Some years ago, I became acutely aware that I just didn't "get" organized religion. For something that promotes a god who claims to be all-merciful, all-knowing, and all-loving, it feels incredibly exclusive. And they all seem to have their own special Correct Way to Salvation: baptisms, communions, prayers, different types of sins to avoid. These things often all conflict and yet yield results that are oddly the same. Just didn't make sense. And if you look at how the universe is constructed, one thing is certain: it makes sense. So I figured, God is probably pretty sensible, too. What I really don't get are all the zealots out there who think that the bible is supposed to be translated literally. These people forget a few key points:
1. The books that make up the bible (Old and New Testaments) were chosen specifically as a political act by Emperor Constantine as he attempted to integrate Christianity into the then-pagan Roman Empire. He specifically chose authors who (over)emphasized Christ as Divine.
2. Long before anything was written down, it was circulated by oral tradition, sometimes for centuries. Therefore, it changed with every telling. A lot. Remember the game "telephone"?? So we must at least consider the idea that Lazarus might have just been really, really sick, and Jesus helped him get better. Makes a little more sense than Jesus reanimating a 4-day old corpse.
3. The authors who wrote the books of the bible did NOT interact directly with Jesus or Moses or Elijah, etc. They were often separated by generations, if not cultures.
4. A story's meaning in one cultural context means one thing, and something completely different in another (i.e., because of our Puritanical heritage, it's easy for Americans to think of Mary as always and forever a virgin, but that would never fly in the Orthodox Jewish society she lived in back in those days. Married women had sex and children. It's a mitzvah, people!).
5. The bible was translated and transcribed about umpteen-billion times by hand. There aren't always equivalent words between languages, and not all transcribing monks were entirely honest.
Bearing this, and other information gleaned from 17 years of religion classes at several Catholic schools and universities, and a reasonable understanding of the nature of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology, I concluded one thing: the only thing we can know purely about God is experienced empirically. All other sources of Godly information are tainted by ignorance, bias, political maneuvering, habit or outright propaganda.
So I established my own "church". I call it The First Universal Church of Parsimony. We are based on the Principle of Parsimony (aka Occam's Razor) that states, in short, that the simplest explanation to a problem is probably the correct one. This is especially true if given two competing solutions that lead to the same outcome.
Basic tenets of The First Universal Church of Parsimony:
- We do not tithe.
- We do not practice bigotry.
- Darwin was on to something.
- Like the early Christians, we do not accept the cross as an icon, as crucifixion was possibly the cruelest and most inhumane form of torture and execution in history.
- We do not believe in a Cartesian dichotomy of mind and body--they are infinitely interconnected and neither is more "noble" than the other.
- We do not believe there is any one "right way" to experience or accept God.
- We believe that the Torah, Bible, Quran, etc. are all full of important life values.
- We don't have all the answers, so we like to listen to other points of view to seek truth.
- We believe in a mindful way of life because God is present in all things, and therefore, we have no set time for "church"--anytime is church time, because you just never know when you might encounter empirical enlightenment.
Recommended reading: The Gospel of the Redman by Ernest Thompson Seton
I'm in!
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