of the girls for almost ten years.
Adults don't assign roles to silverware, though we certainly can, and we don't usually have transitional objects. But we do give names to ships and hurricanes and then talk as if they had preferences and intent. We become more protective of whales and gorillas if we give them human nicknames. We unwittingly breed canines to look more like baby humans (e.g., big-eyed) by preferentially nurturing the ones that look more like us. We spend time trying to cajole favors out of tree spirits and ancestors and gods. Adults who shed traditional religion may simply move to the next level of (still anthropomorphic, self-focused) abstraction, talking as if the universe itself heard our wishes and could be manipulated into fulfilling them (e.g., The Secret ).
It is only with conscious effort that we are able to set aside the instinctive projection of ourselves onto the world around us, let alone anything that may lie beyond. And yet, if we care about honoring reality, we must. Author Dexter VanDango put it this way:
If humanity is to get beyond God as the ultimate human male, for good or bad, it is vital to always keep in mind our psychology, our biology, and our family relations. And it is equally essential to realize that God, if God exists, does not possess our hopes, our fears, our desires, or emotions. If God does possess anything akin to desires and emotions, these “feelings” are unlikely to bear any resemblance to ours.…For if God just is, it may be a fact that God has no consciousness, as Nature has no conscious overview, designs, or goals. 34
A friend put it this way: “I've always wondered how God can be considered omniscient and omnipotent and yet have anything resembling temporal intelligence and all that it implies (emotions, reasoning, etc.). Without time, everything is definite and, possibly, indeterminate even at the same time, and the mind of God would be able to conceive of this.” As these two comments illustrate, if we let ourselves contemplate the little that smart humans know about reality, then orthodox Christian conceptions of divinity become transparently self-centered and self-serving. It is a testament to our narcissism as a species that so few humans are embarrassed to assign to divinity the attributes of a male alpha primate.
To say that the descriptions of God in the Bible are metaphors does not make the situation any better. A metaphor about something as deep as the human relationship to ultimate reality needs to be deeply accurate. The center of gravity needs to be spot-on even if the surface meaning is grossly simplistic. But biblical descriptions of God have this backwards. Rather than heightening the sense of an ineffable power that is actually compatible with philosophical concepts like omniscience or omnipresence or with the laws of physics and biology that govern this natural world, they force divinity into a human template. Rather than evoking the humility, wonder, and delight of the unknown, they offer the comfort of false knowledge. Rather than being true to timeless, placeless completeness, they are true to the place-time-culture-ecosystem nexus in which they arose.
When the writers of the Bible said God was angry or regretful or pleased, they had only a superficial idea of what these words actually mean. How could they know that these affective labels describe intricate, functional body systems, just like our visible appendages? Their peers didn't yet understand how two eyes create binocularity or how our muscles contract the hand, let alone the chemistry and function of emotions. They are not responsible for their ignorance; they did the best they could with the information at their disposal. They looked at patterns in the natural world and human society and made their best guesses about what lies beyond. We should do the same.
by Dr. Matt McCormick
T he historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is important. Without it, the foundation
Adults don't assign roles to silverware, though we certainly can, and we don't usually have transitional objects. But we do give names to ships and hurricanes and then talk as if they had preferences and intent. We become more protective of whales and gorillas if we give them human nicknames. We unwittingly breed canines to look more like baby humans (e.g., big-eyed) by preferentially nurturing the ones that look more like us. We spend time trying to cajole favors out of tree spirits and ancestors and gods. Adults who shed traditional religion may simply move to the next level of (still anthropomorphic, self-focused) abstraction, talking as if the universe itself heard our wishes and could be manipulated into fulfilling them (e.g., The Secret ).
It is only with conscious effort that we are able to set aside the instinctive projection of ourselves onto the world around us, let alone anything that may lie beyond. And yet, if we care about honoring reality, we must. Author Dexter VanDango put it this way:
If humanity is to get beyond God as the ultimate human male, for good or bad, it is vital to always keep in mind our psychology, our biology, and our family relations. And it is equally essential to realize that God, if God exists, does not possess our hopes, our fears, our desires, or emotions. If God does possess anything akin to desires and emotions, these “feelings” are unlikely to bear any resemblance to ours.…For if God just is, it may be a fact that God has no consciousness, as Nature has no conscious overview, designs, or goals. 34
A friend put it this way: “I've always wondered how God can be considered omniscient and omnipotent and yet have anything resembling temporal intelligence and all that it implies (emotions, reasoning, etc.). Without time, everything is definite and, possibly, indeterminate even at the same time, and the mind of God would be able to conceive of this.” As these two comments illustrate, if we let ourselves contemplate the little that smart humans know about reality, then orthodox Christian conceptions of divinity become transparently self-centered and self-serving. It is a testament to our narcissism as a species that so few humans are embarrassed to assign to divinity the attributes of a male alpha primate.
To say that the descriptions of God in the Bible are metaphors does not make the situation any better. A metaphor about something as deep as the human relationship to ultimate reality needs to be deeply accurate. The center of gravity needs to be spot-on even if the surface meaning is grossly simplistic. But biblical descriptions of God have this backwards. Rather than heightening the sense of an ineffable power that is actually compatible with philosophical concepts like omniscience or omnipresence or with the laws of physics and biology that govern this natural world, they force divinity into a human template. Rather than evoking the humility, wonder, and delight of the unknown, they offer the comfort of false knowledge. Rather than being true to timeless, placeless completeness, they are true to the place-time-culture-ecosystem nexus in which they arose.
When the writers of the Bible said God was angry or regretful or pleased, they had only a superficial idea of what these words actually mean. How could they know that these affective labels describe intricate, functional body systems, just like our visible appendages? Their peers didn't yet understand how two eyes create binocularity or how our muscles contract the hand, let alone the chemistry and function of emotions. They are not responsible for their ignorance; they did the best they could with the information at their disposal. They looked at patterns in the natural world and human society and made their best guesses about what lies beyond. We should do the same.
by Dr. Matt McCormick
T he historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is important. Without it, the foundation
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