Seriously, what’s the point of learning about an observer-free, external-to-the-mind, reality? I get it, the scientific method demands that we avoid letting our biases taint our investigation, but shouldn’t the outcome of that investigation consider what it means for us? In other words, the aim of rational enquiry should be to make humanity better: More fulfilled, healthier, happier, and to increase the human conception of reality; not some abstract thought experiment on what the universe would be like without us in it. That being said, maybe even reason isn’t a complete way of understanding the world…

If you’re unfamiliar with the acronym, WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic. The term was coined as part of a psychology meta-study (a study of studies) that concluded that we in the West have a pretty different relationship with the world and with each other than pretty much every other society on the planet. Turns out we’re also a lot less religious than the rest of the world too. As a matter-of-fact, the more prosperous a nation is, and the less its citizens contend with “existential threats to their lives and their culture”, the less likely that population is to be religious. In other words, spiritual practices and religion are negatively correlated with a high standard of living (more on that term later too)…

Here’s where we make the leap to the metaphysical, so please bear with me because a “proof” (for lack of a better word) doesn’t come until the end.

Faith is the unqualified belief in a benevolent reality outside of reason, and beyond human intellectual conception… but a reality that is still accessible to each one of us (more on that later). It’s the possibility that there is one “truth” that unites us all. It is the hope for hope, goodness for goodness sake… a divine virtuous cycle of love…

I don’t remember exactly who wrote it, but an academic I read in university termed Plato “A Christian before Christ”. That didn’t make any sense to me. How could someone that died three and half centuries before Jesus be called a Christian? And then I read the Cave Allegory in Plato’s Republic and it all made sense.

The cave allegory goes something like this: Plato imagines a group of people that have been imprisoned from birth in a cave, and confined in such a way that they can’t see themselves. All they can see are the shadows of themselves and other objects that are cast upon the back wall of the cave by torchlight. Plato poses the question, “What would this group of people’s conception of reality be?” Without ever having seen themselves, they would simply think they were a shadow. They’d have no conception of three dimensional space, let alone the whole, great big wide world outside of the cave.

For someone questioning Christianity that needs to experience what it is to be Christian, I prefer Mark 12:30 and 31, which in summary is, Love God… and love the other. These two seemingly separate clauses, are actually the same thing: Every one of us can experience a mystical union with the divine by loving other people without constraint. How do we love without constraint? By loving and forgiving those that don’t even merit our love and forgiveness. That’s it. That’s the Christian message in a few sentences. That’s the theory underpinning Grace, which is God’s unmerited love for us, the divine union of God and Man in a person, which is Christ, and the core message running through all of the Gospels, exemplified by Christ’s own actions, and his penultimate act of dying brutally while asking for forgiveness for us.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism are all describing something, probably exactly the same thing (more on that later), but differently. And given my post earlier on the relativity of truth, why am I favouring one truth? An atheist friend of mine was fond of saying, “What are the chances that the religion in which you were raised is the right one?” In answer, it might not be the right one, but it’s right. Said another way; the chances are 100% that my religion is right if they all are. As a wise many once said (sorry I can’t recall who), “There are many paths up the mountain of truth”.

…But that’s exactly what the Church decided, contrary to some early Christian theologians that thought the idea of eternal damnation was incompatible with the idea of a super-reality that is growth, creation, and love. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Isaac of Nineveh were all early Christian Universalists who believed that all humanity, every single one of us, will be restored to God’s presence… eventually (more on that)…

This is an Anglo-Catholic blog. “I’ve heard of Roman Catholic. What the heck is Anglo-Catholic?!” you ask? Anglo-Catholic is an Anglican that cherishes the liturgy, rituals, and (to a certain extent) the theology of our Catholic heritage, while rejecting the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome (a.k.a. the Pope). You might be thinking, “Didn’t Henry VIII just create your church because he wanted a divorce?” One could say that’s a common perspective but also a gross simplification…

I don’t think I’m alone when I say this, but I unlocked the next level of love when I had children. I loved my parents, siblings and wife, but not in the same altruistic way that I love my kids. If a doctor told me that one of my kids needed a heart transplant and my heart would fit, it would take me about two seconds of deliberation to decide to rip the thing out…

The mainstream Christian tradition has been for most of the Church’s history that “unbelievers”, as defined by their acceptance of Grace and/or their actions toward others, will suffer eternal torment. Essentially, if union with God is unending heavenly bliss, then rejection of/by God is hellfire and torment forever. I’ve already posted about the idea that everyone will be reconciled with God (a.k.a. Christian Universalism) eventually. But I also struggled with the question, “what’s the point” if everybody ends up in “heaven” anyway…

Let’s tackle one more notion that seems to empower Atheists: That religion is the cause of most (or all) wars or violence. It’s a pretty ubiquitous comment, but one that doesn’t hold a lot of water. To condemn Christianity as the primary cause of conflict, you’d probably have to go back five or six centuries to the Inquisition, and as the main reason for a war, you’d have to go back seven or eight centuries to the Crusades. You might say that the Troubles in Northern Ireland were religiously motivated, given that the two sides identify themselves as Roman Catholic and Protestant, but in all reality that designation refers far more to allegiance to the British Crown or Irish autonomy than it does to belief in the transubstantiation of the Eucharist, or the role of Grace in salvation (for example)…