ryankane.com

[13:29:44] ryan: she’s an impenetrable force of irrationality
[13:29:51] ryan: wow
[13:29:54] ryan: I need to write that down
[13:30:13] chris: you may also have described women in general
[13:30:30] ryan: did…did I just crack the code?

I was thinking about all of the different conflicts that have been argued in US politics in recent years.  Things like gay marriage and “don’t ask don’t tell” got me thinking…

I wish we could find a new place to go where everyone in America who believes in equal rights for all, freedom to believe in whatever religion you want, and freedom to be attracted to other consenting adults are among the founding principles.  You could even be whatever race you want, and all humans enjoy the same rights regardless of gender, etc.

Perhaps we can break away from our government and start fresh on a new body of land somewhere- a promised land of sorts.

We’ll make certain that future generations understand that this is important by authoring a constitution that clearly states our intentions and we’ll start the greatest country of all time!

And maybe… just maybe… we can finally push the human race past the hatred and divisiveness that currently governs us.

To begin, all we have to do is sail west…

Apparently it fooled a judge into believing it was a real person after a 25 minute “conversation”.  Here is my conversation with this bot:

Bot – Hi Ryan !
Ryan – How are you
Ryan – ?
(long pause…)
Ryan – Why… this isn’t realistic at all!
Ryan – I’m just talking to myself and no one is listening.
Ryan – hmmm… on second thought, maybe this IS realistic

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.”

-Marcus Aurelius

Helpful life hint: Never play a scrabble-type game against an English major.

Just read a post on fark.com from the site creator, Drew, about his grandfather passing away.  His grandfather was a retired Methodist Minister.  Drew was nice enough to post one of his grandfathers writings from a decade ago regarding God and religion and I just had to save it- one of the best summations of spirituality I’ve ever personally read.

Please do not take offense at what I am going to say. In no way do I mean to belittle your beliefs. And please don’t don’t worry about my “salvation,” whatever that may mean to you. My beliefs really serve me well.

I am grateful that over the years I have never been looked down on for asking questions.

“When I was a child I thought like a child…”. Children are apt to interpret things literally. No where is this more true than in the realm of religion. All of my playmates were from Roman Catholic families, and we were all aware that there was a difference between Catholics and Protestants.

As a child I felt I knew all about God, but as the years have gone by I find that I agree less and less with the things I’ve been told about God. Even as a very young person I got away from that kind of thinking, for it didn’t fit with some other ideas of God that meant more to me. For example, I was taught, and I still believe, that God is Love, and that God is inextricably related to the welfare of all people. Believing that, I cannot believe that God purposely allows disasters of fire, flood, and earthquake, to say nothing of individual personal pain in the form of physical impairment, bereavement, divorce, assault, automobile accident, etc.

Another idea that I have discarded is that God is all-powerful. If God is a god of love and also all-powerful, God certainly would not cause the difficulties I’ve just mentioned. If God were all-powerful he would not allow them to happen. So, they must happen in spite of any power that God may have. So, for me, God cannot be both all-powerful and loving.

Take the illustration of a disaster such as an airplane crash that results in some persons dying and others surviving. When I read of parents of a survivor thanking their god for saving their beloved family member I feel like asking them, “What kind of god is this who is willing to save some people, but is unable (or unwilling) to save others?

One thing I am very sure about is that God is neither male nor female, even though I’ve been using the masculine pronoun for want of one that is adequate. Particularly in the last ten or fifteen years or so of my ministry I became sensitized to the alienation and hurt we males have inflicted upon women and girls by the language we use. And clergy males are no less to blame than lay men.

Once, at the beginning of a meeting of clergy, we were asked to introduce ourselves by name, and then tell what were the best or the worst things that had been part of our lives in our recent past. With a gesture that included all the people in the group, a man spoke of the love and concern he had felt recently from “all my brothers in the ministry” during his recent illness. A young female minister two seats away from him who had sent him a note of encouragement, introduced herself in turn and noted that the worst thing that had happened to her was learning just now that she was a brother of the male minister. It was said gently, and with a touch of humor, but it made very clear how thoughtless we men sometimes are.

At this point I can’t resist telling you the story about a rocket that had been sent into space. It fell to earth one Sunday morning just outside a church where a service was in progress. The landing made such a noise that the congregation and minister rushed out to find the rocket stuck firmly in the ground, and there, wonder of wonders, was an angel sitting on the nose cone. When the hubbub had died down, the minister, as spokesperson, posed a question directly to the angel.

Minister: Blessed Angel, we welcome you to Earth. We are honored by your presence. We pray that you would be so kind as to answer a question that you, as a citizen of Heaven, are eminently qualified to clarify.
Angel: I am happy to be with you, and I shall try to answer your question.
Minister: We would like to know, What is God like?
Angel: (after several moments in deep thought) Well, first of all, she’s black…!

And that reminds me of what a parishioner said to me when he learned that I was about to retire. Said he in a derogatory manner, “I suppose the bishop will appoint a woman to be our pastor.” And, trying to answer in a light manner, I responded, “Yes, and she will probably be black.” What made it interesting was that the bishop did indeed appoint a woman, and she was indeed very black.

At my final service of worship before her arrival I did something to symbolize my desire that she be welcomed warmly. I hoped also that what I did would indicate clearly that I would no longer be pastor to this congregation. At the close of the service, using appropriate words, I took off my black clerical robe and placed it upon the altar as an indication that the person who was coming would take up the robe, and with it, the ministering of the congregation that had been my responsibility until then.

PHYSICS AND THE BIBLE

The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav (1979, Morrill Quill Paperbacks) is a physics book dealing with subatomic physics written for the lay person, which has opened an exciting new view of creation for me and has forced me to rethink my place as one human being in the universe as well as my old ideas about god.

Writings by Carl Sagan

One of the most important ideas that has changed my religious outlook is my discovery that pure chance appears to be what decides things in the sub-atomic physical world. Of course this runs counter to the idea that God purposely directs every single thing that happens.

For me, however, it provides a satisfactory answer to the old problem of evil. That subject has puzzled and bedeviled people for centuries, and perhaps even farther back in prehistory before there were any formal theologians. There has always been a feeling on the part of humans that if they were good, however that was defined, they would be rewarded, and that if they were bad they would be punished.

In our own lives we know that this is not the way it works. Oh, we can try to rationalize by saying that in some mysterious manner it must be for the best that the mother of three little children was killed in an automobile accident. God must have had a good reason for willing, or at least allowing, that sort of thing to happen.

I don’t buy that. Rabbi Kushner, in his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, does an excellent job of expressing how impossible it would be to respect that kind of god. Also, my own personal experience tells me quite convincingly that good people do not always receive a blessing, and bad people do not always get their just desserts.

I suppose that the ideas of heaven and hell came into being in order to explain that it would only be fair that each person get what he or she deserves If that doesn’t happen while the person is alive it seems only right that it should happen in some other life beyond death. That would mean that the good people in this life would go to heaven and bad people would go to hell. That helps many people to feel better when humans don’t get what they deserve-either eternal peace or eternal damnation-before they die.

I believe that fairness (justice) is not life’s major operating principle. After all, what did I ever do to deserve being born into a loving family where I always had the necessities of life? What terrible thing did a child starving in Ethiopia do to deserve suffering and starvation? How is it that one child is born to an alcoholic mother who doesn’t want it, and another child is born to parents who will love and nurture it to responsible adulthood?

Heaven and hell solve the problem for many people, but it doesn’t for me. The best explanation I have is that such eventualities come about by chance. Which simply means that all babies are born without being consulted or having any choice in the matter.

The question, “Why me?”, asked when cancer strikes, is not taken seriously by those who answer in a supercilious manner with the question, “Why not you?”. I love that Old Testament character, Job, who was not patient at all (although crossword puzzles sometimes define him as the epitome of patience) with his friends who kept trying to convince him that he must have done something terribly sinful to have deserved the sorrow and pain that they thought God visited upon him. Job maintained before them and before his God that he was not guilty of anything that merited his suffering.

Many a human being has felt as Job did, and the argument that God, by inflicting pain and suffering, is merely meting out just punishment for unknown sin, is certainly not worthy of a good god. The god Job’s friends believed in is not my god.

In the realm of nature, think of the fact that only one of millions of sperm cells succeeds in fertilizing an ovum, and all the rest fail. Why that particular one? Or, what about the fact that an average of only two out of some 700,000 eggs laid by a Pacific salmon ever reach maturity? Why those particular two and not some other two? Given the relevant facts, we can determine what the probabilities are for survival, but we can not say just which specific eggs will produce the survivors. We can predict that a certain number of lives will be lost in automobile accidents for every ten million miles driven, but we cannot be specific and tell by name who the victims will be.

Both fortuitous and hurtful happenings seem to be distributed by chance, and that would be very discouraging if it were not for some other important factors. In other words, if chance were the only operating power we might as well forget about justice, righteousness, and love. We could live any old way we wanted to, because nothing we could do would make a difference in the outcome. The fact is, however, that how we deal with good fortune and bad fortune does make a big difference.

I firmly believe that there is a manner of living which is exceedingly valuable, and I call that way of life Christianity. I hasten to say that I don’t believe in everything that has been called Christianity. But, I do wholeheartedly believe in the kind of Christianity that is depicted in the gospels of the New Testament as they reveal the spirit of Jesus. And it is the spirit that is important to me. There are also Old Testament instances that give evidence of that spirit. I firmly believe that the spirit of goodness is not restricted to persons who call themselves Christians. Neither does it belong to any time period in history.

I know it’s hard to talk about God as spirit, for spirit is something ethereal, out of reach of the five senses, and yet it’s something that we human beings give life to. The idea of God as a superhuman being who is somewhat like us is very pervasive, but I don’t believe that there is such a “being” beyond the lives of humans.

My God is goodness itself, a quality of spirit. The spirit I think of as my God, the essence of Goodness, lives where-and at those moments when-a human being gives life to the spirit of love. Love is only an idea until it is expressed in action by a human being; then it becomes a reality!

I don’t believe in a literal heaven up in the sky or in a hell that is somewhere in the fiery bowels of the earth. I don’t believe in a literal, physical, resurrection of Jesus or in a virgin birth. Some of the parishioners whom I served over the years would be distressed by those statements. I hope that they don’t disturb you, but if they do, remember that you don’t have to believe as I do. Every person has a right-and a duty-to hold fast his or her own beliefs. You have a right to yours whatever they may be. However, please remember that it’s a sign of growth to be willing to give up even long-held beliefs in favor of new ones that you find to be more meaningful.

Religious beliefs are not simply to be mouthed; they should guide and direct personal day-to-day living. Saying we believe something, simply because we have been told by some authority that we ought to believe it, is not good enough. In our childhood we naturally take on beliefs that our parents hold. We hang on to them until our own experience gives us good reason to change them. But, to hold onto beliefs that were passed down to us when we were children if they no longer make sense is to be less than honest with ourselves.

I’ve heard a story, which may or may not be true, about a young wife who always cut a slice off a roast before she put it in the roasting pan. One day her husband asked why she did that. Her answer was that her mother always did it, and so it must be the right way to prepare a roast, but she agreed to ask her mother about it. When she did, her mother answered that she always cut a slice off the roast because she didn’t have a roasting pan big enough for the whole thing.

There’s nothing wrong with questioning custom, and there’s nothing wrong with questioning our religious beliefs either. It’s easy enough to question the beliefs of others, but I’m talking about our own beliefs. Those that can’t stand up under our own questioning ought to be discarded, don’t you think? I think that a reason some people don’t have anything to do with organized religion is that they have questioned certain religious practices and beliefs and have found them wanting. The sad part is that these folks don’t investigate anything else.

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Ryan: I’m coming to grips with the fact that I might be waking up at 4am
Taylor: that’s fine but either way we are packing today
Taylor: so come to grips with that
Ryan: NOOOOO
Taylor: YESSS
Ryan: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Ryan: notice I used more “O” ‘s
Ryan: it means I’m more serious-er
Taylor: YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Taylor: Notice I used more “s”
Taylor: it means way more seriouser
Ryan: O’s are more powerful than S’s
Ryan: you’ll learn