Last night, my friend Sherry (one of the sharpest people I’ve ever met – I’ve never known anyone so well read) sent me a link to an article entitled “Betrayal” – subtitled, “Should we hate Judas Iscariot?” –published in the August 3, 2009 edition of The New Yorker. The article was written by Joan Acocella, the well-known dance (and occasional cultural) critic for The New York Times.

Acocella writes about efforts over the last few years to “rehabilitate” the image of Judas Iscariot, following the discovery in the late seventies and the restoration (from 2001-2006) of The Gospel of Judas, constituting one part of a codex supposedly dating back to the third or fourth century.

Her discussion about Judas, his betrayal of Christ, the cultural significance of his identity as a Jew are all very interesting, but not as interesting as her discussion of the role scholars and theologians, as well as believers, take in shaping our understanding of religious texts.

“In the twentieth century,” writes Acocella, “Bible scholars repeatedly had to deal with ancient books – the Dead Sea scrolls, the Nag Hammadi library – that surfaced from the sands of the Middle East to wreak havoc with orthodoxy.”

She goes on to ask why The Gospel of Judas (which, though I’ve not read it, is described as bizarre) would matter to modern Christians. Here’s her answer:

“Many American religious thinkers are more liberal than their churches. They wish that Christianity were more open – not a stone wall of doctrine. To these people, the Gospel of Judas was a gift. As with other Gnostic gospels, its mere existence showed that there was no such thing as a fixed doctrine, or that there wasn’t at the beginning.” (emphasis added)

So where does the doctrine really come from, if not from God? Who decides what Christians should believe? And how can we be certain that what we know of the lives represented in the Bible are the whole truth? If they are true in any respect at all?

I find it so difficult to believe in the divine origin or backbone of the Bible every time a new text such as The Gospel of Judas is discovered. So much of what we are led to believe is revealed truth seems more and more likely pieced together, or carefully selected and excised, by some unknown person or persons from the past, from a strange collection of ancient folk tales that are missing crucial cultural context.

Yet even today, there are those who believe in the literal truth of the Bible. I suppose it’s easier to believe than question. Faith certainly offers more comfort than uncertainty. At least to some people.

Wouldn’t it be more humane to look for the truth and to surrender flawed, ancient texts that do nothing but encourage discord? There must be a better way.

I was interested to read an article by Alan Cowell in today’s New York Times (see Facing Gay Rift, Anglican Sees ‘Two-Track’ Church) in which Cowell quoted Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, as saying:

“…a person living in such a union* cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle.”

* meaning a same-sex union

I struggle with his statement because of the thought that one cannot live as created without that life being “incongruous” with the teachings of the church. How odd.

First, I guess I can’t understand how these massive segments of the Anglican church can vary so widely on what they view as God’s plan. How could God’s thinking regarding gay men and lesbians be viewed so differently by members of the same church which are, presumably, standing on a common foundation?

Second, I can’t understand how those standing on either side of the argument can know, with certainty, that their perception of God’s will is accurate and that the opposite perception is inaccurate?

Third, how can these people presume to know God’s will? Where does such arrogance come from? From a supposed understanding of the Holy Bible? How can they rely on a book so full of inconsistencies and incongruities?

Many centuries’ worth of theologians have attempted to comment upon and find consistency in the teachings of the bible, yet there are still vast chasms in understanding that lead to ever more commentary and argument.

How can the man of casual faith therefore assume to understand God so much better? And why should all others be subject to his instincts? How many times have we heard people say that they have to do what they “feel” is right? Even when they do not know why they feel what they feel?

I don’t know exactly what I am trying to say – perhaps only that I don’t think it’s possible for one to create a consistent life for one’s self out of the teachings of the Christian church – perhaps that the arrogance of the believer seems far more dangerous to me than most anything else I can imagine.

The PBS news magazine Religion & Ethics Newsweekly recently ran a segment about same-sex marriage that featured a protester holding a sign that read: Stop Using Jesus to Justify Inequality. That sign got me thinking.

I’ve never understand how religious folks can use the phrase “God the creator” with great reverence then show such disdain for those parts of God’s creation that they don’t particularly like.

I’ve so often heard Catholic homilies or Protestant sermons that preach the infallibility of God – yet many of those same preachers (certainly not all, thank goodness) speak of issues such as gay marriage as if god had made a terrible mistake by creating gay people.

It doesn’t make a bit of sense to me.

Let me be frank. I don’t know if I believe in a god or not. I certainly have my doubts about the Christian version of god. There are so many inconsistencies and examples of bad behavior in the Bible that I think I prefer my own sense of morality to that found in the Bible.

Regardless, I know that we are all created. Nobody asks a cow to act like a cat. Nobody expects a tree to flow like a river. These things simply are what they are. We, as humans, assign a value to each creation. I doubt that nature creates with any sense of value. I’m no scientist, but I would suspect that nature strives for balance – and that which is created is intended to help create balance.

Is it so difficult to believe that people are created different from one another? That variation in human beings is natural – as it is in other species – and not some defect?

Believe me, I know what a difficult issue this is. The part of me that still longs to believe in God, doesn’t believe that God intended our world to be filled with such hatred – but it is. And religion only seems to further poison the waters.

I wish I understood how to help change that.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported this morning that the Atheist Foundation of Australia had been rebuffed in its attempt to launch an atheistic advertising campaign similar to those that have met with success in London and Washington. Not exactly breaking news. The Foundation issued a press release in November 2008 stating that:

The bus slogan campaign proposed by the AFA with the thought provoking sentiment, “Atheism – Celebrate reason!” has been refused for display by ‘APN Outdoors’. Various other phrases also deemed unacceptable. 

However, the Herald article did add some facts. According to the Herald, Australia’s largest outdoor advertising firm, APN Outdoors, rejected the Atheist Foundation’s request to purchase $16,000 in mobile advertising similar to that employed in London and Washington – this in spite of the fact that APN has previously accepted religious advertising on the very vehicles the group is seeking to employ. The Herald reports that APN has refused to comment on its rejection of the Foundation’s advertising purchase. APN has also refused to divulge whether or not it has religious-based clients who purchase advertising for their organizations.

The Foundation issued a press release in December stating its intention to file a complaint with the Tasmanian Anti-discrimination Commissioner following the refusal of Metro Tasmania, a State owned bus company, to display its advertisements. The foundation had intended to launch its campaign later this month.

Given APN’s refusal to speak, it’s hard to know what is motivating their refusal of the Foundation’s advertising. However, given the advertising mockup supplied by the Foundation, it’s fairly clear that their campaign is innocuous. Only the most insecure of the faithful could feel threatened by such simple statements.

Their refusal to accept the advertising is somewhat more ironic considering the company’s slogan of “Think Outside…” Clearly, they only believe in the concept of thinking if it fits certain undisclosed criteria.

If you’d like to share your thoughts about APN Outdoor’s rejection of the Foundation’s advertising campaign, you can send a message to the company using the contact information found here.

In the November/December 2008 issue of New Humanist, the magazine’s editor, Caspar Melville, wrote:

At the end of October an advertising campaign was launched. The idea was to fund posters on London buses with the message ‘There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ It aimed to raise ₤5,500 (approx. $8,300 USD), hit its target within hours, and after a week it had topped ₤100,000 (approx. $150,000 USD) and is still rising. 

Apparently, the advertising campaign has caused quite a stir in Britain, not only in the interest it has garnered from thousands of willing donors, but from media who seem to view the success of the campaign as one more sign of the nation’s increasingly widespread abandonment of the church and, by extension, of god. 

London advertising campaign

Yesterday, The Guardian reported that atheists and humanists were expanding the reach of the campaign to all corners of Great Britain. Yesterday’s kick-off of the expanded campaign included speeches by prominent atheists, humanists and other contemporary thinkers. 

In November 2008, the American Humanist Association, inspired by the success of the British campaign, launched its own bus advertising campaign with the slogan, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake”, appearing on the sides, rear and insides of buses in Washington, DC. 

Washington advertising campaign

The Washington campaign has been just as controversial as the London campaign. Take a look at some of these headlines from U.S. publications, printed in response to the Washington campaign:

• From The Washington Post: “Ad Campaign Promotes Godless Morality”
• From The Wall Street Journal: “Atheists Reach Out – Just Don’t Call it Proselytizing”
• From Chronicle of Philanthropy: “Stupid Nonprofit ads?”
• From Catholic League: “Atheists Launch ‘Godless Campaign’”
• From Christian Broadcast Network News: “Atheists Rollout Anti-God Campaign”
• From CNN: “Missing atheist sign found in Washington state”

I’m fascinated by the media’s response to these campaigns. It’s as if they resent non-believers for expressing themselves. Can’t you feel the sarcasm dripping from The Wall Street Journal headline above?

I’m just glad that this debate is growing stronger. Atheists, brights, humanists, secularists and many others have been denied a voice – their credibility challenged – for far too long, especially in contemporary America where there is a bent towards the unexamined life. I hope our friends the humanists keep plugging away. I know that I, for one, will be contributing to their campaign.

Last week, both the BBC and CNN, as well as other media outlets, reported that a group of Congolese rebels trying to establish a government based on the biblical ten commandments had murdered somewhere between 200 and 400 people, with some having their lips cut off to discourage their speaking ill of the group. This shortly before the group hacked to death dozens of civilians at a church near Doruma in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I can’t help wondering if the rebels who committed these crimes in the name of the ten commandments wondered whether or not they might be violating the following commandments before they took innocent lives:

• You shall not kill
• You shall not steal
• You shall have no other gods before me
• You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your god

Not that I’m an expert or anything, but it seems like hacking dozens of people to death violates at least three of the above commandments, if not all of them. What do I mean?

• You shall not kill – Self explanatory, I think.
• You shall not steal – Surely the death of a parent robs a child of much-need security in the form of clothing, food, shelter, love – just as the death of a child robs that child of its future.
• You shall have no other gods before me – When any man presumes to act in the name of god, he has in mind made a god of himself and is in fact placing himself before his god who, in the form of Jesus, surely set the example of believers as servants, not gods themselves.
• You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your god – Can there be any question that a person who murders in the name of a god who commands him not to kill has made wrongful use of that god’s name?

It amazes me that believers are so blinded by faith (which in my mind is just a prop for human ego disguised as right-thinking) as not to see the truth and horror of their own actions. What will it take for us as humans to see the light?

The New York Times published an article yesterday entitled “Lawmaker in Kentucky Mixes Piety and Politics” which led with the following sentence:

Tom Riner looks for God everywhere, and in places he does not find him, he tries to put him there.

The article goes on to quote Mr. Riner, a Baptist minister and a Democratic representative in the Kentucky legislature as saying:

The church-state divide is not a line I see.

Mr. Riner is reported as having been involved in activities that have cost the state more than half a million dollars in legal fees related to separation of church and state issues. Whether or not it occurs to the public that elected him that there are better and more appropriate uses for $500,000 dollars isn’t clear. Maybe they simply look at that money as the cost of admission for “true” believers. 

I find it annoying that Mr. Riner and others quoted in the article have the nerve to insist that the founding fathers created a Christian nation and that we should follow their lead. The question of whether or not America’s founding fathers were as religious as the religious claim them to be is far from answered in my mind. 

As I’ve written before, there certainly isn’t indicating that the Constitution, clearly a founding document of the American nation, anticipated a theocracy. And experience itself has not shown the religious political leader to be blessed with any more grace of “god” than any other person. Consider the results of the last eight years of what I hesitantly call the faith-based presidency of George W. Bush. Has America really benefited from Bush’s faith? To the contrary, we are facing one of the worst economic and political eras in our nation’s history – and it happened under the guidance of a self-proclaimed believer – one who claimed that his decisions were guided by god. Could this possibly be a god who cared for his own creation? It’s hard to believe as more and more people lose their jobs and their homes, quickly followed by their hope for a better future.

Mr. Riner needs to spend a little more time learning about the history of the founding fathers if he plans on making such ridiculous claims – and a little less time believing in fairy tales. 

Last month, the Freedom from Religion Foundation (“FFRF”) filed suit in the U.S. District Court Western District of Wisconsin against President George W. Bush, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle and Shirley Dobson, Chair of the National Day of Prayer Task Force. Yes, Shirley Dobson is the wife of James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, a bastion of religious discrimination. 

FFRF’s complaint seeks:

“…a declaration that Public Law100-307 and Presidential and Gubernatorial Prayer Proclamations calling on citizens to pray violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

The FFRF complaint goes on to make the following points:

• The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits government officials and persons acting in joint and concerted action with government officials from taking actions that endorse religion, including actions that prefer religion over non-religion
• The designation of a National Day of Prayer has the intent and the effect of giving official recognition to the endorsement of religion; a National Day of Prayer has no secular rationale.
• Prayer is an inherently and quintessentially religious activity.
• Exhortations to pray in official Presidential proclamations, directed at all the citizens of the United States constitute an end in themselves intended to promote and endorse religion  
• President Bush’s mandated Proclamations of a National Day of Prayer inherently violate the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution by endorsing religion over non-religion. 

Wondering if the case has any traction? It isn’t entirely off-base, though I imagine the FFRF will simply be seen as a bunch of spoil sports trying to remove morals-based thinking from society. 

On a legal basis, however, the FFRF’s claims seem to have a basis in legal precedent. In one significant U.S. Supreme Court case involving the Establishment Clause (Everson v. Board of Education of the Township of Ewing, argued November 20, 1946, decided: February 10, 1947), the court held that:

“The “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment means at least this: neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.”

“ Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups, and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect “a wall of separation between church and State.””

Of course, there are other standards to be applied in such cases, so there is no simple legal reasoning to help us reach a straightforward conclusion . Common sense, however, would indicate that the presidential and gubernatorial proclamations that sparked the suit clearly favor religion over non-religion.

Even if you don’t buy that argument, the proclamations, which this year made clear reference to a specific passage within the Psalms, clearly favor Christianity over other religions, something that should be problematic in and of itself.

If you’re interested in helping the FFRF pursue its case against government officials, you can visit their Web site at www. ffrf.org. You’ll find a copy of the complaint as well as copies of the presidential and gubernatorial proclamations in question. You’ll also see a link where you can become a member.

On September 16, 2008, the Catholic News Service (“CNS”) ran an article headlined “Vatican evolution congress to exclude creationism, intelligent design.” 

According to the article:

“The Pontifical Council for Culture, Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana are organizing an international conference in Rome March 3-7 as one of a series of events marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species.’”

I certainly don’t have any beef with the Council excluding creationists and supporters of Intelligent Design from the conference, but I do think the CNS headline is interesting, especially since the article’s author later goes on to say:

“Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the other extreme of the evolution debate — proponents of an overly scientific conception of evolution and natural selection — also were not invited.”

So it seems as if thinkers that the Council considers radical at both ends of the spectrum are being excluded from participation. Not that woulf know that from the CNS headline. But who says a religion-based news organization needs to be balanced in its views? Most churches aren’t.

CNS bias aside, it’s ironic that the Council would make the following statement to the service:

“Jesuit Father Marc Leclerc, a philosophy professor at the Gregorian, told Catholic News Service Sept. 16 that organizers “wanted to create a conference that was strictly scientific” and that discussed rational philosophy and theology along with the latest scientific discoveries.”

Obviously, the Council’s quest for truth only extends as fas as moderate views that fall somewhere in between the extremes of atheism (or naturalism, or whatever “ism” represents the scientific extreme) and creationism at the other end of the scale.

Leaves me wondering how much truth the Council (the Catholic church, really) can handle. And the church complains about so-called “cafeteria Catholics” who pick and choose the articles of faith they wish to follow? That’s like the pot calling the kettle black.

This morning, I received an e-mail from TED (see link to the TED blog on the opening page of this blog) that I think is important to share. I’m not sure how I feel about what the organization is trying to do, but it seems worth taking a look at. So here is their message:

Dear TEDizens,

We urge you to take a moment to watch a short video that went live on the web today. Beautifully filmed and edited by TEDster Jesse Dylan and his team at Form TV, it might just be the most inspiring thing you see this week.

That video, and this website mark the launch of an inspiring global endeavor to celebrate compassion and to promote a new collaboration between the world’s religions. What we’re doing, starting today, is to begin writing the Charter for Compassion that Karen Armstrongcalled for earlier this year when she made her TED Prize wish. And the exhilarating twist here is that the writing won’t be done behind closed doors. It will be done by you… and perhaps millions of others around the world. Because we’re using special collaborative web tools created by the geniuses at Kluster to enable this be truly a charter “created by the world for the world”.

Later this week millions of Muslims, Christians, and Jews will be sent an email inviting them to come to the site and offer their choice of words, in their own language, to help create a charter capable of inspiring the world to focus on what the great religions share, as opposed to what divides them. Already people are responding to this amazing idea with passion and excitement. The goal is to obtain all input from global participants within the next four weeks, select the best contributions with the help of a council of religious “sages”, and conduct a major launch of the finished document in 2009.

We’d love you, the TED community, who saw the birth of this idea in March, to be among the first to contribute.

The two things you can do to help now:

1. Help us write the Charter! The first writing phase begins now with the Preamble, a concise explanation of why the Charter is necessary and urgent.

2. Send out the ask to everyone in your network. We want this to be a truly global and diverse document that represents all of our voices.

A very exciting day for the TED Prize. We are honored to have you on this journey with us.

Thank you to all of you who have helped get us this far! And a special thank you to Kluster who have put so much into building this site.

Very best wishes,

Chris Anderson
TED Curator

Amy Novogratz
TED Prize Director

Background:

At TED2008 in March of this year, TED Prize winner Karen Armstrong was granted a wish to change the world. This is what she asked for:

“I wish that you would help with the creation, launch and propagation of a Charter for Compassion, crafted by a group of leading inspirational thinkers from the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and based on the fundamental principles of universal justice and respect.”

Since then support for idea has built among numerous religious groups, spiritual leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, and Britain’s first female Rabbi Julia Neuberger have joined a special Council to oversee the Charter, and Kluster, a collaborative decision making platform, has built a groundbreaking site that will allow anyone to contribute to the Charter.

www.CharterforCompassion.org