Archive for March 29th, 2008

29
Mar

why i believe what i believe

By Alex Cameron 0 Comments
Categories: Christianity, Jedi Skills, Life, Misc and Wisdom

I believe there are worse sins than those the Catholic church prescribes. The worst thing, even worse than dishonesty, is ignorance. We all have our own spiritual path to walk down and must thoroughly embark on a search for divinity that forms the foundation of our secular and religious beliefs through our understanding of science, and a judgement of truth that is based on our reasoning on the balance of evidence. Once we have established the justification for our beliefs, we must then take the obligatory leap of faith for things that we cannot lean on our own understanding for.

A while ago i asked over 20 people i know who subscribed to New Age belief structures to state why they believed what they did, and the response alarmed me. When i asked the same number of Christians, they were all equally ignorant. There is an unwritten assumption that to be accept spirituality we must do it blindly, which i believe to be unsound. We have been given minds and conciousness that can sense and reason, for a reason. If we were here to behave that way, we would simply be robotic animals. I have to know why i believe what i do, and that it is justified. And i respect the beliefs of others when they are the same. We can’t all be scholars, but we have an individual responsibility to the truth and not to base our lives on ignorance.

The book i’m nearly finished writing is called “Let Me Know Your Name” is a scientific, intellectual and logical journey into the universe, the nature of God, historical analysis and answers for difficult questions. It ends with a number of conclusions, but essentially it is a statement of my own faith, why i believe what i do and what the end result of the search was.

This is that statement.

———————————

An argument that the brilliant Richard Dawkins often uses is that belief in a God is a facet of evolutionary development (i.e. the “mind” and other intangible functions being a construct of the brain in response to environmental stimuli) and the belief in a God is effectively indiscriminate as to who that God is. Frequently he answers that a belief in the Judeo-Christian God is no different than belief in Viking gods such as Odin or Thor. My own view is epistemological, in that all beliefs should be backed up and justified, not based on “faith” alone.

I am not an atheist because i see absolutely no evidence whatsoever to demonstrate there is no God.

I am not an agnostic because i believe in absolutes, the importance of investigation, and the need to understand and make a decision and choice as to the nature of my own existence.

I am not a humanist because i understand man to have been a spiritual creature since his evolution, and that homo sapiens to be too separate from the other animal species.

I am not a naturalist because science can only explain the nature of the universe and not the cause of the beginning of its existence.

I do not believe in Odin, Horus or Thor as they are polytheistic divinity structures that are logically impossible, clearly primitive and humanistic, and associated with cosmological entities.

I do not believe in Father Christmas because it is a literary fictional construct of someone’s imagination, and scientists have failed to detect his presence in the uninhabitable North Pole or find out where he lives.

I do not believe in invisible pink unicorns because science has not established them as an existent species, and they would be pink if they reflected pink electromagnetic radiation but could not be invisible at the same time (i.e. reflect no EM radiation).

I do not believe in the universe’s “energy” as a form of God we all exist inside or forms of pagan natural divinity, as it is logically impossible.

I am not a New Age practitioner because the belief system is a scrappy and syncretic mix of ancient ignorance and relativistic obscurantism; it misrepresents science and is logically impossible in most respects.

I am not a scientologist because scientology is an utterly ridiculous sci-fi religion dreamt up by Ron L. Hubbard that is scientifically corrupt and seeks to profit from its members.

I am not a Hindu as the polytheistic divinity structure of the Dharmic Vega gods is constrained by the physical universe and therefore logically impossible.

I am not a Buddhist as it is Dharmic religion with a logically impossible divinity structure, and does not offer a satisfactory or realistic explanation of man’s evil nature or the cause for the universe’s existence.

I am not a Mormon because it is a perverted polytheistic interpretation of Christianity that has a divinity structure that is logically impossible and the scriptures and evidence are written off by scholars.

I am not a Christ Scientist as i reject the idea that sin and evil are irrelevant and medicine is unnecessary.

I am not a Jehovah’s Witness because as a cult it is based on a flawed interpretation of another religion that has been removed from its original context.

I am not a literal creationist as science has revealed that our existence was driven by abiogenesis and Darwinian evolution over billions of years and the biblical scripture is metaphorical.

I am not a Satanist because i believe it is an extension of humanism and the concept of a human becoming its own God is logically impossible.

I do not worship my ancestors or objects on the earth because they are objects inside a physical universe arguably created by a supreme being outside of it.

I am a not a Jew because i am by race a gentile, i.e. my mother was not Jewish, and  i do not reject that the prophecies of the Old Testament have stopped or remained unfulfilled.

I am not a Muslim because the Qu’ran is scientifically unsound, the concept of God is logically impossible, i fundamentally disagree with the values and principles presented in Sharia law and the Hadith, the pronunciation of Christianity as corrupted has little to no basis and i do not recognise the nature of God to be the one presented through my own experience.

As an aside to that, i find it deeply unsettling that the Hadith states Mohammed had a wife of six years old that he consecrated his marriage with when she was nine.

I am a Christian because:

  • The bible is the only scripture that correctly orders evolution as revealed to us through science;
  • The spiritual description of our existence is the only one that aligns logically, philosophically and scientifically with modern science and our understanding of time, natural physical laws, spatial relativity and cosmology;
  • The historical and archaeological evidence for the Bible and the events depicted in it is better than almost all other literary sources combined;
  • That evidence arguably suggests the fulfilment of prophecy as recorded thousands of years before is the highest record (> 95%) of any spiritual movement;
  • Only Christianity provides a way for our dark human nature to be reconciled with God;
  • I agree with the  values, principles and morality proclaimed in Christ’s teaching;
  • There is no other realistic explanation for the historical events of the 1st century other than a physical resurrection of Christ;
  • My personal spiritual experience confirms the same.
29
Mar

nothing like my earthly father

By Alex Cameron 0 Comments
Categories: Christianity, Jedi Skills, Life, Misc and Wisdom

If the blind lead the blind, they are both in for a big fall, and so it is with human parenthood. Our parents are flawed – potentially more flawed than we realise. But in childhood, mother and father are god. They are the limits and extents of the world, and all its truth. We learn how the world is, how we should behave and what we should expect in life from them. They are our model for relationships. Women are like our mother, and men are like our father.  Their relationship sticks in the back of our heads as how all relationships are and should be. Girls take on the role their mother took, and boys take on the role their father did. We look to mum for nurturing, and to dad for the limits, authority and validation of who and what we are.

So it follows that we always assume God is like our dad, and project his face and qualities onto a heavenly Father. How you feel towards God is governed by how we feel towards your dad. Part of the search to know the Creator is discovering who He is, and why He is nothing like the dad that brought us up. If your father was distant, violent and punishing, despite all your reasoning to the contrary, your perception of God is that He is exactly the same. If your dad was wonderful, a relationship with God is simpler as you implicitly trust Him and see Him in a loving light. God is spoken of in the masculine as scripture was written in patriarchal language and culture, but He has no gender. We can only understand Him in a semi-human context.

Once you have broken through to the idea that God is likely, you have to ask yourself what He is like. The answer to that question is relatively easy as it is the very purpose of scripture. The Bible is a documentation of man’s relationship with God and describes who He is and what He is like.

And what an incredible question to ask! Imagine learning about the personality and character of the Creator. What a fascinating idea.

First we have to admit that there is absolutely no way we can comprehend the Father. He is too big, too powerful and too extensive for little apes to get their heads round. Scripture tells us that the universe cannot contain Him. Mars is our nearest planet, and it takes 6 months to get there.

We can turn to science to help us understand God’s nature.

The God of the Koran and Hindu Vedas (or other polytheistic divinity structures) are gods restricted to the time and space dimensions of this universe and, therefore, are logically impossible.

A Creator could not have created the universe if He were a part of it (which is why New Age talk of the universe’s “energy” as god is also logically impossible), so he is by nature extradimensional and outside our physical universe. According to particle physics and relativity, at least ten dimensions of space existed at the creation of the universe. Three of these dimensions (plus time) formed the space-time manifold that we can directly observe. The other six of these dimensions exist within the universe as incredibly compact dimensions of space. God must be able to operate in all of those ten dimensions plus more in order to have created the universe.

The God of the Bible is invisible and cannot be seen except if He reveals Himself to us in a three-dimensional form that we can see. A being which exists in dimensions beyond our three spatial dimensions would be invisible to creatures (us) that can only exist in the confines of our universe. We cannot visualize a God who exists in dimensions beyond our own.

The God of the Bible is described as omnipotent. If God were confined to three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, then He could be in only one place at one time. The God of the Bible is described as knowing all that we do and that we can hide nothing from Him. A three-dimensional God would not have the ability to see through walls (Can you?) and could not know what happens outside of his sight. When earth’s mightiest telescopes continue to explore the furthest reaches of the countless galaxies, they are bringing testimony to God’s handiwork. There is nothing that is stronger than God because there is nothing that was not made by God.

Stephen Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose extended the equations for general relativity to include space and time. Not only space, but also time has a beginning - at the moment of creation. Studies in particle physics have shown that our dimension of time is really only half a dimension, since time can only move forward (time travel is scientifically impossible). If God existed in only one dimension of time, then He would have had to have been created at one point.

The Bible says God exists outside our universe and was not created, but has existed from eternity past to eternity future. The Bible also suggests God created time and was acting before time began, confirming that God exists in at least two dimensions of time. In addition, the Bible states God can compress or expand our time line, based upon what He wants to do. For God to turn a day into 1000 years and 1000 years into a day requires that He exist in at least two dimensions of time.

A three dimensional God would be unable to hear all prayers, since He could not be everywhere at once. In addition, a three dimensional God could not perform any of the signs and miracles of the Bible, since He would be confined to the laws of physics of our three-dimensional universe, which make no allowance His supernatural intervention and violation of natural laws, i.e. miracles.

Since we live in a universe of cause and effect, we naturally assume that this is the only way in which any kind of existence can function. However, the premise is false. Without the dimension of time, there is no cause and effect, and all things that could exist in such a realm would have no need of being caused, but would have always existed. Therefore, God has no need of being created, but, in fact, created the time dimension of our universe specifically for a reason - so that cause and effect would exist for us. However, since God created time, cause and effect would never apply to His existence.

Things that exist in one dimension of time are restricted to time’s arrow and are confined to cause and effect. However, two dimensions of time form a plane of time, which has no beginning and no end and is not restricted to any single direction. A being that exists in at least two dimension of time can travel anywhere in time and yet never had a beginning, since a plane of time has no starting point.

God’s free-will is not hindered by our dimension of time as He stands both above and within our time line, since our line of time runs through His plane of time. Free will and fate can co-exist as God knows what each person will do and can put him anywhere in our time line to accomplish His purposes. Complete free-will and complete predestination is possible in two dimensions of time. If he can move along and stop in our time line at will, then say if 100 million people are praying to Him simultaneously, He is able to stay at that point in our time line for as long as necessary to hear and respond to their prayers.

The topic of omnipotence (the ability of God to do anything, i.e., God is all-powerful) is frequently cited by atheists as proof that the God of the Bible cannot exist. The claim has been made that if there is anything that God cannot do, then God cannot be omnipotent and, therefore, does not exist. The Bible never claims that God can do all things. In fact, it makes a point that there are things that God cannot do. God cannot commit sin. God cannot lie. Therefore, biblical omnipotence does not mean that God can do all things. God cannot do anything that is contrary to His holy character. However, God can do anything that He determines to do. This is a true meaning of omnipotence - the ability to do anything that one sets out to do. Since an all-powerful being will always be able to accomplish whatever He sets out to do, it is impossible for an all-powerful being to fail.

Once we understand our position in relative terms to the Creator, it seems logical to assume that He would have revealed Himself to at least one of the peoples of the earth. The Judeo-Christian God has a name, and a character. Scripture is that revelation and describes who He is and what He is like.

The Creator’s incommunicable attributes are self-existence, infinity, unity, perfection, immutability, omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience. The communicable ones we share with Him (the good side of our nature) are holiness, love, grace, mercy, patience, goodness, righteousness, truthfulness, faithfulness and humility.

Only what God has chosen of Himself to be revealed can be known. One of God’s attributes or qualities is “light”, meaning that He is self-revealing in information of Himself (Isaiah 60:19, James 1:17). The reality that God has revealed knowledge of Himself should not be neglected, lest any one of us come short of entering His rest (Hebrews 4:1).

Let’s start by understanding that God is our Creator and that we are a part of His creation (Genesis 1:1 Psalm 24:1). Man is created in His image – masculinity reflects the “warrior” and His “strength”, and femininity reflects his “heart” and “beauty”. Man is above the rest of creation and was given dominion over it (Genesis 1:26-28). Creation is marred by the ‘fall’ but still offers a glimpse of His works (Genesis 3:17-18; Romans 1:19-20). By considering creation’s vastness, complexity, beauty, and order we can have a sense of the awesomeness of God.

God is eternal, meaning He had no beginning and that His existence will never end. He is immortal, infinite (Deuteronomy 33:27; Psalm 90:2; 1 Timothy 1:17). He is immutable, meaning He is unchangeable; this means that He is absolutely reliable and trustworthy (Malachi 3:6; Numbers 23:19; Psalm 102:26-27). He is incomparable, meaning there is no one like Him in works or being; He is unequalled and perfect (2 Samuel 7:22; Psalm 86:8; Isaiah 40:25; Matthew 5:48). He is inscrutable, meaning He is unfathomable, unsearchable, past finding out in entirely understanding Him (Isaiah 40:28; Psalm 145:3; Romans 11:33-34).

God is just, meaning He is no respecter of persons in the sense of showing favouritism (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 18:30). He is omnipotent, meaning He is all-powerful; He can do anything that pleases Him, but His actions will always be in accord with the rest of His character (Revelation 19:6; Jeremiah 32:17,27). He is omnipresent, meaning He is ever-present, everywhere; this does not mean that God is everything (Psalm 139:7-13; Jeremiah 23:23). He is omniscient, meaning He knows the past, present, and future, even what we are thinking at any given moment; since He knows everything His justice will always be administered fairly (Psalm 139:1-5; Proverbs 5:21).

God is one, meaning not only that there is no other, but also that He is alone in being able to meet the deepest needs and longings of our hearts, and He alone is worthy of our worship and devotion (Deuteronomy 6:4). He is righteous, meaning that He cannot and will not pass over wrongdoing; it is because of His righteousness and justice that in order for us to be reconciled with Him, Christ had to experience God’s judgment when our sins were placed upon Him as our substitute (Exodus 9:27; Matthew 27:45-46; Romans 3:21-26).

God is sovereign, meaning He is supreme; all of His creation put together, whether knowingly or unknowingly, cannot thwart His purposes (Psalm 93:1; 95:3; Jeremiah 23:20). He is spirit, meaning He is invisible (John 1:18; 4:24). He is a Trinity, meaning He is three in one, same in substance, equal in power and glory. He is truth, meaning that He is in agreement with all that He is, He will remain incorruptible and cannot lie (Psalm 117:2; 1 Samuel 15:29).

God is holy, meaning that He is separated from all moral defilement and is hostile toward it. He sees all evil and it angers Him as righteous holy anger, not human sinful anger; fire is usually mentioned in scripture along with holiness. – He is referred to as a consuming fire (Isaiah 6:3; Habakkuk 1:13; Exodus 3:2,4-5; Hebrews 12:29). He is gracious - this would include His goodness, kindness, mercy, and love - which are words that give shades of meaning to His goodness. If it were not for God’s grace it would seem that the rest of His attributes would exclude us from Him. Thankfully this is not the case, for He desires to know each of us personally (Exodus 34:6; Psalm 31:19; 1 Peter 1:3; John 3:16; John 17:3).

God’s thoughts are uncreated and eternal, but divine and human thoughts may have the same objects. God’s thoughts decree what comes to pass. It is possible for both God’s thoughts and man’s thoughts to be true, but God’s thoughts are true because they are His. Our thoughts and God’s thoughts are both validated by Him. God does not need to have anything revealed to Him. God has not chosen to reveal all things to us. God’s thoughts are all non-contradictory.

The Creator has 2 attributes that often cause immense disquiet and misunderstanding when the Bible is read in a non-contextual man – His righteous anger/wrath, and His Jealousy.  We are told in scripture that God can hate, and “hates” sin. The question to ask is whether the Father is setting a good example in the way He does things.

The hardest image of God to understand is that of Him as a warrior; two thirds of the Bible describe God’s warring activities. True love and benevolence is not permissive, as any parent will testify to. Loving someone does not mean you allow them to do whatever they want. Love must always come together with justice, and God requires justice, even though He is described as being patient and “slow to anger”. There are 3 different words for “anger” in Hebrew, all referring to different types of feelings and concepts, just as there are 3 words in Greek for “love”. God is a God of divine anger and of judgment. But notice against whom the judgment is directed. It is against those who hate Him and who have rejected Him.

Righteous anger is the anger we should feel in the face of a great wrong or injustice done to us or others.  If we didn’t feel a sense of righteous anger in the face of great wrongs there would be something seriously wrong with our conscience, as it signals the difference between right and wrong, or holiness and sin. God’s righteous anger is always justified and not sinful, abusive, selfish or rash, as human anger can be. His nature and being cannot tolerate sinfulness and that which violates who and what he is.  Therefore, it is impossible for a just God not to have “wrath” toward sin.

Sin is at enmity with the righteousness of God. The wrath of God is always directed against sin. If this were not so, if God did not become angry over sin, then He would be condoning sin and He would be sinful Himself. If God were not angry over sin, then he would be imperfect and He would not be God. This means that you can never understand grace apart from the wrath of God.

To say that God has hate for no man is clearly untrue.  However, it must be noted that this hatred is conditional.  Nowhere does God express a hatred for mankind in general without cause, but He does hate the evil.  Even in Genesis 6, the grief God feels is on account of the evil of the people.  God’s hatred for people is conditional and incited upon certain conditions of disobedience being true of a person.  This seems to be a reliable statement, for God’s declarations of hatred for any group or individual are accompanied by the necessary condition of wickedness (evil).

The doctrine that God is a jealous God comes from the Old Testament books of the law of Moses. The “jealousy” is always in the context of idol worship, beginning in the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20. The same Hebrew adjective, qannâ’ (Strong’s H7067) is only used in reference to God and translated into English as “jealous”. Two different Hebrew words are used to describe human jealousy. The Hebrew verb qânâ’ (Strong’s H7065) refers to a passionate jealousy or envy. The Hebrew noun qin’âh (Strong’s H7068) takes on a wide range of meanings from sexual passion (or jealousy) to a zeal for God to anger or envy. God does not envy an human being or anything that any human being possesses. God has no rivals, and divine “jealousy” has an entirely different meaning to human jealousy.

The last chapter in our understanding of the Creator is that He has a name, and it is not just “God”. “Human being” is not your name, “Human being” is what you are. Christianity simply calls Him “Lord” or “Father”, and in Latin He is known as “Dominus”.

In Jewish thought, a name is not merely an arbitrary designation, a random combination of sounds. The name conveys the nature and essence of the thing named. It represents the history and reputation of the being named. It is for this reason that “denying the name of God” is degrading, insulting and sinful, as it effectively proclaims that He is lower than He is. The unforgivable sin of “denying the Holy Spirit” does not mean to withhold, it means to demean or falsely accuse/mis-label. In most contexts it refers to proclaiming that God is evil, or the power of the Holy Spirit is the Devil’s work.

This is not as strange or unfamiliar a concept as it may seem at first glance. In English, we often refer to a person’s reputation as his “good name.” When a company is sold, one thing that may be sold is the company’s “good will,” that is, the right to use the company’s name. The Hebrew concept of a name is very similar to these ideas. When a messenger travels in the name of his king, he carries the power, reputation and will of the master. A name is power.

An example of this usage is in the story of when Moses asks God what His “name” is (what a question). Moses is not asking “what should I call you;” rather, he is asking “who are you; what are you like; what have you done.” God replies that He is eternal, that He is the God of our ancestors, that He has seen our affliction and will redeem us from bondage.

Because a name represents the reputation of the thing named, a name should be treated with the same respect as the thing’s reputation. For this reason, God’s Names, in all of their forms, are treated with enormous respect and reverence in Judaism, hence God is known as “Hashem” or “the name”, which it is not spoken.

The most important of God’s Names is the four-letter Name represented by the Hebrew letters Yod-Hei-Vav-Hei (YHVH, or “Yahweh”). It is often referred to as the Ineffable Name, the Unutterable Name or the Distinctive Name.  He is of course also referred to as “Jehovah”, which is a variant of an English vocalisation of the Tetragrammaton (YHVH).

The first Name used for God in scripture is “Elohim”. In form, the word is a masculine plural of a word that looks feminine in the singular (Eloha). The same word (or, according to Rambam, a homonym of it) is used to refer to princes, judges, other gods, and other powerful beings. This Name is used in scripture when emphasizing God’s might, His creative power, and his attributes of justice and rulership. Variations on this name include El, Eloha, Elohai (my God) and Elohaynu (our God). Christ screamed to Him on the cross as “Eloi”.

Almost all angels described in scripture writings carry the name of God with the suffix “-el”. The 7 archangels are the prime example, with Gabri-El (Gabriel) meaning “Messenger of God”, Micha-El (Michael) meaning “Likeness of God”, Rapha-El (Raphael) meaning “Healer of God”, Uri-El (Uriel) meaning “Light Of God”, Ragu-El (Raguel) meaning “Friend of God”, Zerachi-El (Zerachiel) meaning “Command of God”, and Remi-El (Remiel) meaning “Thunder of God”. The angel Azra-El (Azrael) is associated with death, and even Satan’s canonical name (other than Lucifer) is Satan-El (Satanel) or “Prosecutor/Accuser of God”.

God is also known as “El Shaddai”. This Name is usually translated as “God Almighty,” however, the derivation of the word “Shaddai” is not known. According to some views, it is derived from the root meaning “to heap benefits.” According a Midrash, it means, “The One who said ‘dai’” (”dai” meaning enough or sufficient) and comes from the fact that when God created the universe, it expanded until He said “DAI!” (perhaps the first recorded theory of an expanding universe?). The name Shaddai is the one written on the mezuzah scroll. Some note that Shaddai is an acronym of Shomer Daltot Yisrael, Guardian of the Doors of Israel.

Another significant Name of God is YHVH Tzva’ot. This Name is normally translated as “Lord of Hosts.” The word “tzva’ot” means “hosts” in the sense of a military grouping or an organized array. The Name refers to God’s leadership and sovereignty. Interestingly, this Name is rarely used in scripture. It never appears in the Torah (i.e., the first five books). It appears primarily in the prophetic books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, as well as many times in the Psalms.

29
Mar

introducing mr inappropriate & bunny boiler

By Alex Cameron 0 Comments
Categories: Black Arts, Jedi Skills, Life, Misc and Rants

Absolute comic genius.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/esVcr8E4fTE" height="400" width="500" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/OfuZfjiWYyY" height="400" width="500" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/xKytbno2O7I" height="400" width="500" /]

29
Mar

thou shalt not bastardise

By Alex Cameron 0 Comments
Categories: Christianity, Jedi Skills, Life, Rants and Wisdom

At the end of the Bible there is a very serious and threatening warning to those who misuse what’s inside it to hurt others or pervert scripture for their own means. It goes directly to the heart and doesn’t mince words – if you take the words out of context and corrupt the central truth it contains, you are in for some serious spiritual trouble.

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”

Revelation 22: 18-19

There you have it, plain as day. Don’t mess with this book, use it out of context or pervert its teachings.

This is also the reason many people get so meaninglessly confused about specific Bible verses and cite apparent “contradictions” and/or quote complaints about hypocrisy, cruelty or scientific inaccuracy. Scripture is something that must be studied, and read in its context, because although the message of wisdom it contains is relevant for all time, the culture and times in which it was written was different to the one we live in today. That wisdom is about human nature and our historical relationship with God, which never changes.

But there are groups who claim to be a denomination, sect or misunderstood branch of legitimate Christianity that often trap or mislead those who are spiritually seeking. What they teach is blatantly fraudulent and blasphemous, and in some cases, utterly ridiculous. It often goes under the banner that there is a conspiracy by the mainstream church to suppress their claims so it can promote its own power-seeking agenda. If only it were that grand and dramatic.

To understand what we mean by a Christian cult or perversion, we can turn to Walter Martin, the pioneer of the Christian counter-cult movement.

“By cultism we mean the adherence to doctrines which are pointedly contradictory to orthodox Christianity and which yet claim the distinction of either tracing their origin to orthodox sources or of being in essential harmony with those sources. Cultism, in short, is any major deviation from orthodox Christianity relative to the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith.”

Many of these movements come under the “restorationist” umbrella, meaning they claim they are restoring the original spiritual doctrines and teachings of Christianity that have somehow been tampered with and lost, despite all the scientific and archaeological evidence that scholarship presents to the contrary.

Or more simply, this is what happens when man re-interprets God to be the way he wants God to be, and remakes Him in his image. The resulting chaos and damage ruins lives.

Gnostics and the “lost” gospels
Gnosticism is the source of the so-called “Gnostic Gospels” that are mentioned in TV and film (e.g. The Da Vinci Code, Stigmata) that claim to depict another side of the New Testament story and Christ himself. These include the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary. The widespread belief is that there has been a conspiracy to suppress them.

Only they aren’t gospels at all, and they are freely available for anyone to look at.

Gnosticism is comes from the Greek word “Gnosis”, which refers to secret, hidden and esoteric spiritual “knowledge” available to all from the experience of God. The various Gnostic belief systems revolve around humans being spiritual souls created by the evil Demiurge (the Abrahamic God), and trapped in an evil material world that can only be escaped from by such secret knowledge. Gnostics identify Christ as the embodiment of the second (good) God who brought that secret spiritual knowledge to earth.

Gnosticism developed heavily in the first few centuries after the events in Judea (i.e. Christ’s execution and the apostolic missions) and hence battled for prominence with the early Church. In some cases, the two belief systems merged. Above all, the central idea of Gnosticism (a knowledge superior to and independent of faith) made it welcome to many who were half-converted from paganism to Christianity. According to Gnostics, faith was for the multitude, knowledge for the few.

The so-called “Gospels” were discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt and have been dated to several centuries after the circulation of the traditional gospels, which were documented abnormally near to the time of the events they describe. Very few copies exist, in comparison to the tens of thousands of New Testament manuscripts. Their resemblance with the main synoptic gospels comes from the authors openly quoting and borrowing from them, not because they were controversially different views of the early Church teachings, as portrayed in the movies. Gnosticism adopted Christ as one of their central figures, and included the New Testament in their own “Gospel” writings.

The Gnostic “gospels” allude to concepts and ideas that are obviously Gnostic in nature and go against the teachings of Christ, who spoke in simple parables to ordinary people, and taught of a single God who welcomed all rather than a select few. All of them, including the Gospel of Thomas, failed the 3 main tests to become a part of the Bible. None of them were written by apostles, eyewitnesses or have any apostolic authority, they are not congruent with the rule of faith (i.e. orthodox teachings of Christ), featuring the teachings of another religion and they were not in continuous usage and acceptance by any of the early churches.

“Young Earth” Creationism
More of a naive stupidity than outright perversion, creationists take the Genesis story absolutely literally. They believe God created the Earth in 6 24 hour days 6,000 – 10,000 years ago, and that evolution is in direct contravention of the Word of God as a lie concocted by the Devil. Some even ho so far as to claim dinosaurs were also the Devil’s schemes to test people’s faith.

This claim has absolutely no validity whatsoever and believers are almost always in militant denial of simple facts of science. Creationism is not a science by any normal description and should not be treated like one. The “days” in the metaphorical account of Genesis refer to “ages” of time representing billions of years and it is the only religious scripture that correctly orders evolution as we understand it today through science. Evolution and natural selection are the engine and mechanism of God’s creation, and science is the study of creation. As far as a religion is true, it will always be synchronised with our scientific understanding.

These people belong in the same class as those who believed the earth was flat and the sun revolved around it. It is asinine in the extreme and they should be written off as ignorant and naive, with no exceptions.

Jehovah’s Witnesses & the Watchtower Society
Founded in the late 19th century by Charles Taze Russell and also known as the people of the Watchtower Society, Jehovah’s Witnesses have a uniquely paranoid view of Christian scripture that is such a radical departure from the original Biblical context that it cannot be considered as related to orthodox Christianity. Because absolutely anything that doesn’t come from the Watchtower is from the Devil, you won’t find many of them looking critically of what they believe. The Devil is everywhere and all powerful in these scared and frozen minds. And let’s face it, they’re very, very annoying.

Like Muslims, they believe there is one true God (called Jehovah) and no Trinity, and Christ was killed on a torture stake as a Son (but not the incarnation) of God and that He was not physically resurrected. Apparently only 144,000 chosen people will be God’s chosen priests on a new second earth and there will be no afterlife, including no hell, but just eternal extinction. They assert any symbols are a form of idolatry (e.g. the pagan origin of the crucifix), that believers must be politically neutral in all matters despite believing the beast of Revelation to be the United Nations, and reject transfusions of whole allogeneic or stored autologous blood or its primary components.

Amusingly, their prediction of the end of the world as being in 1914 and it’s flawed chronology is the first in a very long list of “prophecies” that have never happened. Not so funny is the other long list of children who have died needlessly in hospitals because their dogmatically religious parents have steadfastly refused to allow them life-saving blood transfusions, or have had their claims of sexual abuse silenced by elders. Leaving the cult itself results in being totally disowned, or excommunicated, and If you sin, a “tribunal” of elders tires you for your actions to determine your guilt and subsequent punishment.

The blasphemy of the Watchtower crowd is fundamentally based in its selective interpretation of the Bible and their own apostasy. What started as a bible study group has somehow morphed into a conservative authoritarian sect with beliefs that have gone so leftfield as to constitute a wholesale re-working of Christian doctrine. All you need to do is take one look at the miserable bastards who knock on doors “witnessing” with their children dressed in suits to know the Devil spends his time writing their magazines.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons)
The first and only thing that needs to be said about Mormons is they, presumably accidentally, added an extra letter to their real title– there is an extra “M” in the middle and it should read “Moron”. They are unusually fundamentalist and considered heretical by the Church, as what they teach is not only quite ridiculous, scientifically laughable and theological ludicrous, it is in no way in harmony with the original teachings of Christ, as they claim it is. That is an outright lie.

Mormons believe that after Christ’s ascension, he reappeared to the early inhabitants of North America (where else?) and divinely-inspired teachings were recorded on golden plates formed around the idea of a great apostasy. In 1820, Christ appeared to their modern-day prophet, Joseph Smith, and an angel called “Moroni” helped him translate the writings on the plates into the English “Book Of Mormon” as an additional scripture to the New Testament. Their “scriptures” are compounded with the Apocrypha and another main text called the Pearl Of Great Price.

Aside from the direct accusations of Smith’s polygamy, failed prophecies and wealth-seeking, no-one has ever seen these golden plates other than pathetically poor and compromised eyewitnesses (which are also strikingly similar to the well-known Kinderhook hoax story) or been able to historically validate anything that he claimed in these writings. Most scholars regard Smith’s works as blatant plagiarism of 4 specific books (Views of the Hebrews, The Wonders of Nature, the Bible and the Apocrypha). Even the organisation’s controversial practices of baptising the dead, violent suppression of dissent, openly-admitted sexism, racism and homophobia doesn’t seem to phase ordinary Americans who subscribe to what these history-rewriters preach. Scholars and scientists dismiss them outright.

Mormon belief structure asserts there was a council of Gods (not one God), God was created and has a physical body, humans pre-existed as spiritual beings and can become gods, and that God organises pre-existing matter (goes against modern cosmology). Amongst their scientific absurdities are the logical impossibility of multiple gods and God Himself being created, matter being eternal in direction opposition to the Big Bang, direct inaccuracies about the emergence of metallurgy and agriculture, and mostly interestingly, claims about the inhabitants of North America that are wholly refuted by modern DNA analysis and molecular biology.

Roman Catholicism
It might seem strange to include Roman Catholicism as a heretical sect of Christianity, but when it is scrutinised, its practices and beliefs are not in harmony with the Bible and arguably verge on blasphemy. Its roots lie in Rome, which was the catalytic place for Christianity becoming a world religion. When it was adopted by the Roman Empire as its official religion, it spread all over the gentile world but the Church became a political power that vied for religious and political control all over Europe. Protestantism arose in England in direct opposition as an attempt by Henry VIII to reclaim political control of his country.

Catholics believe salvation is only possible through their denomination (Christ taught it was through Him), demands confession and penance because Christ’s sacrifice was not enough by itself (when Christ taught of God’s forgiveness), excommunicates members (all are acceptable to God), proclaims hierarchies of deadly sins (all sins are deadly), encourages members to acquire “Indulgences” to earn God’s grace (He gives it freely), include the Apocrypha in their scriptures (despite it being unreliable and alluding to Gnostic concepts), is lurid with arguable idolatry due to its penchant for gold and powerful symbols and teaches of unbiblical esoteric concepts such as stigmata. The process of transubstantiation (i.e. a priest supernaturally turning bread and wine into flesh and blood by blessing it) is blasphemous enough on its own.

Indeed, one look at the Bible is enough to surmise that almost all of the errant practices of Catholicism are explicitly forbidden by Christ himself.

Perhaps the most controversial practice of the Catholic church is its veneration (or quasi-worship) of Mary and angels as the recipients of prayer as intercessors to Christ (Christ taught only through Him), and their claims that she was a virgin all her life (scripture records she had children) and ascended to heaven (scripture records she died naturally). There is no biblical basis for their concepts of purgatory or the “rapture”. They also mandate an infallible Holy Father (Pope – a title only for God) as God’s representative and demand that priests remain celibate and unmarried, despite the first “Pope” (Peter) being married with children and God specifically ordaining marriage for them. History records that the behaviour of many of these Popes has been suspect at best – the current one was a member of the Hitler Youth.

But for ordinary people, the Catholic church is responsible for the mass torture and killing of thousands of people through the Inquisition, hoarding Nazi financial proceeds from the World War II Holocaust and deliberately suppressing the systematic and serial sexual abuse of children by its priests, whilst simultaneously teaching (falsely) that sex is only for the static purpose of procreation and contraception is immoral. Most everyday Catholics themselves admit that their lives are spent fighting guilt the Church has imposed on them, when Christ taught of hope and forgiveness.

The only difference between a cult and the Catholic church is a matter of money and political power. Its beliefs do not reflect orthodox doctrine, and in some respects go directly against scripture and the spiritual teachings of Christ himself.

Church of Christ Scientist (Christian Science)
Christian science has a “unique interpretation” of the Christian faith, according to its 19th century founder and alleged prophet, Mary Baker Eddy, in the book that forms of the backbone of the sect, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”. Although not as deviant as others and flatly rejecting mysticism, the Church of Christ Scientist teaches that the reality of God denies the reality of sin, sickness, death and the material world. Eddy’s calling to found the “Church” originated in her believing that she had received a personal healing simply from reading the Bible.

Although members can apparently seek independent medical treatment, most tend to follow the doctrine of “medicine” that is gained exclusively through prayer, as they believe almost all physical ailments have their root in negative feelings and thoughts. The issue might seem moot in the case of consenting adults, but verges into manslaughter when members who are parents deprive their children of vital medical attention (e.g. Twitchell case of 1980). Another famous case involved the lead singer of Metallica, James Hetfield, relating how his parents both died of cancer after refusing to seek traditional medical treatment.

The Church Science Journal also famously promotes the “healing” of homosexuals, and has a death rate twice that of the national average. They do not diagnose disease, and do not believe in things being contagious and or death being anything other than an illusion, so they will not avoid one another to avoid infection. Their theology teaches that evil is unreal (i.e. a rejection of dualism), that God is Father and Mother, a differentiation between “Jesus” the man and “Christ” the divine manifestation, atonement for sin is unnecessary, Hell doesn’t exist and that Christian Science is a “refinement” or “clarification” of the essence of Christianity. All of these beliefs directly contradict biblical scripture and Christ’s simple teachings.

Scripture clearly states that Christ never healed in the same way twice, and that God works through the hands of doctors just as He may violate natural laws to intervene supernaturally. The most well known quote about Christian Science is attributed to George Bernard Shaw, who famously said “Christian Science is neither Christian nor scientific”, which sums it up perfectly.

Charismatic Toronto Blessing
In 1994, an evangelical church (Toronto Airport Vineyard Christian Fellowship, or TACF) in Toronto gained notoriety for the bizarre behaviour of its congregation, who claimed to have received a blessing of God’s Holy Spirit that manifested in wild madness and strange animalistic and uncontrollable behaviour. Other charismatic churches began following these ”revelations”, with many others publicly claiming they had experienced the same “blessing”.

The most common described behaviours included hysterical laughter (or “holy laughter”), physical spasms or jerks, falling to the floor under the Holy Spirit’s power (aka “slain in the Spirit”) and speaking in tongues. Other less common behaviours include manifestations that resembled roaring like lions and barking like dogs. In its most visible form it overcame worshippers with outbreaks of laughter, weeping, groaning, shaking, falling, ‘drunkenness,’ and even behaviours that have been described as a ‘cross between a jungle and a farmyard’

This phenomenon has a name and has been studied scientifically – it is called mass religious hysteria or religious ecstasy, as experienced in crowd situations in other non-religious contexts. There is no evidence or theological basis that it is a “gift” from God or has a specific spiritual purpose that enhances and/or furthers the Kingdom of God as described by Christ. Paul wrote to the Church of Galatia that the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  None of which sound anything like the crowd madness of Toronto.

———
From seeing all of these organisations and their perversions, it can be easy to believe the claims that the common message, teachings and history of Christianity and its scriptures did indeed somehow become corrupted over time. But it is equally important to understand any religion of prominence will suffer fractional splinter groupings and sects that form by taking core spirituality and changing its edges. You must satisfy yourself as to the integrity of the Bible by independently investigatingthe historicity and archaeology, because understanding how it has been preserved explains how precious and marvellously strong Christ’s life and teachings are. The naive, ignorant and weak will fall for the cults, but true spirituality requires critical thought, honest examination and a discerning mind.


this month

March 2008
M T W T F S S
« Feb   Apr »
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  

What I'm Listening To

Podcast Feeds

  • View in iTunes
  • Any Podcatcher