All Comments (82)

I believe we take the words of the bible as it is.We don't look into for the hidden meaning. With so, all are meant for our ggodness created by God.
As for it I don't preaching, they

It's a great achievement for Islamic leaders and scholars as well as Newsweek and the Washington post to present this imperative opportunity for inter cultural and global philosophical dialogue. What's important is that by exchanging our ideas and comments regarding inter religious relations and world events that affect our views of each other as fellow human beings. Since the advent of humanity, We strove to make sense of the world we live in and the lives we've experienced. Worldwide curiosities to learn the true nature of life and our universe is an exceptionally rare virtue upon life on Earth. In other words, we're the only known species on the planet who've pursued to unravel these great mysteries and developed written philosophies based upon our understanding of the world around us.
One such philosophy that lasted throughout the ages of humanity is commonly known as religion and spirituality. Ever since our early belief in the Sky God and the God Mother from ancient Pagan times, we vigorously pursued to unravel the truth about our most profound questions. As any educated person would know that religion and their core beliefs or faith have evolved over time. Paganism, Monotheism and Polytheism have been influenced by humanity as these great philosophies have influenced our perceptions and decisions in life over the ages. Over time humanity has embraced diverse religious faiths and spiritual convictions that continue to influence our behavior in our times and most likely beyond.
What's vital for humanity's progress and even survival is to know the true nature of faith itself. To understand the true origins of faith. But most of all, is to accept the truth for whatever it may be. Each one of us will learn the absolute truth once we die. But until that time comes for anyone of us to depart this world, we really don't know the answer to God's existence nor do we have the absolute truth in regards to the true nature of God. Besides if we did possess the truth, there would've been only one religion on Earth with no diversification of any way, shape of form. There would only be one holy scripture written throughout human history.
Considering one's religious faith to be absolute, while considering others to be false would be ethnocentric at best. While collectively searching to unravel the mysteries on nature, life and the universe through sincere reasoning and serious research would be enlightening at its worst. Most importantly, we must accept the fact is that none of us have conclusive evidence to confirm our core beliefs and there's always an immanent change that our most cherished beliefs could be wrong. Our greatest challenge would be to tolerate the truth no matter what it may ultimately be. With such an open mind, we would be able to overcome any future discovery that would contradict our faith regarding the true nature of life, spirituality and divinity.
Humanity does have the ability to achieve such a social achievement. However, it's solely up to humanity and not any other entity or groups of entities to decide our destinies. Each one of us has a choice to make; either hopelessly engaging into meaningless inter cultural conflicts or combine our scientific and cultural gifts to thrive into an enlightened global civilization that could ultimately expand beyond our solar system. The choice is yours, and the time to make it is now!

GaryD: I hope it's not the Holy Spirit that's entered you, inspiring remarks such as "the percentage of Popes residing in hell likely exceeds the percentage of lawyers by a factor of at least 5."

By the way for what it's worth the percentage of Popes residing in hell likely exceeds the percentage of lawyers by a factor of at least 5.

"I hear the word 'infinitesimal' is no longer used in the misleading way it was decades ago when I sat for calculus. Do you think if religion stood as well for correction, such that questioning could only improve it, would it at least have a chance of success when applied to the real world problems for which people claim it's designed?"

JHYBER, first of all, the approach to infinitesimals used by Newton and Leibnitz was discredited over a hundred years ago. Karl Weierstrass put calculus on a rigorous formal basis, using the epsilon delta definition of a limit, in the 19th century. Many high-school calculus classes don't get into it (the epsilon-delta definition of a limit has been described by at least one writer as the single most difficult concept to grasp in modern mathematics), but any serious university calculus class will cover it, because you can't derive the fundamental theorems of calculus without it.

In any event, an infinitesimal (whether Newtonian or the more modern formulation) is not the same thing as zero.

Second, there's a lot more self-correction going on in any serious religion than most people realize. The teachings of any religion, such as the three Abrahamic religions, that is based on the belief in divine revelation will ultimately be grounded in that revelation. But for people who take the religion seriously, there's an ongoing struggle to properly understand God's will as revealed, to apply it correctly in their particular time and society, and to fight the hypocracy and self-serving that arise in any endeavor that includes humans.

The "plain meaning of the Bible"?!

After years of reading and re-reading various parts of the Bible, I spent the past 2 years reading through the entire thing, along with commentaries from a variety of scholars. Throughout the entire venture, I tried very hard to put aside my own preconceptions and read what was really there. (No doubt I failed at times, but I REALLY tried!)

After all that, the most important conclusion I reached was quite simple: Love really is more important than anything else.

Another conclusion I reached was this: On just about any issue (besides love), anyone who believes that that there is such a thing as "the plain meaning of the Bible" (e.g. John Smith's posting June 14, 2007, 6:47 PM) probably hasn't read it, or at the very least, they read it with such deeply ingrained preconcevied notions that they couldn't help but pick and choose whatever supports those notions.

Picking and choosing is, of course, what "conservative" Christians often accuse "liberal" Christians of doing, but I think it's just something that anyone with a closed mind does.

DEMOS, yes! What you write is what I was referring to by way of struggling to make a point that probably is too ambitious. Thanks for the links that I look forward to, to update what little I recall from school. I hear the word 'infinitesimal' is no longer used in the misleading way it was decades ago when I sat for calculus. Do you think if religion stood as well for correction, such that questioning could only improve it, would it at least have a chance of success when applied to the real world problems for which people claim it's designed?

TWO WORDS ON FAITH: HOKUS/POKUS !!!

So because it appears in print it must be correct.

Mr. Haber, be assured I lack the talent to have made this up! I will find you some names if such are in print, or at least as many primary sources as I can, but let me cite for starters, a scholarly, non-polemical secondary source with excerpts and reviews available on Amazon.com or by Googling the title. I first heard of it on an audio on NPR's website:

Zero: a biography of a dangerous idea, by Charles Seife, Penguin Bks, New York, NY, 2000.

If an official Church ban on zero didn't usher Europe into the Dark Ages, its outing as an academic myth is long overdue, making me glad I brought it up and even more glad you challenged me. I will say that the Church to my knowledge has never denied it, and they alone wrote that part of their history. It'd be tribute to Christ's teachings, imo, for them to have faithfully recorded it as an official act among those summarized as the Inquisition that most governments even today would have hidden from history. Such an abiding commitment to bear witness to the extent that acts that humble and shame are acknowledged seems wholly Christian and redemptive of the early Church.

"When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called religion."

Or liberalism.

Cheap shots are easy, precisely because you can throw them against anyone and anything, indescriminantly, and without thought.

As is so often true in life, though, you get what you pay for.

Well taken sir I was not intent that that particular conversation go any further than it already had. My point was made and I had nothing further to add.

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity.

When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called religion.

"...to think of them as absolute is to give them a status that belongs to God alone."

How does Mr. Borg know that "absolute" is a status that belongs to God alone? His viewpoint itself is a "tenent". Borg doesn't know anymore about God than any other human being, or whether the concept of "God" is a mere figment of imagination.

"...to think of them as absolute is to give them a status that belongs to God alone."

How does Mr. Borg know that "absolute" is a status that belongs to God alone? His viewpoint itself is a "tenent". Borg doesn't know anymore about God than any other human being, or whether the concept of "God" is a mere figment of imagination.

Well taken sir I was not intent that that particular conversation go any further than it already had. My point was made and I had nothing further to add.

GARYD, I never said otherwise, and I think your response was fine. We just need to remember not to get sucked into a conversation in the twilight zone. It's a bit like trying to have a reasoned conversation with Basil Fawlty.

To state facts is to state facts. Not all facts are necessarily pleasant or well mannered.

Jesus also gave us the right to self defense in Luke. "Have you any swords among you?"

GARYD, I agree. We need to be careful to remember Proverbs 26:4, though.

A question I've always had problems with: after death, what do you do in heaven? I guess each person who believes has his visions of his afterlife. I really do want to know what those visions are. Do you worship God all the time, bring him gifts, go to church socials? What does one do in heaven (be he christian, jew, muslim)? Knowing all the people who proclaim they are in heaven, and knowing many who I know are not in heaven, I choose the latter.

Hoax Buster??? Hoax Buster????? Going to Hoaxbuster.com for information on Christianity is like going to the Gobi Desert to learn how to swim.

OK BELIEVER, I'm thinking Illiad. It's modern lit compared to Exodus. The Greeks were running naked in the woods when:

A Hebrew, (woman) Pharaoh, Amenophis IV
Led 12 tribes of Israelites, (builders)
Out of Egyt to a desert place, Akhetaten, (El Armana)
Over the protest of Pharaoh, Amenophis III
Who was subdued by the murder of his firstborn son, (twice)
The Israelites built a tabernacle, a palace for a ball-of-fire God, (the sun)
Amenophis IV made sacrifices to God
She claimed to be God's, (the sun's) child, (real thing, biological and not spiritual)

Oh heck, http://www.hoax-buster.org page 2

JHBYER, are you trying to describe the concept of an infinitesimal? That's what Newton and Leibnitz used in developing the calculus. Though at times they treated infinitesimals as if they were equivalent to zero, an infinitesimal is not the same thing as zero. For more on that, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitesimal

Both Newton and Leibnitz were truly gifted mathematicians - while infinitesimals, as they described them, were not well defined, they were still able to develop correct results. Since then, modern mathematicians have been able to formulate well defined, rigorous approaches to using infinitesimals. Most, however, take an entirely different approach to the calculus, basing it on the epsilon-delta definition of a limit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_%28mathematics%29

MTMAV, had it not been for your post, I'd be mainlining after cruising WaPo for a news fix, but I had to check out REALITYCHECK to understand you. That is some baaaad, uncut, purely informative prose. Great stuff! You might try MICHAEL for a mellower buzz of truth. Thanks!

Just Curious,

The Bible doesn't actually say any of those things.

We still talk about many natural phenomena from our own point of view as observers, such as when we say the sun "rises" or "sets." When we say that, we aren't trying to make a statement about astronomy - we're simply talking about what we see, and how it affects our lives. None of the Hebrew scriptures were intended to be astronomical texts - and they shouldn't be read that way (by anyone, believer or non-believer).

The Hebrew scriptures, in particular, were written very long ago (think Illiad rather than Canterbury Tales) for a very different society. Slavery and atrocities during war were commonplace. If there's anything we can learn from the Bible, it's that God meets people where they are. Take the time to read the Old Testament laws governing slavery and warfare; you'll find that they prohibit the worst abuses and, in the case of slavery in particular, provide constant reminders of the humanity of those caught up in slavery.

You also mention a number of rules dealing with ritual purity. Taken together, they require that nothing directly associated with human mortality be brought into the presence of God, and require that the ancient Israelites separate themselves from the pagan cultures around them. "Uncleaness" had nothing to do with sin. There were times when an Israelite was required to perform an act that would make them unclean - such as provide proper care for the body of a parent who had died. Contact with the body would make them ritually unclean, and they would not be able to enter the temple until they were purified. Did this mean they had sinned? Of course not - they were required to provide proper burial. But nothing associated with death and decay could be brought into the presence of God.

We can play "gotcha" word games all day (and if we just want to play, the U.S. Code of Statutes could be as easily used as the Bible), but there's no benefit in that. Can the Bible be challenging? Of course - the books it contains were written over a period of centuries, in a variety of cultures, represent a variety of different genres, and address a wide variety of circumstances and purposes. Can we have serious disagreements over how it should be evaluated? Again, of course - people have done that for centuries.

But if you really want to challenge the Bible, you need to take the time to understand it. There are many genuinely tough questions that serious students of the Bible have to ask themselves - you just haven't found them yet, because you're taking the easy way out.

Eating Shellfish was a good way to die at that time even now there are far more cases of Salmonella poisoning than almost any other source. What better way to keep scientifically primitive safe from food borne illnesses than by limiting what they eat?

By the way the dietary restrictions were lifted at the time of acts for Christians.

If you are going to discuss biblical jurisprudence during the days of Abraham you should first expose yourself to what the standard practices of the time were.

Also, JHBYER, would you please list the names of mathematicians who were burned at the stake; perhaps even one?

JHBYER,

Could you please cite some reference to the extent that the Christian Church [sic] ever "banned" the use of zero?

REALITY CHECK YOU ARE WRONG! ! !yOU ARE a MAN WITH LITTLE KNOWLEDGE AND YOU PROVE IT IN YOUR POSTS.IF YOU SRE GOING TO TAKE ON A SUBJECT SUCH AS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU'R TALKING ABOUT, AS DO ALL CRITICS OF THE CHURCH.THE TRUTH IS THAT THE DIDACHE IS THE FIRST PLACE WHERE YOU WILL FIND ABORTION MENTIONED AS MURDER.THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SCRIPTURE;BUT WITH THE TEACHING OF THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS,OF THE 1ST CENTURY,THERE ARE MANY THINGS ABOUT CHURCH THEOLOGY YOU WONT FIND IN THE BIBLE.

REALITY CHECK YOU ARE WRONG! ! !yOU ARE a MAN WITH LITTLE KNOWLEDGE AND YOU PROVE IT IN YOUR POSTS.IF YOU SRE GOING TO TAKE ON A SUBJECT SUCH AS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU'R TALKING ABOUT, AS DO ALL CRITICS OF THE CHURCH.THE TRUTH IS THAT THE DIDACHE IS THE FIRST PLACE WHERE YOU WILL FIND ABORTION MENTIONED AS MURDER.THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SCRIPTURE;BUT WITH THE TEACHING OF THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS,OF THE 1ST CENTURY,THERE ARE MANY THINGS ABOUT CHURCH THEOLOGY YOU WONT FIND IN THE BIBLE.

To Believer:

So then, how do you reconcile some of the things that have been written in the bible that are questionable?
For example: (from previous entry)

sun revolves around the earth (says so in the Bible!). Are slavery, beating and raping women and forbidding people with disabilities from entering church okay (says so in the Bible!)? Is it a sin to wear clothes made of different kinds of cloth or to cut your hair around the temples? Is it an abomination to eat shellfish? Says so in the Bible!

Just curious

To Believer:

So then, how do you reconcile some of the things that have been written in the bible that are questionable?
For example: (from previous entry)

sun revolves around the earth (says so in the Bible!). Are slavery, beating and raping women and forbidding people with disabilities from entering church okay (says so in the Bible!)? Is it a sin to wear clothes made of different kinds of cloth or to cut your hair around the temples? Is it an abomination to eat shellfish? Says so in the Bible!

Just curious

Easily done sir sin in a wod is biblically speaking selfishness that is put yourself or your needs and wants first above all else.

Easily done sir sin in a wod is biblically speaking selfishness that is put yourself or your needs and wants first above all else.

The rules of the calculus of difference, the practical application of which enables modern technology, were uncovered by Newton and Liebnitz, with the latter reporting his breakthrough to be the realization there is no such thing as nothing. This may seem a "sophomoric" observation to those who dismiss the legitimate question, "If God made everything, who made God?" unless they know that the Christian Church had banned the use of zero as a tool of Satan, who plotted to turn God's work into that reality called nothing. Burning mathematicians at the stake for flagrant violations failed to curtail the practice, because zero alone made possible written calculation, not to mention math above the level of arithmetic, while making the latter so easy children taught each other what had heretofore been a skill of privileged accountants for the rich, which included the Christian Church. Fortunately for us, the Protestant Revolution freed Newton and Liebnitz to use zero whenever a number was so small as to be the limit to which they aspired to calculate. Wouldn't it be something if there was nothing? Yes, and that's illegal under the laws of nature, calculus and all operative languages, including English. To ask who made God if God made everything is to politely question Judeo-Christianity and Islam's fundamental assumption there exists such a thing as nothing from which God could come. To press it is to insist religion be honest if it would be true.

Believer, your last paragraph in particular was beautifully stated. I admire your brevity.

Michael, the split is not between faith and reason. There have been too many reasonable people of faith to believe the two cannot be reconciled. By that, I mean there are too many people in history and in the present who are intelligent, articulate, and reasonable in other aspects of life, and who bring that intelligence, articulation, and reason into their life of faith, and without seeing any contradiction. When someone makes the two to seem at war with each other, it is almost always because he wants one of them to be conquered and destroyed; presumably he thinks he will benefit by the conflict or the catastrophe that follows. This is the case with preachers who earn livelihoods by convincing people to look to them for answers as much as it is the case with pop-scientists who earn livelihoods by convincing people to look to THEM for answers.

In reality, it stands to reason that if faith and reason are each ways of knowing what is really out there, really true, then they will not contradict each other, even if they say different things. That is, each will say the same thing in different ways, or different sorts of sayings about different things; but they will not contradict each other with contrary statements. John Paul II wrote a beautiful booklet called "Faith and Reason", the link to which I have posted here: http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/JP2FIDES.HTM I highly urge any to read it.

As a last bit, on a matter of historical interpretation, I'ld like to mention something. From the 640s until the 1090s, Muslim Arabic forces conquered N. Africa, the Holy Land, Spain, the Levant (Syria), modern-day Turkey, Mesopatamia (Iraq), Persia (Iran) and had attacked Constantinople in at least 2 major attempts to take it. These places had been predominantly Christian when conquered; Muslim policies and historical influences collaborated to change that. It was not until 1095 that, in response to the pleas for help from the Patriarch of Constantinople, that a Pope began preaching war. Now, those seven or more wars were carried out by the Christian princes of Europe against the Muslim potentates of Arabia; whether war is a very fitting thing for a Christian is for Christians to argue among themselves. For non-Christians it is cheeky at best to cite Christ and say that they ought to have turned their cheeks. For non-Christians, it ought to be enough simply to say that Christians, like everyone else, have the right to defend themselves, and to use force when confronted with force. Whether the Christian exercises that right, and how or to what extent he does so, is between him and Christ. In any event, to judge our ancestors harshly while preventing them (in the form of their traditions) from judging us, is very hypocritical. Leave Christ to judge the Christian princes in how they defended themselves.

I agree with the overall premise of this article in that it's smart to question things one doesn't understand or agree with as that's the best way to learn and truly understand one's faith. History is littered with tons of examples of many instances where adherents to certain faiths would simply accept bad theology as fact. The Crusades of centuries ago or the Suicide Bombers of today are just two of many perfect examples of blind faith without any sense or thought behind it.

As to the comments about tradition, I agree that they are creations, not the final word on any matter (nor should they ever be so). A brief review of religious history will yeild many instances when traditions were decidedly NOT a good thing to follow.

To those religionists who dismiss Mr. Borg's article here, I encourage you to review your own doctrines carefully to see where you're exercising blind faith. As a former Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christian over time, I came to realize that there were some areas where the church had fostered an almost dangerous blind faith in some aspects of my life. God's gift of reason and logic were things I was taught were the devil's work--leading me to have blind faith in the church leadership. This led to some terrible and tragic places for me in my life at the time--things that would have been avoided with even a bit of reason and logic.

It's been my experience that religious leaders are not god but are instead falible human beings who usually have good intentions but seldom actually hear from god accurately. Unfortunately and sadly, their parishoners act as if they are.

Thanks

All religions are MAN's attempt to put god in a bottle, build a temple around the altar on which that bottle is displayed, hang a sign (of the cross?)overhead and create rubrics and rituals to differentiate US from "them" non-belivers. MY god's bigger than your god. And all I have to do is have FAITH in MY god, and I will be SAVED.

But from what?

Sorry for the typo - it should have been:

"Creatures or creations of whom?"

"But none of our “tenets or traditions” can be the last word, the final word. They are creatures, creations. To think of them as absolute is to give them a status that belongs to God alone."

Creators or creations of whom?

There's an unspoken assumption here that is fundamental to many current debates among Christians. Dr. Borg's reasoning presupposes that none of the "tenets or traditions" of Christianity were given by God. Fundamentally, he rejects the traditional understanding of inspiration. Since he does not believe that the core tenets of Christianity were given or revealed by God (or, at least, that they were not given in a way that can be clearly and reliably understood by people), he does not give them a status different from any other human speculations about the nature of life, morality, and the universe.

If, however, we believe that God has revealed to us certain things about his nature and the kind of lives he wants for us, then we have to take what He has said seriously. This is not idolotry - which is giving the reverence and devotion that belongs only to God to something that is not God - but rather, reverencing God by listening attentatively to what He has to say to us.

All the sound and fury that signify nothing always calls to mind this quatrain from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

"Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint and heard great argument
About it and about and out
I came by the same door as in I went."

Wow! They'll really allow LONG posts on this board! That's dangerous for people in the same room as me. Somebody needs to cut me off - I've had enough. Lol.

Gary Jackson,

The geocentric view of the universe was not the creation of men of Faith. It was the creation of men of Egypt. Lol. Actually, it is the rather commonsense view of every little child: the Whole Wide World revolves around ME. Ptolemy, a Greek in Egypt, systematized the view as best he could. It is the view that seemed to make the most sense, until a better explanation was developed for much the same (and some new) data.

When men of Faith have said that humans are the center of creation, we have never meant the GEOGRAPHIC center. Moreover, nobody until Galileo seems to have thought such was the belief of men. After all, WHICH person would be the center? All of us? But then, wouldn't the center actually rest somewhere between us all? No, it's all silly. We are the center of creation in the same sense we always have been: THEMATICALLY. That is to say, that when God made the world, we were the reason He did so.

For theologians, it was merely a handy parallel that we were both the center of the theme and center of the universe. When Copernicus (a century before Galileo) started teaching that we were not, in fact, the center of the universe, he was GIVEN AWARDS by the Church for his great scientific work. This was possible because he did not from his findings that we are on the periphery of the universe attempt to deduce that we are on the periphery of God's plan. That's what Galileo did. Heresy or no, I cannot say; but I can say it is silly because it is faulty logic. Very often we lock the most precious things where nobody is likely to find them, rather than display them for all passersby. Why not God?

Science and Faith reveal to us two different sorts of things. Science, properly understood, searches for how's. "How did we get here?" "How does carbon turn to diamond?" "How do babies get made?" These questions pertain to what the Scholastics called "material causes." And they are very important questions, whose very important answers have yielded great benefits. Useful technology arises from the answers to such "how questions".

Faith reveals to us the why's by telling us the who's. Those question are of an entirely different sort. When scientific data shows a trend, the best explanation of which is this evolutionary theory or that, we have discovered a how - how we got here. But we have not, by that discovery, gotten one bit closer to knowing, therefore, WHY we got here, or WHO has done it, or even, really, WHO we are. To confuse the HOW and the WHO, or the HOW and the WHY, is a deadly error in judgment.

And I mean "deadly." After all, if each of us is JUST a highly evolved blob of cells, which themselves are JUST randomly connected atoms, then what is to prevent someone from treating me as such? Indeed, the degrading cost/benefit analysis of human's lives, industrialized killing alongside industrialized arms manufacture, and a host of other atrocities is only conscienable if we view each other as JUST highly evolved blobs of randomly connected atoms; that is, if we haven't got consciences.

But you and I both have the experience of being more than blobs, of having consciences, of being thinking, acting selves. We are different then walls and rubber balls. We aren't just things, we are I's. Just like things are made of other things, an I, it stands to reason, comes from another I.

Intelligent Design and Darwinian Evolution are at odds with each other ONLY if

(1) Intelligent Design insists that God made humans like rabbits from a hat, out of nothing and all at once; (that is, if religion tries to do science's job by speaking about "how")

and (2) Darwinian Evolution insists that what may appear random bits of mutation are in fact just that - purely random, and planned by no thinking "I"; (that is, if science tries to do faith's job by speaking of "who/why").

The Catholic Church sees no reason why God could not create the universe from a big bang, or from a big flop, if he so pleases. Nor do we see a reason why God could not create a man from a mollusk, if he so chooses. What the Church insists upon, is that whether God made men from mollusks or monkeys, or out of thin air, that God made us, and that he made us like himself in some way. Specifically, he made us as little I's, and that we must treat each other as such, and not merely as animals. We all have the experience of being selves, of being self-conscious. This is not a leap of faith. Galileo's leap, from the geographic to the thematic, is a much broader leap than to say that I must have come from something like me, when everything else we see comes from something like itself.

None of this, however, is germaine to Dr. Borg's post, as someone earlier pointed out. I am amazed by the number of people who have hobby horses like abortion or evolution that they ride into every conversation. I think Dr. Borg's point was that fanaticism often arises from a lack of self-doubt, a point which I think is very true. In my previous post, I only disagreed about what is fanaticism and what is the self to be doubted. But at least my post addressed his. Let's all stay on one topic at a time, and if we haven't anything to say about it, then perhaps it would be best to go find a blog about intelligent design or the Church's position on abortion.

Look. All questions concerning our origins are useful. Personally I think the question of who made God is the central question. Let's be honest. The whole notion of God--a lone superbeing who created all that there is presumably with a set of "human" hands--is utterly fantastic. It is given legitimacy by dint of the fact that in America we believe in freedom of religion. Thus, one can legitimately posit that one lone superbeing or superconsciousness, created the earth, the heavens and all life on earth after its kind.

The problem with this view is that it has to from time to time re-create itself to accommodate science, which has a nasty habit of discovering knowledge that challenges the faith based view of Creation. Man and earth at one time was thought to be at the center of the Universe. Science has demonstrated beyond any dispute that we live in an ordinary solar system at the center of which is an ordinary star on the fringes of a galaxy that is fairly ordinary among an undetermined number of other galaxies that extend billions of years into the past. Now, religion is trying to accomodate this reality with a gimmick called Intelligent Design.

Future discoveries will no doubt render that theory just as obsolete as the one that possited that the earth was the center of the Universe and all things revolved about it.

There is a good deal of confusion on the board, and I believe that it results in ambivalence in the use of the word “faith.” In Dr. Borg’s article, I count two distinct senses in which the word is used, but without obvious differentiation by the professor. To those two senses, I propose a third sense, that he mentions in his post but without apparently including it as a sense of the word “faith.”

(1) Faith as religion: “faith without questioning risks becoming idolatrous religion,” presumably meaning that faith with questioning remains healthy religion;

(2) Faith as belief, or a set of beliefs, which may or may not be left unquestioned;

to which I add (3) the Principle of encounter with God.

Now, it is my belief that Dr. Borg is correct about the catastrophic results of making absolute in our minds that which is not absolute in reality. The question on the board seems to be whether a religion or a set of beliefs (they are not the same thing) can be absolute. Dr. Borg rightly asserts that God alone is absolute; certainly humanity and our creations are very changeable. Yet, on the matter of religion, Dr. Borg does beg the question by assuming that Christianity is like other religions: like science, a quest for truth about some aspect of reality. Buddhists, Hindus, and so forth seek to encounter the Absolute, the Transcendent, the Divine; that is true enough. The first principle of Christianity is that because God is Transcendent and Absolute, and we are finite and fluctuating, we can never on our own achieve a meaningful encounter with God; but rather, if God is God and we are not, then God must himself initiate the encounter.

The central claim of Christianity is that initiate the encounter is precisely what God did. First to the Jewish people God began to reveal himself. Then in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God reveals himself fully and finally to a world that otherwise could “only point to a stupendous and wondrous Mystery beyond all language,” to use Dr. Borg’s beautiful phrase. The whole point of Christianity is that it is different, or at least claims to be different than other religions. Christianity claims that in Christianity, we have not human gropings toward God, but God’s decisive reaching down to humans. Christianity may or may not be correct on this account, but this is the account of itself that Christianity gives. It claims to be the principle of encounter with the Almighty God.

This claim is the one upon which all else hangs. If Christianity is in fact a religion given by God in the person of Jesus Christ, then it would necessarily be absolute, at least to the extent it was given by God. That which was incorporated into it by humans would of course remain finite and fluctuating. To pretend that those finite and fluctuating parts are absolute and eternal is to allow them to become ossified, rigid, and irrelevant to changing people; it is to allow the Good News to become Old News. But on the other hand, if Christianity is given by God, at least in part, then to deny that those parts are eternal and transcendent, never aging and ever new, is to turn the Good News into the Latest Trend. Latest trends, not coincidentally, always end up as old news.

So it is, among other things, with the Sacred Scripture. Inspired by God, it is written by men. So the meaning given to those men is eternal; the expressions, idioms, customs, and even languages used to record those ideas (and events, where the Scriptures mean to record events) are human, and passing. Research into human antiquities can shed light on how humans communicated then, so that we can try to discern what God says to us today. Very often, because the idiom and customs have changed, if we read the Scriptures with only the lens of current customs, we will misread what was meant then. Moreover, because something is included in the Scriptures does not mean that God wishes us to imitate it: some things teach by positive example (what to do), and other things teach by negative example (what not to do), and as with all narratives, some things are just part of the story. For example, Jesus was good to social outcasts: so ought we be. On the other hand, King Manasseh offered his son as a burnt sacrifice and practiced all manner of witchcraft (2 Chron 21:6), an example we are clearly not meant to follow, but which is nonetheless recorded in the Word of God for some purpose we must discern. St. Thomas Aquinas said it very well: “The Sacred Scriptures are always right. When we understand them to be wrong, it is because we have not rightly understood them.”

If the Sacred Scriptures and Christianity are only pointers, and “some point better than others,” then what’s the point? Why not be Buddhist, or Hindu, or some aboriginal religion groping in the dark for the Divine? If that’s all the Scriptures and Christianity are, then why keep them? Simply because they are ours or because they help us make sense of life? They needn’t be ours and we are free to try to make whatever sense of life we like.

But if Christianity and the Sacred Scriptures are from God, then we must keep and preserve them at all costs as threads connecting us to heaven. We might, under appropriate circumstances, add our own ideas to help us out, but we must never throw away what God has given: first and foremost, Himself, His Son, the very Word-Made-Flesh. Dr. Borg says that “language can even mediate the Mystery.” I will go a great deal further and assert on the basis of historical testimony and my own experience that God has in fact mediated Himself to us, so that we can have a real relationship with Him and not simply grope in darkness for a mystery, and He does so by the Word.

Borgs point as I read it could be described as; If God were to appear on earth and say: 'This specific sentence in the bible is incorrect', should we then say: 'No way, the bible is the truth and you wrote it' - or should we say 'Oh dear, we thought the bible was truth and only truth, please explain us then, what is the truth, and how come there was something untrue in the bible?'.

We should of course say the latter; It's God who is absolute, not the bible.

As a related argument, without doubt God is greater and extends beyond what the bible tells us. If God could be reduced to what is said about him in the bible, then the entire nature of God could be understood and described in less pages than the collected works of Dostoyevski. Not very likely.

Br. Morten Barfoed, Copenhagen

Alas, the posting machine has stripped the Strong's numbers from the Numbers passage, evidently because it doesn't recognize the parenthesis-symbol I used. The essential line is:

"...the LORD doth make thy thigh ([03409]) to rot ([05307]), and thy belly ([0990]) to swell; And this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels ([04578]),"

MtMAV, the claim that the Christian "anti-abortion" position is contrascriptural rests on two propositions:

1. That there is nothoing in the bible to support the pro-lifer's opinion tha abortion is murder. I've looked at the passages you cited, and don't see what they have to do with abortion. Could you please explain how they do? (The Didache is not the bible.)

2. That there are three passages in the bible that show that abortion was not regarded a murder. I have described them, and described their import. What is it you don't understand?

Hosea should be pretty self-evident from the English translation.

It has long been recognized that the Exodus passage had something to do with abortion; Philo, in the first century, recognized that it did, but misinterpreted it; he thought it had to do with an "accidental" abortion--a pregnant woman gettng caught in a barroom brawl, or something--and took the conditional "if there be harm" to refer to whether the fetus was animated or not; if not, the act was not murder. This misinterpretation, in Jerome's and Augustine's hands, became the basis for the "traditional" Roman Catholic position, that early-term abortion was not murder.

I believe Philo was wrong on two counts: Exodus was written (c. 1000BC) long before Aristotle introduced the didtinction between the animated and pre-animated fetus, in the third century BC; that distinction was surely not known in Old Testament times (but was in New Testament times).

Moreover, "accidental" abortions arising from pregannt women getting caught in brawls were probably pretty rare events in Old Testament times, when women, especially pregnant women, were largely confined to the house. In order for the tribal priests to go to the trouble of pondering and formulating a general "law" to be written into scripture, the circumstances to which the law appied must have arisen fairly frequently; and if one consults any reference on ancient methods of abortion, it will be apparent that the most common method, particularly among the poor, was the violent one I described above.

As for Numbers, lets look at it using Srong's Hebrew-English dictionary (ALLCAPS added for emphasis):

"Then shall the man bring his wife unto the priest, and…the priest shall set the woman before the LORD …: and the priest shall have in his hand the bitter water that causeth the curse: And the priest shall charge her by an oath , and say unto the woman, If no man have lain with thee, …be thou free from this bitter water. But if thou hast gone aside to another instead of thy husband, …The LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to rot , and thy belly to swell; And this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels , to make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot: And the woman shall say, Amen, amen.

And the priest… shall cause the woman to drink the bitter water…And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that , if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water… shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people. And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed. This is the law of jealousies." [Num 5:15-29; KJV]

03409: yarek yaw-rake' from an unused root meaning to be soft; the thigh (from its fleshy softness); by euphem. the GENERATIVE PARTS;

05307: naphal naw-fal' a primitive root; to fall, in a great variety of applications (intransitive or causative, literal or figurative): ...cease, die, ...(let) fail, (CAUSE TO, let, make, ready to) FALL (AWAY... BE... LOST, ...perish, ...rot, slay, smite out...

0990: beten beh'-ten from an unused root probably meaning to be hollow; the belly, ESPECIALLY THE WOMB; ...belly, body, + as they be born, + within, womb.

4578: me`ah may-aw' from an unused root probably meaning to be soft; used only in plural the intestines, or (collectively) the abdomen...; by extens. the stomach, THE UTERUS (or of men, the seat of generation)...:--belly, bowels, X heart, WOMB.

Can you suggest an alternative interpretation?

Since when is serious scriptural exegisis "tripe"?

Um, excuse me, but is anyone actually going to get into the contents of Mr. Borg's post? Seems we're spending a lot of time trashing him for his (probably) question driven interpretation of faith and Scripture, but not actually debating what he says. Not very Christian, or Buddhist, or Jewish, or Muslim, or . . . well it's not very good of us.

The way I see it, Borg's comments are a refutation of many conservative Christian doctrines. Too many of my fellow Christians spend too much time belittling others who don't follow their paths, and too little time getting into Scripture, praying and seeing what God will reveal. And too many others spend too much time saying that if they merely go to church each week they are Christians - they go through the motions and never really question what they are saying or doing or how they might truly make the scriptures come alive.

I think that's really Borg's point - if you want to be a true Christian you have to do more then just show up for an hour a week in a certain building. You have to do more then just sit through one sermon. As I see his world view, you have to ask why the pastor/priest said what she/he said, and you have to reflect on what that means to you, and how you can take that meaning and turn it into positive action in the world around you.

Anyone who has deeply encountered God knows that God is unknowable. It is sad that anyone would think that the word or mind of God can be reduced to a book or a set of doctrines. The experience of grace leads to humility, and certainty impedes grace. The first lesson of the Gospels is those who had God neatly wrapped up in their own interpretation of scripture missed the presence of God in Jesus, and those who did not know the scripture were able to find God. Jesus could quote scripture to refute those who thought they knew scripture. Otherwise he mentions a handful of basic passages. The Bible teaches its own limitations. I think Marcus is right. As soon as one stops questioning one's own understanding of God, one is mistaking one's own humanly constructed image of God for the true God.

When I was a little boy my grandmother always told me that religion is basically a form of mental illness abused by a group of people who make money from them by making them feel normal. This was over 50 years ago…I look back and see how truly smart she was, way ahead of her times.

"The creatures outside looked from pig to zionist, and from zionist to pig, and from pig to zionist again; but already it was impossible to say which was which".

For Reality Check above: You posted the same exact tripe regarding abortion on another web site. (One trick pony? Proud of yourself? You must think of yourself as being on a roll with that post). On that web site, I provided you at least 5 biblical passages refuting yours. Roman Catholic doctrine regarding abortion is neither "contrascriptual or extrabiblical" as you state. In addition to biblical scripture, the rich, rich Catholic tradition (much of which is predicated on biblical scripture) is replete with early church father