Hopefully, this rebuttal will be shorter than either the introductory post or Cody’s response.

There are a few things I would like to start with. First of all, I would like to point out that Cody has chosen to rely on some source materials while I have chosen not to rely on any. And admittedly I lack formal training in rhetoric. These two factors serve to put me at a disadvantage in this discussion. I would just like to report that I am aware of this disadvantage, and while I don’t necessarily like being disadvantaged, the discussion is on my thoughts on organized religion (that is, I am not attempting to disprove the existance of God, the divinity of Christ, as Cody claims, or any of this. I am merely presenting my reflections on organized religion and the teachings of the modern church, and this of course is what Cody should be responding to, just as a matter of context) and so therefore I feel that the strength of my commentary will help me make up for the disadvantage I suffer as a result of my presentation of reflections rather than some conversion attempt I might have been otherwise attempting. In other words, I do not need to win every little arguement that comes up in this debate; my challenge it to make a somewhat coherent argument against organized religion, and if I can accomplish this, I will succeed in my purpose, regardless of how many small holes are poked into it. I don’t need to convert anyone to this position, I merely need to state it. Additionally, I belive Martin Luther when he says that the Devil knows the bible too, and can pick out verses here and there to show that really his argument is correct, and those who argue for tollerance and forgiveness are really doing the work of evil (this is the favorite tactic of people like Dr. James Dobson and Reverend Fred Phelps of “God Hates Queers” infamy.)

Since I am working in this context, I would like to point out that I am not allowed to be entirely consistant in my argument. I am a Christian, and was raised a Lutheran. A lot of what I believewas synthesized through Martin Luther. A lot of what he wrote was derived from the writings of St. Paul. What does one do when he agrees with a number of things that Luther wrote, but knows that those writings were based largely on what Paul wrote? How can someone claim that one person’s claims are largely true, while still claiming that this person was not a very good person? An example of this is Luther claiming that humans are saved by grace alone. This passage came from Paul, not from Jesus. Yet I still believe that this is correct.

How does one reconcile this inconsistancy? Well, I have reconciled it by agreeing with the addage that even a broken clock is correct twice a day. Paul got some things right, in other words. Just because he set himself up as THE exponent of Jesus’ religion on earth does not mean that he was not “in touch” with the story of Jesus’ life and teachings. I am not saying that everything he wrote was wrong; I am not even saying that MOST things he wrote were wrong. And Cody agrees with me when I say that Paul’s writings should not be accepted on the same level as the words of Christ.

But then there is a prickly situation here in Cody’s work, where he claims that he agrees that Paul writes truth when he writes that ALL the words he writes are as if breathed by God (his citation was 2 Timothy 3:16, which checking my own NIV next to my Luther’s small chatechism, I discover is cited correctly.) However, Paul himself contradicts this statement in 1st Corinthians 7:25, where Paul admits at least on one occasion that he is not writing with direction from God, but using his own opinion as one who is deemed trustworthy by the Lord’s Mercy(!) So either all in the Bible is directed by the Holy Spirit or all is not. This is a binary dichotomy: Either every last word in the Bible is the breathed word of God or it is not, and man, at least on one occasion, inserted some of his own opinion.

And if it is as easy to do this in one location, how much easier would it be for a former persecutor of Christians who realized a conversion, but who clearly has ambition to be a great person, as great as the chief, or “super” apostles (2 Cor 11:5, 12:11) while claiming false modesty, to insert his opinion about things in other places, all the while claiming that these messages were sent by God? The Mormon religion is rife with “prophets” all of whom have recieved revelations from God telling them to engage in all sorts of nefarious activities (such as the case of Ron and Dan Lafferty, who came from a fundamentalist sect of mormonism and were supposedly called by God to kill people in order to “clense” the world of apostates, which is detailed in Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven). If people in America can be subject to this sort of religious hallucination, so could St. Paul. And what better position to enforce one’s opinion of how things SHOULD work than if you set yourself up as one who regularly hears things from God, one who is favored by God’s Mercy?

While I make a number of claims about Paul, and Christ, and such, I would like to address one of Cody’s presentations of my comments.

He seems to be suggesting that all ecclesiastical history, specifically that of the New Testament (which tells of the formation of the early church) is not only wrong, but intentionally wrong. This ties in nicely with Doc’s belief that Jesus was not divine (a point I will touch on later), so therefore his disciples—especially that scoundrel Paul—felt the need to first invent and then perpetuate a lie, for the sole purpose of instituting an oppressive social system. But why would they continue to spread a tale they knew to be false unless they in some way benefited from it? For it is clear that nearly all of the disciples met very nasty ends for preaching the Gospel (beheaded, flayed, burnt alive, crucified upside-down), and none of them profited from it, at least in the material sense of the word. Perhaps a corruption in the system happened later down the line, long after the church had been established.

This is not what I was arguing at all. I was merely arguing that the religion that was formed after the New Testament was agreed upon was indeed used to oppress people. Cody conceeds this directly after this quote. I firmly argue that Paul got it wrong, not from a malicious spirit, but because he had the “spirt of the convert” and believed, very sincerely, that he was chosen by God to do this evangelical work. He felt he had THE answer and like the man who broke out of Plato’s Cave, wanted to come back and share the discovery with those who lived in darkness. I say he was very sincere in his beliefs, way more sincere than many televangelists today. No, I never argued that Paul wrote what he did to promote an oppressive system, or to “perpetuate a lie”. Instead, I am saying he had a flawed interpretation of the teachings of Christ, and it is unfortunate that the system that later developed as “organized religion” was based quite extensively off of this flawed interpreation.

But what if he did do it maliciously? Cody asks what he had to gain. Indeed only one desciple actually lived out his life to its natural end. All others, including Paul himself, met with bloody martyrdom. But I invite Cody to take it from a man who knows something about the martyr complex. As a political radical, I can say there is a certain romanticism about going down in a blaze of glory fighting for something you really believe in. It is finally some vindication that your life’s work was not in vain and a validation of your claims that the state apparatus that murdered you is indeed unjust. It permits the martyr to make a statement that he was not able to make in his life. That statement is “See, the state causes suffering.” One who does not know suffering (i.e. one that is still alive) cannot make that statement the same way his blood and death can. And Paul becomes far more potent a force when he is dead, because he transfers from a man who had to physically move himself around the world into a legend, a story that can travel much faster than the feet can carry the person attached to that story. What did Paul have to gain? To put it in psychobabble terms, he had an ego, and a need for vindication. And he had a martyr complex, and he had the faith of the convert. A very potent combination. it can lead people to do and say any number of things, and so much worse for everyone else if the person is very sincere in his belief that he is doing the right thing. I mean, look at the Bush Foreign Policy if you want immediate demonstration of this combination.

Nor do I ever claim that I do not believe in the divinity of Christ. I believe Christ was as devine as any other person. I firmly believe that when he answered “It is as you say” and all this to questions about whether he was the messiah, son of god, etc… he was speaking from his belief that he, like all other men, and all other Jews especially were sons and daughters of God. He believed that all were the children of God, all lambs of God. I would say Jesus did not see himself as any more special than any other person. He may have objectively been singularly blessed, but it is doubtful that he really came to terms with the meaning of this (this can be evidenced by his words on the cross, which can be read as him coming to grips with just what was going on, if indeed he was really the fulfillment of all the prophecies and such). He may well have been the son of God incarnate. But I don’t have anything to prove or disprove that claim save the theology that developed around the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph and Mary. And that theology, because it cannot be examined logically, is automatically suspect. It has an agenda: to promote Jesus as the son of God, and the savior of mankind. How can I expect that if it knew it might be promoting the wrong agenda, it would say so?

I personally believe that Jesus may well be the son of God, but I said that he does not NEED to be the son of God for his teachings to still hold ground. That claim is the central tennet of Christian Faith as it exists in the mainstream today, not only the divinity of Christ, but also its function in Jesus’ death. I believe Jesus was a Jew and a rabbi, and was talking about a new way to look at Judaism. It only became a new totally seperate religion when the Jews did not accept the message. But nowhere can it be found that Jesus in his lifetime argued for a complete break from Judaism or a new religion.

I read Jesus to say that the law is fulfilled through him, and that Jews are messing everything up by focusing on the letter rather than the spirit of the laws, and that they should get back to worshipping God rather than observing the law so strictly. Jesus was a rebel, though Paul and Luther (basing his writings on Paul) absolutely condemn rebellion against authority. But nowhere does Jesus say Judaism is broke to the point of not being able to fix it, and that a new religion, the one Paul began spreading some thirty years later was at all a good thing. For the essence of his message to be observed, Jesus does not NEED to be the son of God, nor does he NEED to have died on the cross. For a religion that bases itself on the martyrdom of Christ, Jesus needs both. The priority of Jesus’ death and resurection over his teachings is what essentially seperated Judaism (and Islam, later on) from Christianity.

I claim that Paul was wicked because it is possible (and rather likely, on more than one occasion) that he inserted his own world-view into his writings, and passed them off as being inspired by God, and since these teachings are now part of the canon, and claimed to be entirely inspired by God, they are beyond question. His advocacy of slavery, his description of homosexuality as depravity, his highly gendered roles, they have all been shown later on to be objectively wicked, and yet he endorsed them anyway. The quality of Paul’s world-view was wicked, regardless of what time frame he wrote them in.

I maintain, without any proof, of course, but with exactly the same amount of proof that the Church has for nearly all of its claims, that if Paul was really in touch with God as he claims he was, he would have spread the message of love and forgiveness, not condemnation and oppression. Jesus did not condemn anyone, even the worst people, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the outcasts. But Paul did, throughout the epistles. Jesus loved all, and showed himself to be in accordance with the nature of a loving God willing to sacrifice his son to save the world. Paul did not. It is unfortunate that he was so prolific in his writing and that his letters since became part of the canon. But he was wicked in life, and if indeed even some of these beliefs were from his personal view of the world rather than the words of God, he wasn’t entirely converted, but maintained both a sense of self-righteousness and self-importance that allowed him to set himself up as a judge of people while adminishing them to not judge people because all are sinful and fall short of the glory of God.

I’ll save commentary on the sacraments for later, as I am sure we will be returning to this topic as a subject of a chapter in and of itself.

Regarding “God sending people to Hell” I will partially conceed to Cody that indeed people do choose hell over heaven through their actions, belief and such. But I will not conceed all of it, because according to Paul (once again, and therefore according to modern religion), God does indeed condemn people. As I understand it, blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is an unforgivable sin, according to Matthew 12:31. Instant condemnation. And to add insult to injury, the Church teaches that to teach anything other than God’s Word (that is, as interpreted by Paul, and later the dogma of the Church) is blasphemy. This is in Romans 2, written by, you guessed it, Paul, who claimed that he was writing it under direction of the Holy Ghost. Paul gives himself the privileged position of being the primary exponent of God’s commands claiming that he is indpired by the Holy Ghost, but then closes off debate by saying challenging this word is blasphemy and blasphemy is the only unforgivable sin.

But, I digress: I am sure if people, given the choice and knowing what hell is really like, would all choose Heaven (this is illustrated in the parable of the sheep and the goats, where all the goats are seperated out and they go to hell at the last judgement, even though they try to plead with God to let them into Heaven and claim that they were ignorant…) Whether or not people choose to go there in life is really irrelevant. God makes the final choice to either let people live with him or apart from him, to put it into Cody’s terms.

(The idea of sending bad people to heaven is not my own, but apparently came from Judaism, as explained by Dr. David Solomon, a former instructor at BHSU. I wish I would have thought of it, but it made perfect sense to me when he said it. Good people get to go to heaven to listen to Moses preach the law all day, and they really delight in it, while bad people go to heaven and are forced to listen to Moses preach the law all day, and needless to say, that they are not too pleased about that. According to Solomon that if the Jewish version of Hell, and I happen to buy it. The bible tells a bleaker story, burning in eternal fire and such… I am not relying on any cliche that was not propegated through the church, and in fact, if it weren’t for the Church, I would have absolutely no concept of hell in the first place.)

And on “allowing sin into heaven”, the flesh is sinful, according to the Church. Sin does not follow the soul. People in hell keep their corporeal form and it burns there. But people who do not wish to be “ruled by God” should still have a place in Heaven the same way a prisoner who behaves anti-socially in our society still inhabits it and has a physical “place” in it. Eternal prison would really be rather horrifying… Being “all-will” (my conception of the non-corporeal “soul” or “spirit”) and absolutely no ability to interact on the environment would really be hellish…

The issue of “origninal sin” will be dealt with in the next rebuttal, but I would like to insert here that I think part of the disagreement between myself and the Church (and Cody, I assume, though I may be incorrect; as he is basing his response on essentially Christian texts, I can confidently make that assumption that Cody’s understanding is similar to the Church’s) on the nature of God. This is too prickly a subject to delve too deeply into at this late hour. However, I will touch on it. I agree that God is “just”, whatever this means (ask Socrates). I also believe he is “good” (there is a very concrete definition of “good” in this sense: always acting in a beneficial faction) and this leads him to be “loving”. Can a rational god be both good, using the definition above, and at the same time, just? There is a lot of evidence of God’s justice, (if a world wide flood was really the work of God as the Old Testament superstitiously claims). But Jesus claims he came to earth to pay our debt to cosmic justice, (read: to atone for our sins). If Jesus is correct, and I believe he could be, and God really did want to make us suffer for our sins, he stopped seeking payback at the moment Jesus rose from the dead. The Law was fulfilled and our sins were paid for.

However, I have a hard time with this. It seems that the flood tale, like the Garden of Eden story, was based in myth that Moses basically collected and retold, and claimed was really from the Burning Bush. Nobody can make the argument to me that the flood story from the Babylonians, which preceeded Moses by thousands of years, did not ever influence Moses in his life. That was probably a common tale by then. Most cultures have a flood story. This is a given. How easy would it be for a superstitious, ignorant people such as the Hebrews were (they did not know how to read or write for the most part because they had just spent 500 years as slaves in a land without an alphabet) to actually believe this, or their subsequent captivity and such was really the action of a god seeking retribution for their sins? It’s easy for people who don’t know very much, but believe in a just god to connect the two events.

I believe that God is not like this. I choose to say that if indeed there is an omni-potent, omniscient, omni-present God such as the one the Church refers to, he is a God of Love, and is really not that interested in our planet. Maybe he is not infinite at all; maybe he put the planets in motion and then checked out. Who knows? For the sake of this discussion we have to agree that there is a God, and it is the same one the church talks about. Even if we assume all this, the nature of God is still one of love and forgiveness. But I just have a hard time believing that God requires any sort of payment for “sins”, or that which we call sins, (which are really violations of relatively universal codes of morals and ethics,) really offend God at all. After all, when compared to the truely infinite, what possible impact can any action that we, mortal humans do have on an infinite God? Nothing we can do can save us from damnation, so why is it that even the slightest sin requires true repentance and humiliation?

My version of God is one that loves all life in the universe, not one that sits in judgement. I think that was just a creation to get people to follow religious laws and to justify social inequity, and as such it really does a huge disservice to God if it means anything to him at all. But then again, none of us gets to ask God, and the Church claims a monopoly on the truth concerning this issue, so, here we are. This disagreement about the true nature of God covers every one of Cody’s objections in the second half of his response. Unfortunately, it is rather off topic, as the discussion is about the nature of organized religion, and Cody has already admitted that the Church itself today is an oppressive organization designed to oppress people. I think Cody would agree, in these terms that the Church promotes a certain image of God, and of God’s justice that serves the very valuable function of scaring people into obeying the moral and ethical norms to which they may be otherwise disinclined.

Similarly with the “nature” of Jesus. I maintain that Jesus was a philosopher. But I never said he was not the son of God too. He has more value to us who live on this world right now as a philosopher, whose teaching run quite counter to the official dogma of the Church, in whatever its variety. Jesus was not interested in getting us to behave a certain way, by promising us Heaven for compliance. He offered people a choice. He told people what the Kingdom of Heaven was like in his parables to give them an understanding of what they were working for by living a good life. He suggested an alternative interpretation of people’s religion at the time. And because of this, he was dangerous. He was not the carrot and stick type that our modern churches use, and religious organizations of his day used. His message was one designed to present people with a radical new outlook on a faith that was by that time, supposedly 5000+ years old. He did not rely on coercion, but on pursuasion, offering people a chance to figure it out for themselves, and more importantly, decide for themselves whether or not it was something they wanted in their lives, thus reducing the role and need for professional clergy (and by extension, organized religion.) Never did he command people to meet every sunday; all of that came later.

That “later” is what I seek to address in my writings here. Not that the nature of God is not fun to debate, but… Who can say for sure what the nature of God is? Certainly not TS Elliot, while he may have been a skilled essayist on the nature of the theology that later developed around that question. By smashing apart the authority of Paul, I seek to undermine the authority of the Church that rests its own claims to “correctness” firmly on his composition. By questioning the bible and the myths that are presented through it, I am advancing questions concerning the methods the modern church uses to keep us in line. I am not here to argue the nature of God, nor the divinity of Jesus Christ. I am interested in this, but I am writing now about organized religion, and seeking to offer critiques of the theological basis for the organization of the religion, and specifically offering critique of fundamentalism which I view as a very dark force, but which supposedly bases itself in the teachings of Jesus. Criticizing Paul’s evangelism thus serves that purpose: so many of the evangelical folks today seek to emmulate his example. I seek to offer one critique that will hopefully take one little breath of wind out of their sails, to do my little part to help push back the darkness for one more day.

If I happen to argue a refocusing on the teachings of Jesus as a result, it is merely a by product or a set up for a return to the main argument. So while I applaud Cody for his very well thought out and articulated argument, I invite him to write future responses keeping this context, the fight against organized religion and specifially, evangelism, in mind.

Please post all responses to this rebuttal in the Comments of this post.

Serenely, and Merry Christmas
Doc