Comment by Zh ///
I love how you demonstrated the irrationality of atheism through science but I wish you could have made a rational and logical case for your religion too
Reply by Green Peacemst ///
Interesting point. It´s not clear that he´s gotten that far yet. I know that I got my college degree in Biological Anthropology studying the evolution of speech, symbolic behavior, and religious ritual. I had been an interfaith spiritual seeker since high school. I felt anxious and stressed, and hungry for a social philosophy that I had sought in a Kung Fu class. I worked a summer in eco-consumer advocacy knocking on doors, then went to Africa to teach science. Back in the big city suburbs, I left a corporate job after three weeks to work in social services with substance abusers with kids. A colleague introduced me to a self-care technique by Louise Hay, a Religious Science minister who healed her own cancer with a holistic bodywork psychotherapy effort and her spiritual orientation, including Emmett Fox. She also shared that her mother had been doing Christian Science, that I hadn´t registered earlier. Her book was endorsed by Bernie Siegel MD who had written Love, Medicine, and Miracles. I remember that Siegel had an account about a Jewish prisoner being tortured, who had a vision of Jesus, then told his torturers, the SS apparently, "I love you." I actually wrote him about that and asked for the source, and he responded that he couldn´t remember. More likely the person had remained Jewish and was fearful and ashamed. Today there are numerous conversion testimonies in a Jewish Jesus ministry, incidentally, that I´ve seen. The work was slow for 5 or so months, and I experienced an acute psychological crisis of despair. I brought a Tao Te Ching one day, ran to the bathroom, and set the faucet dripping to recite the first chapter, "The Tao that can be told is not the Real Tao...."
I guess the Louise Hay contact happened around that time. Another colleague offered to take me to an NA 12 step meeting. I felt so moved that I joked, "I´ll have to start using drugs." Instead, I used my thinking to investigate more kinds of meetings and found CoDA and Al-Anon. CoDA uses self-care affirmations, along with emotional awareness training, and the standard blessings of sharing and step work in relation to a Higher Power. I also explored holistic workshops, Buddhism, yoga, and creativity. Relationships with women provided oddly acute experiences. Uncovering crucial, painful issues by one point, I began a distinct recovery period. At one point I worked as a security guard at The Disney Store on New Year´s Eve. I even began doing bicycle delivery work, with a lively series of experiences. I even began to take legal and business classes at that time, with one class giving me the chance to write on special sea turtle protective mechanisms for fishing nets. One context led me to visit my old college area in Boston/Cambridge, where I applied for a book-stocking job, got it, moved into an apartment, and found the Christian Science Reading Room I remembered in Cambridge near my college. I quickly moved back to my other big city suburbs, looked for temp work, and met a Russian woman. Meeting her, I quickly found a call center temp job. That was around February, 1999. Six months later, I got promoted to a permanent desk office position in a Wall St. customer service position. The 12 step group CoDA was still my primary spiritual practice, with Buddhist meditation, study, and temples, and some Christian Science. I began attending Christian Science services in the big city enough to meet a friendly couple who I met for brunch a few times. Also, an eco-social justice activist who had shifted from being a musician.
I began visiting Episcopal services at lunchtime, and other kinds of services and locations on Sundays, along with Unitarian Universalism. My Wall St. job was in conflict with my eco-social values, and so it soured, but only by May, 2003. I had also been involved with a food co-op store for years by that point. I also got divorced, traveled Europe for a month to fulfill one dream. I found a job in social services through a Unitarian Universalist contact. I also started dating an African-American woman, an orphan of two parents who had died of AIDS, as I recall. The job was at a homeless shelter with a cast of characters and challenges. The relationship ended, and the job soon after by 2006 or so, and I was ready to apply for a masters based on classes in International Relations. I remember at some point there having thought in Christian Science that it was good for small things, but not for social reform. In my masters program, I began tracing University based education and social movements/Civil Society back in history and identified Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi. along with the UK anti-slavery abolition movement. I was reading remarkable testimonies in Christian Science, including one of a soldier whose arm was badly hurt by a bomb and left with just a shred of bone. His prayer in Christian Science led to its healing. Another was of a group of British POWs in a Japanese camp who organized and resisted malnutrition in relation to their meditative prayerful focus on God as Divine Mind and Love, and more. I had intense interest in Christian Science, but found they prohibited drinking. I didn´t want that as a restriction. I also realized that Jesus had taught love, not elimination of all things unlike him, nor all rivals in spiritual understanding. I could be Christian and interfaith, too. I gave Unitarian Universalism a few chances. My experience in the masters program was demanding enough that I tried to attend a United Church of Christ location there.
I then took another trip through Europe, and then went to Brazil to teach English. I got involved with an adult student of mine who was some kind of independent Christian, kept returning to the area, had a child with her, and married her. I graduated and tried to get work in an agroecological context, but things didn´t work out. Another intentional ecovillage, although Christian, was fundamentalist. I returned with my wife and child to her village by the beach, and was able to teach English in the nearby big city.
Anti-theists began attracting my interest and attention several years ago. I had been calling myself an interfaith Christian, and had tried to associate with Unitarian Universalist online communities, but simply found their disinterest in Jesus disempowering to me. I determined that I was an independent interfaith UU Christian.
At root, my logical case for my religion would be that as the result of my studies and personal experience extending my masters research on the origins of Universities and social movements, along with my undergraduate History of Science studies, and my understanding of the psychosocial issues in mental health, I saw the underlying components resulting from sustaining Jesus´ standards of loving integrity in his legacy. Jesus´ standards of loving integrity account for a number of unique phenomena in the development of Western Civilization. I refer to it as Jesus´ living legacy of loving integrity for Moses and God in University-based, US-EU-UN global human rights-sustainability society with structured pluralism, as one short version.
Thus, the rise of University-based Western Civilization specifically relates to its heritage in Jesus. All the admired advances in Western Civilization involve modernization processes that have been identified with secularism as part of the Freedom of Religion and advance of science. However, scientific materialism and the narrowmindedness of church authority has led to the association of secularized Christian culture with atheistic secular humanism, and three main forms of materialism, including economics.
Jesus´ special role as Savior is reported in most doctrines as his substitutionary atonement, his sacrificing himself for our sins. However that dynamic has been used in the spiritual-religious terms of the Bible, Jesus taught the need for personal effort in spiritual-religious practice for personal growth. Therefore, as the described Son of God/Son of Man, Jesus´ teachings and demonstrations of healing, and people achieving salvation in this life through their personal transformation from love, God´s love through Jesus, Jesus gave a standard of spiritual-religious practice. He potentialized a new level of salvation.
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