It’s been probably 11 or 12 years since I’ve released any new material commercially and I am happy to report that the long dry spell has now officially ended.  I have a new song that appears on the record “Adrift on a Star” by Dan Barker and Friends. Dan of course is the much-maligned co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but he has over the course of the last few years become a friend as well. We both have roots in Southern Californian Christian music production, although we did not work at the same time or in the same styles and did not know each other till recently.

I have appeared on Dan’s radio show, Freethought Radio, and was also one of the speakers at the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s annual convention in 2011. Sometime after that convention Dan sent me an email explaining that he was going to be producing a CD of freethought songs, one of which would be co-written by Dan and Broadway composer Charles Strouse, who was also the keynote speaker at the convention.  I told him I had a song I had written that might be a good fit for the album.  That song is called Be Still My Child and it had an interesting evolution.

A couple of years ago in my Songwriting class, I had given an assignment to write a song in one part, a refrain song.  Songwriting students generally find it more difficult but ultimately more liberating when imposing restrictions of various kinds on their musical exercises.  Stravinsky paraphrased that idea in his Poetics of Music.  This assignment was meant to force students to write a structurally restricted song.  They asked if I would write one with them and ultimately they prevailed.  I wrote and recorded the tracks on one night, using an alternate open tuning for my guitar that I had developed and am still using, and came back the next to write the lyrics and record the vocals in my own voice.  I had no idea the song would end up on a distributed CD, and since I had a strict time deadline (the next class meeting!) I decided to base the lyrics very loosely on a selection of Persian poems  known as The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Once Dan contacted me about the CD, I decided I had better clean up some of the tracks, mostly the lead vocal track, and in the summer of 2012 I called Martin DeBourge to see about getting my voice in shape.  I was determined, unlike my first solo album Relative with its battery of lead singers, to do all the lead vocals myself, in my own voice, the good, the bad and the ugly.  It needed to be my voice.  Martin and I decided to spend a number of weeks on lessons and coaching and at the end of that to cut the lead vocal track.  He also contributed the backing vocal tracks.

Most of the instrumental tracks are the same ones I recorded the first night.  I asked Greg Lawless, founding member, guitarist and co-writer for Adam Again who also played guitars on Relative, if he would be interested in doing a lead guitar track.  This was not an easy decision for him knowing that the song was going to end up on a record by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but musical sensibilities and friendship prevailed and he recorded a great track.

I should say at this point that yes, musical sensibilities prevailed.  In a discussion about my musical future with Dan Barker in May, 2011, around the first time I appeared on his show, I had suggested that I was not interested any longer in my music being used for any kind of agenda or for utilitarian purposes.  I had done that for years as a Christian and was not going to do it now for any other “ism.”  What I wrote to him was this:

It’s not at all that I wouldn’t love to advance the cause of reason and skepticism.  For some time I have lamented the use of music, at least my music to advance any message. I did that for so long.  I guess I would prefer to make artistic statements about the world as I see it, in promotion of the human condition and those human experiences we spoke of earlier today, open my songs to all people of any and no beliefs, and hopefully make an impact that way.  Of course none of that would be rooted in any supernatural cause, and I do expect that my secular worldview would certainly shine through.

The lyrics I wrote for the song are there because the poem resonated with me on its own.  I don’t want anything I do to be used to convert anyone to or from anything. So this was a musical exercise even though it is a personal statement for me.  I’m happy that Greg was happy to be involved.  Once the tracks were finished, I reluctantly mixed it myself in my office at James Madison University and sent it to Martin who mastered it.  Off it went to Dan.

The song was premiered on Freethought Radio on January 5, 2013.  A link to the podcast is here, and Dan’s introduction to the song begins at around the 21-minute mark, about the show’s halfway point.  More information on the songs and the album Adrift on a Star is available here.  You can also stream a HQ version of the song below.  In the wake of all this, I have made a commitment to myself that I will have something out by the end of 2013, at least an EP with 4-6 songs. I am somewhat feverishly working on the material now and will spend the coming summer working on my vocal again with Martin.  I’m certain there will also be musical appearances by the usual cast of friends and characters. Thank you for listening.

Be Still My Child
Darkness surrounds me
kept by the heavens,
looking out with empty eyes
Empty eyes, oh no!
Be still my child
Be still my child

Poured myself out,
up to the heavens.
Tears fall up to empty skies
Empty skies, oh no!
Be still my child
Be still my child

Hurry child
for the storm’s a swirlin’!
Carry you off with empty hands
Empty hands, oh no!
Be still my child
Be still my child

Some, for the pleasure
– dreaming beside you,
give no thought to empty lands
Empty lands, oh no!
Be still my child
Be still my child

Written, Performed and Engineered by Ojo Taylor
Lead Guitar: Greg Lawless
Backing Vocals and vocal engineering:  Martin DeBourge
Recorded at Treehouse Studio, Harrisonburg, VA.
Vocals recorded at 15hiFi Recording Studio, Hesperia, CA
www.ojotaylor.com – Music . Freethought . Lovism
© 2012 B-1 Music, ASCAP
p and © 2012, Innocent Media

OJO QUESTIONS: ROUND ONE
December 31, 2011

Who were some of your biggest musical influences growing up?

I didn’t grow up in a musically fluent household.  My mother was born in Philadelphia and my father in Long Beach, CA but they met in a small rural town in Pennsylvania.  My mother lived in a strict household and my father was reared by his Austrian grandmother.  My mother always told me she liked Paul Anka and Perry Como growing up, but I still haven’t heard anything about my father’s tastes in music as a young man.  Maybe I should ask him.

The only records I remember as a kid in the house were Sing Along With Mitch, The Jackie Gleason Orchestra, a record of ragtime piano songs and a few others, but I listened to them all.  I remember when my father bought Herb Alpert’s record with the chick covered in whipped Cream.  He played cornet in high school so I’m sure this was the appeal for him.  I liked the record and like many other young boys, liked the record cover too.

My mother’s brother bought the first Beatles record when it came out and left it over at our house once.  I was probably 7 years old.  That was it for me.  Most of the rest of the decade was all about the Beatles.  That’s not a bad way to go, I suppose.  Then towards the end of the 1960s it was CSNY, Led Zeppelin, and most of the other popular records high school aged boys liked.  I won the first Jimi Hendrix album in a dance contest and that changed my life.   I listened to the radio a lot.  Although neither of my parents were big music consumers, they did love music and made sure I had piano lessons all the way through high school.  We moved often so it was start and stop the whole way.

It was not till high school that I began buying records in earnest.  I heard Reason To Believe by Rod Stewart on the radio and rushed right out to buy that one.  James Gang Live at Madison Square Garden, Santana, more Beatles, then Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, Yes was my first concert, Pink Floyd.  I did not have very eclectic taste.  Pretty much the run of the mill popular stuff, great as all that stuff may be.  Lots of my friends can run circles around me with their collections and depth of knowledge of earlier music.  By the end of high school I had a lot of records but had not even heard a note by Muddy Waters.

We both have a fondness for the Fugs. When did you “discover” them, and can you share some of the things about them that appeal to you?

I had heard of them when they formed in the 1960s but had not really been exposed to them, and as I mentioned, my tastes were pretty much mainstream rock. It really wasn’t until about 5 years ago or so after I began teaching full time that I really got a chance to revisit and study them.  One of my classes is History of Rock which has between 200-300 students in one section and that’s what led to a deeper look not only into them but that whole era and sociology that gave birth to them.

It was the song Crystal Liaison that kind of hooked me.  It has so many interesting angles.  There is the title, a drug-themed distortion of Christe Eleison from the Catholic Mass (I grew up Catholic).  That seemed to capture what that whole psychedelic thing was all about; drugs as the new religion.  It’s reinforced by the music itself which is sung in a manner suggesting Gregorian Chant with open fifths in the vocals; just brilliant, really.  The video of them that I show my class with that guy dancing and all also captures a lot of what they were about and the era they thrived in. I was too young to “get it” at the time.

Prior to forming Undercover, were you in any other bands? Were they distinctively “evangelical/christian” lyrically?

I didn’t start playing in bands until I was 18 and had just graduated from high school.  I was invited to play in Jim Nicholson’s band (the guitarist in Undercover) because he had heard that I played piano.  Having taken piano lessons is nothing like playing in a band though and there was a learning curve.  We began playing covers, high school dances, backyard parties and stuff like that.  We were not very good, but we were paying our dues. We went through a few iterations with different names and members, but Jim and I were always the constants.

We became evangelical Christians a couple years later in 1976 and almost immediately began writing our own songs for the first time, and those with religious lyrics.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Anyone who has kept up with you knows that you no longer adhere to Christianity or any religion for that matter.  Do you consider yourself an atheist? Agnostic?

I try to dodge the labels because they are so arbitrary and misunderstood.  I have no idea what I am.  Or rather I am both or either of those things at one time or another. I don’t want to get into technical definitions and stuff, and life isn’t that way for me anyway.  I know very few if any thoughtful atheists who insist that they know beyond any doubt that there is no god.  Most atheists I know are also agnostic that way. Even Richard Dawkins says the same thing.   We don’t know for sure.  But neither do we know with 100% certainty whether or not there are teapots between the Earth and sun, as Bertrand Russell used to say. We can probably safely say there are none but we cannot prove that there are not.  So it is with that distinction between atheism and agnosticism in some minds. We too often get stuck in the semantics.

Atheism among Christians is considered a religion.  Many love to say that and yet nothing could be further from the truth.  Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a supernatural god.  There is nothing else that uniquely connects all atheists.   Stephen Roberts summed it up (although there is some legitimate critique of the language he uses) when he said, “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.  When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”  It is true though that we are all unbelievers with respect to all gods but our own if we assume that they are different gods rather than different versions of one God.  The fact that I take it “one god further” in my inability to believe the Orthodox or evangelical Christian version of things is a big deal to many Christians. But let me put myself in some perspective if I may.

There was not a single moment when I woke up and “decided” I was now going to be an unbeliever.  My faith was dismissed little by little over a number of years until at one point I realized there was just nothing left.  I’ve documented some of those erosions on my blog and in other places.  In the end, I am probably an atheist in that I don’t believe in a specific supernatural god nor do I have a coherent model for what that might look like nor a reason to embrace belief in one. It would be great if there was an all-loving God who would welcome us with life eternal at the end of our lives, but that wishful thinking is not enough to get me there. I am agnostic in that I don’t know.  There just might be a god out there!  It’s fluid, I am open and I find no compelling reason to join myself to one label or the other.  I’ll leave that for others.

Can you identify a specific time period / event / etc. in your life when you knew you no longer fit into the packaged “Christian” mold?  When you knew you were no longer interested in faith?

I’m not sure I ever did fit into the packaged Christian mold.  I mentioned that I was born and raised Catholic. I loved all the imagery, the cultural and sensual aspects of my religion.  I abandoned it as irrelevant when I was a teenager who knew everything.  I took my detour through evangelical Protestantism when I went forward at an altar call at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa in 1976 and stayed within evangelicalism for probably 15 years.  But it was never comfortable and I always had questions, things that didn’t make sense, even from the beginning.  Culturally I could never get it either and never could identify.  The bible belt, the religious south, protestant hymns and music, the Gaithers and groups like that, PTL and all the televangelists, contemporary Christian culture seemed all very foreign to me and in some cases just damned weird.

I wrote liner notes on an album around 1988 or so to the effect that I was throwing out a whole bunch of bathwater and hopefully keeping the baby, which was the core of my faith.  I returned to Catholicism in practice around that time, and officially around 1992. I was more comfortable there, but even when I returned I had told the priest working with me that there was no way I could believe some of the essential doctrines they held.  He conferred with his superior and came back to me with the requirement that I at least stay open.  That seemed fair enough.

There I sat until 2007.  I had kids and we went to church.  It was part of my practice, even going to Mass every day whenever I could.  There is something really nice about a regular practice and routine like that, and I’m talking in natural terms here.  The Buddhists know this.  When I moved to Virginia to take the teaching position at James Madison University things came to a head and I was not expecting it.  In many ways my faith had again become irrelevant just like it had when I was younger.  I had rationalized so many central tenets of the faith, especially Hell, which needs rationalizing to be consistent with other tenets.  Once Hell is on the block, lots of other questions follow.  I had outright rejected other things as I mentioned above in the account with the priest (besides the untenable Catholic doctrines there are protestant gems like the rapture and many others).  Science had falsified a good chunk of the narrative too.  There was no worldwide flood or Exodus of the Jews from Egypt as it was written and as understood by literalists. I shrugged! What’s a man to do?  One cannot force oneself to believe things one does not believe.  It was the question of Hell that forced the crisis though, and I have documented that story here.  There is more to say about all this.

It was probably 2008 that I realized I could no longer call myself a Christian.  The funny thing was that I felt no different inside, but just had that realization that I no longer could believe what I was being asked to believe. I still had some questions about things like the resurrection of Jesus and stuff like that, but I read and read and studied as much as I could. In the end, it was more a shift in the way I chose to evaluate claims than in choosing not to be a Christian anymore and to start living in some other way. I still was the same person, still committed to love, my family, to doing good, to making a positive impact in my world with the time I have.  I just could not force myself to believe many of the objective claims that Christianity makes, and as I said at the beginning of this, once the doctrines are gone then what’s left?  It is only love that is left for me. Some will say that’s what Jesus was all about, but Jesus was about lots of other things too if we are to believe what is said about him in the scriptures.

In addition to all of the beliefs and doctrines most of which are based on scientific and objective claims about events in the real world we all live in (the virgin birth, the resurrection, the fall of man and nature; almost all beliefs are rooted in objective claims somewhere), it is also true that people are expected to adhere to a worldview that comes along with those doctrines. That has major repercussions downstream.  If we believe that mankind and even the whole world or universe has suffered a fall and is inherently evil or sinful, that will have an impact on the way we live and on the way we treat others.  There are many such aspects of the religious life and worldview or in this case the Christian worldview, that I find no reason to accept, that I find cynical, objectively wrong, or in some cases just downright immoral.  It’s also a very good question to ask why religious faith should be considered virtuous in any way at all in the first place! I suspect it’s only because faith is required to buy into and get past all the things that otherwise make little or no sense or that have no corroborating evidence.  Mark Twain said as much; “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”

So contrary to what this question assumes, I am interested in faith.  I am interested in it because it is a human phenomenon that has global consequences.  We may not survive this century and religion and its various worldviews will have a lot to do with that. I am interested in knowing more about it because I feel like I gave so much of my own life and time to it.  How did that happen?  Why?  How does it work?  What are the mechanisms?  I am interested in it because I am interested in the universe and all that is real within it, visible or not visible, but real in any case.

I am not interested however in living a life of faith (except as Thomas Talbott defines it, which I address in a later question), where I define what’s real only by what some ancient text, tradition or religious authority says. What I believe must now be earned and I will put that bar for evidence as high as the seriousness of the claim and in direct proportion to the likelihood that those claims are true or not.  Thomas Huxley said it better:

“Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvelous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.”

Why should this be a controversial proposition to the religious? I believe it is only because it throws down the gauntlet and for so many it calls into question the veracity of what they believe regarding objective claims about our universe in time-space. And then what, after the evidential house of cards falls?

What classes do you teach at James Madison?

It’s a great gig.  At James Madison University my classes are History of Rock, Songwriting, Artist Management, Music Publishing, Entrepreneurship in the Music Industry, Legal Aspects of the Music Industry, and Marketing of Recorded Music.  These classes are all in the music department. In the summers I also teach at Cal State University, Fullerton in the Business School.  The class last summer was Music Marketing: Distribution and Retail.

OJO QUESTIONS: ROUND TWO
January 15, 2012

During your journey through evangelicalism back to Catholicism and finally outside the realm of belief, how were your Undercover bandmates reacting? The band as a whole certainly matured toward the end when compared to the catchy simplicity of the first two albums.

Well, yes, it’s been a journey for all of us and we did kind of “grow up in public” as has been said of us before.  A few punches in the gut in the course of one’s life will have a tendency to do that, to grow you up pretty quickly.  I would say that the fundamentalism of our earliest days just didn’t last that long, maybe the first three records, but by the third it was already becoming obvious to us all under the surface that we were going to be asking some questions rather than simply spitting out answers.

Over the years, we’ve all ended up in different places.  It’s pretty clear to me, and I don’t even think about this that much, that our relationships with each other are not based on the band or on what we believe or not.  It is very much like family.  Our acceptance and affection for each other just “is.”  Having said that, I think my dismissal of faith has had an impact.  I have to be careful here, because I just read a brilliant piece by Thomas Talbott who beautifully defined “faith” quite a bit differently than most evangelicals or even most people might, in the Hebrews sense of the word, and in his sense, even skeptics and unbelievers of all types can be said to have faith, but not in the way Evangelicals think:

“But then, for my own part, I would never dream of using the term ‘faith’ in this way. For as I and a substantial minority of religious writers use the term, the opposite of faith is faithlessness, disloyalty, or even hypocrisy, not intellectual doubt. In fact, faith is not essentially a matter of believing something at all; much less is it a matter of generating belief in oneself by means of an heroic act of will. It is instead a matter of owning up to whatever knowledge one has, of allowing one’s settled beliefs about the world and one’s deepest moral convictions (or whatever light one has acquired, as a religious person might call it) to transform one’s life and to reflect itself in one’s actions. In a word, it is just the opposite of what Sartre would have called “bad faith.”

My skepticism has had the biggest impact probably on our two singers, Bill Walden and Sim Wilson.  Bill is a pastor in Napa, CA and Sim is a pastor’s son and is very active in his church in Cleveland, TN so I suppose that stands to reason.  It has not negatively impacted anything in practice, as far as I can tell, but I think it does cause Sim some grief at least. To the others it has simply not been much of an issue at all. Neither has it been an issue in my adopted band, Dead Artist Syndrome.  We like to tease Brian Healy, up till now quite a controversial figure, that he is now the biggest bible thumper in DAS.

What kind of “reception” have you received from other “Christian” musicians with whom you may have toured, played with, etc.  Have you lost any “friends”?

True friends are true friends so anyone I’ve lost I have to think was lost before they were lost. I’ll say this, and I hope it doesn’t get me in too much trouble.  There are a good many artists at various stages of doubt in their lives. Some are open about it, some are not.  Some cannot be open because their livelihoods are connected to their religion.  That’s an awful place to be, but I guess it’s inevitable and is probably the same for pastors.  Where does a pastor with a family go once he or she has lost belief?  For some artists it’s simply a private matter and they don’t feel compelled to talk about it openly.

I have had all kinds of comments, from the very nasty (although those are mostly from disgruntled fans) to threats to follow me around virtually and oppose things I say (this from a member of another band who I did not know well, but who had looked up to us), but most frequently, they express a sense of sadness and disappointment.  I find that a very strange response indeed and it’s hard for me not to interpret it as a projection of a response to their own doubt onto me that somehow threatens their own faith.  I have a blog post about that brewing.  Some have encouraged me, and that mostly from other artists who also doubt at one level or another.  But really, isn’t every bit of growth we experience as human beings a result of doubt and skepticism?  We leave things behind because we find they don’t fit anymore, and often it’s painful.  Why should doctrinal tenets or objective claims made by religions be any different?

I have been having some really great dialog with Michael Pritzl of The Violet Burning, a lifelong and very dear friend who has been completely accepting and respectfully curious.  We learn from each other and he has had his own journey from Catholicism to Evangelicalism and then to Anglicanism (I hope I am representing him correctly).

It’s difficult to generalize.  I know lots of people and have many friends.  I’m very lucky that way.  Some simply don’t talk about it, I’m sure some are worried for the fate of my eternal soul (I’ve been told that too), some encourage me, some are Universalist so it doesn’t matter what anyone believes or doesn’t believe, some are too busy working out their own thing to worry about mine.  I’ve heard it all.  The bottom line though is that for the most part, my dearest and closest friends are not going to throw our friendship away over something like doubt.

You mentioned Calvary Chapel in the mid-seventies. A lot a folks were connected in some way with Calvary Chapel in those days. It would be interesting to see how many are still spiritually, theologically, and philosophically in “the same place” as they were back then.

I think a good number of them are.  There is an annual Calvary Chapel picnic that I have not yet attended, but hope to this summer.  I saw the photos online from last year and all the familiar faces were there. I’ve had debates and disagreements with a few of them, and it has gotten ugly at times.  No matter how controlled and reasonable I try to be, no matter how hard I try to keep it from not being a personal thing (rejection of religious claims is not the same as rejection of the person), it is still difficult for people to have ideas challenged, and fundamentalists are sort of at the front of that line.   They tend to get their feathers ruffled easier and faster than most.

On the other hand, I just received an email from a man who was a worship leader at a Calvary Chapel for a long time, who is now coming out as a skeptic also.  It’s probably a lot like the rest of life – some stay, some don’t.  Some move on from what I would consider a very simplistic view of the world and life to a more mature view, but some dismiss the faith altogether.

 I love your list of musical influences growing up. Did you feel the need at any point after you got into the evangelical movement to “give up” your records on love for all those “satanic” bands?  In the 70s and 80s there was a big emphasis on giving up the “secular” music if you really want to be a good Christian. Surely you felt some pressure even if you didn’t go along ….  (comment: I tried and tried hard, but no matter what anybody told me Petra’s first few albums just did not even come close to filling my need for Zeppelin II or Sabbath’s Paranoid. )    

I probably went through about a three-month period early in my born again experience where I thought secular music was demonic.  I was raised Catholic remember, so lots of the protestant, evangelical and fundamentalist mindset was very foreign to me.  I reasoned my way out of that pretty quickly and never looked back. So much of it is just off-the-scale silly.  That mindset is still out there too!  Anyway, like you, I listened to my Zeppelin and Sabbath with abandon, and later as music changed in the late 1970s, to all those new punk and new wave artists.  It was a great time musically, especially where we lived, in Fullerton, where a good number of bands came from.  As an aside, maybe there are those who would say, “See?  If you had not listened to secular music, you would probably still be a believer!”

Were you (or are you) ever embarrassed by the 70s and 80s evangelical stage of your journey? Do your students research Undercover and ask you about “Talk to God” or “Jesus Girl” or “Slaughter of the Innocents”?

At one level, I can look back on all that and simply chalk it up to youth.  That’s where things were back then, and it would be a mistake to look at those songs outside the context of where the church was culturally and what they were able to accept and stomach at that time.  The lyrics had to be overt and the simpler, the better. By the time Branded came around, I didn’t care about that anymore.  I needed to make the statement that album made. Today, everything in Christian music has pretty much been worked out.  Christian bands can have careers outside of the Christian music industry, can have infidels as co-members, and can sing about whatever they want.  In 1980 it wasn’t that way.

I do not mean to rationalize or explain away those early days though.  Those songs and lyrics did represent where we were at that time, and what Christian life for young people was like in Orange County, CA and it does look awfully immature and shallow.  In some ways that was really good for young people who attended church. They were able to break free of artificial cultural fetters within a lyrical framework of pretty conservative cheerleading that made things more acceptable for church leaders.  That was a consequence, but the bottom line is that we did write those lyrics.

My students do look me up. It’s impossible to hide.  The song they most often want to hear is God Rules and I rarely indulge them, but then I don’t need to really.  It’s all out there.  They got a particular kick out of the version of God Rules set to Family Guy footage. I still don’t know where that came from, but it’s out there.

 Occasionally you still get together with the other guys to play an Undercover show … how do you feel about singing those songs today?  Are their any from your Undercover catalog you simply will not do? Why or why not?

I really think those days are winding down.  I wrote an essay on my blog that had this little bit in it:

“Undercover is certainly one big issue now; not so much the band itself, but the sociology around the band. Except for the love I have for my bandmates and the fun we always have together, I really don’t care if we play anymore or not if it must be done in religious venues. After the church politics surrounding the last concert we did in January 2011, when the church itself almost cancelled the concert at the very last minute because of my beliefs (all without having made any attempt to talk to me directly), putting into jeopardy the huge personal investment of time, effort and all the money the promotion team had on this earth, risking turning people away who had already bought tickets, some of whom had traveled thousands of miles just for that show, something snapped in me.  I’ve lost my appetite for it and have kind of put my foot down.  It seemed as immoral in its consideration as it would have been if they had actually cancelled.  I’ve always loved our audience more than anything, and if we play again, it will be on our terms, for their sake, or fuck it.”

So it’s not the songs themselves, it’s the politics and sociology around it.  Yes, there are early lyrics I wrote and that we wrote and performed for years that I cringe to think about.  Slaughter of the Innocents should be fully retracted and erased from the face of the earth.  In Classical music, the composer can recall a piece and that’s the end of it; it’s gone from the repertoire.  Not so in popular music.  We still get asked to play those songs and sometimes people ask where they can buy those early records.  I take it on a case-by-case basis.  There are some songs I simply will not play anymore because I think the lyrics are harmful, discriminatory or just plain silly.  There are others I won’t play because they are not musically consistent with anything we’ve done lately, and there are some we won’t play because they have little value beyond nostalgia and I’m not really into that.

On the other hand, there are some songs I enjoy playing because I like the music even though lyrically it may not be consistent with what I believe. They are not harmful and the songs are often meaningful to people. There are some songs we play that we play because we love the music and the lyrics.  Build a Castle and So Wonderful would be good examples of that last kind, and there are others. Some songs, like Way of the Rose are renderings of biblical events with no underlying message or doctrinal proposition. I’m ok with those too.  There are also times where another band member might feel strongly about playing or not playing a song.  It’s not all about me, and I am happy to support them too.  It’s a case-by-case thing.  I think we’re all on the same page roughly though.  There are some songs we simply will not play.  The older the song, the more likely it is we’ve left it behind, although that is not always true.

Who are some of your favorite musicians / bands you are listening to these days?

I don’t listen to music the same way I did when I was younger.  I think that’s a function of having spent the biggest part of my working life in a band and owning a record label, then getting a graduate degree in music where I analyzed and listened to so much music over five years that I really needed to detox. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older too.  Since I teach in the music school here at JMU, I am surrounded by music all the time, in my classes and on the periphery. Silence is the most beautiful sound to me of late. Because of the shifts in the way music is delivered, I have not actually bought music in years.  I do not pirate it, but it’s readily available legally and legitimately for free by streaming from one place or another (emphasis is on “legally and legitimately”).

In my Songwriting classes, I ask the students to submit a list of 3-5 songs they would like to study over the course of the semester.  That helps me keep a finger on the pulse of what they might be listening to, and it’s always a good mix of new and old music.  We listen a lot in that class alone.  I also hear their songs which vary in terms of quality.  At the end of the day, there’s just not much space left for me to want to listen to more music, and if there is, it’s usually to listen to stuff I happen to be working on myself.

I do go through phases though where I do listen, and I go through stages where I am more fixed on one artist or style over another.  There are some artists I used to love that I simply have lost all interest in since.  They were more important perhaps as rites of passage for me than anything else. Sometimes it will be nothing but Classical music, and even within that there are certain composers I will focus on for a while or certain periods, or maybe even certain pieces.  Sometimes I just go through a Radiohead or Sigur Ros thing.  Sometimes I go exploring for new art music, which is one of the great things about streaming.  I like My Brightest Diamond a lot, and the various artists Shara Worden works with in different capacities.  I keep my eye on NPR because they offer first listens of new albums by great artists like Paul Simon and Robbie Robertson. I would probably not have otherwise heard their albums.

I also am connected to a network of composers whose music I listen to.  This is stuff the general public will never hear, but lots of it is really good (and lots of it isn’t).  So I hear a lot of stuff, a lot of great stuff, but I really don’t “listen” like I used to listen.  I don’t have a television and never listen to the radio either so I’m not always right on top of the latest and greatest sensations.  I have a lot of respect for artists who are focused, work hard, are persistent and have become really good at what they do.  That almost always shows up somehow and I find that moving in itself.

Notes:

1 – I am indebted to Daniel Batt for our exchanges, including an article he sent me by Thomas Talbott from where the quote comes, and for our diaog, which led to my tempering the Stephen Roberts quote.

2 – Here is a sweet and beautiful version of Build A Castle performed live by Michael Pritzl.

3 – DAS is supposedly releasing an album hopefully in this lifetime.  We’ve been working on it for almost three years now, with Ric Alba, Gym Nicholson, John Piccari, Michele Bunch Palmer and of course Brian Healy.

4 – Bert is working on an interview with Ric Alba which will also appear in a number of rags, presumably Huff Po too.  Ric is a brilliant and thoughtful guy so I’m sure it will be a must-read.  I’ll link to it when it shows up.

5 – Photo at the top by Susan Ann Luce.  Photo of Undercover by Rich Brimer.

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A friend then posted something about scientists who are also “nut jobs,” and accusing me of wanting to crush Christianity.  I cannot quote this person with certainty because he later removed all his comments and removed me as a friend.  But I know it must have been something like that, because of my reply:

[S]cience takes care of its own nut jobs through peer review, replication and results. It’s falsifiable. Religion is not. There is not a “correct answer” that can be proven or disproven. I am not hell bent on crushing christianity, I am committed to the well-being of sentient creatures, and often religion is enemy #1 when it comes to that as this article and a number of my other posts demonstrate. If you are looking for a common thread, it is that. Very grateful for those who “get it” and I have a number of dear friends who do, thankfully. Personally I don’t think religion is necessary to “get it” but everyone’s path is her own, until it violates the well-being of sentient creatures. Then I feel compelled to jump in.

I then issued a revision:

Correction… there are some claims of religions that CAN be disproven, especially those that involve claims about our reality in time-space. I was referring to the stuff that theologians have historically spent time with – the nature of cherubim, the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin, who will sit at whose right hand, what Jesus did on Holy Saturday – that stuff cannot be proved or disproved, and fortunately, we can also safely say that as far as we can know, none of that stuff matters anyway other than as novelty, history, and keeping theologians employed. I guess that’s ok.

And this is where things got interesting.  I will call my friend “John” in the interests of discretion. He replied:

Ojo, Jesus did provide a litmus test, falsifiability, if you will: “You shall know them by their fruits.” The Westboro folks and Terry Jones clearly fail the test, and this is widely affirmed by church leaders. (I won’t attempt to speak for other faiths.) This is comparable to the science world, I would think, in that while the mainstream scientific community applies standards, many, many crackpots put forth little-accepted theories every day. It’s a bit disingenuous to lump “religious” people together while picturing “Science” as a neatly unified front. There are crackpots in ALL fields.

I replied:

[T]hat falsifiability test might work if it actually worked. Throughout the ages and centuries, all kinds of “fruits” have been alternately accepted, heretical, blasphemous, worthy of death or glory. If it was so, if there was a genuine set of christian behaviors that truly was actually and practically falsifiable, why have they changed so much over the years?

John jumps on this, but in arguing that what he says is a criterion for falsifiability “has not always been followed,” it seems he is actually saying that Christianity (in this case) is falsified!  Now perhaps I am not reading him correctly, and I will give him the benefit of the doubt:

Joe, first you suggested there was no form of “falsifiability” in religion (by which it appears you primarily mean Christianity). I pointed to one, and now you discount it because it has not always been followed. Is Science thereby nullified because its standards have not always been followed? Scientific history is full of theories once accepted, now discounted (swamp gas, humors, bleeding, Newtonian mechanics, spontaneous generation, expanding earth, continental drift, steady state theory, etc., etc.). I perceive a double-standard here: Science is “self-correcting” when it discards once-accepted ideas, but Christianity is proved false when it does the same thing. You also seem to view Christianity as including every “religious” idea ever articulated, no matter how absurd, but do not apply this same standard to Science; if you did, Science would look considerably more ridiculous.

Another very bright friend, Jeff jumps in with a very good question, one that becomes central to the discussion:

John, can you show us, in practice, how the Christian community follows this falsifiability principle that you espouse? I’ve seen a similar principle (and several more) work in science, to the point where there are standard models of gravity, evolution, particle physics, chemistry, the periodic chart, and so on. And while these are always open to refinement or even being supplanted by more generalized models, the models we have are generally consistent with ALL current, reliable experimental data.
Can you give me an example of a “standard model” that is agreed-upon by all non-fringe theists of every tradition?

I again felt compelled to clarify my comment on the falsifiable test.  I am rushed and not as thoughtful as I would like more often than I would like.

John, I’m afraid I was not too terribly articulate or clear in my reply. I had a lot of time to think about it on my drive from LA to Tucson last night! It’s not that it has not always been followed that concerns me, but that there is not, as Jeff suggests, a standard model that everyone agrees to and there should be. But ok, perhaps we can get past all that hair-splitting and give Christianity the benefit of the doubt here and say that the fruits of the faith are love, which the Bible also would agree with in places. But there are some who will NOT agree with that, and will say that “Correct beliefs and doctrines matter!” I get that comment all the time, so what are those “fruits” that you mention? Perhaps they are Paul’s Fruits of the The Spirit. Putting aside those who still will say that correct doctrines are also important (and I think this an important dynamic), what are we to say of those who bear fruit but are outside of Christianity? Believers do not show any more virtue or character than those of other faiths or no faith, and in some cases (teen pregnancy and divorce rates in the South, for example) are actually worse than among those of other faiths and no faith. So if we are to know them by their fruits and if this is truly a falsifiable principle among Christians then how does it apply, how does it work or show up? I think Jeff’s question is a good one.

I did not hear from John for a number of days, but we’re all busy and some of us at least have lives outside of Facebook, and John is a very talented and busy guy.  After some of the other usual bunny trails on the thread, John sent three replies in quick succession.  His first:

Hey, Joe, taking a moment to respond to your long entry (Sorry I’ve taken so long–been majorly tied up). I’ll deal with these issues one at a time if/when I can. Re. A standard model: Yes, Christianity has a standard model, and it is agreed upon by leaders of all the major branches of the Church (Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism). As a guest speaker [...], I spoke at churches from all of these bodies and was rarely even asked my doctrinal beliefs. This was because they knew I shared their core beliefs about the centrality of Christ in God’s plan of salvation, the need to love God and neighbor as oneself, etc. Churches that have abandoned or seriously distorted these core issues (Mormons, Moonies, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.) are considered by all but themselves to have abandoned the standard model. This would be parallel the pseudo-sciences that exist on the fringes of the scientific community, I believe. More to come?

His second:

Re. Correct doctrines: Of course they matter, especially when they are what people consider key issues. But while the mainstream churches may disagree (as do scientists) over many issues, they do not consider secondary issues to be deal-breakers. The reason Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Eastern Orthodox, Coptics, etc. accept one another as authentic (read their statements of faith) is because of where all stand on the central issue of saving grace. Indeed, what sets those recognized as non or quasi-Christian cults apart is not only their lack of authenticity on this central issue, but their insistence that only THEY are the real thing. Again, I see a parallel to science in that there are certainly unorthodox “scientists” who are both rejected by and reject the mainstream as well.

And his third, which also included an embedded link to this article by the Barna Group called Self-Described Christians Dominate America but Wrestle with Four Aspects of Spiritual Depth:

Re. Fruits: There certainly are plenty of these in the world of religion ;>). Seriously, the issue, I believe, is separating Christianity from “Christendom.” Western culture has been identified as “Christian” for so long that true life-changing faith has been muddied by the much larger numbers of those with a merely religious affiliation (“wheat” vs. “tares,” in Jesus’ prophetic words). The Barna organization has been doing spirituality polls for years. When they look at the “fruits” born by standard-issue “Christians” (Christendom), the results are, as you point out, not impressive. But when they look at the fruits (level of charitable work and giving vs. divorce, abuse, alcoholism) among those who identify their lives as profoundly centered on Christ (a very small percentage of those calling themselves Christians) the results improve dramatically. We should not be surprised that tares (a sort of pseudo-wheat) do not produce real wheat kernels. I wonder what percentage of people calling themselves “scientists” produce bad fruit, i.e. do irrelevant, poorly supported work leading to questionable conclusions. I suspect they may be the majority. Yet I do not consider them proof that science is, therefore, a false discipline.

That’s the long background for my long set of thoughts and rebuttals below.  I had had some time to think some of these things over, but it was the constant comparison of science to religion and religion to science that got my engines fired.  I can let one or two go, but this stream seemed to demand a more thorough answer, also because these things come up often.

Although it was not specified, let us first establish that by “fruits of the spirit” we are most likely talking about those listed in Galatians 5:22-23, a short list of some traits that show character:  “…love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (NIV)  WIth that in mind and all the background, my reply to John follows.

Is Christianity the Standard Model?

First, in reviewing the comments we’ve each made so far, John said, “I won’t attempt to speak for other faiths,” but as far as ascertaining whether or not Christians or any religion can demonstrate higher character and virtue as a result of their faith, that is critically important!  I was deliberate when I said that “religion” is not falsifiable.  I did not specify nor am I singling out Christianity.  All religious traditions make specific claims.  Jeff’s question was clear too.  “Can you give me an example of a ‘standard model’ that is agreed-upon by all non-fringe theists of every tradition?”  He did not single out Christianity or any other religion but specifically mentioned “theists of every tradition.”  Nowhere was this addressed, or perhaps it was addressed indirectly by suggesting implicitly that Christianity is the one knowably true, correct religion and that its practitioners are known and its truth verified by its fruits (Gal 5).

So first, John only presented a sort of standard model of Christianity, not for theism or other traditions. Or perhaps he is saying that orthodox (small “o”) Christianity is the standard model of theism. If so, then he has only shown that it is considered so by fiat, by a consensus of church fathers perhaps beginning with Constantine in the 4^th Century, but certainly not much earlier (and the historical record and apocrypha are clear on that). There is no data, no research, nothing at all that would logically require anyone to accept the claims of the “leaders of the major branches of the Church” as necessarily, factually, actually and absolutely correct and true, and in fact most of the rest of the world would simply disagree and there is no basis by which anyone can prove that anyone is right or wrong!

Another implicit aspect of Jeff’s question is that the things we know, we know everywhere. They are universal.  There is no such thing as Muslim or Christian mathematics.  There is only mathematics.  There is no European vs. Asian theory of gravity.  There is only the theory of gravity.  That’s why it is a Standard Model.  It works and it works everywhere throughout the known universe.  Hawking hinted at the same, and while some consider his statement over the top, I consider it simply a statement of fact:

“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.”

More on that below, but let’s consider that for a moment, and assume that religion and specifically Christianity (since John invoked it) does work using his own metric – fruitful lives.

Are Christians More Virtuous And Fruitful?

The article posted from the Barna group is interesting and I might even agree with a good chunk of it, at least the parts that seem to be a research-driven operationalization of what it means to really be a devout or more sincere kind of Christian using his four parameters (Commitment, Activity, Repentance, and Community).  I do not mean to minimize it, because maybe he’s right in his model. But it does fall short in our discussion because first, it does not advance the idea that even those Christians are any better off or any more “moral” or fruitful in their lives using Galatians as the standard, even though John suggested that “the results improve dramatically” over presumably less committed Christians.

Maybe the book makes the point, but the article doesn’t.  But even still I will grant the point because Barna’s model makes intuitive sense for any religion or non-religion (and I have adapted it below).  But second, it only considers Christianity. There is no assertion that these deeper Christians are any more fruitful than deeper Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists or atheists.  Anyone who is going to assert that Christianity is the true Standard Model because its adherents are more fruitful than adherents of any other tradition or by those with no tradition (who are equally committed to their own personal growth) has a stiff burden of proof. It has yet to be shown and this article does not get us there. And that, as my initial assertion using the broad term “religion” and Jeff’s question highlight, is the real question; are Christians more virtuous or fruitful, even the deeply committed ones, than the deeply committed practitioners of other traditions?

What about those with no religious tradition?  I could also somewhat easily adapt the article and its four parameters for unbelievers.  Commitment, activity, and community are all critically important.  We don’t need religion for any of those and hopefully that’s an uncontroversial statement that we can agree on.  But repentance does seem unique!  I have no need for what Barna calls “abandoning the lure of sin and handing total control of their life to God.”  So is this truly a necessary ingredient to living a fruitful life in the Galatians sense?  I think not, but what is necessary in my opinion, and what I think is the overarching parameter rather than repentance is a sense of humility; that I am human, that I am no better than any other, that I can fail and have failed personally, that I can cause harm, and that my life is more meaningful when I am in the service of others.  Again, we do not need religion for any of that.  Humility is a human phenomenon first, not a religious one. I believe we all struggle with these concepts, not just Christians.

(Dis)Agreement Among Major Christian Sects

I think John is too generous on the idea that the major Christian sects simply ”accept one another as authentic” or that the only thing that divides them are secondary issues.  I could discuss many such articles of division, but does anyone think, for example, that the Catholics consider the primacy of and submission to the authority of the Pope a secondary issue?  Or the belief that the literal and actual body and blood of Christ are present in the Eucharist, which the Catholic Catechism calls (in a paragraph heading) the “Source and Summit Of Ecclesial Life?”

According to their Catechism:

The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: ‘Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation (CCC, 1376).’”

The Council also declared anathema (accursed and consigned to damnation) anyone who:

…denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue” and anyone who “saith, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood – the species only of the bread and wine remaining – which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation, let him be anathema.” (Council of Trent, Thirteenth Session)

The Catechism itself says that The Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life. The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.” (1324) and, “In brief, the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking.” (1327).

How much wiggle room is there on this issue?  In light of all this, does it make sense to say that this is really a secondary issue to Catholics?

Does Raul Ries from Calvary Chapel believe that the Pope and the Catholic Church are on a spiritual plane equal to his?  Here is an excerpt from one of his radio talks, (the audio of which can be found here).  At 20:53 he says this:

[T]he thing which is sacrificed by heathens is sacrificed to demons and not to God. Notice [Paul] explains it. And I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the Lord’s table and the table of demons or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy or are we stronger than He. Now maybe not here in America but maybe not more in America (sic) because of all the Latins that come from Central America and South America and Mexico. We have what we call santaria. Or what we call ‘white witchcraft’. And that is practiced in the Catholic Church. Believe it or not. You’re dealing with the supernatural in the burning of the incense and the candles and then the laying hands and doing the chanting and then the (transis?) and the calling of demons up from hell. And some even kill chickens and the blood of chickens or animals are used to sprinkle on the altar. In Brazil, man, this is big time. And I think it’s important to understand that we’re not putting anybody down, but we are putting the system down because the system is not biblical. You see.”

Of course, anyone who has  been around the Calvary system for any length of time knows of Pastor Raul Ries’s toxic points of view on Catholicism.

And what also of the differences between say, Calvin, Wesley and Luther?  Are they also secondary?  Do they have the same standards for communion with God, eternal life, or the same ideas about redemption, sin, forgiveness of sin, predestination, expiation and reparation?  Are these secondary issues to them?  Do they all think that members of the other sects will all be eternally present with God?  Perhaps there are those who have (thankfully) transcended their in-group’s doctrinal codes, but what are the official positions, as I have just outlined for Catholics on the Eucharist?

I think the supposed kumbaya of the major sects within Christianity is a fantasy. I would argue that there is much more disagreement than agreement, even among the primary issues (the nature of Christ and his work, the nature and mechanisms of salvation, the role of baptism of the holy spirit in salvation, whether salvation can be lost or not, etc.).  There is no agreement on all these major issues and many, many more, and that’s why we have the divisions we have with all the attendant consequences and discord.

Theology – “Queen of the Sciences”

How Can We Know Doctrine and Theology Are True?

But again, let me grant the point anyway and concede for the sake of argument that there is agreement of the major sects!  John wrote, “Correct doctrines: Of course they matter, especially when they are what people consider key issues.”  So that’s the assertion.  How are we to know that the doctrines and theologies are correct and true?  What proof can we submit them to in order to prove their veracity?  What is the method?  If it is by tradition or by religious or scriptural authority and fiat, what mechanism exists that requires us to accept that tradition or authority rather than acknowledging that they are wrong and simply tossing them out like we have so many other specious authoritative claims? In what way, in other words, are these doctrines falsifiable? Those questions lead to my final point.

Science

I am amused and a little perplexed at the frequency with which John compared religion and science throughout his replies. It is as if (and I am not sure here, and again, I hope he corrects me if I have this wrong.  I’m only trying to do my best to understand) he is equating the two, putting them on the same playing field.  I don’t believe that’s warranted.  Let’s look at the issues listed in John’s replies.

1) There Are Crackpots On All Fields

With regard to types like Westboro and Terry Jones:

This is comparable to the science world, I would think, in that while the mainstream scientific community applies standards, many, many crackpots put forth little-accepted theories every day. It’s a bit disingenuous to lump ‘religious’ people together while picturing ‘Science’ as a neatly unified front. There are crackpots in ALL fields.

My Reply:  I don’t believe I said that science was a neatly unified front.  In fact, I said, “science takes care of its own nut jobs through peer review, replication and results.”  Science has it’s nut jobs, quacks, charlatans, and incompetents.  I admit that.  But I consider that a strength, not a weakness!  It is the second part of my sentence that elevates the scientific method over the religious way of knowing things.  Peer review, replication and results is something only science can lay claim to.  Religion cannot.  Those mechanisms are what weeds out the crackpots.  It’s also what makes science more robust.  There is stiff competition for publication, for showing other theories wrong, for data-driven innovation, and for answering unanswered questions, for pushing the boundaries of our knowledge farther and father.  If someone in science did what was suggested, and simply put out garbage, “little-accepted theories,” then their careers are either over or seriously marginalized.  Westboro Baptist simply goes on and on, criticized, but toothlessly. They are not weeded out at all, they just grow right along with the rest.

2) Discounted Scientific Theories

Is Science thereby nullified because its standards have not always been followed? Scientific history is full of theories once accepted, now discounted (swamp gas, humors, bleeding, Newtonian mechanics, spontaneous generation, expanding earth, continental drift, steady state theory, etc., etc.). I perceive a double-standard here: Science is ‘self-correcting’ when it discards once-accepted ideas, but Christianity is proved false when it does the same thing. You also seem to view Christianity as including every ‘religious’ idea ever articulated, no matter how absurd, but do not apply this same standard to Science; if you did, Science would look considerably more ridiculous.

My Reply: First, science is not nullified when its standards (a curious word, by the way.  I assume he means method) are not followed.  The incorrect method and any conclusions that result from it are nullified.  That’s the way it works.  That’s why science exists.  It is a method, not a belief system.  Religion is not a method.  It is a belief system.  Science makes no claim for inerrancy or divine inspiration. Religion does.  If there is a double standard, it is only because it is inherent in the claims of each.

A bad idea or methodology in science is just that.  But in religion, it must become a metaphor, or explained away somehow to preserve claims of inerrancy or divine inspiration.  All theories that have been shown to be false, fallacious, even fraudulent have been shown to be so because of the scientific method, not in spite of it.  So yes, science is self-correcting, and not just because somebody says so.  I am not giving science any special consideration on its bad ideas.  It is self-correcting only because it has results that work, that are verifiable, that are replicable.

What similar mechanisms does religion have? What proof can we submit religious bad ideas to in order to prove their veracity?  What is the method?  That’s my point. Westboro and Terry Jones are easy.  Everyone, religious or not knows these guys are nuts.  But what about ideas such as hell, sin and redemption?  How can we know with the same certainty that we have when we purpose to land a vehicle on Mars that these ideas, what I would consider very bad ideas are actually, factually and absolutely true?  We know how science weeds out its bad ideas.  How does religion do that, especially with those I just mentioned?  Or if they’re not bad ideas, but really great ideas, then how can we know with certainty (taking into account what I said about tradition and religious authority above)?

Now perhaps some will argue that “well, we don’t know all the answers in science either.”  That’s true.  But then, we don’t require people to believe those things either, nor are they central to any of the theories like sin, hell and redemption are for Christianity.  I am not concerned with how ridiculous science may look because of the ideas that have been discarded in light of its overwhelming track record of actual and meaningful results as we learn more and more.

But when someone attributes something to “the Word of God,” and here I mean even well-accepted mainstream ideas that can no longer be considered viable, then because it had the initial imprimatur, it is in a different class. Rather than the Church saying that the idea that the earth is at the center of the universe is tentative, they made it doctrinal and authoritative.  When it was shown otherwise, it means much more egg on the bishop’s face than it would have for a scientist who operates under the presumption of tentativeness. Failure, error, mistakes, folly do no damage to the scientific method.  That’s why it exists.  They do, however cause fatal damage to religion when its discredited  tenets are doctrinal, considered inspired, inerrant, authoritative.

3) The Fringes and Pseudo-Science

With regard to Mormons, Moonies, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, they…

…are considered by all but themselves to have abandoned the standard model. This would be parallel the pseudo-sciences that exist on the fringes of the scientific community, I believe.

My Reply:  The pseudo sciences can be ruled out because of the failure of their method and results.  The sects mentioned are ruled out because they diverge from what John called the standard model of Christianity. But that model again, is arbitrary in that “…it is agreed upon by leaders of all the major branches of the Church (Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism).”  That’s all we’re given on support for a religious standard model.  In science we hold things to be true because they work, not because a bunch of people got together and agreed that this is the way things are.  The standard is much, much higher and more stringent, grueling and unrelenting actually (as anyone who has read published dissent and reviews knows). Now maybe there is more to the support of the religious standard model than agreement by the leaders of all the major branches of the Church, but I don’t see that in the reply, nor have I seen or heard it anywhere else.  How do we know the tenets and claims of the religious standard model presented are actually, factually and absolutely true? Without that, how can we thus compare religion and science?

4) Dissent and The Mainstream

But while the mainstream churches may disagree (as do scientists) over many issues, they do not consider secondary issues to be deal-breakers. […] Again, I see a parallel to science in that there are certainly unorthodox ‘scientists’ who are both rejected by and reject the mainstream as well.

My Reply:  What is the criteria for the disagreements among mainstream churches?  For science, it is because there are unanswered questions, research not yet done, done poorly, inconclusive results, not yet replicated, not yet published, incomplete theoretically.  Again, the comparison does not hold up.  Those unorthodox scientists who can deliver results are not unorthodox!  Some madman in a basement in his home, uneducated and illiterate may come up with a revolutionary and correct theory and explanation of dark matter!  If it works, if it’s replicable using the scientific method, if it’s thus verified, then in what sense is that person unorthodox?  The only unorthodox that are rejected by the mainstream that I am aware of are those whose conclusions and results are either spurious or non-existent.  Believe me, anyone who can show that evolution is false needs only write it up, have it replicated and verified and collect her Nobel Prize.  This is not at all how religion works.

5) Bad Fruit

I wonder what percentage of people calling themselves “scientists” produce bad fruit, i.e. do irrelevant, poorly supported work leading to questionable conclusions. I suspect they may be the majority. Yet I do not consider them proof that science is, therefore, a false discipline.

My Reply:  I’m not sure, but my guess is that science could not be considered a false discipline because it works!  It gets results! But let’s just say that even 99% of all scientists’ work is irrelevant, poorly supported, and leads to questionable conclusions.  I think most scientists would agree that the work in question should be rejected at least until it has been revised, refined or corrected and not a minute sooner.  I think they would also agree though that this does not threaten the scientific method in the least.  In fact, as I said above, it supports it.  It is precisely why there is a scientific method at all! Hawking was right. Science will rule the day because it works, and results matter (this reminds me of a law that I teach my students regularly¹:  Results ≠ No Results + Excuses)

In the end, maybe there actually is a planet or star called Kolob that is the nearest celestial body to the throne of God.  Maybe the Temple Garment “when properly worn…provides protection against temptation and evil.” Maybe Bigfoot, chupacabras and Nessie exist, and maybe people have been abducted by extra-terrestrial aliens.  Maybe there is a hell and maybe there are cherubim. People believe some interesting things.  My own view is that if any of these things exists, it will be science that discovers them.  We are not left only with the alternative of having to believe such things under pain of eternal torment at the hands of God because tradition or religious authority says we must.  The world is no longer ruled by popes, priests, prophets or pastors, and I am personally left wondering how much they are actually part of the ongoing discovery of our universe and the human experience unless they too are working as scientists, and only then independent of their self-interest, prejudices and passions.  The powerful coercion of those offices may have been compelling and may have been sufficient for driving assent of the masses in pre-science Palestine, or for Constantine, the Council of Trent, the Dark Ages, for Joseph Smith, or for the very many pseudo scientists. No more.

I also recommend this related blog post, A Theology Sandwich.

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¹ – I am grateful to my friend Miles Holliman for exposing me to the simple beauty of this formula, which I have since co-opted and which my students know as “Ojo’s Law #2.”

Maybe greeting people is a good thing.  I considered that and then I considered the impact of greeting people this way. Is he really just greeting people?  My question is this.  What is it about this guy’s belief system and the many others who do similar things, that make him think that this is a better way to spend a lot of time than actually doing something; something that might honor his implied faith and provide real benefit to someone?    I’d really like to know.

Have any similar people near you?  Post a photo here in the comments!

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The eight ways she suggests “church leaders or members do things that either trigger the deconversion process or help it along [...], push people out the Church door or shove secret skeptics out of the closet,” are listed below. In the full article she offers much more detail on each, examples of how they show up, and why and how they have the negative impacts they have.  I can imagine even many believers might agree with her, especially those of the “Lord, save me from your followers!” persuasion. I think it goes deeper than that.  This is not a list for extremists, but also for the rank and file:

1) Gay-Baiting
2) Prooftexting
3) Misogyny
4) Hypocrisy
5) Disgusting and Immoral Behavior
6) Science Denial
7) Political Meddling
8) Intrusion

Now, this is not intended as an anti-Christian polemic.  Believers can read her article and disagree as much as they want.  It seems to me though this is something along the lines of “I am breaking up with you, and now I would like to tell you why.” Anyone who cares about their relationships might want to take heed, at least listen and consider what’s being offered, but I imagine there are those who will just blow it off as so much religion-bashing yet again.  That would be a missed opportunity and unfortunate for us all.  Note, for example, that none of these 8 have anything to do with Christianity’s core beliefs!  Valerie’s blog is here, for those who would like to follow her or do a little more poking around.

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In the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a number of unrelated people from diverse and distant stations and geographies experience strange shared phenomena that none of them can explain or understand, and which suggests to those around them that they might actually be losing their marbles.  These people are ultimately driven to seek out and travel to the remote location where they have been “summoned.”  It’s not a perfect metaphor for what I am about to say, maybe not even a very good one.  I don’t believe in alien abduction (although I do agree with Sagan, Hawking and others that it’s likely that there is non-supernatural intelligent life in the universe beyond us). I do understand having a sense of an inner stirring, a change of outlook and perspective that I could not really explain or could have predicted, and later coming to find out that I have it in common with a number of other people.

What I’m referring to are the inner tectonic shifts that came as a result of having dismissed my religion and eventually all supernatural phenomena as completely and woefully inadequate to explain and understand our world and universe and the human experience including all the intangible aspects, beautiful and ugly, that come with it. At first all I could articulate was that I did not believe some article of faith or another anymore, like hell.  That list grew over the years until I finally realized I had nothing left to hold any kind of coherent faith or god-ideal together.  That struck terror in me at first.  I prayed that God would forgive me for not believing in Him, as ridiculous as that sounds now, but I truly had nothing on which to base a reasonable belief. What kind of worldview and life would I be left with?  How would I, how could I explain things I had always used God to explain before?  Maybe I was wrong!

This was a case of having to empty myself before anything else could occupy, of having to devastate before anything could be rebuilt.  There was that moment, like in the film when they all find out about each other’s shared experience, that I also realized I was not alone. I had of course realized through reading and conversation with other skeptics that the ideas I held were common to others, that hell for example, is completely untenable, but this was all cognitive.  I tried to articulate what was going on inside me in my first public coming out as a skeptic and freethinker:

To the believer, it will sound as if I am cut off, down a bunny trail of error and blindness, a heretic, apostate. I feel no such thing. Things make much more sense to me, I am more alive, I feel more connected, I am not worried nor do I fear. I am incredibly grateful to the forces responsible for my existence. No god I am interested in knowing would begrudge an honest and sincere inquiry, honoring the only faculties I was born with. I assume responsibility for it. I know love more than I ever have. I have grown. I am more complete in every way. I have ongoing discussion about all this and my ongoing process on Facebook, and I invite anyone to sit in and continue to grow with me, just as it was with listening to Undercover.

I began to read other testimonies of deconversion from a number of religions, Christian, Mormon, Muslim, and found them talking about the same kinds of shifts.  Then I found Robert Green Ingersoll.  How could he have known over a hundred years ago almost exactly what I would be feeling today?  And how is it that so many of us, separated by time and space come to end up feeling these same things, this same way?  This was truly good news indeed, much better news than any I had heard based in anything supernatural no matter how fanciful, but I will let Ingersoll tell it in his own words.

When I became convinced that the Universe is natural — that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world — not even in infinite space. I was free — free to think, to express my thoughts — free to live to my own ideal — free to live for myself and those I loved — free to use all my faculties, all my senses — free to spread imagination’s wings — free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope — free to judge and determine for myself — free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the “inspired” books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past — free from popes and priests — free from all the “called” and “set apart” — free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies — free from the fear of eternal pain — free from the winged monsters of the night — free from devils, ghosts and gods. For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought — no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings — no chains for my limbs — no lashes for my back — no fires for my flesh — no master’s frown or threat — no following another’s steps — no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.

And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain — for the freedom of labor and thought — to those who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains — to those who proudly mounted scaffold’s stairs — to those whose bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn — to those by fire consumed — to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.¹

¹ – From Robert G. Ingersoll’s Why I Am An Agnostic, Section XI, 1896.

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ImprovFriday - An online new music event. What first started out as a two hour event now spans three days (its a world time clock thing)! The rest of the time is for listening to music, hanging out and sharing ideas. Each week the music will kick off between 2-4 pm Thursday, PST, concluding at 10 pm Saturday, PST. It’s very easy to join in, all you have to do is post an improvisation or a piece with strong improvisational elements. We put up this site to serve as a home for your creativity.

The theme this week was “Space,” which

… can be ‘space – outer, inner, open and closed, distances between, silences, personal and public, secret, pitch space as in black, spatialization, space out and in’.

My contribution, “Isla” unfolded in one sitting and was my first attempt at putting anything coherent together in the new music production and synthesis software I’ve been using, Reason 6, by Propellorhead Software. The manual for the thing is 1,110 pages long and I’ve spent what seems like months just working through the different chapters on all the various synthesizers, drum computers, effects, sequencers, processors, and all the rest.  It’s an intimidating tool at first glance, and there’s a learning curve!  I finally decided it was time to actually get something done.  Headphones recommended.

Isla

This work by Ojo Taylor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

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Sec. 6. Marriage.

Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.

The amendment, which will be decided in the state’s May 8 primary, is generating the usual protests and counter-protests, but there is one group of junior high kids who have formed a gay-straight alliance, GLOW (Gay, Lesbian Or Whatever), and they are determined to make their voices heard in as many ways as they can.  In this video, twelve-year-old Isak Atkins-Pearcy, who provided the artistic direction for the video talks about love, his family and relationships.

Out of the Mouths of Babes, or Wise Beyond Years

A few of my favorite lines:

In a world where everything is right, you could love anyone you wanted to.

It’s sort of like the Civil Rights movement where it’s just kind of like unbelievable that anyone would think that was right.  You should be allowed to love who you want.

Kids, they’re sort of just more open-minded I think we just know that this isn’t right, and that this shouldn’t even be a problem even though it is.

Watch this courageous lad’s video and please consider sharing it.

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Krauss’ full essay is a must-read. He asks and concludes, in an election cycle when religion is being worn on one’s sleeve, …

… should we not be able to question whether the beliefs of the religion publicly espoused by a candidate may reflect on candidate’s judgment and their ability to distinguish sense from nonsense? [...]
When a person’s religious beliefs cause him to deny the evidence of science, or for whom public policy morphs into a battle with the devil, shouldn’t that be a subject for discussion and debate? [...]
why should we not focus on the actual content of the publicly espoused beliefs held by politicians? [...]
It thus seems fair game to openly and directly ask Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum to outline the specifics of their beliefs about the sacred as well as the profane, in order to more fully probe the character and intellect anyone who proposes to lead this nation. To do any less is to be negligent in our duties as citizens.

To the extent that any other candidate, including President Obama also chooses to wear his religion on his sleeve (and regrettably there are no female candidates that would require my use of a gender-neutral pronoun) this should also apply. Santorum’s religio-centric views are generating a lot of discussion, but so far Romney’s Mormonism has been free of scrutiny. Personally, I would like to know more about beliefs around the temple underwear (especially the almost magical-sounding official view that “when properly worn…provides protection against temptation and evil,”) but as a matter of public policy I am more interested in his personal views and participation in rituals of baptism of the dead, especially Jewish victims of the Holocaust, which Romney has apparently refused to discuss. Yes, I think that and some other things matter.

Read Dr. Krauss’ full essay here. His full bio is here, an impressive read itself but which I have included also for those tempted to go ad hominem simply because the essay appears in the Huffington Post.

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