Personally, I see Jesus' resurrection as a myth, a metaphor. I also find that a lot of what Jesus supposedly did--resurrection, Son of God, miracles--very much resembles myths that were quite popular before and during the time of the disciples. With this being said, I don't really see Jesus as a special "person." Check this out and the following article.

Was Jesus' Resurrection a Sequel?

When David Jeselsohn, a Swiss-Israeli collector, bought this ancient tablet from a Jordanian antiquities dealer, he was unaware of its significance

 

Check this out! Do you think this should be allowed?

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CNN) -- Unless a federal court intervenes, South Carolina drivers may soon be able to profess their Christian faith with a state-issued license plate.

The state plans to issue plates featuring a Christian cross and the words "I Believe," but a group advocating the separation of church and state says that goes too far.

A similar design had been considered by Florida's lawmakers, but it was rejected there because of concerns over separation of church and state.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which includes Christian, Jewish and Hindu clergy, filed a federal lawsuit last month. The group contends that the plates violate the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against government favoring one religion over another religion or non-religion.

South Carolina became the first state to offer Christian car tags last month, when Gov. Mark Sanford allowed the bill to become law without his signature. The state legislature had passed it unanimously.

"I think it allows people of faith to profess that they believe in a higher calling, they believe in God," said Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer.

Bauer has offered to personally pay a $4,000 deposit required for the Department of Motor Vehicles to begin producing the plates. The fee would be returned to him later.

The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Bauer's willingness to pay the deposit "more deeply confirms this is a government-sponsored program."

"I don't believe that these license plates will ever be on any car in South Carolina, because I think our Constitutional claim is so strong," Lynn said.

South Carolina's legislature has not made a similar specialty plate available for any other faith, he said.

While individuals can ask the DMV to print plates for other faiths -- for a $4,000 fee -- the request would be subject to significant limits and rules not imposed for the Christian plate. Other tags could feature a religious symbol -- such as the Star of David -- but no words would be allowed.

The Christian plate will include the words "I Believe" and a bright-yellow cross on a multicolored stained glass church window.

Lynn's group said in a news release "that other religions will not be able to get similar license plates expressing differing viewpoints, nor can a comparable 'I Don't Believe' license plate be issued.

"The state has made believers of non-Christian faiths feel that they are second-class citizens," Lynn said. "Under our Constitution, that's impermissible."

Bauer said allowing Christians to have a specialty license plate is freedom of speech. He said those who oppose are prejudiced against Christians.

"We're not going to back down," Bauer said. "We're going to fight for a change. I'm tired of seeing Christians back down in fear of a lawsuit."

Bauer also said he is not afraid of a personal political backlash against him.

"If I were never to get elected or serve in another capacity because I pronounce my faith as a Christian, I don't have a problem with that," Bauer said.

Source

I often use terms that seem to really bother people: nothingness, chaos, suffering, meaninglessness, despair, etc. Why do these terms, which are so embedded in my philosophy, bother people so much? Well, most people seem to thing that there is something as opposed to nothing: God created everything with a purpose and a meaning. I, on the other hand, think all we have is nothingness and that everything is intrinsically meaningless. Depressing isn't it? I don't see it as depressing, although I definitely understand how people can see my thoughts as depressing. But, I feel that my thoughts are more in tune with reality: God is dead; the universe could care less about us; reality lies in nothingness and is utterly meaningless.

However, like the Existentialists, I don't see this reality as depressing; instead, I see this reality as quite liberating and empowering: Life is what we make out of it, what we make it to be; Change comes from us; We are responsible for how we act and behave; It is our fundamental job as human beings to create meaning; We are the basis for everything, good and bad; We have one life--live it with a dignified purpose. Often, I am asked how I can be happy if I see life, the world, in such a depressing way.

I know I've been quoting a ton from Comte-Sponville's book, but I think he answers this common question in an eloquent and accurate manner.

What can people hope for who have never believed in God or who have ceased believing in him? Nothing--that is, nothing absolute or eternal, nothing beyond the "darkest reaches of death," as Gide put it--which means that all our hopes for this life, no matter how legitimate (less war, less suffering, less injustice) run up against that ultimate nothingness; it engulfs all, joy and misery alike. That makes one more injustice (the fact that death strikes innocent and guilty alike) and one more misery, or several (one for each period of mourning in a person's lifetime). It condemns us to seeing life as tragic--or, if we seek oblivion, as entertainment. Such is the world of Lucretius, the world of Camus and our own world: Nature is blind; our desires insatiable; only death is immortal. This by no means prevents us from struggling for justice, but it does prevent us from believing in it completely or believing that its triumph can be permanent. In a word, Pascal, Kant and Kierkegaard were right: There is no way for a lucid atheist to avoid despair...

Pascal summed it up brilliantly: "So it is that, instead of living, we hope to live," and that, "forever preparing for happiness, it is inevitable we should not know it." I wanted to break away from that "inevitable" by working out something I called a wisdom of despair. In the Western tradition, such a wisdom would be akin to that of the first Epicurians or the Stoics, and, later, to Spinoza; in the Eastern tradition, it would derive from Buddhism or the Samkhya. ("Only the despairing can be happy," says one of the Samkhya Sutras, "for hope is the greatest torture, and despair the greatest joy.") Once again, this is only superficially contradictory. Wise people wish only for what is or for what depends on them. What good would hope do them? As for foolish people, they wish only for what is not (this is what distinguishes hope from love) and for what does not depend on them (this is what distinguishes hope from will). How can they be happy? They never stop hoping. How can they stop fearing?

"There is no hope without fear," wrote Spinoza, "and no fear without hope." We usually think of serenity as the absence of fear, but it is also the absence of hope; thus, it frees the present moment for action, knowledge and joy! This attitude has nothing to do with passivity, laziness or resignation. To wish only for what depends on us (to want) is to give ourselves the means of making it happen. To wish for what does not depend on us (to hope) is to condemn ourselves to powerlessness and resentment. The path is clear enough. The wise act; the foolish hope and tremble. The wise live in the present, wishing only for what is (acceptance, love) or what they can bring about (will). Such, indeed, is the spirit of Stoicism and of Spinoza. Such is the spirit of all wisdom, no matter what the doctrine. It is not hope that spurs us to action (how many people hope for justice but do nothing in its favor?); it is will. It is not hope that sets us free; it is truth. It is not hope that helps us live; it is love.

Thus, despair can be a bracing, healthy, joyous attitude. (Emphasis added.)  

in a book at a used bookstore.

If tears could build a stairway,

and memories were a lane,

I would walk right up to heaven.

To bring you home again,

No farewell words were spoken

No time to say goodbye,

You were gone before I knew it,

and only God knows why.

My heart still aches with sadness

 and secret tears still flow,

what it meant to love you.

No one will ever know.

I thought this little poem was sweet.

"If God does not exist, everything is allowed." Dostoevsky's character, Ivan Karamazov, said this while discussing theology around the dinner table in his father's house. Not surprisingly, Ivan is an atheist. Only an atheist would say this, right? Atheists aren't moral. They can't be moral! God is the foundation for all morality. If one does not believe in God, then how can one moral? How can one believe in morality? What is the incentive to be moral? (Does there even have to be an incentive to be moral?)

Nietzsche infamously claimed the death of God over a century ago; he new his words were cataclysmic, and rightly so. God seems to be the foundation of almost everything. Get rid of God and you get utter chaos. So when Nietzsche claimed the death of God, the very foundation in which morality was based upon crumbled. But God is dead and morality is still practiced widely. Perhaps Nietzsche was wrong? I don't think so. Maybe we can replace "God" with things more powerful: our thoughts, rationale, and love. Most importantly, maybe God isn't the foundation for morality. Perhaps we are.

Nevertheless, some people still maintain that one can only be moral if one is religious. How naive and idiotic of such people to think this. I fully agree with what Andre Comte-Sponville has to say on this topic.

As Kant demonstrated, either morals are autonomous or they do not exist at all. If a person refrains from murdering his neighbor only out of fear of divine retribution, his behavior is dictated not by moral values but by caution, fear of the holy policeman, egoism. And if a person does good only with an eye to salvation, she is not doing good (since her behavior is dictated by self-interest, rather than by duty or by love) and will thus not be saved. This is Kant, the Enlightenment and humanity at their best: A good deed is not good because God commanded me to do it (in which case it would have been good for Abraham to slit his son's throat); on the contrary, it is because an action is good that it is possible to believe God commanded it. Rather than religion being the basis for morals, morals are now the basis for religion. This is the inception of modernity. To have a religion, the Critique of Practical Reason points out, is to "acknowledge all one's duties as sacred commandments." For those who no longer have faith, commandments vanish (or, rather, lose their sacred quality), and all that remains are duties--that is, the commandments we impose upon ourselves.

Alain puts it beautifully in his Letters to Sergio Solmi on the Philosophy of Kant: "Ethics means knowing that we are spirit and thus have certain obligations, for noblesse oblige. Ethics is neither more nor less than a sense of dignity." Should I rob, rape and murder? It would be unworthy of me--unworthy of what humanity has become, unworthy of the education I have been given, unworthy of what I am and wish to be. I therefore refrain from such behavior, and this is what is know as ethics. There is no need to believe in God--one need believe only in one's parents and mentors, one's friends (provided they are well chose) and one's conscience.

As Comte-Sponville, puts it, "'If God does not exist,' says Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov, 'everything is allowed.' Not at all, for the simple reason that I will not allow myself everything!"

I recently found this Emerson quote in one of his that I'm reading. Although he wrote in over a century ago, I find what he says to still be quite applicable to our own age.

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones* of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

*Reference to the Bible, Ezekiel 37:1-14:"The hand of the Lord was upon me...and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones...and, lo, they were very dry....Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the world of the Lord" (King James Version).

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein

I recently made a couple of posts about atheist spirituality. At first glance, "atheist spirituality" seems to be quite paradoxical, mostly because we tend to equate spirituality with being religious. Have you ever heard the saying, "I'm not religious; I'm spiritual"? Well, most people--atheists and theists alike--will say that you can't be spiritual without being religious, however, I beg to differ. We first must define "spirituality." Now, I must say that we can define spirituality in an exclusive, theistic way, but, obviously, I think to define spirituality in strictly theistic terms is wrong.

After doing some reading, and talking to a friend of mine, I started to get interested in mysticism. I was very skeptical of mysticism at first, but eventually I became interested in it, mainly because I saw that mysticism, at least the way in which I saw it, didn't interfere with my atheism. So I picked up a book called The Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale. I didn't fall in love with mysticism, but a lot of what I read, I found, could be applied to my own life and philosophy. In this book, Teasdale makes a distinction between being religious and being spiritual, which I think deserves to be quoted at length.

Being religious connotes belonging to and practicing a religious tradition. Being spiritual suggests a personal commitment to a process of inner development that engages us in our totality. Religion, of course, is one way many people are spiritual. Often, when authentic faith embodies an individual's spirituality, the religious and the spiritual will coincide. Still, not every religious person is spiritual (although they out to be!), and not every spiritual person is religious.

Spirituality is a way of life that affects and includes every moment of existence. It is at once a contemplative attitude, a disposition to a life of depth, and the search for ultimate meaning, direction, and belonging. The spiritual person is committed to growth as an essential, ongoing life goal. To be spiritual requires us to stand on our own two feet while being nurtured and supported by our tradition, if we are fortunate enough to have one...

Many religious people depend on institutions--their church, synagogue, temple, or mosque--to make their decisions. Rather than looking for inner direction, they shape their spiritual lives through conformity to external piety. They seem to lack the ability and desire to stand on their own two feet. Spirituality draws us into the depths of our being, where we come face to face with ourselves, our weaknesses, and with ultimate mystery. Many understandably prefer to avoid this frightening prospect by sinking into external religiosity and the safe routines of liturgy or ritual. A genuinely spiritual person passionately commits to this inner development. He or she knows that life is a spiritual journey, and that each one of us must take this journey alone, even while surrounded by loved ones.

From this, I see no reason why atheists cannot be spiritual. Shouldn't we be spiritual? Shouldn't we face ourselves and our weakness? Do we not have mystery in our lives? Is life not just some big mystery? Do we not stand on our own two feet? Should we not look at every moment of our existence? I think we should do, and can do, all of these things.  

Below is the introduction to The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville.

Over the past few years, the revival of religion has taken on spectacular and, in many ways, frightening dimensions. This is clearly the case in Muslim countries, but everything seems to indicate that the Western world, though in a different way, is equally affected by the phenomenon. Is it a revival of spirituality? If it were, we could only welcome it with open arms. Is it a revival of faith? That wouldn't be a problem either. Unfortunately, it is all too often accompanied by dogmatism, obscurantism, fundamentalism--and sometimes fanaticism. It would be a mistake to leave the field to these factors. The struggle for enlightenment continues; never has it been more urgent, and it is a struggle for freedom.

Is it a struggle against religion? No; rather, it is a struggle in favor of tolerance, in favor of the separation of church and state, in favor of the freedom to believe or not believe. The spirit is no one's private property, nor is freedom.

I was raised a Christian. My feelings about this are neither bitter nor angry--quite the opposite. I owe much of what I am, or what I try to be, to the Christian religion, and therefore to the Christian (in my case Catholic) church. My morality has scarcely changed at all since my pious years. Nor has my sensitivity. Even my way of being an atheist bears the imprint of the faith to which I subscribed throughout my childhood and adolescence. This is nothing to be ashamed of or even surprised at. It is part of my history--or rather, it is part of our history. What would the Western world be without Christianity? What would the world itself be without both? Being an atheist by no means entails being amnesiac. Humanity is one; both religion and irreligion are part of it; neither are sufficient unto themselves.

I loathe obscurantism, fanaticism and superstition. I find nihilism and servility equally repellent. Spirituality is far too important a matter to be left to fundamentalist. Tolerance is far too precious a possession to be confused with indifference or laxity. Nothing could be worse than letting ourselves be deadlocked into a confrontation between the fanaticism of some--no matter what religion they lay claim to--and the nihilism of others. Far better to combat both, without either conflating them or falling into their respective traps.

The name of this combat is the separation of church and state. It remains for atheists to invent the spirituality that goes with it. This is the task to which the present book hopes to contribute. I've deliberately made it brief and accessible--so as to get straight to the essentials and address the greatest possible number of readers. It seemed to me that the task at hand was an urgent one. Erudition and the quarrels of experts can wait; freedom of thought cannot.

What are the "essentials"? In spiritual matters, it seemed to me that they could be summed up in three questions. Firstly, can we do without religion? Secondly, does God exist? And thirdly, can there be an atheist spirituality? This little book reflects my search for the answers to these questions. Atheists have as much spirit as everyone else; why would they be less interested in spiritual life?  

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality

Andre Comte-Sponville

Up until my freshman year of college, I had never questioned religion or tradition. All I really did was go with the flow: listen to the preacher, listen to the teacher, listen to my father, etc. I was never very religious, though--I didn't care too much for religion and belief. Nevertheless, after taking a religious studies course in my first year of college, I started to question religion, tradition, and, most important of all, I think, God.

God is no longer a reality to me. But when I first started to question God's meaning, his power, and his reality, I was rather sad. Now the way in which I see the world is false, I thought. Now all that has its foundation in God doesn't work for me. What is the point of being moral? Because God says so? Because you must be a good, moral person in order to get into Heaven? No. There must be some other reason. God is meaningless to me.

So, I became an "atheist." I read Dawkins and Harris and agreed with everything they said. Now that I look back on this time in my life, I was really desperate to find a way to make sense out of the world after having my theistic worldview crushed. But in searching, I became very dogmatic, like the Four Horsemen and most atheists. Once I got out of this intial dogmatic stage--although, I must say I still get back into it from time to time--I was ready to pursue something else, something meaningful and subjective but still in line with my atheistic worldview.

I have found something that works for me--existentialism. But before I discovered existentialism, I found The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville. This little book--it is actually little and only 206 pages long--gave me what I was really looking for--a type of atheistic spirituality. If you are an atheist, and are looking for something more than just your typical atheism, I would definitely check out this little book. It is philosophical in nature and very well written. I'm going to post the book's introduction in my next blog post.  

I found this article to be quite interesting. ;)

And God Said, "Just Do It"

By David Van Biema

Genesis, chapter 2 verse 24, says a man "shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." But how liberally to define cleave? That was the very special Bible query the Rev. Stacy Spencer and his wife Rhonda took up last month with 252 married people at their New Direction Christian Church in Memphis, Tenn. And the Spencers' answer was ... encouraging. Does frequent sex have a place in marriage? Yep. Oral sex? Read the Song of Solomon 2: 3 for assurance. How about role-playing? One participant expressed a yearning to see her husband dressed as a police officer. The Good Book offers no specifics on that, so Stacy Spencer allowed that it was up to the woman, "as long as you're not lusting after a particular officer. Jesus talked about spiritual adultery, and that could be spiritual adultery. But if it's just a generic cop, go for it."

Superior sex can be difficult for some couples to discuss with each other, let alone with their pastor. But having taken on almost every other aspect of their congregants' lives, churches oriented toward young adults and Gen Xers have begun promoting not just better sex, but more of it. Well, not just promoting it but penciling it in. When New Direction launched its "40 Nights of Grrreat Sex" program, the Spencers gave participants daily planners. A typical week is marked "Sun: Worship together"; "Mon: Give your wife a full body massage"; "Tues: Quickie in any room besides the bedroom"; "Wed: Pleasure your partner"; "Thurs: Read 1 Corinthians 7--How can I please you more?"; and so on.

New Direction is not the only church promoting a frequent-sex regimen. In February, Paul Wirth, pastor of the Relevant Church in Tampa, Fla., issued what he called "The 30-Day Sex Challenge." The program featured an extensive questionnaire, a Bible verse a day and the assumption that participants would engage in some kind of sex each night. Wirth says he has received calls from eight pastors asking about his program's guidelines. A megachurch in Texas, the Fellowship of the Woodlands, holds semiannual Sacred Sex Weekends ("Learn how you can experience a fulfilling sex life with God's blessing").

Scheduling time for sex appears to be in vogue, and not just among believers. In June, couples in Colorado and North Carolina published books detailing their postnuptial attempts to have sex 101 and 365 days in a row, respectively. But the issue takes on added urgency among conservative Christians, who have just as high a divorce rate as the country at large but theoretically take the till-death-do-us-part aspect of marriage as a faith obligation. When it comes to sex, Wirth contends, many are thinking, "If this doesn't get better, it's gonna be a really sucky life."

"My own marriage was in trouble 10 years ago," he says, but it was reinvigorated with the help of His Needs, Her Needs by clinical psychologist Willard Harley. Wirth eventually contacted Harley and got permission to use the book for his church program. Meanwhile, at New Direction, Spencer discovered John Gray's Mars and Venus in the Bedroom and Getting the Sex You Want by Tammy Nelson.

Their congregations differ in some ways--New Direction, a Disciples of Christ church, is mostly African--American; Relevant is nondenominational and mostly white--but both flocks fall into the 20-to-40 age group, as do their pastors. Along with their wives, the preachers developed programs involving large-scale, coed seminars and a save-that-month schedule; the Spencers also set up a blog so users can post questions anonymously. Both couples emphasized the spiritual, emotional and, yes, practical aspects of having better sex more often. For instance, a husband can expect smoother sailing at night if he helps his wife clear her "to do" list that evening, Spencer said in a conference call with his wife, who added, "Otherwise he's just another thing on that list."

Protestant history has included periods of enthusiastic talk about sex, as well as chilly silence. A famous 1623 Puritan sermon made the case for "mutual [conjugal] dalliances for pleasure's sake," presumably as a distinction from Roman Catholicism's procreation-only rule. In the 1970s, several conservative Christian leaders responded to the popularity of Alex Comfort's classic how-to The Joy of Sex by reminding their flocks that whoopee for whoopee's sake was not doctrinally prohibited; Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Left Behind co-author Tim LaHaye each put out manuals for married couples.

Still, these new calendrical sexhortations have their critics. Lauren Sandler, feminist and author of Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, suspects they are "another way of becoming the best Christian wife--to have tons of orgasms so their husbands can go to church the next day and tell people how they really made Jesus proud in the sack." Todd Friel, host of the syndicated radio show Way of the Master, says sexual intimacy was created as a taste of what it's like to be in a "right relationship" with God. "That's amazing, and it's a little different than 'Come and improve your sex life in a 30-day challenge,'" he says. But some participants find meaning in the programs. "After more than 20 yrs of marriage, this has been 'a shot in the arm,'" one New Direction congregant wrote on the Spencers' blog. "In the past month we have been to Victoria's Secret 4 times (the secret is out!!). Thanks Pastor and 1st Lady for your openness, and obediences to God."

Source: Time.com