It is quite possible that the reason atheism is growing is because fundamentalists like to make asses of themselves.

This article about a UToronto study raises an interesting question on self-forgiveness:

Brain Differences Found Between Believers In God And Non-believers.

Is self-forgiveness easier if one believes in a higher power that forgives them?

What are your thoughts?

 

In this episode we talk about mortality vs immortality in the following contexts:

Why do we want to be immortal (through religious beliefs)?
Humans vs. non-human animals
Why do we feel the desire to be remembered?
What are all the kinds of immortality?
If we believe we are just going to become worm food are we better able to live life to the fullest?

Here are some references:

BSG reference: “In our civil war, we’ve seen death. We watched our people die. Gone forever. As terrible as it was, beyond the reach of the Resurrection Ships, something began to change. We could feel a sense of time. As if each moment held its own significance. We began to realize that for our existence to hold any value it must end. To live meaningful lives we must die, and not return. The one human flaw, that you spend your lifetimes distressing over—mortality—is the one thing… well, it’s the one thing that makes you whole.” – From the Episode “Guess what’s coming to dinner”.

Robert Pogue Harrison: “Nonhuman species obey only the law of vitality, but humanity in its distinctive features is through and through necrocratic.” The Dominion of the Dead, Preface, ix.

Plato the squid: “squish, squirt, squish squish”

Making a difference: http://www.physical-immortality-now.com/physical-immortality-in-earth.html

This episode is one hour and eleven minutes and you can listen to it here:

[podcast]http://unbelievablefaith.com/wp-content/audio/UFaithEp009.mp3[/podcast]

In this gong show we have a wonderful special guest, Charlie, and talk with her about various topics including:

female portrayal in the religious texts
agnosticism
“exclusive club” religions
justice vs. forgiveness
redemption

Here are some references:

Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment. (California: Stanford University Press, 1987), pg.18.
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans. (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pg. 35.

This episode is almost 56 minutes long. Put the needle on your record here:

[podcast]http://unbelievablefaith.com/wp-content/audio/UFaithEp008.mp3[/podcast]

We take a crack at talking about the age old question of why a loving God might allow all the things that we deem as evil and bad.

This episode is on hour and 16 minutes long.

Enjoy, and please add a comment below.

[podcast]http://unbelievablefaith.com/wp-content/audio/UFaithEp007.mp3[/podcast]

I don’t know where these are from or what they were for but found them quite stimulating.  Some of them fit quite well with Thursday’s topic.

Dear God

[caption id="attachment_207" align="alignnone" width="554" caption="Dear God"][/caption]

Over at Faith and Theology, Ben Myers is posting for a week on theologian William Stringfellow. His most recent post contains a wonderful quote from Stringfellow that stands as a helpful corrective to most of the naive and superficial forms of prayer that often proliferate in our churches and individual lives:

“The event of prayer, certain acts called prayer, the very word ‘prayer’ have gathered such ridiculous associations. That is not only the case with the obscene performances, which pass as public prayer, at inaugurations, in locker rooms, before Rotary luncheons, and in many churchly sanctuaries, but also the practice of private prayer is attended by gross profanity, the most primitive superstitions, and sentimentality which is truly asinine…. When I write that my own situation [during my illness] in those months of pain and decision can be described as prayer, I do not only recall that during that time I sometimes read the Psalms and they became my psalms, or that, as I have also mentioned, I occasionally cried ‘Jesus’ and that name was my prayer, but I mean that I also at times would shout ‘Fuck!’ and that was no obscenity, but a most earnest prayerful utterance” (A Second Birthday, pp. 99, 108-9).

Thoughts on this? In particular, and in anticipation of this week’s upcoming podcast, can you think of some ways in which Stringefellow’s theology of prayer lends itself to helping us answer questions about faithful responses to questions of human brokenness, evil, and god’s place in those things? In other words, are we going to respond to human brokenness and evil with the soft and superficial ”God, this has happened in order that your great plan could come about”, or rather, are we going to respond honestly with a shout of “FUCK”?