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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Jimmy Carter and "cherry picking"

Yesterday the Huffington Post published an article with an interview of President Jimmy Carter on a host of controversial questions regarding the Bible. The interview came in response to his recent writing of the book, NIV Lessons from Life Bible: Personal Reflections with Jimmy Carter. In the interview, the deeply religious former president says, "God inspired the Bible but didn't write every word in the Bible" and admits "there is some fallibility in the writings of the Bible". When asked about passages in Corinthians that say women should not teach men or speak in church, Carter said that many of these kinds of things came out of customs of the day, and that "every worshiper has to decide if and when they want those particular passages to apply to them and their lives".

This is exactly the kind of thing more religiously conservative Christians fear as opening the floodgates to chaos. One commenter on the article said, "...after that, religion has no credibility since you can pick and choose what you want to follow." and another said, "...so we all do our own cherry picking". "Cherry picking" is most often a negative phrase intended as a criticism, but I would like to offer a defense of cherry picking.

The first commenter thinks picking and choosing what we will follow harms the credibility of religion because they have a different understanding of the purpose or function of religion than Jimmy Carter. To them, the purpose of religion is to provide solid, unquestionable, absolute answers to life, meaning, and morality. Any subjectivity is then perceived as undermining the legitimacy of that source and letting everyone do whatever they like. But the problem with this approach to religion is that it locks us in to intolerant and inflexible ideologies which create extremism and just plain kooky ways of thinking and acting. Yet, Carter certainly doesn't advocate discarding religion and doing whatever we happen to feel like, so what's the solution?

A Christian of this variety might say that God speaks to us in many ways, and the Bible is one of them. He also gave us a heart and a mind. To place the Bible above all else as absolute is bibliolatry - or making the bible into an idol, with an even higher place than God himself. Cherry picking is exactly how we navigate a complex world in order to 'listen to God' and separate His will from our own chatter. Carter says that it is the general principles of humility, service to others, alleviation of suffering, forgiveness, etc. which should guide us in that earnest deliberation.

While I am not a Christian, I can identify with Carter's approach. The chief difference between Carter and myself on this matter is that my commitment to humility means I cannot know that something was inspired by God, or even if such a being exists. But I do share Carter's commitment to those general principles of humility, love, forgiveness, etc. As such, 'cherry picking' is precisely what I have been doing in my research and use of ancient philosophy as an augment to life wisdom consistent with a scientific understanding of our natural universe. Surely, in reading of Buddhism, Taoism, Stoicism, Socrates, Heraclitus, Chuang-Tzu, and yes, the Bible, I have come across many things I viewed as more relevant to the culture of the times while other things 'spoke to me' in that they rang true with regard to my current understanding and those general principles.

Many of my non-theistic colleagues might recommend ignoring it all and simply starting from scratch. But my experience has shown me that there are treasure troves of wisdom and practice which we have forgotten and have yet to approach today through other means. Not only that, but along with these streams of wisdom come a wealth of historic experimentation over the centuries. Cherry picking is exactly what we must do, within every faith, tradition, and philosophy - but we must do it earnestly and honestly, with pure motivation. Our reason, our experience, and our compassion will tell us whether we are on the right path and help humble and good people who try, to reach consensus.


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Monday, March 12, 2012

Humanism on Secular Buddhist Association podcast

Recently I was interviewed by Ted Meissner from the Secular Buddhist Association for their podcast. We had a wonderful discussion about the Humanist Contemplative concept, and its relationship with secular Buddhism and other practices. We also discuss my project Synthophy and the soon-to-be-founded organization, the Spiritual Naturalist Society. Many thanks to Ted, who does a great job. You may want to check out much of the other guests and content on the SBA's website. Our discussion runs about an hour and ten minutes and can be listened to here:

Episode 107: DT Strain: Humanist Contemplative in Texas

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Thursday, March 1, 2012

Stoicism on "Open Air Atheist"

I was recently invited to be a guest on James Stillwell's Open Air Atheist podcast. We had a very nice laid-back one hour conversation on the subject of Stoicism (which includes a smaller segment at the end on the nature of consciousness). We talk about what Stoicism is, some of it's key concepts and their benefits, suggested reading, and more. Many thanks to James for having me on his show again. If you'd like to listen, you can do so by clicking this link:


Open Air Atheist Podcast, Episode #20: Stoicism


In the conversation at least three things got by me before our time was up. I should have also mentioned the International Stoic Forum, which has been instrumental in helping me understand Stoicism better (or, rather, the good people there have helped me with their participation, both the professors and the students, and the people which both agreed and challenged me). Along with reading, there is no substitute for having meaningful dialogs on these things.

The second thing I should have mentioned is the excellent work of Pamela and Michel Daw, in spreading knowledge of practical Stoicism and teaching others. Their site is TheStoicLife.org. And, lastly, the New Stoa is an excellent group promoting the Stoic life.

On a side note, at 25:50 a sound blip silences the word "not" in my sentence, making it seem I'm saying Stoicism is like the emotionless Mr. Spock's way, and in fact I was saying Stoicism is not like the manner of Mr. Spock - in other words, it's not about being emotionless or suppressing all emotion.

Previous Episodes
As I mentioned, I've appeared on this podcast previously, where we talked about Buddhism. There are some sound issues early on, but they get better. That episode can be listened to here:


Open Air Atheist Podcast, Episode #6: Buddhism


Back to Stoicism, if you'd like to learn more, I have several articles on my site at www.humanistcontemplative.org, which also link further to other resources.


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