Lightandstorm showed me the following clip today. I must say, I haven't laughed this hard in a while. I need to start watching this show!

NEWSWEEK

   I've decided that the best place to begin our study is by summarizing for you the life of a remarkable man, who lived nearly 2000 years ago. The accounts of his life may sound familiar to you. Even before he was born, this mother knew that he would not be a normal child. In fact, she had an angelic visitor come to her prior to her conception, explaining that the one who would be born of her would be divine, His birth was accompanied by miraculous signs and wonders. As a young child, he was religiously precocious, beyond what the adult religious leaders that he met could have imagined possible. As an adult, he left home, to engage in an itinerant preaching ministry. He went from village to town teaching his good news, that people did not need to be tied to the material things of this world but should live for what is spiritual. He gathered a number of disciples around him, who became convinced that he was no mere mortal. He did miracles to confirm them in their faith, healing the sick, casting out demons, and even raising the dead.
   He raised the ire of many of those in power, however. They brought him up on charges before the Roman authorities. Even after he left this world, though, his followers continued to believe in him. They claimed that he had ascended to heaven, and that they had seen him alive afterward. At a later time. some of his followers wrote books about his life, and some of these writings still survive today. I doubt if any of you have heard the name of the man I've been describing: Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius of Tyana, the famous neo-Pythagorean philosopher of the first century BC Appollonius, a worshipper of the pagan gods, whose life and teachings are recorded for us in the writings of his later follower, Philostratus, in a book called The Life of Apollonius of Tyana.
   Apollonius lived at about the same time as Jesus, although they never knew each other. Their followers, though, knew each other, and they entered into heated debates concerning who was the superior being. Apollonius' followers claimed that he was a miracle working Son of God, born supernaturally, was supernaturally endowed to do miracles, who delivered supernatural teachings, and, at the end of his life, ascended to heaven. Jesus, according to the followers of Apollonius, was a magician and a fraud. Jesus' followers, of course, argued just the opposite. Jesus was the miracle-working Son of God; Apollonius was the fraud.

I'm taking a religious studies course (very different from a theology course) over the Gospel of Mark this semester and have thoroughly enjoyed myself thus far. The class isn't too demanding, but there is a ton of reading for each class. And, well, I have to write a 25 page research paper on a topic of my choosing. The only restriction is that the topic has to deal with the Gospel of Mark in some way. I'm not sure what I'm going to write about. Perhaps the Historical Jesus, Jesus and Mysticism, or the Future of Christianity.

The Gospel of Mark is the earliest gospel, dating to around 70 CE. Scholars aren't sure whether this gospel was written right before, during, or after 70 CE. 70 CE is an important date because this is when the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans. Because of this date, Mark is considered to be the earliest of the synoptic gospels, which comprise of Mark, Matthew and Luke. The majority of scholars think that Matthew and Luke based their gospels on Mark and another source called "Q" (Quelle in German which means source) by scholars. Q is thought to be a gospel similar to the Gospel of Thomas that was used by both Matthew and Luke to create their gospels.

It is important to note that we do not know who the author of Mark was and that we do not have the original copy of Mark. Moreover, we only have copies of copies of copies of copies. As far as textual evidence goes, we only have 8 complete copies of Mark from the first 800 years of Christianity and about 5500 bits and pieces of manuscript dated post-9th century.Furthermore, the complete copies are not all exactly the same--this is due to additions, changes, mistakes and omissions made by scribes over the years.

One of the things scholars know is that the author of Mark seriously thought that the "end times" were near and were going to happen soon. In light of this knowledge, most people who derive meaning from the Gospel of Mark believe that the end times have yet to come and will come. This type of thinking is extremely tetchy, to say the least.

Furthermore, the author of Mark was writing to a specific group during a specific time in a specific environment. It is hard to imagine that the author of Mark thought that his gospel would be used over the course of the next 2,000 years to derive meaning from. His gospel wasn't meant to do this. I read an article for class that talked about reader-response criticism--which argues whatever meaning is and wherever it is found, the reader is ultimately responsible for determining it, thus the intended meaning by the author is irrelevant--and meaning, and wrote this in response:

Throughout my reading of Fowler’s article, I couldn’t help but ask “Should we even derive meaning from the Gospel of Mark?” More specifically, did the author of Mark intend for us to derive meaning from his gospel nearly two thousand years later? These are profound questions that require answers, although I think most people, even some scholars, are hesitant to ask such questions. My reasoning is this: if the author of Mark was writing with a specific purpose and agenda to a specific community in a specific time period and honestly thought that the “end times” were coming, then we shouldn’t be deriving meaning from the gospel solely because it wasn’t written with that intent for us to do so. This isn’t to say that we can’t derive meaning from Mark, because we most definitely can, but perhaps we shouldn’t derive meaning from Mark because the meaning we derive will not be close to what the author was intending.

Meaning is a function of many things: culture, language, interpretation, theology, environment, experience, etc. Thus, the intended meaning of the author of Mark is nearly impossible to recreate because we were not there to experience the environment and culture in which the ancient reader would’ve constructed his or her meaning. Subjective experience in the author’s environment is crucial to understanding the author’s intended meaning, yet we cannot create subjective experiences in the ancient environment. Thus, any meaning we derive from the gospel is tainted by our modern-day culture, language, theology—which has no doubt evolved since the author’s time—environment, and experience.

In conclusion, my biggest problem with reader-response criticism is the lack of objectivity. Contrary to what Soren Kierkegaard believed, objectivity should always influence the subjective. This isn’t to say that the subjective meaning is useless, quite the contrary—subjective meaning is immensely important. If the objective intent of the author cannot be derived, and the purpose of the author wasn’t for us to deriving meaning from his work almost two thousand years later, then perhaps we shouldn’t be deriving meaning from it in the way most of us do.

Let me conclude by telling you what I really do think about Jesus’ resurrection. The one thing we know about the Christians after the death of Jesus is that they turned to their scriptures to try and make sense of it. They had believed Jesus was the Messiah, but then he got crucified, and so he couldn’t be the Messiah. No Jew, prior to Christianity, thought that the Messiah was to be crucified. The Messiah was to be a great warrior or a great king or a great judge. He was to be a figure of grandeur and power, not somebody who’s squashed by the enemy like a mosquito. How could Jesus, the Messiah, have been killed as a common criminal? Christians turned to their scriptures to try and understand it, and they found passages that refer to the Righteous One of God’s suffering death. But in these passages, such as Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and Psalm 61, the one who is punished or who is killed is also vindicated by God. Christians came to believe their scriptures that Jesus was the Righteous One and that God must have vindicated him. And so Christians came to think of Jesus as one who, even though he had been crucified, came to be exalted to heaven, much as Elijah and Enoch had in the Hebrew scriptures. How can he be Jesus the Messiah though, if he’s been exalted to heaven? Well, Jesus must be coming back soon to establish the kingdom. He wasn’t an earthly Messiah; he’s a spiritual Messiah. That’s why the early Christians thought the end was coming right away in their own lifetime. That’s why Paul taught that Christ was the first fruit of the resurrection. But if Jesus is exalted, he is no longer dead, and so Christians started circulating the story of his resurrection. It wasn’t three days later they started circulating the story; it might have been a year later, maybe two years. Five years later they didn’t know when the stories had started. Nobody could go to the tomb to check; the body had decomposed. Believers who knew he had been raised from the dead started having visions of him. Others told stories about these visions of him, including Paul. Stories of these visions circulated. Some of them were actual visions like Paul, others of them were stories of visions like the five hundred group of people who saw him. On the basis of these stories, narratives were constructed and circulated and eventually we got the Gospels of the New Testament written 30, 40, 50, 60 years later.

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

 

This is one of the two essays I wrote for my religious studies class that I took this semester. The essay prompt required me to identify how Nietzsche’s critique of religion has influenced the way in which scholars study religious experience. If you are bored, read it J

Nietzsche, one of the founding fathers of existentialism, was a surprisingly spiritual philosopher, although one might not be able to tell by reading his brilliant work, The Antichrist. It is my position that Nietzsche’s critique of religion has greatly influenced the study of the nature of religious experience in a positive way. Nietzsche’s critique of religion allows for the primary focus of the observer to shift from studying experience to studying the meaning created by experience, which in turn drastically shifts the presumed root of religion from one of experience to meaning making. This is an important categorical shift because scholars cannot accurately reproduce or represent religious experiences. Nietzsche’s critique of religion, however, allows scholars to study something observable and important as religions interact in societies—meaning making. In order to understand the effects of Nietzsche’s critique on the modern study of religious experience, his assumptions must first be examined.

A student of Feuerbach, Nietzsche thought that humans had created a reality that was blatantly false by externalizing their most precious characteristics, i.e. the power to think, the power to love, and the power to act. To Nietzsche, this false reality didn’t resemble true reality in any way:

Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary causes (“God,” “soul,” “ego,” “spirit,” “free will”—or even “unfree”), and purely imaginary effects (“sin,” “salvation,” “grace,” “punishment,” “forgiveness of sins”). 1

This is Nietzsche’s umbrella assumption: Religion presents a false reality to the masses. His umbrella assumption stems from two of his most crucial assumptions: (1) God is dead, and (2) A religion’s foundation lies in hatred of the natural—the real. For Nietzsche, rationalism and science killed God. The traditional notion of God could not withstand the power of intellectual thought or the truths put forth by science. Essentially, the traditional concept of God was inconceivable of being true in any sense, given the recent discoveries of his time, such as evolution. Understanding that this view was extremely radical for his day (it still is radical), he stated in The Antichrist that only the rarest of men would understand him and that “perhaps not one of them is yet alive.” 2 For Nietzsche, God was already dead, but this death was incapable of being seen by all; and therefore, people could and would continue to live in a false reality. Thus, religious experiences are continuously attributed to a false reality purported by religion.

Nietzsche’s second crucial assumption is that a religion’s foundation lies in hatred of the natural:

The whole of that fictitious world has its sources in hatred of the natural (the real!), and is no more than evidence of a profound uneasiness in the presence of reality….This explains everything. Who alone has any reason for living his way out of reality? The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality one must be a botched reality... 3

Religion is used by the sufferer to deny reality and is used as a means of rationalizing his or her suffering through God. For Nietzsche, suffering is a part of life and should be understood in terms of reality, but the “weak” dislike and find suffering to be unbearable, and therefore define it as being unnatural when it is in fact natural. Religion offers a better and eternal life after death through salvation, and thereby provides the sufferer with a way to deny the reality of suffering and to justify it via a false reality. In essence, the sufferer creates a false meaning through a false medium to make him- or herself feel better. Because of this denial of reality by the individual, religious experiences aren’t really “religious” experiences; instead, religious experiences are experiences attributed to fatuous concepts. Thus, experiences should just be experiences; there is nothing “religious” about them. Essentially, it doesn’t matter if a person has had a divine experience with God; studying the experience itself is pointless. The meaning that is derived from the experience is what matters. Nietzsche’s assumptions, and therefore his critique of religion, thus shift the focus of the study of experience from the study of experience itself to the study of the meaning created from the experience.  

In his eloquent work on Islam, No god but God, Reza Aslan demonstrates a Nietzschen approach that favors meaning-making over experience.  According to Aslan, religion is,

an institutionalized system of symbols and metaphors (read rituals and myths) that provides a common language with which a community of faith can share with each other their numinous encounter with the Divine Presence. 4

Aslan continues by stating that,

the way scholars form a reasonable interpretation of a particular religious tradition is by merging a religion’s myths with what can be known about the spiritual and political landscape in which those myths arose. 5 

He posits that by understanding religious myths in the context in which they were written, the origins and evolution of a religion—specifically, in his case, Islam—can be assessed.

For Aslan, myths are always true and have very little to do with historical fact. It doesn’t matter if Paul actually saw Jesus in the sky on the road to Damascus, nor does it matter if Moses actually parted the Red Sea. Whether or not experiences and events like these actually occurred isn't debatable. Rationalism and science tell us that such things cannot occur. So, the question isn’t whether or not these religious experiences and events are true, rather, according to Aslan, “the only question that matters with regard to a religion and its mythology is “What do these stories mean?” 6 For Aslan, it is clear that the essence of the myth is of more importance than the experience described in the myth. The essence of the myth is grounded in the culture in which it was written. Therefore, in order to understand the myth, one must first understand the culture in which the myth was created. This understanding of myth leads to the pure form of the religion in question, according to Aslan. But as cultures change with every new generation, so does the religion and its myths. Old myths are reinterpreted so as to provide the current culture with meaning, and new myths are created through experiences to create more meaning. As this process repeats itself, it is inevitable that the current version of the religion becomes quite different from the original version of the religion—not in experience, but in meaning. In this case, religion is a function of culture and is constantly changing. From this analysis of Aslan’s ideas, it is evident that Reza Aslan’s critique of religion is highly influenced by Nietzschean thought.

In No god but God, Aslan advocates the idea that there is a pure form of Islam that is much different from today’s Islam. The disparity between these two versions of Islam—the pure form and the current form—is due to the influence of a changing culture. Aslan acknowledges the affects of culture on religion specifically with regards to the Islamic hadith:

While some hadith may in fact contain an authentic historical core that can be traced back to the Prophet and his earliest Companions, the truth is that the Sunna is a far better reflection of the opinions of the ninth-century Ulama than of the seventh-century Ummah. After all, to quote Jonathan Berkey, ‘It was not Muhammad himself who defined the Sunna, but rather a memory of him’. 7 

There is no doubt that culture has affected all of Islam. Nietzsche felt the same about Christianity. To him, there is a pure and corrupt form of Christianity, i.e. the current form. He thought the stories of Jesus had reached us in a “greatly distorted form”:

The milieu in which this strange figure moved must have left marks upon him, and more most have been imprinted by the history, the destiny, of the early Christian communities; the latter indeed, must have embellished the type retrospectively with characters which can be understood only as serving the purposes of war and of propaganda. 8

To Nietzsche, the pure form of Christianity could only be accessed by realizing that the only Christian who ever lived died on the cross and by taking a more mystical approach towards Christianity.

As Aslan's work demonstrates, the influence of Nietzche's thought clearly shifts the study of religion from the nature of religious experience to the study of meaning making. The scholar wastes his or her time when he or she attempts to understand the facticity and details of an experience. A religious experience cannot effectively be studied because (1) the experience is embedded in a false reality and (2) the observer can never understand the experience unless he or she has had the same exact experience in the same exact context. This allows the scholar to focus on religion’s primary function—meaning making. Instead of asking questions like “Can you describe your experience to me?” and “What time of day did your experience occur?”, the scholar can now study the root of the experience by asking questions like “What meaning do you derive from this experience?” and “How does this meaning define what you do in and with your life?”  The scholar can now see what religion really is: a system of meaning making.

This view of religion as a system of meaning making allows the scholar to better understand the origins of religions and their evolution. What did these myths mean to the early Christians of the 1^st and 2^nd century? What meaning did they derive from these myths as to allow Christianity to flourish like it did? By asking these types of questions, the scholar no longer looks at scripture as documenting literal or historical accounts of actual events or experiences. Instead, the scholar sees scriptures as myths, which then allows the scholar to directly see how the political and social landscapes shaped “God’s” word: the scholar can analyze why certain myths were created and what function they served. This perspective of religion also allows the scholar to more clearly see the evolution of religion, or the lack thereof.   By seeing religion as a function of culture, one can see why and how religion is being used to justify religious conflicts and what allows for religious fanatics to thrive. This perspective opens the scholar to a different and more accurate interpretation of religion. This is the fundamental way religion should be studied: as a system of meaning making.

This new perspective of religion implies the following question: If we study religion as meaning-making and not as experience, do we somehow distort the way people tend to describe religion for themselves? Religion, for most people, is built upon an experience that they attribute to a supernatural reality. This experience is purely subjective and should not be the focus of the scholar’s study. Instead, the scholar should analyze the meaning the individual derives from the experience by interviewing the individual. It is the essence of the experience that matters, not the experience itself. Yes, to some extent, the scholar will distort the way people tend to describe religion. But this distortion must occur in order to understand the meaning derived from the experience.

In order to use this approach to religion, like Nietzsche, the scholar has to assume that all religious concepts—God, miracles, demons, etc—do not describe reality; there is no truth behind these concepts. Instead, these concepts are purely used to make meaning. If the scholar is focused on the facticity of religious concepts, then the experience is emphasized and the meaning derived from the experience is secondary.  We know from rationalism and science, that religious concepts do not accurately describe reality. It is safe to assume, like Nietzsche, that God is dead and that we have killed him—some of us simply do not wish to acknowledge his death. The scholar though, in order to see religion as a system used for meaning making, must acknowledge what true reality is and isn’t. True reality is a reality in which God is dead.

References

1 The Antichrist, pg 7. #15.

2 The Antichrist, pg 1

3 The Antichrist, pg 7. #15.

4 No god but God, Prologue pg XXV

5 No god but God, Prologue pg XXVII

6 No god but God, Prologue pg XXVI

7 No god but God, pg 164

8 The Antichrist, pg 16, #31

My brother is going on a mission trip to China. I don't agree with what he is doing, for obvious reasons, but should I still support him? I was talking to my mother today and she told me that I should support my brother by donating some money to help send him to China. I replied with something like, "Why would I do that? I fundamentally disagree with what he is doing. He is going to China to spread the word of Jesus. I believe that there is a rational version of the word of Jesus, but the traditional Christian version of Jesus' message is bogus and nonsense. There is no heaven or hell. Jesus was not God. God does not exist. Jesus didn't die for our sins." "But he is your brother. You need to support him." "Mom, but by supporting him I am supporting what he is doing. I fully disagree with what he is doing. I can't support him."

I suppose my mom could go on to say that my brother is going to China to do good, which may be true; but he is doing good for the wrong reasons, in my opinion. Help the people because you want to help them, not because you think you are doing something God would want you to do.

Is it wrong of me to not support my brother in this way? Am I being selfish? My mom thinks I am being very selfish and that I will "evolve" one day and realize that I was being selfish. I just don't see it, though. By supporting him, I allow him to do the very thing that I disagree with. We should be spreading love, compassion, joy, happiness, knowledge, wisdom, and intellect--not "God's" love and compassion or irrational faith.

I'm currently taking a religious studies class. My professor requires her students to write 8 mini-papers throughout the duration of the semester. Basically, we are supposed to do some "critical reflection" over the topics and issues we cover in class and write our thoughts down. Below is one of my mini-papers:

All the stories found in religion are myths. I have said this many times to a couple of people, and every time they give me an awkward look (Probably because they think I’m trying to mock them, but I’m really not). Christianity, arguably since its inception, has interpreted the Bible literally and metaphorically. However, in Christianity, the literal interpretation of the myths of the Bible is extremely important because, to believers, the metaphoric meaning of the myth is a function of the validity of the literal interpretation of the myth. The problem is: the metaphoric meaning shouldn’t be a function of the validity of the literal interpretation. The metaphoric meaning is everything.

For example, consider the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is no way of objectively proving that Jesus actually rose from the dead, so his resurrection is accepted by a “leap of faith.” I have asked some of my Christians friends numerous times, “If Jesus didn’t resurrect from the dead, would your faith crumble?” Amazingly enough, the answer was almost always a “Yes.” I would then ask, “Well, would you still derive metaphoric meaning from Jesus’ resurrection?” They would reply, “No, because the meaning isn’t true anymore.” I’m not sure if all Christians think like this, but the majority of the one’s I am around do. What my friends and family fail to realize is that myths are always true. A myth’s truth has nothing to do with whether or not the myth is factually true.

This past summer I read a wonderful book on myth. In Thou Art That, Joseph Campbell explains religious myths in an easily understood manner. Despite common belief, a myth is not a lie. According to Campbell, myths are “spiritual events described in metaphor.” In other words, myths are essentially metaphors. If I said “Daniel is a deer,” you wouldn’t think that I am actually a deer; just by looking at me you could tell I am not literally a deer. If I am not literally a deer, then what I am trying to convey with this statement? The answer to this question depends on one’s interpretation of the statement, but let us just say I was trying to convey that I am peaceful like a deer. The metaphorical interpretation is what matters, not the factualness of my statement.

For Campbell, "...to appreciate the language of religion, which is metaphorical, one must constantly distinguish the denotation, or concrete fact, from the connotation, or transcendent message." All too often, we are concentrated on the denotation of the myth, which is blatantly wrong. This misconception leads Campbell to conclude that “there seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call "atheists," and those who think they are facts are "religious." Which group really gets the message?” Neither group does.

Both groups are focused on the wrong thing: the denotation of the myth. The Christian cannot be a Christian if the denotation of the myth isn’t true. An atheist is an atheist because he or she knows that these myths aren’t literally true. But both parties, by concentrating on the denotation of the myth, miss the most important part of the myth—its message, which lies in its metaphoric meaning. By focusing on the denotation of the myth, the true message of the myth is lost. Reza Aslan is correct in saying “the only question that matters with regard to a religion and its mythology is “What do these stories mean?” A myth’s meaning is everything.