This Diaries perspective , arrived at by my having attended a book review recently of the text “Christianity Without God” written by “Lloyd Geering . [Sir Lloyd George Geering ONZ GNZM CBE, is a New Zealand theologian, who faced charges of heresy in 1967 for his controversial views “] and my subsequently accidentally coming across the article on “Christians why are we losing our religion.” by Craig Groeschel at the site referenced above.
The books review was presented by one David Rxxxx [to The Book Review sub Group of The Humanists of the Sarasota Bay Area”HUSBAY”] and coincidentally to an aspect of my, dollparty,) interests, I disclose here the fact that both the Foxnews Opinion writer and the book reviewer are church Ministers. Indeed, Rev. Groschel is the Minister in the second largest church, LifeChurch.tv in Edmond, Okla. As such he is no light weight in the Christian ministerial field and you as a reader of DK you can see above that Sir Geering , who incidentally was found to be innocent of the charge of “Heresy” is no light weight as a Theologian either.
So now I would like to lead you DK viewers from the Concept of Gods, through the Concept of A God and onto progress relating to the concept of man, as some of mankind do, relate to A God and to religion as I have gleaned it to be and in what I write below and also quote from the book report.
So, follow below if U have any interest.
Regarding some religious claims & theological statements. : Geering states that there “can never be more than human attempts to say something of (possible) ultimate importance”. Of such importance for Geering is his question, “ How can we be so sure that Christianity cannot exist without belief in God?”
He goes on to point out that, “the Buddist tradition dispensed with the belief in God at the time of its origin (sometime between 4th & 6th centuries BCE.Ref.:Wikipedia.) yet Bhuddism is regarded as one of the major religions of the world.” He doesn’t however say who it is that so regards it as such however a Iist of religions can be found through the website Dictionary.com and that list does include Buddhism as a religion. . Further, the criteria for accepting Buddhism on that list of religions can be explored also through the Dictionary.com web site where I found that criteria for the List web site were adapted from Web Wisdom: How to Evaluate and Create Information Quality on the Web. This book provides general guidelines for evaluating web sites; the guidelines having here not only been adapted but also expanded to address the specific concerns of evaluating sites containing information on religions. . So at this point in my presentation we can see that “Buddhism is even older than Christianity and has existed all this time without belief In any god. Hence the DK reader can, if open minded, see that “it is possible for religion to exist without belief in god. I note here for the reader that by a definition,” Religion is an organized collection of belief systems, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values.”(Ref.: Wikipedia) and does not of necessity require a belief in a god depending on a mindset that a person chooses to accept. . Geering goes on to say that, “ Theology, read that as God Talk, is highly symbolic. He makes the point of relating that, “The reason why the prophets ridiculed the religious images which some of their contemporaries were worshiping stems from their conviction that an image should be recognized for what it is – a humanly made object. . “Image” may be defined as, ”a physical likeness or representation of a person, animal, or thing or, a mental representation; idea; conception or, from Psychology: a mental representation of something previously perceived, in the absence of the original conceived of stimulus or, form; appearance; semblance.”Ref: Dictionary.com. Hence, as I , dollparty, interpret it the conventionally Christian held “image” of God is that of a humanly established object and as Geering continues to say, “Such objects may continue to be valued as symbols BUT whenever people venerate them or worship them for their own sake,such people become idolaters.”
My interpretation of that last sentence is that Geering sees The Christian God as naught but An Idol which is A Symbol for whatever people choose, about the two of them, to be, and since what ever people think of is conceptual then for those persons “ everything is open to review and change. It can be viewed then, in my opinion, that: Everything being open to review and change, we are free then to explore whether or not the traditional idea of god is any longer essential to Christianity.
Rev. David, the Gering book reviewer, accepts that it ,God as being essential, is not so and he seemingly accepts whole heartedly the concept of Natural Religion: ie.,“ Religion based on principles derived solely from reason and the study of nature.
Rev. David concluded his book presentation with his statement that via the use of Reason, Nature & Science that Christians will give up on the Christian God concept although he conceded that it just might take up to 500 years to do so.
So what is it that Christianity is hoped to become after loosing its God?
What is it that Sir Geering and Rev. David see as replacing the conventionally accepted concept of the Christian God? They point out that most religious scholars accept that Jesus was a historical figure and that “Jesus did not talk much about himself at all; rather he talked about the Kingdom of God. When the roles of prophet, priest, and King were removed, the first fact that came to light was that Jesus was in no sense a devine figure but was truly human in every way.”
It was pointed out that, “ Jesus stood in the Wisdom Tradition of the Hebrews” which has led one Robert Funk to say that . “Jesus parables and aphorisms all but obliterate the boundaries separating the sacred from the secular. When we read the parables of the kingdom we find they are pointing to, and sometimes describing, human attitudes to life, the nature of human relationships and the kind of society which we strive to build.
Those points are what I came away with from Rev. David’s book review as my understanding of what Christianity should evolve into upon giving up on its concept of a devine God.
Geering said that, “Jesus taught people to look into the future with faith and hope, but he never encouraged people to let God take over their lives and make all their decisions for them as do some evangelicals today. Rather he Jesus taught people to take full responsibility for their lives.”
Finally from Geerings writing he says,”There is almost universal agreement that, This also, I came away from Rev. David’s presentation with as my understanding, for being an inclusion in this Diary concerning Christianity after Christianity has lost its God and Indeed love is a sorely needed practice to be pursued in actual action in current Christianity, imo.
Harkening back now to the Fox opinion piece which was referenced at this Diaries beginning.
“Recent research indicates that the number of people who do not consider themselves a part of an organized religion is steadily on the rise.” Ref:.http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/...
“Though the number of those religiously unaffiliated is increasing, trend in there is little to no the number of those who express atheist or agnostic beliefs. * However,see post immediately following in regard to said trend. People aren’t saying they don’t believe in God. They’re saying they don’t believe in religion. They are not rejecting Christ. They are rejecting the church.”
In a study by Kosmin there is revelation about several trends of interest to atheists. Self identified atheists grew between 1990 and 2008 from 902,000 to 1,621,000. The nones grew from 14 million to 34 million in the same period. “The rise of the nones has been one of the most important trends on the American religious scene since 1990s http://www.atheistscholar.orgAtheistPsychologiesAtheistDemographics.aspx#_ftn11. Combining the atheists, agnostics and the nones the total is 16.6% of the American population.The range for this is 16 to 20%. The above mentioned group took a 37% lead, as a percentage of growth, of the total survey population growth, leaving behind all the other categories. Certainly not, imo, a warranted “there is little to no trend in the number of those who express atheist or agnostic beliefs.”
This begs the question, “Why are we losing our religion?”
My reaction to the above is that of the writer (Rev.Groschel) not being willing to give easy concession to a “loosing” framing but desperately striving to put an optimistic frame on his writing by using phrases including “on the rise” and religiously unaffiliated “is increasing” rather than having it simply put and out in the open as the Berkely news center states it that, “Religious affiliation in the United States is at it lowest point since it began to be tracked in the 1930s.”
“On American attitudes toward religion, UC Berkeley researchers found that 20 percent of a nationally representative group reported no religious preference. Again, the range from different studies is 16 to 20%.That’s a jump from 1990 when all but 8 percent of Americans polled identified with an organized faith.”
Of major import, IMO, is that,” More than one-third of 18-to-24-year-olds claimed “no religion” compared to just 7 percent of those 75 and older.” (Hence, 93% of those 75 and older can be assumed to be religion acceptors today and they seemingly are not being replaced by equal numbers of religion acceptors as the group of todays acceptor oldsters die off. Rather the group to die off in the not too distant future will likely be replaced in that future American society by a large group of aging but non religion accepting youngsters.
In the Fox news opinion piece by Rev. Craig Groeschel the Reverend states that, “I believe what Bill Hybels asserts: “The local church is the hope of the world.” But in order to reach the current generation and generations to come, we must change the ways that we do things.” That’s why we like to say, “To reach people no one is reaching, we have to do things no one is doing.” (However there are some people working via a markedly changed approach to the Christian Godhead and given the lessening of possible resistance to the idea of Christians giving up on their God concept via the lessening number of Christians…the task of the “Christianity without God” workers should become progressively easier as time goes on.
Those two paragraphs immediately above are the lynch pin that connects Rev. Groschel’s article about “loosing” to Rev. David’s, the book reviewer’s work, in having Christianity lose its God, IMO. Rev. David, IMO, is certainly trying to change the way that church people do things in their churches namely to lose their God and very importantly in the process of doing so to claim responsibility for ones self.
No longer, if he and others like him, are ultimately successful, will the bible be all that people need to guide them in how to live their lives. Hopefully, eventually the bible will be replaced also by Reason, Nature and Science. there is little to no trend in the number of those who express atheist or agnostic beliefs.
Apologia:
On my numerous "Edits" & "Save & Previews" of this Diary, as part of my redo, the right sided sentence starts occurred repeatedly. If this happens in this Diary repeat Please do not take offense. You can always take your complaint to DK bigwigs or, if you choose, simply cease & desist after your first such encounter before you pop a cerebral vessel.
and ,to Anton Bursch:
A most special apology!:
True to your word you did, as you said in your last comment to my original Diary publication "shut up" and quite possibly you then did not read my reply to you there.
After reading your personal history in your comment I came to realize that you are a special kind of person whom in regard to religion has seen the light and made, amidst your very religious family members, a significant and important change in "weltanschaung".May the knowledge gleaned by you, in your life before, as well as after your change in "worldview" always be with you. I have no doubt that in regard to Christianity it by far surpasses mine.
Should you have any interest in reading it and care to send me an address that I can mail it to I will send you a copy of my book "Finding My Place:my journey to Humanism".
It is a Memoir written to be left to my twin grandchildren one of whom thinks I am weird and who I consider to be quite perceptive in his view of me.