In another post, bestselling author Anne Rice told you her story – how, through historical research, she became convinced the facts support a real Jesus who rose from the dead. She explains how and why she left atheism to embrace hope.
Then, in 2010, she left the church. She said:
“For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian … It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.
“My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.”
Many have asked my thoughts about Anne Rice’s departure from the Catholic Church. Let me tell you my own story of struggling with quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious church people.
When I was 12, my mom went “bipolar.” Manic depressive with mild schizophrenia.
Except that for a year and a half, nobody knew that’s what was wrong with her. We just knew she was impossible to live with.
The fights, the arguments and contention would start as soon as I got home from school every day and stretch past bedtime.
Our entire family was bedlam for a year and a half.
Mom would swing from being your best friend to your worst enemy at the slightest provocation. I’d come home from school and find she’d tossed boxes of my stuff in the garbage. She’d say embarrassing things to my friends.
She insisted dad wasn’t really her husband. She said he was a man who looked just like Bob and she was sentenced to live with him until the ‘real’ Bob came back. When he came home from work she would hurl accusations at him. My brother and sister and I would complain bitterly to him about how she was treating us.
It was almost impossible to not get sucked into some kind of conflict every day. Home was the most dangerous place a kid could be.
My dad was taking her to doctors and counselors but nobody seemed to be able to arrive at any conclusion. Meanwhile, people watched us with a judgmental eye.
My dad was an associate pastor at a very large church in Nebraska, 2000+ members. Dad started getting heat from his boss, the senior pastor, Mr. G, who didn’t like the fact that one of the pastors’ wives was “out of line.”
Mr. G quoted the scripture that says a pastor should be in control of his family and told dad if he didn’t straighten out mom’s problem, he might have to leave.
Dad pursued answers and eventually got mom to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist diagnosed her with a chemical imbalance and bipolar disorder.
That trip to the psychiatrist was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Psychiatrists and psychologists, in Mr. G’s opinion, were the new high priests of a secular order that would dismiss all human ills as curable illnesses. Psychiatrists didn’t have the courage to call evil by its real names – SIN and DISOBEDIENCE. They existed to give people like my mom an alibi. Mr. G declared Mom insubordinate and rebellious.
Literally on the same day the diagnosis came back, Mr. G and Mr. J, the pastors of our church, visited our house to deliver the news. We all sat in the living room as they announced, “We’ve asked your father to resign from his responsibilities. He’s no longer qualified to be a pastor.”
I listened without much comment. I was 13. My older sister, however, was livid. At 18 she’d formed definite opinions about what had transpired. She started sobbing and retorted angrily to Mr. J: “If people knew what YOUR daughter does when she’s out at night, they’d be forcing you to resign too.”
Mr. J said, “We’re not here to talk about me or my family today, Robin. We’re here to talk about you.”
Earlier that day, dad had been brought before the Board of Elders to hear their final verdict. One by one, they agreed with Mr. G: “Bob, you’re not in control of your family. We’re sorry, you have to step down.” Mr. G demoted dad and announced to 2,000 people the following Sunday that dad had “resigned” so he could “attend to problems with Betty and the family.”
The next months were painful indeed. Few knew the real story. Some gathered around us. Most only knew something disgraceful had happened though and kept their distance. We felt like pariahs.
Dad couldn’t hang with his same friends anymore. He wasn’t invited to lunch at work. They shut him out of staff meetings. They hadn’t cut his pay, but he did lose a tax deduction. Less money to go around.
A couple months later I got into a fist fight at school. Came home with two black eyes. Bad report cards and complaints from teachers. All this added to the mounting case against dad.
He would come home from work every night and sit on the couch and sob. Mom told him it was all his fault for being such a cruel tyrant.
Dad followed through with the psychiatrist’s advice to get her on a prescription drug. Literally within a few days, mom transformed from defiant and combative to quiet and cooperative. The bizarre behavior stopped completely. Not only that, she went from being angry and defensive to feeling deep remorse about her erratic behavior.
Soon it became clear that Mr. G torpedoed dad simply because mom had a medical problem – a chemical imbalance – and that mom’s behavior wasn’t “sin” or “rebellion.” It was a well-understood mental illness. She couldn’t help herself.
Dad was hurt and humiliated and felt abandoned. He desperately wanted to bail. A lot of people told him he should quit his job, especially our relatives who understood the scope of the situation.
Dad thought about pulling up stakes, moving elsewhere. He decided to stick it out. To argue his case and vindicate himself.
Few men had the balls to stand up to Mr. G, but dad did. As mom’s condition improved, he said, “Mr. G, you made a wrong judgment and you need to apologize to my wife.”
Furthermore dad made Mr. G write her a letter of reconciliation, because by this time mom had become terrified of Mr. G. He had, after all, the ability to singlehandedly destroy dad’s career.
Nine months after dad had been demoted, he was reinstated.
Two weeks later dad was diagnosed with cancer.
Had dad cut and run, he would’ve been in a newcomer in some new environment, maybe even starting over in a brand new city, surrounded by strangers.
But since he’d stuck it out and vindicated himself, we were surrounded by a faith community that lent us help with dinners and financial support and prayers and encouragement.
Dad had major surgery. He was cancer free for a year and a half, then it came back. Treatments were unsuccessful, and as it became clear that he wasn’t going to make it, Mr. G secretly mailed a letter to everyone else at church. He explained how this summer might be Bob’s last and it would be really nice to raise some money, so Bob can take a trip to the West Coast.
$10,000 came in. In 1986 that was enough to not only take dad to California, a place he’d always longed to visit, but it was enough to get all of us to Alaska and Hawaii too. Dad experienced a 5 week “last hurrah” with his wife and kids that July.
That October, he died. I was 17.
I can’t tell you how many things I’ve wanted to quit, and didn’t, because dad wouldn’t throw in the towel and walk away from a bunch of quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous people.
And say what you want about ’em, when you’re in the oncology ward with terminal cancer, those are the same people that will probably be with you as you pass from here to the other side.
They will still have their faults and you will have yours, but… blood is thicker than water.
A faith community can become just as close and even closer than your biological family. It’s why they can hurt you so easily.
But there’s no such thing as a real community, or even a real relationship, that isn’t vulnerable. Painfully so sometimes. During our special vacation to California, dad told me that getting rejected and blamed for a mess he had no control of had been worse than dying of cancer was now.
Peter asked Jesus, how many times should I forgive my brother? Seven times?
Jesus said, “Seventy times seven. That’s how many times you should forgive.”
What do you forgive people for, anyway??
For being quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous. For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6:14-15.
After the potluck dinners have ended and people start throwing chairs at each other, it’s so easy to pull the plug and run. So many marriages don’t work out, it’s so easy to just live with someone and see how things turn out.
It IS easier.
It’s easier at first.
But when a series of relationships fail, they rip your heart to shreds just as much whether you were married or not. It just seemed like not ‘committing’ yourself lessened the risk. If your “common law wife” leaves you after 10 years, how is that any less painful than if your legally married wife leaves you? Just because it’s ‘unofficial’ doesn’t make it less perilous.
I’ve had to make multiple passes of forgiveness about Mr. G. A few years later when more fiascoes erupted, I had to let go again.
A few years after that, it occurred to me that my dad might not have even gotten cancer in the first place had he not endured two years in such a toxic, unsupportive, humiliating environment. That’s speculation, but still I had even more forgiveness I had to do.
A year ago I realized I needed to confront yet another layer of unforgiveness within myself. I had made a conscious choice to let go of the past, when I suddenly felt God saying to me, “The Father’s Heart is going to be poured out over Mr. G and his church.”
The day you forgive anther person is the day new blessings get released into their life. The day you forgive another person is the day you stop being a victim of whatever they did to you.
Dear Anne Rice, I greatly esteem your writing and your scholarship. I commend you for your adroit case for the historical Jesus. I appeal to you as a brother and member of the imperfect body of Christ, that to exit and publicly denounce them is to embrace quarreling… hostility… and public disputes.
From an individual view it’s all justified. But isolation makes islands of all of us. When we who were mistreated gather together in opposition to those who did us wrong, we inevitably become like those whom we judge.
A few years ago I visited an old college buddy in Washington DC. He was an exquisitely smart, seminary educated man who’d been a pastor in a Protestant evangelical church. He’d recently converted from Protestant to Eastern Orthodox.
Eastern Orthodox??? Most Americans don’t even know what that is.
I was dying to hear his explanation. “I don’t know what Peter’s going to tell me, but it’s sure gonna be interesting.”
I wasn’t disappointed. We sat up late three nights in a row exploring his decision. I don’t have time for the whole story now, but one of the points he made was this: “Protestants have ‘splitting off’ in their very DNA. As soon as they disagree, they leave First Baptist Church to go start Second Baptist Church. Then some of those people split off and form Third Baptist Church and on and on it goes.
“Catholics and Orthodox people don’t automatically do that. They prize unity. I have a bishop over me and he’s like a father to me and my wife. We live in community and in covenant together. He’s responsible to look out for us and we choose to be in a trusting mutual relationship.”
Whether you’re Protestant or Catholic or Orthodox… or if you’re on the outside looking in… I want to encourage you: living the nomad life is less demanding in the short term but lonelier in the long term.
As you make forgiveness a way of life, when you choose to live in community, you earn a kind of compound interest of grace. Months or years do not always reveal the fruit of that. It grows evident over decades. Community is the only place where you truly learn to forgive and learn to love.
The only way we exorcise our demons – both figuratively and literally – is in committed relationships with other people. Those around us are mirrors. They show us our faults, and we theirs. As we bathe those faults in mercy and forgiveness we become the people we aspire to be.
Perry Marshall
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Me and my family served in Israel for a year. In Israel we found that although we were never part of a formal church, our spirits were in unity with people from different denominations and cultures who believe in Jesus Christ. We found that we did not had to play the religious game to be accepted by the community (it was not to our advantage to even mention that we were Christians). We found out our truest intentions toward our Father, and to fake it would have been futile.
After we came back to our church we found hostility towards us. The old grace vs law debate. The pastor used his position during sermons to launch attacks on the ‘legalists’. We decided to amputate ourselves from the body of our church before having our souls amputated. We left formal church. It took the better part of a year to have the attacks stopped AFTER leaving. We just ignored any comment passed on by anyone – or responding in favour of the pastor/church. I can not pass judgment on anyone, as I think that the pastor sincerely thought it was a holy war.
My question is thus a comment: I know my Redeemer liveth and that He shall stand upon the latter day to give judgment upon me and others. We will be judged according to the light we had, not according to the misleading we had. For us it was the right thing to leave formal church. I can understand others better who has been hurt by the church, without being negative about it. I am part of a bigger ecclesia of which formal church is also a part.
Thank you for a great website.
no questions here. observation/thought only. thank you perry m; for this wonderful site. I am one of those lone wolfs of Christ. I admit; I have not read all these comments posted. also…I admit, I have not completely finished reading the Bible.
but…I am, a man of God! I learn more, from listening, then arguing, or commenting. hense: I love you site.
I wish, I could chat, at your coffeeshop, in person. I was blown up, by an anti-tank mine, in vietnam, may 11, 1969. my life, has forever, been profoundly affected. I cannot begin to say why, here. I just want to say, there IS a God, I have met him, my doubts are erased! and I can tell, he has touched you sir, and I don’t say that lightly. few, have been so blessed. I look forward to your website, for All its contributions, no matter, there interpratation. thank you
Hi, Cristian Tampe……….I think we sould agree to disagree on the subjects raised in our discussions. The only common denominator we share is our Belief and Love of Our Lord and Saviour Yeshua (Jesus Christ) and I leave You with the Following Thought……..Yeshua when He returns………It will be to the Mount Of Olives in Jerusalem not to Rome or the Vatican ?……may God Bless You and Yours……Kindest Regards……..John Foley
Dear John,
You are right, we will have to agree to disagree, as I see you are unable/unwilling to answer why Peter would end his first epistle “from Babylon,” or why early Christian writers unanimously place Peter in Rome, with no early Christian writer or community ever claiming Peter died anywhere else, and insist on Peter’s alleged burial in Jerusalem based on archaeological evidence which is inferior to that unearthed under the Vatican and has seriously been put to doubt by Prof. Stephen Pfann -an esteemed Antiquities expert who as far as I know is not Catholic. But yes, you are entirely in your right, as one of the most precious gifts we received from God was free will, which includes the freedom to believe in whatever we wish to believe, even if the evidence overwhelmingly points against it. But please examine your reasons for believing this -i.e. not what you believe, but why you believe it. I would beseech you to, as you once said, approach this subject “with an open mind,” and read sources other than those based on F. Paul Peterson’s tales regarding Father Bagatti’s work. I’ll end our discussion on Peter with a quote by Protestant theologian Adolph von Harnack (1851-1930), “…denying the Roman presence of Peter is today an error as clear as the sun for every scholar who is not willfully blind…the Roman martyrdom of Peter was contested based on tendentious prejudices, first of Protestants and then of critics.”
In terms of “where” Yeshua will return, this to me is irrelevant, as Jesus comes to save all in the world who truly believe in Him. The Catholic Church, unlike other preachers, is not in the business of monopolizing salvation: “…for those who are not formally and visibly members of the Church, salvation in Christ is accessible by virtue of a grace which, while having a mysterious relationship to the Church, does not make them formally part of the Church, but enlightens them in a way which is accommodated to their spiritual and material situation. This grace comes from Christ; it is the result of his sacrifice and is communicated by the Holy Spirit…” (“Dominus Iesus,” 2000)
May God bless you and always guide you towards the Truth.
Dear Perry, Anne and whomever else may stumble across this life altering comment. A comment that if acted upon will change much of what you have thus far been taught and have come to believe in relative our world, religion, faith and the secrets of the Universe. If you would like to add some mind expanding enlightenment and understanding of our Creator, Jesus and his family, our Universe and others, Heaven, how the Earth (Urantia) was created and evolutionary life began, when the first man and woman climbed down from the tree tops, the Garden of Eden, Adam & Eve’s mission failure, the Lucifer rebellion, life after death and the journey toward Paradise, whether Hell truly exists and more; much, much more, then obtain and read The Urantia Book. Read what Wikipedia has to say of how this book came into being and where the information it contains originated; or Google it and read on-line. It was finally published in 1955 after decades in development, yet few have ever heard anything of it. The revelations it shares with our mortal species of space and time are absolutely amazing, so help me, my hand up to God. Best regards, Arnold
i’m a fan of cosmicfingerprints,perry,biblical apologetics,the early church;but here’s my problem:if you want to go with john3:16,& so forth,you must go with a concrete-literalist approach to biblical material,by process of elimination,eg.
And you get that the historical/real/biblical Jesus,& paul,eg,were either of the Lord,or lunitics,or liars…
Jesus being of the Lord(indeed being the Lord)therefore,we must go with all his teachings (which were clearly passed on accurately to the early church fathers,etc);which were rightly taken literaly
Jesus & company taught(beyond john3:16)that literally;
1)He would soon/quickly return at end of the age/end of the tribulaion,at armageddon on a white horse,
2)we would return with him on white horses
3)there would be blood up to the horses bridles
4)we would rule as kings,priests,lords & judges,for 1000yrs
5)then the earth would be destroyed/enter new earth,etc
This was all considered totally real & plausible by the lineage that Jesus passed info on to;the same category of info as John3:16
How do we take the Jo3:16 message literally(rightly so),but not the kingdom message?it would seem that by the same literal interpretation-standard that we take one,we should embrace the other accordingly:as the lineage disciples/apostles did.do we have some reason to think they were foolish;was Jesus foolish/lunitic/liar;what is the reliability of the NT?
Protestants prized truth more than anything else. I was raised as a Catholic and we are in a community of idolaters and superstitious people.
Yes it seems we are like in a “marriage of convenience” where we can “divorce” easily- but no one wants to leave a congergation where he serves for so many years-and then misunderstood, suspended and maligned behinds one’s back. I will stick with my wife if she becomes “crazy” but I will not suffer hell for those who will betray you for money’s sake and will no longer open the Bible so thay can go on with Tradition.
I am touched by your story-but I rather sympathize with Anne Rice. And I would counsel her to just be in the fringes anbd attend services and not be manipulated to become a spokesperson for Christianity.
Someday -the Lord will use her again-just be open to it-and let time heal our hurts and sorrows.
I was about to mock and laugh like I did every time you tirelessly published your word..
but now as an atheist internet savvy basement dweller…I am frozen.
It is sad that Anne Rice should think of herself more highly than she ought to. The principal thing is love. We are called to love one another. If we say we love God but hate our brother, then we are liars. 1Jn_4:20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
1Jn_5:2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.
I pray that she may understand the need to function as part of the body and not to alienate herself. Surely she is an integral part of the body and is therefore causing the body [which she belongs to because the Spirit of Christ is in her]to malfunction due to her absence.
Church is a hospital for sinners not a museum for saints. I spend a lot of time sharing my faith with strangers and have learned more and more not to judge them. I however still have some issues with people in the church but I have learned that this is onkly because I am comparing myself to them. As humans we tend to want to do this. As a matter of fact it is on of the biggest deceptions that unbelievers fall into. They unwittingly compare themselves to other people and think that IF GOD EXISTS I am a lot better than that guy so I will be okay. I deal with this virtually every day in speaking to the lost. With them I simply point out that other people is not Gods standard, perfection is. I believe Anne Rice has fallen into this same trap but as a believer. As Christians we tend to want to compare ourselves to other Christians to gauge our obedeince. We are concerned with how other will perceive us in the Christian community. These comparisons I have learned can lead to isolation and fault finding within the church maybe not outloud but in our thoughts. This I believe comes from a faulty belief that grace is not enough. That we must need to do something and with the thought of works as necessary come comparison and pride. We are saved by grace and the ground at the foot of the cross is level. None of us are perfect, as a matter of fact we are all quite imperfect. I like to mention to unbelievers that criticize Christians that we never clamed to be Jesus, we said we need Jesus. Hey Perry if you get a chance read my free ebook online about this subject and more and help me market it.It is designed for evangelisim. God Bless all Mike
http://www.amazon.com/Gravity-True-You-But-ebook/dp/B006XG0ID4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326574922&sr=1-1
Perry, Thought you might be interested if you have not seen this. It is Annes new book that just came out. it appears she has gone all the way back to her previous style of writing.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0060AY8K2/ref=pe_174190_22572230_nrn_image
I just came across this article from Glenn Beck’s site on an interview with Ann Rice and it seems to me that she has left Catholicism far behind and all or a lot of the major tenet’s of ‘Christianity’ behind.
Here is the link;
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/exclusive-vampire-author-anne-rice-explains-why-she-abandoned-catholicism-the-bible/
An interesting read.
The question is what is a church? The obvious answer is áll Christians’but who are they? We know it take more than lip service and even more than belief in Christ. Obviously faith is required but if we remain the person we were before we believed God is not working in us – we are not saved by works but the works of God must be fulfilled through us. I say this not to condemn anyone but to provoke us all to the work that God has apointed us to do – which is to be a light unto the world. If the world and the church are the same how is the light to be seen. By this I mean our work must set us apart not as individuals so that the glory is ours but as a community so that all may be saved.
We, brothers and sisters need to create a Christian community that is not governed by the love of money but the love of God, that is not governed by strife and jealously but by a cooperative spirit. It is my belief that the church is a new community of people serving God within a new economy defined by the use of a local currency that is asset based, not debt-based and by the formation of cooperatives.
We the church need to be visible, we need to be a light, we need to make the unbeliever thirsty for the love of God and we cannot do it in this system of things. The church is not (in agreement with Dalibor) Pastors and leaders but nor is it people. The church is a separation of believer from the world.
May I suggest a blog regarding the actual building of the true Christian church a community separate from the world, in the world but not of it?
Robert
PS the economics and administrative details have been worked out
Michael
I would like to say as embellishment not as criticism that it does not matter how good we are in the world if we are of the world that is if our goodness is as citizens of the world. As an example of what I mean may I suggest that philanthropy and charity is often admired but is also often simply an act of people who are being good in the eyes of this world not the next. To think we are better than Joe because we give more time or money than Joe is worldly thinking. If we are not immersed in the workd of God we are may I submit, wasting our time morally speaking. We need to build the church and by this I do not mean structures of stone nor even of plywood but of people who live as God intends. This is why I do not see the buildings or the congregations of this world as the Christian church simply because the church as it exists does not enable people to live seperate from the world. We need a community the world desires to be part of. I see this as using a positive currency rather than debt-based money which forces people to create debt and borrow and a cooperative economy that promote equality and stewardship.
This owrld is rational and we cannot disobey God and succeed. If we are to save the world we have to live in the way God intends and this is not Capitalism.
Robert
It’s the second time when i’ve seen your site. I can gather lots of hard work has gone in to it. It’s really good.
Perry
(I sincerely apologize how long and large this post has turned out to be! I still hope that you may have time to read it and if you have any response I would be glad to hear them. Thanks Much!!!)
I have appreciated your website for awhile even though we may differ on things such as the Big Bang and such. I very much appreciate this web site and the Cosmic Fingerprints web site too.
You might file this under ‘helpful criticism’ and of course ‘your mileage may vary’ according to how ‘useful’ this criticism is to you!
I’ve noticed over time that ‘Scientific Facts’ or ‘Scientific Beliefs’ change… first with ‘Mainstream Scientists’ and then later with ‘The Public’ and unfortunately they don’t change together but lag behind usually ‘far behind’ in terms of years or sometimes they never coincide with current ‘best practices’ of the ‘Mainstream Scientist’s Beliefs’.
In case of ‘The Big Bang’, from what I understand, it was not ‘creation ex nihilo’ but all of the matter in the universe was contained in an ‘infinitesimally small ‘point”, so it didn’t come from ‘nothing’ but was already there and just ‘exploded’. But I have heard other ‘Big Bang’ explanations where from some ‘infinitesimally small point not only all matter exploded but the ‘universe too’ … in that case I would have the question ‘where was that small infinitesimally small point located? If it was not in ‘this universe’ then ‘where’ was it’… can that question even be asked?
The reason I’m saying this is that the ‘Big Bang’ has pretty much fallen out of favor with some cosmologists, astrophysicists and physicists it just has not made it into the ‘public’s mind’ or consciousness as yet.
This can be confusing because there are also some scientists that may or may not be directly in these fields that still support or think that it is ‘the current explanation’ for the origin of the universe’ and thus still promote the ‘Big Bang’.
Another problem is that on a number of subjects the mainstream scientist’s are not fully ‘here nor there’ in their explanations… What I mean by that is in the example of ‘Gravity’, that has been settled for over 300 years since Newton… that is until Newton met Einstein with his curved space explanation of Gravity, which is, that it is not a result of a ‘universal pull’ but that space being ‘curved’ in the presence of mass is what causes the ‘pull’. In addition to this we have scientists over in ‘Quantum Mechanics’ or ‘Particle Physics’ that are looking for ‘Gravitons’ a particle that is ‘Gravity’ or mediates the gravitational force.
So which is it? Is it ‘curved space’ a la Einstein or is it a particle ‘Gravitons’ a la Newton a ‘force’???
We have scientists using both explanations depending on their audience or the problem they are addressing or the explanation that they are giving, it just ‘all depends’ but logically it seems it has to be ‘one or the other’.
This is not the end of it!
But it is of my ‘explanation’ of ‘the problems of explaining Gravity or of the Big Bang.
The Bigger problem I see is that we are trying to make Christianity ‘relevant’ to ‘scientifically thinking modern man ‘ or at least, what he supposes himself to be! By trying to show that the Bible is ‘Scientific’ and therefor trustworthy because ‘Science’ is the 20th and 21st century ‘Religion’ and if Christianity is congruent with our ‘Science’ then maybe it could be ‘True’…?
Now here you may disagree with me or at first not understand exactly what I am getting at, but I think what I am trying to point out has resulted in ‘Joe Q Publics’ perception of what we call the ‘God of the Gaps’ in scientific thinking’… which is ‘it’s a Miracle until Science can explain it and so on… So God get’s ‘Smaller’ and ‘Smaller’ until he is no longer relevant because as in Calculus you are going ‘to the limit’ and the ‘limit’ here is ‘No God’ or ‘No God is needed to explain the observable universe’ because Miracle after Miracle has fallen to ‘Scientific Explanation and Proof’ and the gaps have gotten smaller and smaller and eventually no more supernatural explanations will be needed or even possible because ‘Science’ has explained everything.
It’s like 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 15… or ‘n+1’ to infinity. I think that this is the thinking anyway. People see it as ‘Scientific Progress, that eventually Science will explain everything.
But what happens along the way as Christians tie the Bible to the current ‘Scientific Paradigm’ is that as the theories change the ‘Biblical Explanation’ doesn’t change and the Bible or ‘belief in the bible’ falls because the scientific explanation has changed, which is expected for ‘Science’ but not for the Bible… in other words if ‘the Bible says it happened this way ‘ then it did…absolutely unchangeably!’. But then when the ‘scientific explanation’ changes the Bible is left tied to a now ‘discredited’ explanation and seen as not only irrelevant but wrong. It’s not accorded the same ‘pass’ as Science get’s since we know that ‘Science’ or ‘Scientific Explanations’ change as we get more evidence or data. The problem is that if the Bible says something happened this way ‘Scientifically’ then it had to happen that way and it can’t change because that was the way the Bible said it happened and you can’t then change it to something else later! Because the Bible was wrong to say that it absolutely happened in the previous way and now we know that it didn’t!!! I don’t mean to belabor the point but I hope you can see what I’m trying to get at.
Now another ‘bad thing’ maybe the worse ‘Bad Thing’… Is that the Bible is not a Scientific Book!… By that I don’t say and don’t mean to say that the Bible does not have or make statements that are not ‘Scientifically (as far as it goes!) ‘testable’ or ‘provable’, some are some are not, at our ‘current level of scientific advancement…
But far worse then any of this is that or ‘Scientific Thinking’ or ‘Biblical Scientific Thinking’ is not even Biblical.
How in the world can I make such a statement?!
Well I don’t but I know someone who has and after getting familiar with him and his arguments, I have to agree with his assertions here.
Before I say more, this of course depends on his ‘Exegesis’ of the word in the Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek languages and cultures.
I’ve found a few unique web sites (individuals) in traversing the Internet,( and I think your’s is also one of them!) and they have generally changed my thinking about most subjects at hand in the regular manner that I have grown up thinking about them and I suppose most others too… Christians at least!
That brings me to mentioning at least two and maybe three web sites that I may have already brought to your attention in an earlier communication? Can’t remember!
The reason that I think that these two web sites are ‘Game Changers’ or uniquely important is because, one ‘wrecked’ Science for me and the other ‘wrecked’ ‘Biblical Scientific Explanations’ using Science to validate the Bible or to show that the Bible is ‘A Scientific Book’ or ‘Scientifically Valid’. It all hinges on our definition or understanding of ‘Science’ I think.
The first web site that I came across in this manner, the one that wrecked science for me was here:
http://milesmathis.com/index.html
I rush to add here that ‘Science’ ha snot even gotten Science right!
What this person has done is to ‘fix’ or ‘correct’ problems, many problems, in Science that have not been fixed for hundreds or even thousands of years and the worst part is problems that were, are not, even seen or known to be problems, that is things ignored for various reasons or excuses.
Well that does not make any sense!!!
If they really are problems then in umpteen thousands of years would not somebody anybody seen them???!!!
Maybe indeed they have!
The problem is that if they have we don’t have a record of it or at least the solutions to these ‘universe shattering problems’ (Big Grin Here!)!!! So ‘they’ may have been seen and identified and solved before but I’m not aware of it and reading the papers that I’ve read on his web site I don’t think that the mainstream is much aware or concerned… Even though they, ‘these problems’, may be the reason for all of the problems in Quantum Mechanics (renormalization, -poppycock!-, as the inventor of renormalization put it…the physicist Richard Fenyman), in Physics, Mathematics, Astronomy, Astrophysics, etc etc! If this is indeed the case and Mainstream Science and Scientists have been getting it wrong (Not the Scientific Data [for the most part!] or the instruments that have collected that data) for all this time then how can Christians get it ‘Right’ depending on these Scientific Theories interpreting that data?
Granted! The formulas fit the data because in many aspects and respects they, the formulas, have been made to fit the data, the data does not necessarily confirm the formulas correctness! We don’t want to mistake the formulas and theories for the reality of which they are trying to explain! Or necessarily the interpretations of that data.
I’ll give you some quotes from the web site and see if they sound reasonable to you… and if so then you may want to look a little more and see if they might push your thinking in some other directions…(not necessarily ‘bad’! either).
Here are the quotes:
“It has been known for millennia that the Earth rests upon the back of a giant turtle. Only in recent centuries has this knowledge been added to. In 1794, in one of the high valleys of the Himalayas, one of the wise was asked, “Master, what does the turtle rest upon?” The Master answered: “It is turtles all the way down, my son.” But now that scientists have finally succeeded in mapping the universe, a turtle controversy has arisen. It turns out that level 7,484,912 is occupied not by a turtle, but by a man dressed as a turtle. It is not known how this will affect our other equations.
You probably aren’t used to having a book on science and math open with a joke. But a sense of humor is crucial to existing in a world where even our greatest accomplishments contain large elements of the absurd.
Some contemporary thinkers are of the opinion that we are very near to a complete understanding of the universe. I am far from agreeing with them. We have made some wonderful discoveries and are due a small dose of pride, I suppose. But the things we don’t know so overwhelm the things we do that any talk of a full understanding is just bombast. Worse, it is hubris. It may even be a scientific sacrilege, with real curses attached to it.
When we become too secure in our knowledge, we stop questioning. Failure to question is the ultimate scientific failure. Answers quit coming precisely when they aren’t sought, and they aren’t sought precisely when they are (erroneously) thought to be in hand. We are like the dog who discovers how to use the little flap-door and now considers himself master of the house. He lies in front of the fire and congratulates himself for his cleverness. He would be better outside chasing rabbits.
In this book I propose solutions for several of the greatest errors currently existing in physics and mathematics. I do not propose to solve all the greatest errors, of course, or even to know what they are. I only present the ones that have become known to me in my years of research. Many may find my list surprising or even shocking, since I do not seem to choose problems that are commonly acknowledged to exist. Rather I choose problems that are believed to have been solved. This, I realize, can have the appearance of caprice or insolence, but I have simply gone where my nose leads me. I suspect that the whole history of science has moved in much the same way, so I will not apologize for seeing problems where I see them.
Lest I be dismissed as a crank before my first equation hits the page (and this sort of dismissal has become pandemic in the field), I rush to add that I am not a so-called classicist, bent on refuting Relativity and Quantum Mechanics simply because they disturb my sense of balance or my love of Newton.* I attack Newton as well, long and—I like to think—shockingly. Beyond that, I am convinced of time dilation and length contraction and the necessity of transforms. I simply do not believe that Einstein provided the correct transforms. Likewise, I believe in the accuracy and usefulness of many of the equations of QED. But QED is still in large part a heuristic math posing as a theory. Even Feynman admitted this before he died, to the chagrin of most in the field. QED is not “the final solution” until it is fleshed out with a coherent theory. I believe, contra current wisdom, that QED will be provided with a coherent theory, one that makes sense even in the macro-world.
I am not a classicist, nor am I in any of the other dissenting groups that are opposed to the standard interpretation of Einstein.
That is to say, I am not proposing supra-luminal theories or any other theories that go beyond the math and theory of Einstein. I am not proposing any new particles, forces, fields, or maths. All the major chapters and findings in this book deal with straightforward mathematical analysis of famous historical papers and theories. For the most part, this analysis is high-school level algebra applied to these papers. In critiquing the calculus, some rather subtle number theory is used, but no higher math at all. This means that this book is unlike anything you have read or heard of before. It is not allied to the status quo, but it is also not allied to any of the dissenting groups. It is completely outside the 20th century argument, since it cannot be said to be ultimately pro-Einstein or contra-Einstein, pro-Newton or contra-Newton.
It is pro-Einstein in that his theory (and Lorentz’s and Poincare’s, etc.) is shown to be correct in many important ways. However, it is contra-Einstein in that my algebraic corrections falsify some fundamental assumptions and equations. How you would classify my correction is therefore more a matter of your own allegiances than mine, since I have none.
This book differs from all the other critiques I have seen of current theory in that my arguments are not mainly philosophical or even theoretical. They are mathematical. I rerun the original equations in the original papers and show where the specific mathematical errors are. In this I believe I may be the first.
Especially as regards Relativity, there has been a massive amount of criticism and absolutely no mathematical proof to back it up. A few mathematical variants have been put forward, some with a certain amount of validity; but no one has shown where Einstein’s math is wrong in itself. Herbert Dingle, perhaps the most famous critic of Einstein in the 20th century, said in the 60’s that he was astute enough not to search for mathematical errors in the theory. Whether his astuteness was based upon the recognition of his own mathematical limitations or upon some other factor is less clear.
I suppose current wisdom is that because they are assumed to have been combed by everyone from Bohr to Feynman, the equations must now be unassailable. But nothing in this world is unassailable, as Einstein’s refutation of Newton was supposed to have proved. Newton survived two hundred years of geniuses before Einstein appeared. If Einstein had been cowed by genius, I would now have nothing to critique. But Einstein did not see problem-solving as an attack upon genius or upon the status-quo, or as the solution to his career aspirations; he saw it simply as problem solving, let the cards fall where they may.”
END QUOTE ————-
This was the site that wrecked science for me, I was looking, at the time, for a site with a ‘new take’ on physics since I could see that physics was hopelessly broken from all I had read in the scientific and popular media. At first I was disappointed because, as he said above, he was not proposing any new theories or forces or particles ect. So I thought ‘what’s the point then?’ But then I got to the part where he said “When we become too secure in our knowledge, we stop questioning. Failure to question is the ultimate scientific failure. Answers quit coming precisely when they aren’t sought, and they aren’t sought precisely when they are (erroneously) thought to be in hand.”
“In this book I propose solutions for several of the greatest errors currently existing in physics and mathematics. I do not propose to solve all the greatest errors, of course, or even to know what they are. I only present the ones that have become known to me in my years of research. Many may find my list surprising or even shocking, since I do not seem to choose problems that are commonly acknowledged to exist. Rather I choose problems that are believed to have been solved.”
Now that last one got my attention
All the major chapters and findings in this book deal with straightforward mathematical analysis of famous historical papers and theories.
This too, he is going back to the original papers that these theories are based on, supposedly, and finding errors. This excited me because I realized that if the house’s foundation is not solid then nothing that comes after is solid either and maybe this is where things went wrong???! Why I had become disenchanted with the ‘mainstreams’ scientific explanations when they just did not add up! Well worse was to come!
And it happened here:
http://www.godsriddle.com/index.html
http://www.godsriddle.info/
What happened here, with cavets as mentioned above, is that I learned that the Bible is not ‘Scientific’.
What I mean is that the Bible is not based on Science’s First Principle, that things, matter is immutable, that they does not change.
Now this is where the problem lies, mine or yours, his exegesis here has to be correct for this to ‘fly’. That is for ‘Sciences’ First Principle’ to not be Biblical or the Bibles First Principle. If this is correct then you can’t tie the Bible in to today’s current Scientific Paradigm(s) without bringing about those ‘changing Science’ ‘unchanging Bible’ problems that I mentioned earlier’
Maybe to be more plain is that the Bible (according to him) says that the universe, the matter that makes it up is changing and getting larger…ar least more matter is entering the universe or ‘spreading out’ and until a Noble prize was awarded for an expanding accelerating universe the question was static, expanding, or oscillating universe? But again the Bible does not necessarily correlate here…it seems to say an ‘expanding universe’ but it does not say an ‘accelerating expanding universe’. Besides what ever it says the Bible said it first.
But the crux of the problem is that the people that wrote the Bible did not have, maybe could not have, a ‘scientific view’ of the universe that we have today not even the thinking that brought it about… In other words the Books of the Bible at least the old testament writers did not think ‘Scientifically’ or have a ‘Scientific World View’ as we have today. They didn’t think like Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas.
Well when I found all of that out I was floored! I didn’t realize that the people of that time, the ancient Hebrews and others did not think ‘Scientifically’ like we do today. But worse is that the translators of our modern biblical texts were not thinking as the Hebrews etc. Were but were thinking in a 20th century mind set and translating the scriptures with and in that mind set and ‘something had to give’!!!
So on this last site I think it’s, this, has been pointed out and more correctly, or more fully been translated to give the idea using more then just ‘one’ word to describe things that it takes more then just one word in our language to get across.
Now this is more in your territory so you will have to see what you think of his exegesis but again he has convinced me.
Going back to the science end of things one last web site to mention is this one:
http://www.blazelabs.com/
But especially here:
http://www.blazelabs.com/f-u-suconv.asp
This last site is maybe less relevant to the discussion at hand but it’s almost as important as the first site. He get’s our scientific units ‘in order’ and maybe even expands them farther then what we would think… That is like Mendeleev did, give us the periodic table to the elements, with holes in it, in his time that is, that were yet to be filled in with unknown elements, this person has done the same for scientific constants, he has given us a table and has been able to generate our known scientific constants from his theory but he has also given us a table with ‘holes’ in it that maybe points to more constans yet to be discovered and has also shown us that a number of scientific disciplines are in fact redundant… that is they both use the same set of equations so they are related to each other and may be able to shed some light on each related disciplines.
I’m sorry to take up so much of your time but since I’ve run into these two people, three people, I’ve felt that anyone doing science that is not aware of this (especially Christians) can’t in fact be doing Science accurately…that is trying to find out the principles and laws that our universe operates by as maybe Isaac Newton expressed.
Thanks for your time Perry I really do enjoy your web site and your Cosmic Fingerprints has some very unique challenges for Christians and Atheists alike as to the ‘provability’ of God’s existence!!!
Thanks Again
Sincerely, Joe Hyde
P.S. oh! Oh! I almost forgot! Plate Techtonics might need to be in for a revision too! There is much written on this subject that I won’t give or go into here but here is a video on youtube that will give the basic idea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kL7qDeI05U
Joseph Hyde,
Your exposition of various scientific theories and mathematical problems that were thought to be solved were, according to you, now proven to be unsolved is nice to read and ponder over. Scientists generally welcome such critique for that is the essence of science. The big bang is only a theory and like many theories lack concrete proof. There are many unexplained facts and illogical assumptions. However at this point of time in our scientific thinking the theories relating to big bang have wide acceptability the Newton
Einstein controversy notwithstanding.
The video and the theories that continents do not drift are totally unacceptable to an earth scientist like me. Continents tend to accrue material from deep within the earth’s bowels but that is existing mass and not something that is extraneous and that will explain the many problems that is addressed in the video. Regarding the marsupials and dinosaur no geologist challenges their past spread as established thus far. But that is no proof to counter continental drift. Atlantic and pacific spreads are well accepted and without sub-duction as denied in the video there will be no spreading.
It will not be appropriate to connect this so called new material coming from somewhere as it seems to be happening in a spreading universe. These are in entirely different realms of science.
It is no use dragging the bible into these controversies as belief is not expected to be logical and belief is at the bottom of all religions either in God or something else.
Thanks all the same as you have enabled me to read contrary views.
George Cherian.
And what of Paul and his letters to the churches? And to what of his purpose’s; to travel to these congregations/churches across the region in order to counsel and strenghten them while facing persecution and shipwreck and death? Paul was definitely not an island unto himself. He fought to keep the churches together, he did not look for reasons that were non-commital as Anne Rice has fashioned for herself in regards to being an active Christian within the church community. As Paul was blessed by a personal encounter by the Lord himself; I believe him to be authoritative enough to teach the early church and for that matter todays church the importance of the unity of the body of Christ. Quitting for Paul was not an option because he deemed the unity of the church to be most important. Each one of us has a responsibility to strengthen the church no matter if there are quarrelsome, hostile, bickering, disputatious and sinful people in it.
Dear Perry,
Just want to thank you for keeping me subscribed . Thank you for tour personal story and comments re Anne Rice. I have had my share of sad experiences but would choose not to write about them, except for this observation: there is no perfect church and in them I found some wounded people (including myself) who would wound others. Ms. Rise may have quit the church but I doubt she had given up on Christ.
Bless you.
[…] (1) http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/anne-rice-leaves-the-church/ […]
I had a very similar experience with the church growing up… and a very similar experience with my mother.
She was overweight, depressed, easily triggered and would scream and spit hatred at the drop of a hat. Each day coming home from school… My brother and I called it “walking into the buzz saw”. We never seemed to have a moment’s peace.
I did leave the church because of the judgemental nature and hypocrisy of it all… however, that doesn’t mean I didn’t create a new core familial group.
Tis true… all are flawed. The travesty is in not admitting it.