Debating Christianity – a Panel Discussion

So, I’ve had this video bookmarked for about 6 months now with the desire to watch it, but since it runs almost 2 hours long, I just have not been able to do so. The video requires attention, thought and focus all of which I lack most of the time

In a debate, sponsored by Christianity Today, but welcoming an intellectual that calls himself an Atheist, they tackle the question of whether the Christian God exists and why does it matter.

One of the members of the panel, Christopher Hitchens (the Atheist), started off with a bang talking about how the mythical life of Jesus is not unique in our world as often our most highly regarded figures have strange births the might require something magical of their mother like not having sexual intercourse or the act of rising from the dead just to die again is not unique as well. He also stated the idea that the Catholic Pope can claim that while AIDS is bad, condoms are worse as a reason why this debate and belief can matter in this world.

The first 20 mins or so is basically the five panel members giving a statement about their position and that is followed by about 30 mins of debate that touches on many topics, morality, god, etc. And, ended with some comparison to a scientist going against his oath as a doctor and a suicide bomber justifying his action from the Qur’an.

The second segment starts off with a question posed to Hitchens in which he answered that most of the things that could prove the existence of God would be something that he would assume it is him that is in a delusional state. For example, if he started hearing voices in his head or if he saw what he thought was a resurrection that he would first assume that it was something wrong with him. The segment continued with some questions from the audience posed at the panel. At one point, Hitchens reaches the conclusion that a Christian with the belief that everyone must follow their God or you will burn in hell is no different than a fascist.

Here are some (but not all) of the questions that were posed during the debate:

Can humanity live with the idea that we may not exist for a reason or created out of chance? Does intellectual life provide the proof of God? With God, moral values provide a good basis for life, would humanity still be moral without an existence of God? Is the existence of God dependent on a relationship with him? Can we assume that all adherents of the religion are all living the moral life of that religion and therefore are all examples of that faith? Is Christianity or religion something for the weak, the unintelligent? Is religion in which God knows all a religion that sponsors complete anti-freedom? What about people who are given a bad hand – is the belief in a God a good thing because it gives you hope to overcome the hand you have been dealt? Justice in the afterlife make the suffering in this world okay? Disbelief in something just because you don’t like it is not a way to live? Morality for our own humanity enough for humanity to do good? God weeps and grieves for the wrongs that we commit, but does not interfere because at what point would he have to stop? Does a father do this children well by always stepping in to stop bad behavior? Examples of the animal kingdom show that morality, love & evil exist without the belief in a God? Why does justice in the afterlife make you want to care about the suffering of humanity when all wicked and non-wicked deeds are rewarded or punished after life?

I love reading books or watching or listening to these types of debates because it’s so thought provoking. I really think that anyone who follows a faith or doesn’t believe in a divine should also engage themselves in this way as it only strengthens your own stance because you are forced to examine your own beliefs. For if you question your faith and return back to it, your faith is much stronger because of it and you have more knowledge within. I think both sides presented some good arguments in this debate & included some humor while they were going.

If you are interested in watching the actual debate, here is the full video. I highly recommend it, but do allow yourself the time to watch it or you will miss some of the very highly thought provoking debate.

Thanks to you, I am still lost, but it is good.

During the day today, I came to the realization that I have enjoyed being single. Sure, I miss having the companionship, the physical touch. I miss having someone who shares my home, my life & my bed. I miss making love, having sex & enjoying the psychology of becoming one with someone.

But, what I have been learning is enough to make me be able to still enjoy life, despite missing some of life’s joys and pleasures. As much as I sometimes crave those aspects of life, I know they are not the only aspect of life that I should enjoy.

After being married young to my high school sweetheart, I did not get a lot of time to date and learn who I was & who I was looking for in a life partner. I thought I had already found that. But, since that was not meant to be, I am now to a point where life has allowed me a chance to study myself, to figure out who I am as a being. To study the thoughts of others to learn who I am looking for. To examine my life, my faith, my career to see if I’m on the right path to what I am desiring from this life.

I have learned a ton in the last 2 years, but much of my learning has happened over the past 6 months thanks to this blog & to finding such wonderful people on twitter. Some of the nicest people I have ever met are on there & they have shown me things within myself that most do not even know. I can be myself and people seem to enjoy my company.

My biggest challenge now is that I have reached a point where I must figure something out. As I have come to realize that there is a conflict between myself, the typical personality I am attracted to & my desire to maintain my personal faith. Since my faith is rooted in the idea that I have a strong belief that no other man can tell me who my god is or how to worship & give thanks to her. That no book has all of the answers to life’s challenges, even if they give a basis of morality that I already follow. I see the world through my own eyes & see what the world provides & I live a moral life. I do not drink, I avoid most meat products & I save my sexuality for the safety of love that is driving towards marriage. I believe I am a very moral being & do not do things I should not do for the safety of my body, my mind & my family. Do I challenge my own faith? I do not know.

Or can I find the same type of person within this world that does not reside within a faith I am not in so that my faith and theirs does not create a problem within our hearts, minds & families.

Maybe I just need to pose a question within myself. What plays larger in my life – my intellectual mind or my spiritual mind? A hard question indeed because they both have shaped my view of the world. I’m more inclined to let my intellectual mind take over, allow it to explore the faith but also know that it is not me who is unwilling to accept those outside of my faith as potential love. So, it is not me who needs to decide what is ultimately more important.

I know my love is out there, but where I do not know. My life is at another cross road within me & it is both exciting, confusing and fearful all at the same time, but it is much better than being depressed, alone & unhappy.

This is the lost I would rather be.

But I do shake my fist at all of those who have led me to this point and still say I love you all. Thank you for being my friend, for showing me who I am, for listening when I reach out. Thank you for your willingness to accept me. The world is a large place, but within my heart, you are all there by me as I walk out the door every morning.

I ::heart:: every single one of you. You bring a smile to my face when there are tears & a tear to my face when there is joy. And, I can say right now, my life is on the right path, I just don’t know where that path leads me, but at this moment, I am okay with that.

When pain threatens to overcome

One of the questions in my poll a few posts back was “Have you ever thought of suicide?”

The answer is yes. There have been two moments in my life that I have been within moments of making the choice. The first one seems so lame now that I look back on it as I had not known pain, yet I thought I was in pain so unbareable that I suicide was the only way to release it. It wasn’t until the second time around did I realize just what pain felt like.

Both of these incidents happened in moments of my life when I felt very lost, alone & unsure of how to survive on my own. But, both of these events, I believe were changing moments in my life that has led me down a path of greater understanding & happiness. Had things gotten worse in those moments, I may not be discussing it now as thought it was in the past.

It became known to me during both of these that suicide is only one answer to the question, but only one. While it is still the choice of the individual & is not to be denied to them, it must be known to them that their choice is the ultimate one without being able to go back. It may seem like the answer, but it does not have to be.

My first experience happened when I was 15. I had grown up in a fairly good home with both parents being educated, employed and happily married. But, things fell appart a little in the family life at that time. My mother would reveal that she was pregnant & have her third child (she was 38 years old at the time). My younger brother would have his first major panic attack during school & the next year I witnessed things that I wished I would never see. I was even put into a situation where I was asked to hold my brother so my father could talk him down from his rage. Anxiety & panic attacks can be very hard to deal with, especially for an 11 year old like he was. So, while my family started to split apart, I found myself feeling more alone. I was having trouble making friends at school & would often find that my “friends” were more interested in getting answers for homework than being my friend. And, of course, I was also in the middle of my teenage years where emotions play with your head & hormones mess with your ability to focus sometimes. While locked up in my room, I had very little to do but think about the pain. It was at that moment that I returned to the God I had been raised on & saw the power of faith and what role it can play in bringing you out of the destructiveness that I had found myself in. Between age 15 & 18, my spiritual self played a big role in who I was. While I would eventually leave the faith I was raised in for my current ideals of god, it was a path that has forever changed me.

The second happened after 6 months of torment in a failed marriage that was not even a year old. My emotions had been played so long as I competed with the “other”. The stress & emotional low that came with the idea that my 7 year relationship, the person I cared the most about & loved so much that I would die for them, only to find out they are willing to say they love someone else, but they love me as well. To see the notes exchanged between them, to know they work together & spend time together every day, to feel betrayed & unsure who to trust. This pain is almost unbearable. Seeing the hate from their eyes as they blame you for their unhappiness without any compassion for your own pain. Seeing the person who took your first kiss, your virginity & pledged your life to them for life stare at you as though you are some sort of disease. Hearing them degrade you one minute, then shower you with affection the next only to turn their back on you the moment the “other” comes back into the picture with an email or myspace message. And, the whole time wanting to be supportive to them because you believe they are going through an identity crisis & because you love them you want to be there as they go through their own painful experience.

This pain is greater than I thought I would ever experience. It tears you apart from the inside, slowly, painfully & you can feel every pin as it pushes against the walls of your organs, your heart & tries to break through the skin.

Add on top of the pain, the stress of being in your final semester of graduate work, putting a theatre production together in two weeks, working 20 hour days for that span. Putting together your thesis debate to defend it. And, having your wisdom teeth removed.

Yes, all of this happened between Jan & April of 2007.

A number of things happened that helped me through this. I had some wonderful friends who supported me. I had family who loved me. I had my own intellectual mind that was able to see the signs of pain & I had the strength to call a counselor while in tears & her kindness of talking with me on the phone for 30 mins for free, scheduling me the next day AM to come into the office. During that 30 min call, she suggested I seek additional help from a Psychiatrist as they may want to put me on a med to help me through it. I was able to get myself an appointment that following Monday into a new doctor that had just opened up her private practice after leaving the University’s hospital. (If any of you know Psychiatrists, you know their schedule is never that open..I was lucky).

I also went for a few appointments to the family counseling center at the University. I think I shocked the Graduate student who was my counselor, as I had quite a story. (What I have revealed is not the full story.)

All of that support around me helped me get over the pain enough that I no longer thought suicide was the answer. But, it wasn’t for another year and a half that I would be fully out of that emotion. It would take me moving in with my parents for 2 months, filing for divorce, moving 900 miles away to Alabama for my new job to get me moving. But, it wasn’t until a few months after my divorce was final did I ever feel free enough to break away from that pain. That was a year ago last March. I went off medication in July of last year. I still struggled with highs and lows, but it was no longer completely based on my past, but now about my future & present, so I had moved forward.

What suicide, depression & pain has taught me is that I’m extremely strong, I have the desire, the will and the want to not allow the pain to overtake me. But, most of all, despite having only a few close friends, they are ones that I love with my life. While my relationship life may have forever been hurt as I struggle to trust people, my love of life was not destroyed. I would not let that die within my heart. My heart still longs to be compassionate & I long to love someone greater than myself. For now, that part of my life remains empty, but I know when it’s time, I’ll be ready (I hope). I just hope they are ready to handle what might be within me not only in love, but also in pain. For I know, once I have someone who loves me enough to be willing to comfort my heart, the darkness that hides within me will need some light but the switch is nowhere to be found.

Andrew Newberg on Religion

“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good. … Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country.” — Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, 1993.

Since I was traveling this past week, I was able to get my hands on the USA Today on Monday (I don’t normally read this newspaper). Inside the front section, Andrew Newberg had an Op-Ed that discussed the role of religion and how it can affect the brain. He began relating a story of an experience with an ex-girlfriend and her family when he was in high school. Her parents were born-again Christians who were “pleasant to me, but they made it quite clear that in their view I had deeply sinned by not turning to Jesus. Oh, and because of this, I was going to hell.”

Mr. Newberg is an associate professor of radiology & psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. During his Op-Ed he discussed how faith & religion can be a good thing for the brain and can actually lead to someone living a happier, more protective and longer life. Religion can aid in how you cope with stress & emotions and help deal with questions related to the meaning of life. However, in order to get these benefits, the religion & spiritual practices must be positive and uplifting.

Religion can also have a negative affect on the brain when the faith is too negative.

If you ruminate on negative emotions, they activate the areas of the brain that are involved in anger, fear and stress. This can ultimately damage important parts of the brain and the body. What’s worse, negative emotions can spill over into outward behaviors that generate fear, distrust, hatred, animosity and violence toward people who hold different or opposing beliefs.

These hateful ideas result in quotes like the one above, and ultimately lead to destructive acts of violence such as the ones against abortion clinics or hate crimes like the one against Matthew Shepard for being gay.

I thought this was a really good op-ed as it described exactly why I disliked many in the organized religion. When I think about faith, I think about positive ideas. Since life is made from love, why wouldn’t the divine be filled with the same love and compassion. The moment someone starts blasting at me that God is somehow hateful or going to damn me to hell for not believing in this or doing that, it turns me off. My mind does not need more hate within it.

I think this does explain some of the reasons why we have people who act out hatefully towards “sins”, or even why sometimes we have extremist groups that strap bombs to themselves. When God is power-hungry, the people who follow will do anything to bring people to him. But, when God is forgiving, loving & compassionate – people will come to him without force.

If there is a hell, why should I fill my heart & mind with the pain of fear when I believe that no god will let a loving, compassionate person not be with him in paradise. But, this is just my opinion about most of the religions in the world & why I will challenge anyone who uses fear & hate to get me to come to god as it does not work.

If you want to read the Op-Ed, it’s available online at: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/06/this-is-your-brain-on-religion-.html

Evaluating Faith

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about religion lately, probably because I have started to look closely at everything again for the first time in nearly 10 years since I last did so in depth. The more and more I study Islam, the more I like what it teaches, however, I do still have some of the same problems with it that I had with Christianity while I was growing up and I’m still seeing myself more drawn to the ideas that are often considered part of Sanātana Dharma (Hinduism). The whole idea of “submission” to a higher power just makes me feel uneasy. I’ve always seen the higher power as being one with humanity, that we should honor her for the gift of life, but to worship her was going against the whole idea of life. I consider life a gift, one that should be used wisely & to focus so much on worshiping every day or every week seems to be to take away from what the divine really wants you to do with your life. The gift of life is not a gift of servitude. It was given through an act of love & with love for nature, humanity & animals, you give back to the divine & this is how you give thanks. I see my work through my love for others as my way of giving worship and gratitude for the life I have.

So, I’m left with a major principle of the monotheistic religious structure that I just don’t feel is within the mind of God. While I think Islam has points that are correct, making it a stronger & loving faith over Judaism & Christianity, I’m still don’t think my life is meant to be there. So I continue to struggle with the whole concept of what monotheistic religion is based on, which leaves me think I will likely never fall into this structure because of it.

With all of my studies, I do keep doors open at all time, and I think one of the reasons I have become interested in learning more about Islam the last year is because I feel I did not give it a chance it deserved when I originally was studying all of the faith structures out there. I think I saw it too close to what Christianity was and in order to fully discover myself, I had to leave that idea behind. My initial look at Wicca led me to start seeing the divine as more of a motherly figure as oppose to fatherly, but I did not understand the whole concept of ritualistic worship & magick; it just seem too close to what I was leaving. My travels have taken me to a point where I see a lot of my ideas included in the collective mold of Hinduism, but yet I do not feel I fall into that category either. But this could be because I haven’t been able to dive much into the religious texts & ideas behind the culture & faith. So, like I have said in my about me & faqs pages, I consider myself pagan for the very fact that my view of the world, of the divine and of life & death just don’t seem to fit any set belief structure out there. I fully expect some of Islam to be part of my concept, but if I can’t fully “submit” to the idea of Allah, then I guess I just don’t fit the mold.

So, with all of this, some might say, why not just fully invest in something or nothing? If you have so many doubts or questions, are you really a believer? And I continue to say, I do still believe there is a divine presence in this world, I have felt it. Sure, science could probably explain this feeling or the idea & I fully accept the scientific structure, but I still choose to believe that the breath of life is divine. Perhaps part of my problem with religion & finding faith is that I don’t reject science but I still accept divinity, I donno. So, I believe still in the divine, but I see that divine more within the world, not separate from the world.

I see the beauty in all religion & but I also see what is wrong with it, which ultimately leads me away from the dogmatic organized path. So, I continue to wonder this world without a clear idea of where I fit in, but I know I fit into the collective idea of what is life. Is my current struggle merely my attempt to find connection with others and if so, what am I looking for? I may never know, but I do know that every time I go to the mountains I discover more about myself that I did not know before. Nature is powerful & speaks to me in more ways that any book or priest could ever do.

One thing I know for sure that causes me the most problem, I see so much of my faith being centered around the concept that faith is personal, living within ones heart. The whole idea that someone can tell me what is within my heart, what is correct or what is sinful, what I must do about it or not do about it just drives me nuts. If god wanted all her people to follow a certain path, wouldn’t everyone already believe the same thing? It just seems that with so much diversity in the world that perhaps god had something else in mind that does not fit some of the concepts of these dogmatic faiths, especially when so many men have corrupted faith to a point where it deals more with power than with celebrating life, can an ancient set of texts really tell someone who or what god is? And, to be a follower of a faith but to break away from it to claim that god is something else is considered going against god & will likely get you killed, yet we don’t question this concept or the notion that power to maintain control will suppress the ideas of man into believing what is told to them.

I guess I will continue to think about this whole idea….

Peace & love