universe filled with stuff instead of a giant bunch of nothing.
Like you, I more or less stopped the incessant wondering about this stuff around college. I guess that's the definition of being human: Not only are we the only species (we know of) capable of wrestling with the question of "Why," but we're also a species amazingly good at accepting the reality and world we're given.
Ebert: The scariest thought I've had is: What if there was no cause? What if it all just happened? Our minds appear to be hard-wired in terms of cause and effect, but that may be just us. In the quantum experiment I mentioned about entangled particles, cause and effect seem to be the same.
I understand how your thoughts could lead to depression. There is this consolation: At least we think.
Milan Kundera wrote in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" that the only questions that truly matter are those that can be formulated by a child.
If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading some of the apologetics by G.K. Chesterton, such as "Orthodoxy". He was a brilliant philosopher/theologian, and an equally talented writer.
The more I have personally looked into the rationality of belief in God, the more compelling I have found the case to be. There are many good reasons to believe and many bad reasons not to, yet I find myself in the same position as you were in Catholic school, wondering how I can just have faith for the sake of faith. If God didn't want us to be rational, he would have given us the faculties for it. But if he didn't want us to be dreamers, then he wouldn't have designed us for that either.
God may have separated the light from the dark, and the land from the seas, but for some reason he didn't separate the human intellect from the imagination. At least in contemporary times, I feel as if the question of God is really a question of why he didn't just make us beings that are either all rational or all dreamer.
Perhaps coming to terms with the fact that we are both is what the spiritual quest is all about. The quest for knowledge is, after all, the quest to understand one's self. While I can't say I have come to terms with it personally, I can at least say that I'm thankful to be both at once, to be an imaginative thinker. This aspect of our being is the source of all art, and while the contrast can at times be tortured and conflicted, I can't say that I would have it any other way.
I find it strange that I generally take God's defense in debate and I that often talk about him as if he exists, yet I don't personally have any deep-down, gut feelings of truly believing in him. But then again, perhaps that is what truly believing really means.
Ebert: Where did he say "enough?"
In the Bible where Israel and Judah are allowed to be conquered and deported by neighboring empires - "delivered unto the sword", as it were, by their own God.
I guess I brought this up because you mentioned being alarmed by the God of the Old Testament. God spent whole books declaring His judgments on Israel, one of the many ways His words and actions might make Him appear less than loving, less than just, less than fair, certainly less than secure. I'm not trying to visit your exact opinion of the OT God here, I don't know what you call him. But I really do understand people's caution of Him; on the surface, he appears less than magnanimous.
But still...doesn't that alarm stem from our own definition of love and justice? Aren't those words flexible in meaning even amongst modern nations, much less ancient ones? After the exile, the Israelites accepted the exile as God's justice in the end, as Ezra says. They had a different worldview.
Another common thread in these comments is poor experiences in religious upbringings. So many experiences like the giant Catholic schoolgirls, or a pastor abusing his flock, or cruelty from other teens in a youth group, or gay hate rallies, or some other. How difficult it is to trust a God who's represented like that. It really does tick me off.
The irony is, nobody is angrier over such hypocrisy than Jesus Christ. If he came today, it'd be those pastors that he'd go after, not Congress or the ACLU or anyone that most Christians would expect him to. Look how he treated the Pharisees, or the people using the temple as a cash flow like some big churches do. It's so hard for me to see so many look at Christ as a judge. He didn't come to judge, but to offer grace. He wants us to receive forgiveness and compassion, not just adhere to a system or cause, and He came down to offer that grace permanently and continuously, with Himself as the price.
THAT's the "unlimited" aspect of God that we struggle to comprehend, surely.
Ebert: Now I understand your original comment.
Belief in G-d is as natural, it would seem as belief in the person sitting next to you. Often times the subjects of the existence and power which such a being might possess find themselves being examined on the same table. We who believe in the existence of an all powerful G-d who created the universe believe for varying reasons, reasons which may stem from a particular upbringing or from personal experiences one has throughout their life. Often times the same upbringing and personal experiences of people can shift one's opinion on the very existence of a supreme being and can do as much to nullify one's opinion on such matter. As we all know, the debate has raged on throughout our recorded history as to whether there is a G-d, or if this is simply a bunch of religious nonsense.
To make one thing clear: the belief in G-d does not constitute a religious subtext automatically. Religions have been formed throughout the ages as a means to understanding G-d, or what people believe to be G-d. So what I am about to show you has nothing to do with a religious persuasion, although I myself am a practicing Messianic Jewish person.
G-d must exist. Why? Because you and I exist. This is in fact part of a scientific infallibility (I know, because I have a friend who is a physicist). Let us look at the scientific facts of the matter: Whether you believe in the creation of the world through direct divine influence or the big bang, this simple equation still works. Newton's laws of physics are absolute. Can we agree on that? Any scientist will tell you the these three little laws that every child learns in the third grade, or so, are viewed upon as the building blocks for the laws of the mechanics of the universe and all are governed by these rules. Newton's first law states:
"An object in motion shall remain in motion until an exterior force is moved upon it."
So with this fact in mind, let us look at what will happen if we reverse the process. If an object is at rest, the object with than remain at rest until acted upon by an exterior force. This is your scientific proof of the existence of G-d. In all accounts of the story of the beginning of the universe, it all at one point... begins. Nothing will begin unless it is begun by an exterior force. Do you see it. Whether it was a big bang or the direct words of the Almighty, there is no way that the events of the "Beginning" could or would have been set into motion unless an exterior force is acted upon it.
Ebert: So it would seem.
I found this:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/#WhyTheSomRatThaNot
After many years of being raised Catholic and going to church, I'm proud to say I carry on what I believe to be are proper morals and ethics. I believe in Free Will, and I'm against hypocrisy. And when it comes to general philosophy, when I was told Descartes once said, "I think therefore I am", I realized that line didn't help me. After all, if that is true, and I'm thinking about God, wouldn't that make me God?
I find it interesting to note that all the great religions of the world agree about how we should treat each other, but disagree about how we should treat God. I thus suspect they are right about the former, and wrong about the latter.
I view God not as a personality with parental overtones, but rather as a kind of mathematical abstraction -- the essence/embodiment of all that is harmonious in the universe. If we are kind to and honest with one another, we contribute to God. If we kill, lie, or steal, we attack God.
Some may wish to criticize me for putting all emphasis on our treatment of each other, and none on our treatment of God. Shouldn't the latter take precedence over the former? My response to that is, that the question implies there will be conflicts between the two. Nonsense! If somebody tells you that, in order to treat God well, you must treat your fellow man poorly, that somebody isn't God, and isn't talking for God. They are talking for Somebody Else.
Does God exist? Does the square root of -1 exist? Yes to both. When you define a mathematical abstraction, you don't have to worry about whether it exists. You merely lay out its postulates, and observe what useful, real-world conclusions derive from them. The concept of the square root of -1 produces useful insights into engineering. The concept of God produces useful insights into morality. Yes, Virginia, there is a square root of -1. Yes, Virginia, there is a God.
It takes less faith to believe God made the first chicken than to believe the first egg made itself and survived without a mother to incubate it. How did the first dog or pig survive its first few weeks without a mother to feed from?
Ebert: The question has been solved by a team made up of a geneticist, a philosopher and a chicken farmer. It was the egg.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/05/26/chicken.egg/
A memory came to me of a Sunday School exercise from my childhood, where the teacher asked us to draw what we thought God looked like. Most of the other kids were going in the direction of a bearded old man image, like Michelangelo . . . or The Far Side.
I remember my first instinct was to reach for the yellow crayon and fill the paper with as much yellow as possible. It felt to me like the color of love. I honestly don’t remember what happened after that – what my end product looked like nor what the teacher or anyone else commented on it. But this incident I recall is a touch point for me in my concept of God. I think I learned my Sunday School lesson that day, no matter what my teacher was trying to teach. So when I see the art you provide that “can’t be described in words”, I too am pleased.
I still attend church, in the same denomination that I have been part of my entire life. For I am a mother, and sharing with my children the stories of our faith, and being part of our community on a Sunday morning is a part of raising them I could not easily cease doing.
Yet, most Sundays my own “church” happens not on Sunday morning, but in the afternoon. That is often when I am in a movie theatre, or performing in a community theatre production, or rehearsing for one, or just being in the audience. This is my real congregation. Whether it’s performing in a light-weight comedy or a complex Sondheim musical, I always reach some new level of awareness of the human condition. This I know for sure: God is there for me – in the art, the connection, the elevation.
My children accompany me to both “churches”, and despite hints from my parents that I should encourage them to be baptized as soon as possible, I would not feel honest in nudging them to be “born again”. I see their minds growing, their understanding of God evolving. My 15-year-old daughter read this blog entry, and we talked about it with wonder and awe. It was our Sunday School today. Thank you.
Ebert: If I'd been your teacher, I would have told the class: "Susan's drawing is the best. Who can tell me why?"
The erroneous notion that atheism requires faith in the non-existence of God (and is therefore itself religious) is nicely summarized by this statement:
"If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby."
It does make life more interesting, doesn't it, when it's a long journey of answering the big questions. Thank you for sharing this aspect of your journey so well.
You nailed it especially when you said this: "I believe a worthy church must grow through attraction, not promotion." I belive that's what my church does, but maybe we all feel that way.
Also, I remember - as you shared - riding my bicycle all through town as I was growing up. My wife, who grew up in the same town at the same time, cringes at that thought. It unfortunately isn't the word that my boys are growing up in. Stranger Danger - what an awful thing to have to teach your kids.
One more thought:
I've spent hours and hours in churches all over the world. I sit in them not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe. I am aware of the generations there before me. The reassurance of tradition.
I think that's one of the things that makes humans unique (special?) on this planet - our capacity to be awed by the deep thoughts about what exists out there. It is our soul - although I know that you're not admitting to one here - that makes us uniquely connected to the possibility of the divine.
And it's the tradition - again, uniquely human - that connects us to our ancestors. It's the testimony of those that came before us as to what is true. That's how I see it. I didn't always appreciate tradition, but do now and more so as I grow older.
Great post.
The teachings of Jesus would have been as useful whether or not he was the son of God.
Lewis is wrong in that a good teaching is a good teaching. Typical CS Lewis sophistry on that one. But as for JC's teachings, those who claim he was a great ethicist tend to not take the teachings whole, or the behavior whole. And this is a distortion. They also ignore the tone and context of the teachings - and, finally, and maybe most importantly, they ignore that the best teachings (ie, the Golden Rule) had been taught by pretty much every religious or philosophical figure worth his salt, often in a much cleaner context and with much less negative baggage. It's been awhile but I think wikipedia has a Golden Rule entry featuring versions of the teaching from across the religious and philosophical spectrum.
As a sidebar - here is one small item that I found thrilling in your excellent post:
At a midnight mass on Christmas Eve at the village church in Tring in the Chilterns, I felt unalloyed elevation.
The Chilterns? I had no idea where in the world the Chilterns might be. That's always a thrilling thought - there's more to learn about our little planet! Off to Google I went. Now I know. I'll probably never get there, but I did for one brief moment through Roger Ebert's recollection of the place. Thank you for that.
Ebert: The English countryside is one of the great glories of the planet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfyfxhlxzQM
Perhaps an hour's drive from Heathrow.
Dear Roger,
It's easy to imagine our distant nomadic relatives crouched around a campfire 10,000 years ago asking the same questions.
Since then, there may have arisen at least 10,000 distinct cultures, almost all of which are no more: 10,000 languages, 10,000 cosmologies, 10,000 gestures of the human imagination. Each group possessed their own unique prism through which they viewed the world, of how they came to be, of how they should interact with the earth, and notions as to the unseen powers that ruled their earthly (and non earthly) existence. Ours is but one (albeit hugely successful, at least up until now).
Allow me to conclude with a quote by Montaigne: "No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, however much opposed to my own... The savages who roast and eat the bodies of their dead do not scandalize me so much as those who persecute the living."
Best wishes,
qdpsteve: I'm an avowed atheist, but I'm in the vein of Santayana, someone who respects it along with other social institutions, although science is the institution I hold in the highest esteem. I would never berate or degrade a person for their religious beliefs, anymore than I would for their tastes in movies (considering some of the movies I like, I'd be on shaky if I did!) I'm friends with people from every conceivable religious background, and many of them not only see no conflict between their faith and science, they're some of the most avowedly pro-science people around. I don't consider myself a humanist; like Stanley Kubrick, I'm too cynical about human nature to be one. I'm more Matt Ridley than Richard Dawkins, if that helps put my views on the matter in further context.
RWA: Just wanted to say thanks for the response, and I respect your beliefs (or the lack thereof) 100%. Of course freedom of religion must also include freedom from religion, if one so chooses. I'm an admittedly non-churched Christian with enormous respect for science in general as well as the scientific method. Plus, why fundamentalists keep trying to challenge the simple fact that faith, religion and God aren't applicable to said method is a mystery to me.
Also, a great blogger friend of mine, biotech journalist Bradley J. Fikes (who writes for this column in San Diego County's North County Times), is also an avowed atheist with views on religion remarkably similar to yours.
And, it's funny you mentioned Kubrick-- my all-time favorite director. I just a few weeks back finally managed to collect everything he's ever done, from The Seafarers to A.I., on DVD. I've become rather cynical about human nature over the years myself, yet I can't (or more accurately, don't particularly care to) abandon my faith. One of the ways I manage to square this away (and yes, I know it's most likely not much more than rationalization) is that, if God exists, he absolutely must have an enormous-- and decidedly "off"-- sense of humor. Just one "proof", IMHO: Why else, for instance, would human sexuality researchers find that males sexually peak at 12, and women at 40? :-)
Many a sleepless night I have lain awake, wondering these same questions. I remember taking a pre-calculus class in high school. Math had always been so easy for me, but when forced to add and subtract a theory that I could not blindly accept, oh, how I struggled. I told my teacher 'but if you keep subtracting real numbers from this so-called infinity, there must be a number in there somewhere.' She gave me a look like I was the crazy one and signed my drop slip.
I took a class in college on the holocaust and there I finally dealt with my disbelief in god. It wasn't so deep as to say how can there be a god when such terrible things happen. Rather, it made me look life and death in the face and, I think, understand it.
One other thought-
I think that for so many the argument isn't really is there or isnt there a god, but is there death or is there everlasting life. How do we get to this conclusion? Is it faith, or is it fear?
Although I love your blog, and found that insightful from an atheist's standpoint. But I don't have a question on any deeper level (you provided the deep questions, much in vain of Socrates's ravings: the questions are more important than the answers) than your source for the amazing "fractal explosion" images you use.
Ebert: Not fractals this time but Strange Attractors. You can generate your own with Chaoscope:
http://www.chaoscope.org/index.htm
For Windows only, blast!
does anyone else find it eerie that 2 readers of this blog named seth both had encounters with faith healers?
Excellent article, Roger! Coming from a similar upbringing in Chicago, I love hearing stories about your childhood in Urbana and your ability to identify with others like Scorcese, who've had comparable experiences.
Although still a practicing Catholic in my early 30s, I have similar frustrations with the definitions and laws of orthodox religion that you seemed to have expressed. It seems to me that orthodoxy is for those who aren't able to get there on their own. Unfortunately, these are often the people with the loudest voices and most sway over their "flock" or society at large. They seem to think that their strict way is the only way to get there and, thus, rule out other ways of reconnecting with the One. The mystics have always been on the fringe, and perhaps that's the way it should be, for if it were popular it wouldn't be very "mystical".
I'm a big Merton fan and recommend him if you haven't read much already. In his later years, as his contact with other mystics and monks was increasing, he would say that he had more in common with people like Thich Nat Hanh and well-established Sufis than any other monk at Gethsemani (let alone members of the UCCB - my assumption). I'm pretty sure there are plenty of Catholics, "lapsed" or not, that would identify more with you than the Church establishment these days.
"God does not play dice." - Einstein.
I first came upon this quote when I was a lot younger. My father used to repeat it all the time, like a philosophical maxim that everything adheres to (that, and the whole "Matter is neither created nor destroyed," as my father used to teach physics and imparted such knowledge to me as a young girl). My parents have been fairly lax about religion around our house. They let me believe whatever I want (being deists themselves), which caused me to have a lot of questions.
My seventh grade Geometry teacher used to always tell us that about math, you could never ask "What if...?" questions.
I raised my hand and said, "Hypothetically...", and to this day that word starts a lot of my questions involving religion. Hypothetically, what if I was born before Christianity ever existed? Do I go to Hell or not?
Perhaps I'm too much of a rationalist. I dislike math class, but mathematics itself is beautiful. It's all logical and laid out before you. 2+2 is always four, unless we're talking to the inhabitants of Animal Farm or 1984. With religion, it's not like that. There is faith, certainly, but where is the scientifically viable proof that the world was created in seven days and we are all descended from a single pair of human beings (inbreeding, anyone?). I am not saying that to demean anyone else's religion, but those are the questions I used to ask -- much the similar ones as yours. What came before God? And before that? And that? Etc., etc., ad nauseum. Much of my world has to be logical for me to believe in it. I've been told I think 'weird', and that I'm 'anal retentive', and of course nobody in the eighth grade with me really wants to talk about life and its purpose in terms of Bertrand Russell and Occam's Razor. So I had to ponder myself.
When I was eleven, I grew interested in Wicca, but after one of my friends took it up just to be rebellious, disinterest and cynicism set in. I thought about Buddhism, but I don't really believe in reincarnation. If asked, I tell my fellow age peers I'm an atheist, because it's easier for them to understand than to have me go on an hour-long ramble about the uncertainties of life.
After I decided that I'd take a rain check on the idea of a higher power, I recently turned my sights to the oft-evasive idea of The Meaning of Life. This disturbed and frightened me even more than the idea that the world was a set of coincidences that somehow clicked together. I realize why people are religious and believe in [Insert Higher Power(s) Here]. To me, religion provides a purpose, an anchor in an uncertain world. Without something to believe in, whether of a higher nature or not, you are a raft set adrift in the endless expanse of sea that is neither your friend nor your enemy. If life doesn't mean anything, I once wondered, why are we alive? If existence is so ephemeral that tomorrow I could be killed in a car crash and have no impact on the world, if we are all ants in a jar, why live? Why laugh or love or work or do anything at all? You think about the How, and think about the Why.
I read somewhere that sadness and wishing there was an answer for that question was called 'existential depression'. My seventh grade science teacher said he lived for his friends, and my friends who believe in a certain religion or in the afterlife think that after death there is at least something else, whether Hell, Summerland, or even the Elysian Fields. I have none of those beliefs. This is frustrating. The afterlife cannot be scientifically tested. Nobody comes back from it to tell us of it. For all I know, The Afterlife could be populated by chickens who think KFC is the Devil. I don't know.
Somewhere around eight years old, I think I decided to make my mark on the world by affecting the world in a positive way. That is mostly what fuels me these days, but I don't think it's the Meaning of Life. It may be the meaning of my life; that is, to do "something". Whether it's uniting quantum and classical physics, writing a famous novel, becoming a famous pianist or developmental psychologist (and those are all dreams I have harbored). I looked for something to fill the void, which would be metaphorical immortality.
I think that religion also fills this void, like I said above. It gives someone a purpose -- there is something after life, there is a meaning, there is something in life you ought to be working towards -- and I think people, including myself, like the idea. An uncertain world where everything is an accident sounds too impersonal. Why couldn't there be a protector-figure, or at least some higher power that loves you and watches out for you? Who possesses none of the fallibility of your fellow human beings, who is never wrong and never angry and all-forgiving, omnipotent and omnipresent? It takes away the sting of losing a loved one, that something is 'meant to be', or that they're in 'a better place'. It's better than living in Wonderland, after all.
What I guess I mean, is that I think religion seeks for the Whys and Hows about life and answers them for you. I'm really happy for the people who ascribe to a religion and believe in a higher power. That's great.
However, for people like me who would like something to be clearly spelled out in math and science, then we'll just have to go looking ourselves. I guess.
Thanks for your post, sir. It provided a sounding board for my own thoughts. I suppose now I'll have to go and read some more of The Brothers Karamazov now. XD.
- A kid.
Ebert: I've hinted this before, and now I'll say it: Kid, if you write like this in eighth grade, you've got some great prose in you. I would recommend a book about your current life written now, which would be infinitely more interesting than anybody's moldy memoirs of the eighth grade. No special striving for effect, no stylistic straining, just your clear, perceptive views, straight from the shoulder. But you know that.
If I could have written like that in eighth grade, no telling what I might have done, if I had respected my gift. Don't let anyone ever budge you from your destiny.
Someday, when you are old and beloved, say there was this guy with a blog who foretold this way back when.
By the way, I loved Bertrand Russell, but got to him a little later than you have.
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."
Ebert: "...everything that there is may be actually or theoretically linked. All is one. Sun, moon, stars, rain, you, me, everything."
I think this was the subject of Kieslowski's three colors trilogy; it certainly was for "Blue" where the vagabond on the street was playing the theme to Juliet Binoche's dead composer husband's music that hadn't been heard by anyone except for her and she asks him: "how do you know that song?" and he says he just made it up. Also, on the extras to that movie, Juliette Binoche talks about a real "Kieslowskian" moment happened when she was at his funeral. She was there and she said: "Give me some kind of sign that you're okay, please!" and right on cue car horns went nuts in the street behind her near the funeral.
Ebert: Connectedness is his great subject.
I am a big fan of the late great George Carlin's philosophies and his use of logic to deconstruct faith in general. He too, never described himself as an agnostic or an atheist. However he did say he worshipped the sun and prayed to Joe Pesci.
I am not familiar with quantum physics, but I once heard Carlin say something related to physics when he said that he believed we are all part of "the big electron. It doesn't think. It doesn't judge. It just is."
Would you agree with his views?
Ebert: About Joe Pesci, certainly. About the Big Electron, he may be describing what I meant by "One." I don't believe in it. I think it's a possibility.
Ebert: I've worked over the Gospels thoroughly, and am pretty familiar with the epistles. I've dipped into the Old Testament but often find it alarming. The prose of the King James Version is as influential as Shakespeare, and to be raised on it is a gift. Modern translations are pale and sad.
My mother-in-law is quite religious, and each Christmas Eve we go to mass at 7:00PM, come home, someone reads from the bible - gospel of Mark, if memory serves, concerning the birth of Jesus - and then we open presents.
One year, we couldn't find the bible we usually use, so we had one other, written in a "more modern" vernacular. Oh my god it was sad. It was almost the linguistic equivalent of
Romeo: Juliet, our families won't let us get it on.
Juliet: Sucks to be us.
Romeo: Word.
Bill, Bill, Bill . . .
What do you suppose existential dread looked like two thousand years ago? I'm not sure you're aware of this but it would be a while before Freud opened his doors for business. I'm thinking that it must have looked like rabid madness. Remember, demons and angels were part of the collective consciousness at that time. People believed in these things. They weren't wrong really, that's just the stage of development they were at. And of course there are no such things as demons, but you're projecting twenty-first century rationality backwards onto a point in time that had no access to it, and wouldn't for some time. And Bill, please, lay off the Roman history for a bit. It seems to have given you a proctologist's view of Jesus.
First of all, I love what you write and am continuously amazed at how thoroughly you think things through. I admire your work greatly.
I guess I would fall under the wide category of “Christian”. I believe there’s a God, an infinite God, because try as I will I can’t wrap my mind around hundreds of galaxies, billions of stars, and only one planet with life. I can’t bring myself to conclude that there isn’t any purpose to us being here, that we’re just figures, pointless puppets in a world of chaos who live and then die. So even though I don’t understand him or what he is, I believe there’s a God.
But though I’ve come to this conclusion doesn’t mean I’m finished. I’m fifteen years old, and I’ve only begun searching for answers to my questions. So many Christians take the Bible and freeze the words in it, believing there’s only one way to believe and act and do things. These Christians seem so...fake. Jesus simply said, “Follow me.” and I’m trying to figure out what exactly that means.
At the moment I’m trying to live in a hard world that doesn’t offer many solutions, but instead is continuously posing more questions. And although I’ll search for answers, I doubt I’ll ever truly find them until I die.
I wish you the best as you continue to search for your own answers to your questions, and though you wrote you’re more content with questions than answers, I hope they’re answered.
Ebert: It seems to me you're on the right path.
And you use apostrophes, which a surprising number of people, even on this blog, have abandoned. I dont know why.
I'm not having the problem here but on some blogs and bulletin boards Firefox has the annoying habit of making Quick Find appear at the bottom of the screen whenever you type in the apostrophe ', so I wouldn't be surprised if some Firefox users have given up on apostrophes altogether. Still, I've taught composition classes, and occasionally I would be handed back teeth-grating papers where its and it's and theirs and there's were all mixed up. A friend of mine was completely aghast when I told him this, and he has severe dyslexia! I'm reminded of your review of The Opposite Sex...and How to Live With Them where you mentioned that the nun who taught you English would have rapped the screenwriter's knuckles raw over the horrendous grammar in the title.
We do indeed seem to be hard-wired for the interpretation of casuality; it may be one of those cognitive faculties which enable us to do science. Related to this, we also seem to be hardwired to infer design in pattern recogntion and interpretation. The lesson, of course, is that so-called common sense is never enough in the process of scientific investigation. In fact, the history of science consists of the boulversement of long held "common sense" assumptions.
Ebert: And don't get me started on the "greengrocer's apostrophe."
An atheist doesn't believe in God because he's too smart. An agnostic doesn't believe in God because he's too dumb.
"I believe mankind in general evidently has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body."
Deeper, I think they have a need to quell their fear of the unknown, and choosing to believe is just one way to do so.
"Does anyone else find it eerie that 2 readers of this blog named seth both had encounters with faith healers?"
It's definitely interesting. I'd like to hear your story. They think I'm mistaken at best, but I understand. There's no way of knowing whether I'm being honest or not. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Point taken.
I do defend, however, that what I experienced was authentic. It wasn't that I was 12 and was mistaken. Also, my experience happened suddenly, and I went to the doctor the very next day. This was not a gradual thing that happened. It was not psychosomatic.
Thanks for your thoughts, though, Mr. Ebert. I really appreciate the time you take to answer these comments. I wonder how you keep this up and still get anything else done.
Ebert wrote: I don't subscribe to astrology, but I am indeed a typical Gemini. :)
Exactly. Why is that so difficult for folks to grasp? :)
Brad Darr wrote on April 19, 2009 10:29 AM -
"If I say I don't believe God exists, that doesn't mean I believe God doesn't exist. Nor does it mean I don't know, which implies that I could know." - quote Ebert
Mr. Ebert, after making such a fudgey statement as that I think you are qualified to run for a political office, perhaps even president of the U.S.A.
Roger replied: "What part of it is not crystal clear?"
Nobody's asked, but that's never stopped me before, so...
Once upon a time, there was a moving target with a public point of view. Like a chess piece on a board able to step wherever it liked, it always had one foot here and one foot there. Labels, boxes, rocks and arrows too, found him most exasperating - especially after "castling" his King to safety with some help from the Rook.
"Hold still!" they'd cry, "I can't be right unless you're not!" And it was very important to some that others see them as such, as points are scored in the observation of it; else they'd be content to be right in their own minds. :)
And the moving target laughed "Ha ha!" and skipped away.
Meanwhile and overhead, a balloon hovered. Where, from its particular vantage spot it could see the moving target stepping to and fro "tra, la-la la la..." The balloon never knew where the moving target would end up next - or how long it was going to stay there, before moving yet again! It could only see that it was ABLE to move "as it liked".
The balloon took out a pencil then and wrote "paradox" on a piece of paper and origamied it into an airplane and tossed it! The plane swooped and swerved and dipped and dived until finally landing at the feet of the moving target, which reached down to pick up it up and read what was written upon it.
It then took out a pencil of its own and wrote something too, before re-launching said paper back into the air - where the pointy tip of it accidentally pierced the balloon and sent it spiraling down to earth in a big WOOOSH!
SPLAT.
The balloon heaved a gasp as it flopped over like a top heavy toy made of rubber, catching sight as it did so, of the paper airplane nearby and the words the moving target had written upon it:
"Maybe. Maybe not."
Which struck the balloon then as so silly, it started to laugh! And laugh and laugh and then suddenly the balloon began to fill up with air again and get bigger and bigger until finally, it was floating once more above the board and gazing at the view; smile.
And so again, what's so difficult to understand about that?
The dude is Jell-O. Okay? He's J-E-L-L-O. A hard liquid. A flexible solid. Got a pin? Several? Doesn't matter...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1fbz7KhV8U&feature;=related
Shoot it with a BB gun pellet? I mock you....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daCssxMN7B8&feature;=related
How about a fork?! Well, yeah - but only if the Jell-o is stupid and clearly, some know when to move...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1fbz7KhV8U&feature;=related
At least that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. Trying to "best" Roger Ebert is like nailing jello to a tree. You can try, but it's more fun to just work with it, dudes. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPJ33b7InIM
Grin.
Ebert: As a Gemini, I'm of two minds about that.
When it comes to the big question of "What happens after we die?" the most intelligent answer I've ever heard is "I don't know, I've never died." One thing I've noticed over the years is that most(what we'll call for point's sake) non-believers are former Catholics (like myself), although they don't always have the respect for religion that you have and that I try to have when it's practiced sensibly (i.e. sans ignorance/bigotry). As far as my beliefs are concerned, the universe exists, therefore something caused it to exist. I don't pretend to know anything more, and I'm comfortable not knowing.
"All is one. Sun, moon, stars, rain, you, me, everything. All one."
I believe the great John Lennon had something to say on this subject:
"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."
If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
How fascinating an article this is! Fascinating due to its intrinsic marriage of the philosophical and the practical. Fascinating for its ability to pass the litmus test of 'take a random sentence and judge the entire article upon it'. Paragraph 5, sentence 2, randomly chosen, ' Of course they were fervently anti-communist. '. ha! Historical. Ironic. Warm.
It has been my experience that even through becoming a 'lapsed' Catholic, all Catholics remain Catholic, I note that my enjoyment of your writings have everything to do with your Catholic background. I have noticed a basic warmth and beauty to the writings of those who fall into this category. Walker Percy (especially), Flannery O 'Conner (especially as well?) Martin Scorsese (okay, ALL especially), Aquinas (not especially), and yourself. Though seem to not by any means subscribe to the Catholic religion you certainly are a part of this literary legacy...
That was mostly just an aside, yet I'm not quite sure how to react to your article as a whole. I am fascinated by it because I am intensely interested, no actually obsessed, with two major areas of life: Film and Religion. My life at this moment is a striving to make my great consumption of film art beyond a mere 'hobby'. Oh how I would give it all up right now if that is all it is. Yet, my only formal training is in the field of theology. I also love this arena. Allow me for a moment to suggest to you some theological thinkers you may appreciate: Soren Kierkegaard (so ahead of his time in his ability to be so strivingly obscure and lofty, while committed so deeply to every day experience), Karl Barth (at times strikingly orthodox, at times strikingly unique, but possibly one of the greatest "go to" persons for anyone interested in understanding where we are at theology at this moment in history) Simone Weil (for some reason I believe you would especially enjoy the way this woman thinks), (Rowan Williams (the Rich Anglican theologian/archbishop of Canterbury who has some fascinating contributions in the arena of creationism/evolution, as well as the religious pluralism arena), Walker Percy (of course there's 'the Moviegoer', a film that combines intensely the fields of existentialism, Catholicism and the way movies bring our lives meaning). I find myself deeply indebted to what film and theology add to my experience of life. I suppose my 'response' (though please, do not interpret my statement as proselytizing in any fashion) to your thoughts are that I deeply empathize with the need to truly and constantly philosophize and meet science with intellectual honesty and respect. Yet, I do find myself in a sea of inanswerable questions and must bow before God because I believe him to present me with a reality that dwarfs and humbles myself. I have been thinking much upon my finite-ness as of late. As one who has absolutely no item to set myself apart, I am impressed with the deep sea of being that surrounds us. As your posts on the infinitely expanding sea of knowledge and statements have brought forward, I do feel as if we must reckon with our smallness in the universe. I suppose I envy your place as one who is read and pondered by many people who give your statements deep consideration, yet I admit that none of us is immune from the realization that we are merely a dot in the sea of people and thought and sensation and memory. This sea of existence overwhelms me. I therefore take comfort and find a remarkable degree of intellectual resonance with the idea that there is a God who inhabits all of this sea of being and is present both universally and particularly. Jesus Christ is God and man. Is there any statement more profound or mysterious as this? Jesus Christ is both transcendent, always present, all powerful, all knowing, he fully encompasses the entirety of the world wide web and all else that is, and he is also himself a singular POINT. A dot in the sea of being. Yes, it is true that we must reckon with the fact that his singular life had profound implications in the sea of cause and influence, yet it is infinitely important to reckon with the fact of his singularness. The gospels make such a point of this. There were moment of profound singularness. And yes, I do enjoy "The Last Temptation of Christ". Of course I do. Scorsese is able to wrestle with the difficulty of this fact. This profound reality. Christ as God and man. Universal and distinct. This is the supreme fact of everything.
So in other words, you acknowledge that you don't really know whether or not there is a God and you aren't willing to spend years comprehending the mathematical counter-arguments.
Thank-you! When I read some of your articles in the past, I thought you were completely without doubt like so many other christians, but maybe not... You know, your article has made me second-guess that true doubtlessness even exists. There may be hope for humanity yet!
Loved reading this and I agree, CGI animation is a distraction!
Ebert: I am consoled by my opinion that mathematics has nothing to do with proof of the existence or non-existence of God.
Reply to: A kid: My parents have been fairly lax about religion around our house. They let me believe whatever I want... I thought about Buddhism, but I don't really believe in reincarnation. If asked, I tell my fellow age peers I'm an atheist, because it's easier for them to understand than to have me go on an hour-long ramble about the uncertainties of life.
Kid, never apologize for coming up with the Right Answer.
Being an atheist... is the right answer.
In the script for "Milk" by Dustin Lance Black, Harvey says:
MILK: We must destroy the myths once and for all, shatter them. We must continue to speak out... and most importantly, most importantly, every gay person must come out.
(cheers)
Tonight... Tonight it is clear that everyone out there does know one of us. And now that they do, they see we are not sick... they can feel we are not wrong... and they know we should have a place in this great country and in this world... A message of hope has been to sent to all the young people out there... to all those afraid of this wave of hate...
A similar "wave of hate" in this country is aimed at atheists. If 70% of Americans are Christian. that's over 210 million. There are so many Christians whose income depends on the religion. Benny Hinn. Jimmy Swaggert. Trinity Broadcasting Network. Faith healers. The faculty of Biola University, aka the bible institute of Los Angeles..
Why? Because Christians are trying to sell you something, and all they have is "belief.' No facts. Not even a good story.
From a Bible preface: There is more manuscript support for the New Testament than any other body of ancient literature. Over five thousand Greek, eight thousand Latin...
WHY are there so many ancient NT copies? Here's a clue:
Acts 4:31 When they prayed, all were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness. Neither did anyone say any of the things he possessed was his own, for they had all things in common. All who possessed land or houses sold them, and gave the proceeds to the apostles...
In order to keep the Church growing, they had to constantly recruit new members. The Gospel was a Recruitment tool. If you read the Gospel and joined the Church, you had to sell any houses or land that you owned and give the money to the apostles. You don't have to be ashamed that you've figured out what that was.
The Church of Jesus Christ was a scam.
Reply to: Why couldn't there be a protector-figure, or at least some higher power that loves you and watches out for you? Who possesses none of the fallibility of your fellow human beings, who is never wrong and never angry and all-forgiving, omnipotent and omnipresent?
The Romans claimed that Julius Caesar was transformed into such a higher power after his death. That he had ascended to the realm of the gods... and the early Church fought that belief tooth and nail. They were ready to make up any LIE to keep Jews from joining the Emperor cult.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/oral.html
What does Oral Tradition mean?
LINK: Jesus died around 30. For 40 years, there's no written gospel of his life, until after the revolt. Now what happens as an oral tradition arises about an historical person is that, strangely enough, the first oral tradition is
*** not an attempt to remember exactly what happened, ***
but is rather a return into the symbols of the tradition that could explain an event. Therefore, one has to imagine that
legend and myth and hymn and prayer are the vehicles in which oral traditions develop.
When Christian apostles traveled, they carried records of miracles they had done at other places and miracles of Jesus they had written down in order to be used as accreditation as they came to a new community.... (end)
Right now, "Chuck Norris jokes" are going through a period of Oral Tradition. People are free to use their imagination to invent new Chuck Norris jokes. There's no "authorized canon" of Chuck Norris jokes, so the stories change. Just like the legend of Jesus changed and grew - and there weren't any Jesus movies to hold them back.
The Gospel of Mark... is a long "Chuck Norris joke" that was written down, and used as a recruitment tool for a cult. A cult that depended on recruiting new members for enough income to support and feed the entire community.
I'm proud to be an Atheist. I like the label. I don't think anyone should use it as a substitute for how they really feel.
God isn't there. If you can figure that out for yourself, without needing any authority to back you up, you pass the test. It's the only test that matters.
I'm sorry that the two Jewish students had such an unfortunate encounter with the giant Catholic schoolgirls. Our own nuns would never have tolerated violence, hatred or prejudice toward anyone. They made it quite clear that individual Jewish people did not share collective guilt for killing Jesus, no matter what accusations you might hear made by Christians, even if they be clergy. We Catholic students were cool with the Jewish kids in our Northwest side neighborhood. Had a lot of fun with them in boy scouts. They were far more skilled at getting girls than us. Probably because they weren't burdened with guilt about sex. Lucky bastards. LOL.
Our nuns were also very outspoken in defense of black folks and civil rights. This was 10-15 years before the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the early 60's. Many of them would work in missions down south, taking care of black orphans. Those attitudes left a big impression on me, because you all know that racial prejudice is in the water in Chicago. Those who have fought against it over the years are to be honored.
The priests and nuns also greatly influenced my notions of social justice, the labor movement, and ideas like the living wage. It was almost like deja vu when the father character in Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" extolls the virtues of Pope Leo XIII to his sons as the greatest friend of the working man. I well remember being taught in the 1950's of his encyclicals on social justice which were written in the 1890's. The Catholic Church actually represented the spirit of the New Deal long before FDR was elected to any political office in America. Alas, like Democrats and Republicans, Northerners and Southerners, and most everyone in America, it seems to have reversed polarity in recent decades and now sides with conservatives on most matters.
Just one more observation for this entry. I think it's wonderful that you are giving praise and encouragement to "A Kid" (and probably many other young people) on this board, Roger. I have usually done the same when it seemed the obvious thing to do on other blogs. They will be here and influencing society long after we are gone. Maybe they can make a difference for the better because of one simple thing you or I said. Like the nuns so many years ago.
Funny this article came to me at this time. I have been struggling with God and belief. Right now, at this moment I say on shaky ground that I don't believe in God. But I also have been attending an Evangelical Christian church for the past couples years, feeling "unalloyed elevation" while the band plays worship music. (I thought I was communing with God, until I read Emily Yoffe's Slate article. That's what it was? That's it? It was a bit of a letdown, I'll admit)
I was raised Catholic but did not have a very philosophical mind in Grade Two unlike yourself. Since attending the E.C church I have been struggling with the question "How can you know God?" The people I attend church with, my friends, believe it is possible to know God. They claim God speaks to them. I have concluded it is not possible to know God. God must be unknowable. How can we know the creator of the universe?
I sometimes think my philosophy about life is found in the words of Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology which I took in my Grade 12 English class (at a public high school, taught by a Catholic teacher), "No one knows what is evil/who knows not what is good/And no one knows what is true/who knows not what is false.