God of the Natural Philosophers

Review: Religion and Science
Historical and Comtemporary Issues
Ian G. Barbour

A little philosophy inclineth men's minds to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds to religion. - Francis Bacon

In 1989-1991, Ian G. Barbour, now retired from Carleton College where he was professor of physics, professor of religion, and Bean Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, gave the prestigious Gifford Lectures. One of his subjects was Religion in an Age of Science, which he subsequently revised and expanded into Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues, published by Harper-Collins in 1997. Even for a physicist and amateur theologian like myself, it is a dry read, like eating ashes. This is partly because two-thirds of the book is an extended introduction to the remainder. It is also partly because, for the God of Barbour's version of Process Theology, Christ appears to be optional.

Process Theology arises from an attempt to integrate insights from both religion and science in a unified understanding of God, the Cosmos, and our relationship to them, ourselves, and each other. Nature is viewed as having multiple levels of organization and complexity, which offers multiple opportunities for a patient God to act as the chief Creative Participant in the ongoing self-creation of the Universe by a multiplicity (an ecological community) of agents — among them, ourselves. The God of Process Theology is therefore self-limited in both foreknowledge of the future, and power to direct it. This absolves God from the necessity rescuing us from catastrophe, whether brought on by natural processes or human malevolence, thus solving the age-old Problem of Evil.

This transforms the question of the ultimate triumph of Good over Evil at the End of Time — the traditional subject of Eschatology — into a purely technical question of whether the Universe will end in a Final Crunch or a featureless, uniformly cold bath of low-energy radiation. Moral victory is beyond the Process Theologian's planning horizon.

But what of personal salvation? Barbour's presentation of Process Theology is friendly toward the idea, and Christ appears as the chief instance of God's evocative power of love and persuasion. Of Christ, Barbour says (p 326),

Several themes in Christian thought support the portrayal of a God of persuasion. Christ's life and death reveal the transformative power of love. We have the freedom to respond or not, for grace is not irresistible. In the last analysis, I suggest, the central Christian model for God is the person of Christ himself. In Christ it is love, even more than justice of sheer power, that is manifest. The resurrection represents the vindication rather than the denial of the way of the cross, the power of a love stronger than death. Process theology reiterates on a cosmic scale the motif of the cross, a love that accepts suffering. By rejecting omnipotence, process thought says that God is not directly responsible for evil. Whereas exponents of kenotic self-limitation hold that the qualifications of divine onmipotence are voluntary and temporary, for Whiteheadians the limitations are metaphysical and necessary, though they are integral to God's essential nature and not something antecedent or external to it.

 In the complex hierarchy of levels of agency in the Universe, humans are most sensitive to God's power of persuasion, and Christ was the most sensitive of humans, achieving a oneness with God's will worthy of the designation, "Son of God." In other words, according to Process Theology, and in particular to Barbour's version of Process Theology as inspired by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, Christ is nice, but unnecessary (except perhaps as the personification and deification of the Process Theologian's desire to see love triumph over power). The experience of the Christian community that Christ is necessary for salvation is but one of the inputs for a theology that implicitly values the tentativeness and openness of ongoing process above all other values.

The other inputs for Barbour's Process Theology are insights from physics, astronomy, and evolutionary biology. I think the omission of input from psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology might account for some of the sterility of Process Theology — for the omission of these insights is the omission of ourselves, except as physico-biological entities and philosophical abstractions.

In short, Barbour's theology is really an outline. It is waiting to be filled in by a Christology based on the scripture, literature, history, and ongoing experience of the Christian community. And yet, its place for Christ is circumscribed by the need to accomodate a systematic set of metaphysical categories that attempts to span both religion and science. I think it is unsuccessful, in part because its notions of religion and science are circumscribed.

I suggest that a Christology should be informed by the best of modern knowledge and thought (including process thought), but should be mindful that it is an answer to Christ's question, "Who do you say that I am?" In order to maintain faith with the Christian community, past and present, Christology needs to be saturated with Christ as necessary, rather than burdened with Christ as optional. And, in keeping with the witness of the New Testament, it must radically affirm Christ as human and divine, crucified and resurrected, necessary and sufficient for salvation.

Affirming Christ as human is easy — he is man born of woman, child raised by parents, and participant become renegade leader in his community. He is physically, biologically, psychologically, sociologically, culturally, politically, religiously human. Affirming Christ as divine is less obvious in a largely innumerate culture, because such affirmation is perhaps best informed by mathematics.

In mathematics, an infinite set can be mapped member for member (one-to-one) onto a proper (smaller) subset of itself. For example, the integers can be mapped one-to-one onto the even integers: just take each integer and multiply it by two. One maps onto two, two maps onto four, three maps onto six, and so on forever. And yet, the even integers are only half of all the integers. Mappings that are one-to-one are also reversible — dividing the even integers by two recovers the whole set of all the integers. Now, I could just as well have proposed to multiply each integer by a billion, mapping the entire infinite set of integers one-to-one onto a set only a billionth as big as itself. Perhaps similarly, God chose to become the human Christ, a mapping of the Infinite God onto a human being, infinitely smaller than God, but still infinite (which may be part of what it means to say we are made in God's image). That God could also still be God, that Christ had to communicate with his larger self through prayer just like the rest of us, should present no problem. The Author of Space is not bound by space, the Author of Time is not bound by time. If God can be everywhere, why not also somewhere in particular? If God can be everywhere, why not two places at once?

The crucified-resurrected duality also has an easy first part. We know the Romans routinely crucified non-citizens for a variety of crimes, real or imagined. There is no reason to suppose they did not crucify a charismatic cult leader who refused to recognize the Emperor's divinity, and who therefore refused to acknowledge the theological/moral right of the Roman Empire to rule the world. Affirming Christ's resurrection, however, requires a leap of faith, which is most easily enabled by religious experience involving personal encounter with the Risen Christ. (I must admit, that my own rather non-specific experiences could easily be dismissed as wishful thinking. I have no inspiration beyond the "light that lights everyone who comes into the world.") On the other hand, Jesus never wrote a book, never held office, and never went more than 200 miles from his birthplace — yet 2000 years later, he is still a force in human history. Something astounding must have happened.

But now we come to what it all means — the bit about Christ being "necessary and sufficient for salvation." This has to do with our ultimate concern, which the Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich identified with God. The problem is that, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said (God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, Noonday Press, 1955, p127), "Only saints are ultimately concerned with God. What concerns most of us ultimately is our ego." We are turned away from God and toward ourselves in a twisted way which we ourselves cannot straighten out. This estranges us from God, but also estranges us from ourselves (we create a self-image which we use to have a relationship to ourselves — we observe ourselves acting as ourselves — instead of just being ourselves. Not surprisingly, we also are estranged from each other and the natural world, as well. These four basic estrangements are Sin, and make it impossible for us to have completely honest relationships with anyone or anything, including God.

As long as we are in the world God gave us, we can manage. We even use our estrangements to survive. By compulsively distinguishing between self and other, we avoid danger, and seek the reward of food and shelter. But in God's world, the world to come, estrangement is dysfunctional. By clinging to estrangement we condemn ourselves to flee God's Presence (Heaven), rather than to seek it. In God's world, the absence of God is the Outer Darkness (Hell). Fortunately God helps us with our problem.

God goes all the infinite way to rescue us. God becomes one of us (Jesus), not just to preach at us, but to live among us. God as Jesus shows us the depth of our estrangement by teaching us the error of our ways, and then letting us kill him out of our fear and rage at him. God as Jesus bestows on us the ultimate pardon — he undoes our murder of him by coming back to life. God as Jesus then promises to come for us when we enter God's world, to meet us person-to-person, to guide us to Himself as God.

Now for a Christian, the above two paragraphs sketch out the necessity and sufficiency of Christ for our salvation. But what of other faiths? Traditionally Christians have a model of salvation that works like a room with many doors. Pick the one with Jesus in front of it, and he will take you to Heaven. The rest lead to Hell. This creates tension with people of religions other than Christian. I prefer a model that works like a room with many doors, but with Jesus, in many different guises, opening every one of them. Hell is refusing to go through any door at all.

But the categories of Process Theology cannot be found in Barbour's book, that can accomodate a discussion of Christ as Redeemer. The God of Process Theology seems to me an idol of philosophers, and not the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus.

Editor's Note: Process theology is an ongoing attempt to reconcile theology with modern science. Here is a definition from its adherents. It offers some interesting insights, but ultimately tries to stuff God into a box. It's different Fundamentalist's box, but it's still a box.

Problems with Rich's Problems with Christianity and Religion

Problems with Problems with Christianity

If personality resides in the soul, then how can drugs and brain damage affect it?

We do not have souls — we are souls. We are not our personalities. Our personalities are mental constructs that we build in order to relate to each other and to ourselves. If your personality is destroyed you will survive in a state of "flat affect" until you build another one. I know. I've been there. So, I am unimpressed with your point about personality. Similarly, we are not our temperament, which is largely biochemically and neurologically determined, and which in turn strongly influences personalities we build around it.

A stronger and more fundamental point is that our phenomenal consciousness (our basic awareness of the phenomena in the world around us) can be severely affected by brain disorders or damage. For example, a stroke can literally take away not only one's ability to perceive anything in the left part of one's visual field, it can take away the very concept of left, and the memory that one once had the concept. Some stroke patients must turn 270 degrees to the right in order to get into a position they once would have managed by turning 90 degrees to the left. (See The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sacks.) To me, that is a much stronger argument that our consciousness resides in our material brains.

On the other hand, perhaps our brains are "quantum switchboards" between our souls and our bodies, as argued in detail by neurophysiologist J. C. Eccles. (See for example, "Brain and Freewill," and "How Dogmatic can Materialism Be?" both by J. C. Eccles, in Consciousness and the Brain, Globus, Maxwell and Savodnik, eds., Plenum, New York, 1976.) Perhaps we just get so hooked into perceiving, thinking, and feeling with our wetware, that when it gets damaged, we get stuck working with a faulty interface. This suggests that the early stages of the after-life experience could be rather minimalist (including, suggestively, three days of unconsiousness), as portrayed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Of course, that begs the question of what is a soul. My current guess is that since spacetime undergoes quantum oscillations on scales smaller than the so-called Planck Length, the quantum spacetime foam may sustain patterns complex enough to be called alive (our souls), just as much larger and less complex atoms can form structures complex enough to be called alive (our bodies).

Still, I must admit that since you are not attempting to give a proof, but are merely arguing from the weight of the evidence, you have the last word on this: The weight of the evidence points to our doom. Religion has an "in spite of" quality in this regard, called trotsdem by the German theologians.

Gods were invented by people to explain the universe. Science does that for us now, so we no longer need gods.

Science has also begun to realize the limits to which it can go. Goedel's theorem states that any non-trivial, self-consistent, finite set of axioms must be incomplete — i.e., within the confines of any such system, it is always possible to construct propositions whose truth or falsehood cannot be established. The implication for science is that there will always be unknowns, no matter how large a body of self-consistent, experimentally verified theory we construct. We can't "know it all" through the methods of science.

On the other hand, I need God for companionship rather than physics lessons. I recognize the the astrophysical account of cosmogenesis as factually true, but for my soul that truth is empty compared to the mythic truth of the Biblical account. That is, while I know that God did not make Man from the clay with His own hands, I feel that all of us were individually called into existence by God for his delight and suffering in us. Perhaps this is because I need to be desired by God, if only as his fool.

[BTW - Goedel's theorem also applies to morality: Within the confines of any finite set of moral laws, it will always be possible to put the moralist in a situation in which his or her actions will be morally ambiguous, at best. For me, this is why Forgiveness and Reconciliation are necessary for Justice.]

Science has shown the stories of creation and the flood to be false.

Science has shown them to be false as history, not as myth. The truth of myth is in its meaning for us, in the messages in its metaphors, that can stir in us a level of awareness that no other form of interpersonal communication can. That is to say, the truth of myth is not in the myth itself, but in the truth it awakens in the hearers or readers. And so I say that the accounts of the creation and the flood are true, just not literally so. Besides, the universe began with a "Let there be light" BIG BANG, and one school of paleobiologists believe that life began when certain kinds of clay with repeating layers served as a substrate on which primitive amino acids assembled into RNA-like self-replicating proteins (God making us from clay, as it were). Moreover, it seems that about 10,000 years ago there was a catastrophic refilling of the dry Mediterranean basin as the Atlantic spilled over the widening cliff that is now the Strait of Gibraltar (possibly giving rise to the Sumerian flood story). Coincidences perhaps, but kinda spooky, eh guy?

Why was demon possession common in Jesus' time, but hardly known in the Old Testament, and replaced today by the DSM-IIIR?

I don't feel it necessary to believe in demons in order to believe in God. What I do find interesting though, is that Jesus seemed to be an effective faith-healer. Whatever the problems of the people whom he encountered, he seemed to be able to relieve them of quite a few of them, which is impressive to me, even if their problems were psychosomatic. See, however, James Randi's The Faith Healers, and Monty Python's "The Life of Brian," for additional commentary. See also Delbanco's The Death of Satan, for what we lose when we lose the sense of evil.

There is no justification for eternal punishment in hell. Hell as described in the Bible is sadism.

Hell is not described in the Bible. It is alluded to. As for eternal punishment, I would like to be a Universalist — one who claims that EVERYONE will wind up with God in Heaven, no matter what. But without some special revelation to that effect, claiming so is as arrogant as the Fundamentalists who claim that nobody but themselves will go to Heaven (also not described in the Bible). So, I compromise and take the way out given by C. S. Lewis in his book, The Great Divorce. The people in hell choose to be there because they can't stand to fully know who they are before God. Therefore, they flee God's Presence, or at least their own awareness of it, and that flight is hell.

How can people be happy in heaven with loved ones in hell?

C. S. Lewis has an explanation in The Great Divorce, which I don't buy. You've got me on this one. It's why I am tempted to be a Universalist.

Christianity asserts that more than 50% of all people will go to hell.

Where the hell did you get that number? Christians assert all kinds of things, but the Bible is vague and contradictory about the number of the saved. I like to think it is because the numbers or percentages are "above our pay grade" to worry about. But it is easy to work oneself into so twisted up a state of personality that it would be painful to know oneself before God, i.e., to confess. I suspect that is the condition of the majority of the human race. I also suspect that in the end, we get a lot of help with that problem.

The Bible is vague and contradictory on the one point that should be most important: how to be saved.

Yes, Amen! "With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Salvation would have to be a rather paltry thing to be reducible to a simple formula. For me as a Christian, it reduces to the moment in which Jesus says, "Follow me." Well, what does that mean? In the case of the disciples, the reaction was spontaneous and physical — they got up and went where Jesus went. For me in this latter day, it is something that is taking me a lifetime to understand and practice. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Cost of Discipleship gives the best explanation I know. [You may recall that Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who returned to Germany after the Nazi takeover, publicly opposed them, and was martyred in the concentration camps for doing so.]

The plan of redemption makes no sense. There are several theories about why Christ had to die, and all of them are unintelligible.

They all meet some psychological need on the part of some group of believers, however. See Freud's provocative but flawed, Moses and Monotheism for some roundabout hints concerning this one. In particular, considering how hard and painful this life can be, and that it is God's will that it be so, let us mention the idea that in Christ, [warning: heresy!] the current of atonement may flow both ways: as a man, he atones for humanity's capacity for evil, while as God, he atones for the hardness of our lives. The at-one-ment, the reconciliation of humanity and God, is that in Christ, God died for humanity and a man died for God. The reconciliation is completed by the resurrection — the forgiving and undoing of Christ's death, and the reuniting of humanity and divinity in him. I think that the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection are a powerful message of salvation that proclaim the possibility of a common and good destiny for all of humanity. And the obligation on our part is as it always was, "to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God." But rather than thinking of it as obedience to an external power as the price of a ticket to paradise, I think of it as a spontaneous response to being loved and desired by God. And, unlike orgasms, if you don't feel it, there is no need to fake it.

The stories of the resurrection are inconsistent.

The eyewitness stories of any event immediately just past are usually inconsistent. Given that the Christian community didn't think to write their stories down until they were at least second-hand, what else would you expect? And yes, they didn't start writing anything down until the Apostles started dying off, because they thought that the world would end before the Apostles died. Only then did they realize that there might be descendants who would benefit from a written record.

It is unfair that some people got to witness physical proof of miracles while the rest of us are commanded to believe on hearsay.

Absolutely. I agree with Tom Paine that you need not believe hearsay. I side with Paul Tillich in asserting that there is an existential, experiential component of faith. And if you are not called to faith, maybe you are called to atheism.

Why did God design the world so that some animals have to eat other animals, why did he make gross and disgusting parasites, and why did he let the majority of all species that ever existed go extinct?

The world is such that a rational creature can figure out how to survive in it without having to propitiate God to make the sun rise every day. A rational, rather than a magical, world is a tough world, where God doesn't run to fix things for you whenever they don't go your way. As the Tao-Te Ching says, "Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat all creatures like straw dogs." We get to live in a world in which we can do what we want without reference or deference to God, constrained only by physical reality —- by our needs, and prodded only by our pains. And since we seem to have evolved from prior living things, I make bold to state that evolution seems to be part of God's will, and with evolution come creatures that exploit every available ecological niche, (including parasitic and carniverous ones) and extinction of creatures when those niches change.

Jesus and his followers thought the end of the world was coming in one generation.

Indeed they did. So what? Jesus was God living life as an ordinary guy, with one or two extraordinary talents. One would hardly expect an ordinary guy to know the future.

There is no good reason to believe the canon while rejecting the apocrypha.

Whoa! Please see the introductions to the canonical books of the Bible and to the apocryphal books in the New Oxford Annotated Study Bible.

If one and only one religion is true why didn't God make it obvious to everyone which one it is.

Is one and only one religion true? I think all religions, as well as atheism, are contaminated with both truth and falsehood. I believe we are surrounded by truth too great to be contained in a finite number of dogmatic statements. I believe we cannot escape from the truth. I feel called to explore that truth as a Christian, but that doesn't prevent me from encouraging someone else to know the truth by a different, but effectively parallel path.

If God wanted us to have free will, why does he threaten us with hell? It isn't free will if you've got a gun at your head.

Isaac Bashevis Singer said, "We have to believe in free will — we have no choice." Let me ask you, would it be heaven for you if some really nasty evil son-of-a-bitch gets in and insists on remaining one? I think heaven is the presence of God, and the really nasty evil SOBs avoid it. Wherever else they go, that's hell.

God deliberately hardened Pharoah's heart against Moses and the Israelites. Why would God cause someone to sin? Why would God order the Israelites to commit genocide against the Canaanites?

Hardening Pharoah's heart is a pious turn of phrase. That's how the writers of Genesis and Exodus saw it. As for the order for genocide against the Canaanites — see the news accounts of the Kahane Chai party for how that one got started. I think that is the record of the self-righteous bigotry of the chosen people. The archeological evidence indicates that the surviving Canaanites managed to promulgate idol-worship among the Hebrews. And if you want to attain purity of a fledgling faith, you eliminate the non-believers, especially if you are a war-like and undiciplined tribe to begin with, and they are lovely ladies who want to raise the kids they have with you in their own religion. Otherwise stated: "The Jews are God's Chosen People, which is no great honor considering the competition."

There is evidence internal to the Bible that much of the pentateuch was a pious fraud conveniently discovered by priests in the time of King Josiah.

See Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliot Friedman for the full story on this one. One can go further — noting that Chronicles seems to be a whitewashed version of Kings, and the list goes on and on. So what? The Bible is not a single book — it is a library. It is the story of a people's attempt to be the people of God. It chronicles their failures as well as their successes, and their vain interpretations, as well as their inspired insights. It's all meant to be there for us in its wretchedness and in its glory. While many people debate the historical or scientific truth of this or that part of the Bible (and some parts bear up well in the light of recent archeological discoveries, while others do poorly), what really matters is the living Truth that the Bible can awaken in its readers and hearers.

Problems with Why I Believe there are no Gods

You have most definitely not defined God out of existence. (See The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams for how to do this with a Babel Fish.) What you have done is to amass a convincing weight of evidence that the god you expected (and at one time in your life wanted) does not exist. On the other hand, the god you once wanted was a concoction of the inner Freudian/Jungian "demons" haunting your former Christian community mixed with a few of your own. I think that we are both glad that that particular god is a fiction of fevered imagination. But you have yet to convince me, a former atheist, that there are no gods at all, including the God who is beyond all our imaginings and who comes to us as a complete surprise.

Rich Daniel, former Skeptic in Residence at VCBC, committed suicide in the early fall of 2000 A.D. In his memory, I reposted at VCBC two pieces he had sent me from his now defunct website, and with which I profoundly disagree. Here I post a rebuttal to those pieces that I emailed to Rich in 1996. My synopses of Rich's points are in italics, below which I state my counter-arguments. Occasionally, I first point out how he could have supported his position more strongly. Rich said he would think about these points. His fatal depression prevented his reply.

The Redoubt of the Soul

Our technology is about to give us the power to change human nature. If we do, then what happens to Natural Law as a basis for public policy? And will we even care?

Modern science and technology are 300 years young, willful adolescents running away on legs of internetworked computers. Because their parents, the philosophers and theologians, have remained largely ignorant of them, they are stumbling without moral guidance into hiding places of the human soul. How they may transform human nature must give us pause.

At the most superficial level, they will transform human knowledge. The internet will soon give nearly everyone instant access to the world’s knowledge. At the same time, computers are shrinking from laptops to palmtops to miniature belt-glove-glasses-and-earphones affairs worn by computer engineering students who call themselves "cyborgs." Access to knowledge is becoming not only instant, but constant, which is changing the very meaning of knowledge. Printing changed knowledge from memorization to remembering where something was written. The web is changing knowledge into knowing how to ask questions — how find out what you want without finding all the stuff you don’t.

To assist in this quest entrepreneurs are now selling "intelligent agents," software robots that roam the web in search of just the relevant bits of information. As computers and programming techniques grow more powerful, librarians and even teachers may be replaced by intelligent agents that guide each child into mastery of its computer enhanced world. The risk is that the "agents" will construct a biased view of human knowledge — biased by software writers, their employers, or their governments — of which the users are unaware. Even if such biases can be managed, and if users can maintain some commonality of worldview despite fragmenting into non-interacting online communities, the existential risk is the despair that comes from having knowledge without meaning.

Imagine being able to know any fact that has been discovered, but having no reason to know anything at all. Remember that Albert Camus in his Myth of Sisyphus proved that life without reference to God is absurd. He found meaning by reveling in absurdity, but that is cold comfort for the mass of humanity. To make the limit of human knowledge accessible to everyone, but without a sense of purpose, of destiny — of anything beyond — is to invite decadence, decline and despair.

Computer networks may also transform human communication. Even now a laptop computer gives voice to the paralyzed physicist Stephen Hawking. If neurologists seeking to "cure" blindness have their way, then computers may transform from wearable to implantable and interact directly with one’s visual cortex. That is, if scientists can ever understand the workings of the brain well enough for them to enable a computer to put images directly into the visual cortex, enabling a person to "see" without eyes, then they will be able to make a computer take images directly from the cortex as well. Add wireless computer-to-computer networking to this capability, and we have the possibility of people being able to transmit their mental imagery directly into each other’s brain. The same might be true for the auditory cortex, and other parts of the brain as well (including, for a doubtless illicit fee, its pleasure centers).

Using implanted computers and wireless networks, each person may someday be able to connect his or her mind directly to all the world’s knowledge and the minds of all the world’s people, even the recorded thoughts of the post-twenty-first century dead. If computer-enhanced people gain the ability to communicate by thought itself, speech as a time series of symbols (words) may disappear. People might communicate by exchanging much richer content, such as daydreams, instead. And if words disappear, so will all the world’s previous literature, including its scriptures.

As if transforming knowledge and communication were not enough, genetic engineering may transform our bodies and minds. People may want their children to be taller, more athletic, or smarter, and humanity may acquire the techniques to make them so. But genes tend to travel in groups, which means altering one gene may have unintended consequences. Just as breeding dogs for large size compromised their longevity, breeding kids for high IQ or some other cognitive ability may compromise them emotionally or spiritually. As a trivial example, suppose humanity decides to give itself the genes to sense one’s orientation and location continuously, like homing pigeons. How would a Christian Fundamentalist witness about being "saved" to those who are incapable of experiencing or imagining being "lost"? How will humanity sense the despair of having knowledge without meaning if it’s brains are genetically engineered to feel just fine?

Finally I must point out a consequence of John Archibald Wheeler’s realization that the Universe is pervaded by a "quantum foam" made up of so-called zero-point (or vacuum) oscillations of space-time itself. These oscillations take place on a scale so tiny that sub-atomic particles like protons and neutrons would seem enormous in comparison. Moreover, the intensity of these tiny oscillations is so great that a proton passing by would seem not only large, but insubstantial, like a vast cloud. Indeed, Wheeler and others have hypothesized that sub-atomic particles may be no more that standing patterns of these space-time oscillations. Now if quantum oscillations of empty space-time can be organized into standing patterns that comprise solid matter, might they not also be organized into other, less detectable, standing patterns that support some aspects of our consciousness? If so, then some future science may enable us to manipulate aspects of our souls.

Whether or not this last possibility is ever realized, one thing is certain: in the coming centuries human nature will be subject to unprecedented forces of change. Arthur C. Clarke’s vision of 3001 may have been too timid — people a millennium hence might seem alien to us if we could meet them, and we might seem subhuman to them. How in the midst of such change are we to preserve our human nature? How are we to affirm that we should do so? How shall we even answer the question, "What is our human nature?"

Scientific naturalism can give only trivial answers to the latter question. Human is what carries the human genome. But will we still be human if we change that genome? Scientific naturalism will only be able to ascertain our ability to breed with unaltered humans, if there are any left. To the questions of whether and how to preserve our human nature, scientific naturalism gives no answer at all. Scientific naturalism, which is no more than unaided reason, gives knowledge without meaning, technique without teleology.

Hence we must turn to faith. We take it on faith that we must preserve and build on our essential human-ness, rather than undermine it. We find that, as in the title of the feminist health manual, Our Bodies, Our Selves, what we collectively do to our material bodies, we do to our spiritual selves. The theological-moral debates over sexuality, fertility control, abortion, euthanasia, and execution are the first skirmishes of the gathering battle for human nature. People of faith, both liberal and conservative, must consider their participation in these debates not only in the context of keeping the commandments so as to build a wall around the scriptures, but of using ethics to build a fortress around human nature, a redoubt for the soul.

The core question in all these debates has been, "Is human life an essential good, or only a contingent good, to be discarded under certain circumstances when unwanted?" The value we place on human life ultimately reflects the value we place on human nature. If we devalue a violent criminal so much that we permit ourselves to execute him or her, will we devalue aggression so much that we engineer away part of our drive for achievement? If we devalue our fetuses so much that we perform abortion until the end of pregnancy, will we devalue childhood dependency so much that we engineer away part of our capacity to love?

In these and other debates, people of faith will steer humanity’s voyage into the 3rd millennium. The more conservative will witness against certain kinds of change by preserving traditional ways of being human. They will become God’s sea-anchor to slow humanity’s (and liberal religion’s) tendency to drift toward an abyss of meaninglessness. The more liberal faithful will witness within the changing culture, and become God’s rudder to guide its transformations. They will translate scripture into whatever form is necessary for it to remain a living cultural reality. The future may yet be bright.

For if our future is fraught with risk, it also brings hope. Consider that if people become enabled to exchange their thoughts and sensations, it may be more difficult to harm one’s neighbor. "I feel your pain," may become transformed from a political platitude to an immediate sensation. Thus, if the Word of God ceases to be written in our books, it may be because it will become written on our hearts.

Karras of Thebes

Fiction contributed by Kay Goodnow

2000

We are the ones we have been waiting for. — Oraibi, Arizona, Hopi Nation

I went back in time.

I awoke in a semi-darkened room. For a moment, I could not identify my surroundings and I experienced a feeling of disquiet that edged on fear. The familiar sound of wind stirring the palm trees just beyond the limits of my vision triggered the awareness of reality. I was, then, fully awake. And I was at home.

The room brightened slowly as the sun added luster to the river outside my door. Sounds of the morning prevailed and brought with them the knowledge that I had lived through another night, only to wonder how I would survive another day. I lay still, certain that any movement would reactivate the pain and yet hopeful, somehow, that the pain had gone away. Nights had grown to mean escape, release from the entrapment of the day. This night, as in the many nights that had preceded it, there had been no dreams.

It would soon be fully day and the people, my friends, would be coming with their questions, just as they had been coming here since I had first become an answerer. They would want to know the news of my journey. I closed my eyes and tried not to remember, tried not to think, tried not to feel.
The journey had been very difficult. The pain that was always present in my lower back and legs had been nearly unbearable. It had increased with each day of travelling and had made sleep nearly impossible. I should not have gone and would not have gone, but my friend Arius felt that it was important.

Arius.* His name alone brings memories of happier times, of youth and laughter and a drive to live. Although Arius is older than I, he is, in many ways, much younger. He had first come to Thebes when I was a youth. I had listened to his words and his message had spoken to my heart. When he went away I became the answerer and that was over two decades ago, nearly three. A long time, too long. No, I should not have made this journey, even though Arius had come back to Thebes with his eyes bright and his love as constant as it had been from the beginning.

Arius had come back to talk with the people. He had come back to explain to them the things that were happening on the distant side of the world. There had been pain in him, the pain of disquiet and unrest. He spoke of peril and dissent. His words had seemed incredible to most of us, although there had been rumors from time to time, brought to us by the merchants.

I sat up, slowly. The pain returned. It was good to be home, good to be in familiar surroundings. Good to feel the heat of the sun and the wind and the sand, good to be joined again with the azure peacefulness that is the Nile. The palms continued to stir gently as though whispering reassurance. "I am glad to be home," I sighed, "It is good to be at home." The pain eased, lulled for the moment by the contentment experienced in familiar surroundings.

The Council had met for many days and each was longer than the last. After the long journey I had believed I would find rest in meeting with other answerers. But when I asked after Arius, I had learned that he would not be present. It was believed that there were five of us from Egypt, possibly more. I wondered if the others from my country were feeling his absence. I was incomplete and, to a degree, lost.

There had been talks, hours of talks, and much of what was said had been incomprehensible to me at first. The talks continued until the tapers gave no more light, until darkness settled around us. Each day was the same but not the same. The tone changed, fluctuated. An aura of hostility appeared, disappeared and then reappeared. Friends argued and were no longer friends, enemies became friends.

I shuddered, remembering. I should not have gone.

My time had passed. There had been, as yet, no young answerer who had come along to take my place. There had been no signs of interest among the people as to leadership, not as yet. I believed that the people wanted and needed their answerer, and perhaps someone would come forth just as I had, on that long ago day, when our old answerer had died. Arius would know what to do, if only he were here. But that was impossible. Impossible!

I shook my head and felt the vague sting that signifies tears in my eyes and in my heart. It was difficult to move, even across the room to the door, just as it had been difficult to move in the Council room with its rows of long tables and ceaseless conversation. I had tried to count the number of answerers there one day, and had to stop shortly after counting one hundred. The dimness that lives in my eyes would not permit a counting of the rest.

There had been so many things to hear, so many people talking, saying things that I had never needed to question and which no answerer could explain. No explanation was necessary. I had wondered at the questions and even from the start had sensed stirrings from inside of me that I had never felt before. I am an answerer. The others are answerers. There is no need for these questions, as the answers are known within me, within each of us. At first I had spoken with some of the others and I had asked them why they were questioning. They had looked at me in the strange way that foreigners look. "Why do you question?" I had asked, "Do you not feel the answers within? Why is there wondering?" They had shaken their heads, and they had walked away and, finally, I stopped asking.
As the days passed, tension mounted. Anger was exchanged openly among the answerers. I had never seen anger in an answerer before and I had felt fear. I wished I had not made this journey and I longer for the solace of Arius.

I watched the many whispered conferences and the fear in me grew. Slowly I realized that the answers that were being accepted here were not the right answers. The questions were wrong, yes, but once asked they had to be answered. The Council had so decreed. But the answers were wrong, very wrong. I could not understand why the others did not know this. I could not understand why, one by one, they seemed to accept this decision and keep silent. The opposing sides seemed gradually to merge together, forming a mass of acceptance of which I could never be a part. I held on to hope for as long as I could and felt the fears grow beyond description as I let go of hope. These things were wrong.

Nearly at the end, fatigued from the pain what was a part of me always, eyes dimmed by the smoking tapers and the many people in the room, I had risen to state my beliefs and there had been silence, even from those I considered to be friends. The foreboding silence screamed of danger and peril, both before and after I spoke. Arius had indeed been correct. There was a threat here such as I had never known, even in my three decades as the answerer. The threat was isolation, loneliness.
That evening, as I lay fitfully in my room, wishing to be back where the Nile weaves forever they came to visit me. There were six in all, and they were of the group that call themselves ‘Episkopos.’ I had difficulty rising to meet them, the pain was fierce and it had traveled to my heart.

One of them spoke. "Dear friend," he said, in the customary greeting (and I wondered why he called me friend when he knew that I was not his friend) "We have come to counsel and to consider. Please understand that what we say is meant to help you in this difficult time."
I did not hear all of what they said. There were times when all of them had talked at once and what I heard was like the buzzing of the bees in the warmth of the spring. They smiled with their lips and threatened with their eyes. They talked of Constantine and of battles waged and won under the shield of Jesus. "Surely," they said, "It is God who wins these battles. Therefore if Constantine decrees that Jesus is God, it is because God wishes it so. Would you go against God?"

I did not answer. I thought of Arius, and of the messages he had brought, and of the years of questions I had answered through that same message. These things were not necessary. It did not matter at all. The Christ had brought the message, and it had not included Constantine or battles fought beneath the banner of the church.

Even as I thought of Arius, the Episkopos spoke of him. "He is banished," one of them said, "Constantine has so decreed. He can never again return for his answers are impure and not as we would have them. He is in exile and you will never see him again. Arius is a fortunate man. If Constantine had not fought beneath the banner of Christ, Arius would have been executed for his answers."

Fury rose within me and I had great difficulty repressing it. Age and the pain eased it to some extent. When I did speak it was only to ask the question and, even then, to know ahead of time what the answer would be.

"What kind of message is this?" I asked, "That would banish an answerer from his people, separate him from his beloved friends, exile him from the home of his manhood? What kind of message does battle in the name of the Christ whose message speaks of love? Who answers in this way, with the anger of questions that have no answers? What is it that you fear?"
They did not answer. They stood quietly for a moment and then they turned as one person and they walked away. One of them came back and in his eyes were the dark coals of slumbering hatred.

"Those who follow Arius," he said, "Will also be exiled."

I had tried to sleep then, that last night in Nicaea, this time believing that possibly I would not have to rise again. The buzzing in my head had become a roar and I finally slept. That night I dreamed a thousand dreams that had no end. Morning came too soon. I was one of the last to enter the Council chamber and I could hardly bear to sit.

Most of the night I had struggled with what my response would be. I saw Arius in my dreams, exiled into a cold and dark place, alone. I thought about my own exile and dreamed again of a place that held no light and had no walls; dreams changed to nightmares and I woke screaming. I could not face exile! I knew myself to be too weak. And so I entered the Council chamber knowing that I would agree to this pronouncement, even though I knew it to be wrong. Arius would understand. In many, many ways he was much younger than I.

The vote was taken in the Roman way, with "ayes." There were no "nays." There was not even the vaguest sigh of a "nay." I considered the possibility that Constantine is greater, even, than God. But knowing my own decision and the reasons for it, I decided that there were probably other decisions with other reasons. Reasons which were a part of each answerer and which were unknown to me.

Perhaps they too know fear.

Throughout the voyage home physical pain blended with emotional pain. Many times I believed I would not be able to pass another hour, even take another step and I had hoped for the end. Asking God for the blessed mercy of death, I knew that it was not the pain from which I needed to be free, not the physical pain, but the black pit of compromise. I had sold my own heart in exchange for the home in which my body could die.

Today is the morning of the sixth day since my return. The people are coming, as they do always on the sixth day. I can hear them outside and it is time to tell them, but it is not the time to answer. For the first time I cannot answer. For the first time I will not be able to answer their questions.
I go slowly through the door. Although the sun is bright I see dimly through my tears. They greet me with cries of welcome and call for the story of my journey and of the great Council. But first, they want news of Arius.

I speak, but the buzzing in my head is intense and it is difficult to hear my own words. I love them and they feel my love. And somehow, inside of them, without having to ask the question, they know that today I will be unable to answer, to satisfy their wonderings. They are silent. I feel their love and it warms me.

"Dearly beloved," I begin, "It is nearly three hundred years since the Christ died and in that time there have been many questions and many answerings…"

The bees in my head make it impossible to think. I hesitate in direction. From the crowd there comes the cry, "What news is there of Arius?" They wait, expectantly.

I began again. "Some of the wonderings that are not questions have caused alarm with the church and the Council met to answer them. These wonderings are not new to the church in Thebes, for we have always known the answer as brought forth by the Christ. Three hundred years is a very long time, and the message does not seem as clear for others as it does for us…"

They were silent. My head ached, weighted as with the stones of the pyramids. I could feel Arius there with us, silent and strong, and I knew that what I would say would be right and that another answerer was even then preparing to follow behind me.

"Constantine the Great, along with the Council called to Nicaea, has given answers to some of the wonderings that should not be questions. Because of the answers, Arius if in exile, never to return…"
Tears blinded me. The pain in my back and legs went away, replaced by the pain in my heart and in my head. My arms felt heavy, my hands numb with cold in the dry heat of the morning. I looked for the sun and realized that it had dimmed considerably. Some of the murmur of the people reached my ears, but it was vague and distant. I choked on the words that I both wanted and needed to say, choked as I began to explain that I too had been a part of that decision. My legs gave way.
I saw a figure break from the crowd and come forward, placing a strong arm around my waist and helping to support me. I felt within me that here was the answerer, come forward as needed, even as I had gone forward years before.

His voice was soft and gentle, yet, he spoke with quiet authority, I could see that he was as I had been, and that his life was young and that this was to be his way.

"Beloved Karras, rest now. The journey has been long and painful for you. It is good to have you home again!" His words were gentle on my mind, soothing, blending with the whispered qualities of the breeze high among the palms. "I can see that you are troubled. It is a long time since there has been trouble, but we must not forget that trouble brings peace, just as in the time of Jesus. Beloved Karras, with the message comes knowledge of the meaning of the words ‘I am with you always, even until the end of time.’ God is present now, just as He always has been, and the answer that troubles you is the answer of men and not of the message. It will change, again and again, until it is the right answer, even as we know that our answer is what it must and always will be."

His words brought me strength I had not felt for a very long time. He was like Jesus and he was like Arius: gentle but strong, honest but loving, a leader chosen to follow.

The beehive in my head quieted and I lay there on the ground, knowing that my world was filled with peace and with love. I had come home to die, had given Arius exile because of my own fear of being alone, away from my people.

"It is time," I said, as the sun faded to night and the whisperings of the palms became crescendos and the Nile rose up to meet me.

"He is gone," the young answerer said, "So shall it be. For the answer to the wondering that should not have been a question could not be a part of his reality. All in time, in time. What possible difference can it make?"

---

I returned to my own time, seventeen hundred years later. I felt the spirit of Karras as peaceful. I sighed, and woke to the reality of a friend watching me closely. I was at the office and it was midday. Just for a moment, the rays of the sun were red.

"Daydreaming again?" she asked quietly, her eyes full of humor. "You have been staring out that window, ignoring telephone and typewriter for at least ten minutes now!"

I smiled my ‘guilty’ smile and mentioned that it had been a very long journey and that, for some reason, I felt tired. Because she is my friend, I did not need to explain why.

"I want you to know," I thought to the voice in my head, "That it made one whale of a difference!" "I do know," said the voice in my head, and it was filled with the love that whispers like the wind in the palms, "I do know."

* Arius taught that Christ was not God, but a creation of God, half human and half Divine, like the demigods of pagan Rome. Had Arius prevailed at the council of Nicaea, Christianity might have died as one cult among many. But Christianity existed for 300 years before Arius, and before even the notion of the Trinity. The first Christians did not ask in pagan, mystical-philosophical terms who Christ was. They simply knew. - Scooper

Abortion Plank

I nominate Dragnet's philosophy for the basis of moral public policy. You remember..."Just the facts, ma'am," as Joe Friday used to say. Because manipulation of the facts, from distortion to disregard, seems to be the hallmark of the anti-abortion and the anti-anti-abortion parties to our still to be resolved national debate, beginning with the names they choose for themselves: "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice." To which I say bullshit. Neither side is as much pro- anything as they are anti-each other.
 

That was fact one. Here is fact two: It has yet to be established objectively that an early-term embryo is a person, "endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these being the right to life" to quote the US Declaration of Independence. Rather than explore the deep philosophical issues in this short space, I simply acknowledge the widespread and bitter disagreement on this point. I pause to note, however, that except for abortion, we refrain from acting if there is some chance that a person might be harmed. Even though we don't know for sure that an embryo is not a person, we go ahead.
Fact three: It is obvious, on the other hand, that an early-term embryo is, biologically, a living human being. We know it is alive because it grows, it moves, and it responds to stimuli. We know it is a distinct being apart from its mother because, if you wait long enough, it borrows her car keys and reproduces. And we know it is human because it carries the human genome.

Fact four: The main reason anyone chooses to have an abortion is to kill a living embryonic human being before it becomes undeniably a person (which otherwise it would rapidly do) with legal claims to support, nurturance, and protection — and a moral claim to our love. In other words, getting or performing an abortion must lie on a continuum of evil with murdering a child at one end.

Now if a Pro-Choicer can't go this far with me, I maintain that he or she lacks the courage to face and name the facts squarely, regardless of what the opposition might make of them. Such Pro-Choicers preclude the development of national consensus on abortion, because their opponents know that it is foolhardy to negotiate with liars.

On the other hand, if the Pro-Life people try to base public discourse on stronger statements, they must admit that they are going beyond what can be universally agreed on as fact. Otherwise they also preclude development of a national consensus on abortion, but in a more insidious way. As the noted Christian, C. S. Lewis, said in The Problem of Pain (Collier Books, New York, 1962, p 64),

Even a good emotion, pity, if not controlled by charity and justice, leads through anger to cruelty. Most atrocities are stimulated by accounts of the enemy's atrocities; and pity for the oppressed classes, when separated from the moral law as a whole, leads by a very natural process to the unremitting brutalities of a reign of terror.

Given the violence that some Pro-Lifers encourage and others commit, it is reasonable to conclude that many Pro-Lifers don't want consensus — they want to win. They are more interested in getting their way than in examining the consequences, and their opponents know that it is foolhardy to negotiate with bullies.

But the cruelty of the Pro-Lifers is more subtle than bombing a clinic, or assassinating a doctor. They want to limit the creation of what they see as dead babies by banning abortion, a public policy that will lead to the creation of dead women, instead. Now they may argue that the dead babies were helpless and innocent, while the dead women will have been guilty of disobeying the law by having illegal abortions — i.e., that the dead women will have made a bad choice and gotten what they deserved. And that's cruel — it is substituting one class of dead body for another. True, there will be fewer dead women under an abortion ban, than there are dead babies without one, which some may claim is the greatest good for the greatest number. But they should remember Caiaphas' line, "It is expedient that one man should die, rather than the whole nation should perish," spoken as he proposed the execution of Jesus Christ.

We as a society won't win by substituting one evil (dead women) for another (legal abortion). We'll win by reducing the incidence of both. And that can't be achieved while we continue to make abortion a political power struggle — an issue over which one group tries to force its will on another by garnering a majority of votes.

We need to let abortion die as a political issue, and to resurrect it as a moral and social issue. Leave the coercion aside, brothers and sisters on the right, and I think you will find common ground with our brothers and sisters on the left. We all know that there is no sharp line dividing abortion from murder — there is a gray zone, into which any of us should shudder to step. For example, although some of us are comfortable with the idea of abortion nine days into a pregnancy, all of us would convict a woman and her doctor of murder for an abortion done at nine months. Perhaps we can reach a consensus that permits early abortions, but prohibits abortions after 20 weeks (five months) except for conditions that could permanently damage the health of the pregnant woman.

This is an issue for which we need to put aside the blunt instrument of the law. We need to have thoughtful public consideration of good and evil, rather than a political power struggle. We need publicly to consider the responsibility that comes with our freedom, and of how the failure of some to be responsible in their sexual and reproductive behavior undermines the freedom of us all. And for those who are considering having an abortion, we need more ministry and less moralizing. We need either to help them shoulder the responsibility of caring for their soon-to-be-born children, or to have the decency to do as we expect of our government — to let people make their choices, while we refrain from mandating what we are unwilling to support.

Latin in Anno Domini 2000

Liturgy meets Word™

contributed by Kay Goodnow

April 2000

And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;
As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever. — Luke 1:46-55, KJV

From time to time, I contemplate life on paper. Writing ‘exorcises my demons’ by letting my emotions run in a safe space, indulges my humorous sense of the absurd, and gives final form to my thoughts. I write so that I can move on.

I am old enough to remember Big Chief tablets and fat pencils, handwriting exercises intended to improve my script, the ‘blue books’ we used for writing examinations (utilizing my flowing handwriting) and calligraphy a' la quill pen and inkwell. This last was taught in an effort to "preserve an ancient art." (I did not live prior to the invention of the printing press!)

Through the years, I cut my teeth on DOS, WordStar and Lotus. Admittedly, I struggled with the new ways and the old ways until, at long last, the typewriter became obsolete.

Of course the information superhighway arrived on the scene, and the progress of computer technology, along with the evolution of the computer itself and all its appendages, gizmos and ‘must haves’ nearly exceeds the speed of light. It certainly exceeds the speed of my brain which, left to its own devices, would still be happily ensconced in WordStar. But I am almost current now that I have Windows 95 and Word.

Because my son is extremely adept at understanding computers (and making them do whatever it is he wants them to do) my computer and appurtenant equipment move from old to new via Dr. Frankenstein. My son understands that his mother does not want to know how he does these things or how the computer works. When I push the ON switch, it should work. With software, though, I will experiment for hours and hours. Hand me a manual and it will end up in a drawer. Push the ON button and let the software teach me… I am happy. I have two hard drives and the Internet. What more could I need?

From time to time I also contemplate my Catholicism, or what is left of my Catholicism. In all fairness, my Catholicism is mixed in with my Episcopal forebears; I choose to believe I got the best of both.

I am old enough to remember holy cards with gilt edges, scapulars and medals of assorted ilk, incense, nuns who wore long black dresses, the rules about patent leather shoes and wearing slips with zippers in them under my navy blue pleated uniform skirt and my light blue blouse. I remember holy water, Benediction with incense and chants, relics, statues, JMJ letterhead and what it meant to be a Third Order Oblate. I remember all of the Baltimore Catechisms (1942 through 1954). I can tell you about most of the virgin-martyrs, the movie and book Indexes, retreats that scared any evident demons out of me, and daily Mass.

The only difference between myself and any other Catholic raised in the 40’s and early 50’s is that my Catholicism came to me through French and Latin, while my Episcopal heritage was in English, King James, Rite I version. In short, I was an Episcopalian in a Roman Catholic all-girls French finishing school run by European nuns. I was there from Kindergarten through Grade 12. Ten years of that time I was an Episcopalian who wanted to be a Catholic. The last two years I was a Catholic. Then I went out into the world and learned about the reality of life. I lasted, as a Catholic, until I was about 24.

I walked away, due to my failed first marriage and my intent to marry again. I walked away, because I believed myself ‘excommunicated’ by Rome or whatever entity and/or ‘rumor’ excommunicated people back in those days. The Episcopalians asked that we go marry elsewhere and then come back to them. "Boggle!," I said to both denominations, and I ‘excommunicated’ them from me.
Suffice it to say that I spent many years as wife and mother of three children. I was busy, happy, immersed in mothering and growing up along with the kids. But I avoided church and I buried all of my treasured memories way down deep. Occasionally I would contemplate them, in the silence of my heart. In 1975 the voice that lives in my head (which of course is God, by any of His names) said, "Come home!"

So I surfaced into the world of religion. In the course of time I discovered that Vatican II had occurred, that there were no more Baltimore Catechisms, that there was a "Dutch Underground," that the Latin Mass was gone, and finally, that Episcopal churches more closely resembled my old Catholicism than the new Catholicism did. I devoured the Articles of Vatican II in its entirety and I kept hearing "conscience, conscience, conscience."

Light, I decided, Pope John XXIII had used Vatican II to share the light. My heart sang (in Latin, of course, and it didn't really sing, it chanted): Magnificat anima mea Dominum… [My soul magnifies the Lord... (Luke 1:46)]

But not so, not so! Just as the original uncomplicated message of Christianity has been boxed, broadened, defined, redefined, underdefined, smothered, altered and amended, made lawful and unlawful, waged wars and more wars over, made legal and illegal and, in spite of itself, evolved into the reverse of what it was intended to be, so has the complicated message of Vatican II been interpreted in reverse.

Yes, I tried to salvage my Catholicism and I tried to restore my Episcopal heritage. My first marriage was successfully annulled even though I called the procedure off twice as it was happening. My second marriage, which by this time had produced three children and had lasted more than 14 years, was convalidated by both denominations. The annulment procedure and the learning experiences provided by this procedure were devastating to me. There was no evidence of the message of the Christ anywhere, but there was a ton of evidence of church authority. I tried very hard for another five years and finally one day, from inside my heart and in silence, I contemplated my buried treasures and God said, "Rest, now."

This is the year 2000. 25 years have passed (give or take one or two) since I last ventured forth into the world of organized religion. God suggested that it might be time to take another look.
I did. Among other encyclicals I located Ecclesia Dei. From there, it was an easy jump to the Latin Mass. I also located the Pius X Society. I learned too of the changes and schisms in the Episcopal Church. The Catholic Archdiocese in which I reside has a web page, which I read in detail. Unfortunately, the annulment forms I found there have not changed, not one word in 25 years.
God said, "I AM."

The joy and beauty of the Latin Mass recreated the wonderful, mystical feelings of my youth and I thanked God for allowing me to experience them again. In a lovely, old church (with two spires which are not twins) my Latin came back, completely, as did my French. I could remember and I could feel. The incense, the vigil lights, the statues, the vestments and the words, those glorious Latin words, were unchanged.

And yet there are changes. Or perhaps I have changed. The words, after all, are older than I am. I hear the messages in the epistle and in the gospel but my interpretation varies so dramatically with the words spoken in the sermon or homily that I find myself in conflict.
I have given those entities known as ‘authority’ in organized religion back to God. In so doing, I am free to keep my treasured memories of my Catholic past. I am free to keep her music and her beauty, her solemnity and her splendor and all the feelings that they create in me. I am free to experience her mysticism. In addition, I am free to wander through the Psalter and the Song of Songs and St. Luke. The words I hear are mine to keep, and they are simple. I am free to explore other religions, keeping only those values which are essential to me. Best of all, I am free to see the love and joy of God in others.

Sunday night, when I was listening to the silence in my heart and God revealed that every breath of life is sacrament, I again felt Magnificat anima mea Dominum…
On Monday, determined to retain Mary’s song of glory, I dug through several translations in four different sources to find the English equivalent to the Latin. None of them sounded right. Even St. Paul failed me. It is always difficult to translate feelings, even into English, with the written word. I wonder about the Hebrews and the original Greek and how they would sound, were I gifted enough to understand them.

On Tuesday, determined to retain what Latin I can recall, I began to record the words, through what is in the memory unit I call my brain and through what I own in musical arts, onto paper. I am rusty, but willing.

On Wednesday, having decided that the original Latin will outlast everything else that lasts at all, I decided to go into Word and begin my memory book.
Today, Thursday, it is painfully obvious to me that computer technology may, in time, control everything.

‘MAGNIFICAT ANIMA MEA DOMINUM’ I invoked as a title. Word went nuts! It underlined all four words in green squiggles. When I got that corrected, it went right back and underlined all four words in red squiggles. Red means (usually) that a word is not recognized. I typed every Latin word I know. I used eight single-spaced pages and I did not punctuate or use proper paragraph format. I just wrote.
I turned on spell check and I let it run. It went through all eight pages, word by word, and it let me have it in red and green. I could have used the printout for Christmas wrapping paper. Slowly and deliberately I pushed the "Add to" key. Immediately, Dominum was recognized. Then my software recognized Anima, and finally, all of those words, all eight pages of Latin phrases.

I turned on my edit program and began structuring for prose and for poetry and for something new that (I think) I invented called ‘psalming.’ Word doesn’t like ‘psalming’ but it recognizes it as a part of the way I say things. I have taught Word some Latin, but no grammar. It also recognizes French, and my personal dictionary is full to capacity.

I am happy! I have God and I have His Word. I have the Sacrament of Life to live and to share. I have what I believe to be this world’s most magnificent love song, and in Latin. My heart invokes: "Magnificat anima mea Dominum" and my soul, strengthened by the light, warmth, peace, joy and love that is God, hears Him in the silence.

Editor's Note: Ultimately, Goodnow left Catholicism because she had been abused by the Church. See her writings elsewhere on this site.

Facets of the Resurrection

Here I use fiction to understand the Resurrection by imagining the reaction of some of the witnesses. This has been read in congregations world wide.

I keep returning to this place and time. A large boulder, golden in the sun, stands beside the open entrance to a tomb.


I saw Him! At first, I couldn't believe my crying eyes, but He is alive! The man who saved my life has reclaimed His own!

I wanted to touch Him, I wanted to throw myself into His arms for joy, but he stopped me. He said He wants to meet us in the hill country north of here. And then He vanished.

But I did touch Him. Just before he went, I knelt and touched His sandal.

Now, I don't know what to think. The past few days have been so nightmarish, and now they are ended by this simple glory — He is alive! How can I tell the others so that they will believe me? May the Lord give my mouth the words to speak, and them the ears to hear.

I have to go. I have to see Him again. North, in the hill country.

— Mary Magdalen

The women are convinced that they saw Jesus alive this morning. I understand how people can see what they want to see, if they want it badly enough. Our hearts can lead our eyes to deceive.

Still, God knows I wish it were true! But I have to do more than see. I need to hear him, to touch him, before I can believe it.

If he hadn't killed himself, Judas would have died of heartbreak this morning, hearing the women.

— Thomas

I tell you I don't know what happened. I passed out, see. And no, I was not the worse for drink. I hadn't had a drop more than usual. I just passed out, and when I came to, this boulder was moved and so was he. He was gone. How the boulder got rolled, I don't know. The only new footprints about are small, like ladies' sandals, and not enough of 'em to roll that.

Anyway, he was dead, and now he's dead and gone. What's it to you?

— A Roman soldier

 Resurrection? Only the pagans believe in resurrections, and promiscuously so.

As for us, our prophets Enoch and Elijah were taken up, but they did not die. If and when they return, it will not be from the dead, because the Lord took them to Himself, rather than sending them to Sheol, the Place of the Dead.

If these rabble-rousers sincerely believe this falsehood, then not even the threat of death will stop them, and the hard choice I made in getting their leader executed may have been in vain. They could bring the wrath of our occupiers down upon us, ending the official toleration of our religion, destroying us as a people. Surrounded by enemies, occupied by enemies, and now enemies within.

May the Lord preserve us!

— Caiaphas, Head Priest

 My cowardly silence at his trial, and again when the Procurator offered to release him, helped his enemies kill him. The least I could do was to give him the tomb I had built for the day when I would leave this world. And now they say he is risen from the dead. That he just got up and walked out.

I feel as if the awful drama, in which I and so many others sacrificed his life to save ours, has been undone, taken back, blotted out. I feel forgiven.

I must find him, if I can, and beg forgiveness from him. Then this feeling will become real.

— Joseph of Arimithea

Now this is too much! The guy preached a false Torah, claiming that the relationship of all Israel to the Lord is as nothing — that we must each relate to the Lord as individuals. Ha! To be the Chosen People, we must be all together one people, Israel. His cult of hyper-individualism could destroy us from within!

His just punishment should have put an end to that. But now his followers claim that he is come back from the dead! These cultists will stop at nothing. I suppose it's my job, my calling, to knock them off their high horse.

— Saul of Tarsus, Pharisee

 My Roman masters will say that Rumor has run through the city, whispering that the seditious faith-healer, whom Pilate crucified, has sprung back to life as if he were one of their gods! Then they'll say that the Pantheon's too full to admit a barbarian whose wretched ghost couldn't keep his friends from scaring a drunken guard and stealing his corpse.

Perhaps I can convince the real powers of this world that if we eliminate his followers, the mob will take them for martyrs, and become even more restless. Best to leave them alone to make fools of themselves.

It is ironic that this man's followers now preach a message that is heresy to both my masters' religion, and my people's. I suppose it would be heretical to me, too, if I could still believe.
Ultimately, it will not matter. Time will snuff this out, as it does all things.

— Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Judea

 These Israelites all look alike and have the same names. On the one hand Jesus of Nazareth, who called himself the Son of Man, and apparently also the Son of God, and King of the Jews. On the other, Jesus Bar-Abbas, Jesus the Son of the Father. No wonder some people think the one executed has risen from the dead. They confuse him with the one I freed.

It seems there is no way to keep order among these confused, contradictory, and stubborn people. You do what they ask, and they hate what you do. Ye gods, shorten my stay here, and send me back to civilized Rome!

— Pontius Pilate, Roman Prefect of Judea

He is risen, the rumor says. Maybe he was God. Maybe the other rumor is true, that his followers stunned the guards and stole his body.

I say the proof will come with time. If he is risen, let him come back with power to free us from these foreigners. If we are not freed, then, risen or not, he is not the Messiah.

And whatever happens, May God have mercy on me, a sinner.

— Anonymous bystander

This changes everything! At first I thought the women were addled with grief, but then I went and saw the tomb myself.

No, the movement which experienced it's leader's death is not ended — because its leader is no longer dead, but lives! This movement is just beginning. And it will live because its leader has power over death itself. The movement shall live because we shall not die, but live. With Him! For surely, if He raised Lazarus, and raised Himself, He will not forget us?

Now I know that He is the Messiah! What wonderful things must come! I can hardly wait to go north tomorrow and find out!

— Peter

Facets of the Cross

 Here I use fiction to explore the meaning of the crucifixion by imagining the reactions of some of the witnesses. It has been read in congregations world wide.

I keep returning to this place and time. Under a darkening sky, the man hangs from a wooden stake, the intervals so long between wrenching gasps, that each one threatens to be his last.

Thus ends the career of another country bumpkin preacher. That's what they'll all say. God knows, I would have killed for him, or even died in his place. But I won't get myself or anyone else killed just to die along with him! That would be a fine thing — the leader dies, so let the led die, too.
The thing to do now is to gather the movement and get out of town until things quiet down. But how to keep the movement together without him is beyond me. Until now, I didn't realize how much a cult of personality this thing had become.

Even I thought he was practically God! Why does nothing happen? Why do the heavens not tear open and roll up like a scroll? Why does the world continue in the face of this?

Because in the final analysis, he's just a guy like any other guy. And like any other guy, he is overcome by death. God help him. God help us all.

— Peter

"You cannot crucify this man," I want to have said, "unless you crucify me with him." And maybe another would have said the same thing. And another, and so on, until the list of victims became so long and included so many influential people, that they couldn't have crucified any of us. But I was afraid no one else would join me, leaving me to sacrifice myself horribly, to no purpose. And so I left him. Only two justly condemned robbers share his misery. After him this day, they are the most innocent of us all.

"Give us Bar-Abbas!" the crowd had shouted, naming the prisoner they sought to free. As for Jesus, "Crucify him!" The voices calling to free Jesus were few, and quickly cowed into silence. How neatly we divided into those calling for his death, and those not resisting it. No, my gambit wouldn't have worked. But there is a gray zone between the persecutors — the Roman Governor, the Chief Priest and council, the angry crowd, the Roman soldiers — and the victim, Jesus. And I am in it — made less human because I did not stand up for what makes me human.

I stand with others like myself, and Peter, alternately a bully and a coward, who wounded the priest's slave when Jesus was arrested, and then lied about even knowing Jesus when someone asked him. But I can take no comfort from that. I am responsible for my own inaction. I want to feel that I am better than Judas, the betrayer. But without unresisting people like me, corrupted by our simple desire to survive, his betrayal would not have brought Jesus to this.

— Joseph of Arimithea

The man is guilty, so they say. If he is not God, he is guilty of making pronouncements that only God can make. If he is God, he is guilty of leaving his people oppressed by foreigners. If he were God, he would have changed all that by his coming. If he is God, what is he doing on this cross? So they say.
Life is hard, and death takes those we love until it comes for us. And our politics is like chicken soup — the scum rises to the top. If it is not God's will, then God is not omnipotent. If it is God's will, then God is not good. If this man is God, then maybe he is paying the price for our lives being so hard. Maybe this is God's way of being sorry for kicking us out of Paradise.
May God have mercy on this man, and finish him off quickly. May God have mercy on my soul.

— Anonymous bystander

It was perfectly democratic. The people were given their choice between this man and the other. They chose this one for death and the other for life. I did no more than their bidding. My hands are clean.

Both men were leading movements inimical to the peace, and opposed to civil society as we know it. Lest we be deemed to be too harsh in suppressing such uprisings before they reach the full flower of violence, we have developed the custom of setting one of their leaders free each year during their holiday. This year it was going to be the other man anyway, until this one came along. He seemed to me a dreamer, rather than a man of action. I would have preferred freeing him rather than the one the people wanted, because he seemed to me to be the lesser threat. The people must have thought so too, and in their perversity, seeking to undermine the civilization that gives them so much, they chose to have the more dangerous fellow released.

The people have spoken, and in Roman magnanimity I carried out their choice. May the powers protect us from the fellow I freed.

— Pontius Pilate, Roman Prefect of Judea

 I had no choice. We are facing extermination as a people. Only purity and unity of belief can keep us together. Yet this man tried to pollute our belief with subtle, seductive, but false teachings. Moreover, he undermined the authorities arrayed against us so publicly, that if we tolerated him, he would have brought their violence down upon us all.

No, it is better that this one man die, than the whole nation should perish. I would like to have protected him, but I had to think of all the people for which I am responsible. The essence of leadership is decision.

Besides, the whole council concurred with me. If I had been in error, surely someone would have dissented. And in any case, I had no choice.

— Caiaphas, Head Priest

He had it coming to him. He alienated everyone who could have helped him. You know, sometimes to get along, you have to go along. Telling people to their face that they committing the moral equivalent of adultery by merely looking at a pretty girl, or getting a divorce; telling honest people trying to make a living by changing profane money for sacred money that may be offered within the temple precincts that they are thieves; telling the priestly classes that they are children of hell — none of these is likely to win a man friends.

He goaded the powers that be until they got him. And he knew they would get him. He had it coming.

— Saul of Tarsus, Pharisee

 I never thought they would kill him. I only thought they would rough him up, and talk some sense into him. After all, he and his followers roughed people up in the temple courtyard to drive home his teachings. Most of his teachings are fine, but some of his teachings are wrong — he stresses individual morality and an individual relationship with God. But ever since Moses, we have recognized a communal relationship with God, with our community built upon our individual relations with one another. Therefore God gave us the Law, to guide us in our dealings with each other, and in our worship, so that we can continue to be the People of God. Because if we stop being the People of God, we will be no people at all, like the Lost Tribes.

I never meant to betray him, not like this.

— Judas Iscariot

 This man maintained that he himself was the truth. The priests claim they have the truth. My Roman masters claim their way is the true way. It is pretty clear that the truth is whatever some group claims it to be, or whatever some person can convince some group that it is.

What is the truth? There is no truth. There is just existence, and our groping our way through it until we, like this man, cease to exist. He thought he was the truth, with a capital T, like so many other demagogues, some benign, some murderous. Anyone so convinced of their own rightness can't be trusted with real power, and this man was becoming powerful, at least with the mob.

It's a bad end. But what else could have happened? This man fell afoul of the restoring forces that maintain stability in societies. That's all.

— Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Judea

He saved my life. They were going to beat me with stones right in the public square because they had found me with a man I did not know was already married. And he stopped them with just a few words.

"Let one among you who is without sin cast the first stone at her," he said. And the angry mob melted away.

Why can he not do that now? What evil is this that stops his mouth so that he cannot speak? That stops my mouth so that I cannot cry, "He saved my life?"

— Mary Magdalen

 Lately, I've begun to hate watching them die so slowly. It's bad enough to set 'em up — ye gods how they scream when you put a nail through each wrist and and the long one through both heels! But then you have to watch while the pain builds up everywhere — arms, legs, chest. Eventually they suffocate because they can't breathe like that after they finally pass out. After doing so many, you'd think I'd get used to it, but it gets worse each time. If it were up to me, I'd cut off their heads, like we do to condemned citizens.

This guy was a rabble-rouser, those two were robbers. It's all the same — barbarian troublemakers disturbing the gods' peace. If we didn't kill 'em as we catch 'em, they would eventually start new provincial wars, and then we would end up killin' way more people than these few. But I wish that it didn't take so long. You know, just get things over with. One justice for all, citizen and barbarian alike. It's too progressive for these times, I'd say, but someday it will happen. You wait and see.

— A Roman Soldier

Why I Believe There Are No Gods

by Rich Daniel

I'm not entirely satisfied with this yet. I've been accused of trying to define God out of existence. Let me think about it, and I'll get back to you. — RWD

The alt.atheism FAQs define "weak atheism" as a lack of belief in the existence of gods, while "strong atheism" is a positive belief in the non-existence of gods. I am a strong atheist.

First of all, before we can talk about whether gods exist, we have to define the meaning of the word, or at least characterize it by some minimal set of attributes. Obviously, if you say that a god is anything that anyone worships, then gods do exist (as idols, for instance). This is not a useful definition in our context.

Many people claim that god is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. In my opinion, we have very good evidence that this kind of god does not exist. If it did, there would be a lot less suffering in the world. Most theists object on the grounds that either (a) we deserve to suffer because we are sinful, or (b) the suffering is for our own good -- a learning experience (with the "benefits" usually reserved for the afterlife). The first objection is easily shown to be false by the fact that innocent children and animals suffer. The second is a little trickier, but I think the enormous amount of apparently gratuitous suffering in the world is strong evidence against the idea. What exactly are we supposed to learn from watching a loved one with Alzheimer's slowly lose his dignity and identity? Or from the existence of parasites which consume their host from the inside out, carefully leaving the vital organs for last.

In fact just the idea of omnipotence by itself is problematical. Can God make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it? Most theists get around this by saying that God can only do what is logically possible, but to my mind this means that omnipotence is an ill-defined word. Certainly Christians tend to claim that their God can do things which on closer examination seem to fall into the heavy rock category. For instance, God supposedly created beings with free will, and yet he somehow maintains control of the universe. If you pray for something (and truly believe, and it's not something bad) God is supposed to arrange things so it comes to pass, but with free will in the picture, it seems impossible to arrange this, even with perfect foreknowledge.

What about a god that doesn't have the big three omni-attributes? Well, my own personal minimalist definition of god is an intelligent being that is not subject to physical law or any analog thereof. If there were an eternally existent intelligent being that created our universe and designed our laws of physics, but was itself subject to some kind of physical laws, then I would not call that being a god.

In science we make the hypothesis that the universe behaves with regularity; that there is a set of physical laws which are true in all space and all time. (I believe Newton was the first person to come up with the idea that the planets were subject to the same laws as matter on Earth.) This idea has held up under extraordinary scrutiny, from the reactions that occur in very distant stars to the events during the first milliseconds of the Big Bang. Many scientists have speculated that other universes might exist with different physical laws, but if this were shown to be the case, they would immediately start looking for some more abstract set of laws which would be true for all universes.

The observed regularity of the universe is evidence (though not proof) that if a creator did exist, he would be subject to some kind of physical law, and therefore he would not be a god by my definition.
What about a tricky god that for some reason does not want us to have any evidence that he exists? While such a god is not logically impossible, I don't take this any more seriously than solipsism. Neither idea is useful for making predictions or even for explaining known phenomena, so Occam's Razor eliminates them.

Bear in mind that proof in the mathematical sense cannot be obtained for almost any fact of daily life which we take for granted. What we strive for is evidence. And in my opinion the evidence is overwhelmingly against the existence of gods.

Editor's Note: Richard W. Daniel, former Skeptic in Residence at VCBC, committed suicide in the early fall of 2000 A.D. In his memory, I repost here his defense of Strong Atheism which he sent me from his now defunct website, and with which I profoundly disagree. Here he speaks from his own experience as a sufferer from affective (emotional) disorders, which alter the state of one's "soul." It is ironic that when Rich and I were in school together, I (now Christian) was an atheist and he was a Christian Fundamentalist. See also Rich's: Problems with Christianity

Problems with Christianity

by Rich Daniel

Here are a few of the reasons I think Christianity is false. Note that some of these apply only to rabid fundamentalist versions of Christianity, while others are more general. — RWD

Neurophysiology makes a strong case for the non-existence of anything like an immaterial soul. If personality resides in the soul, then how can drugs and brain damage affect it?

What is it that makes people believe in God at all? It seems to me that gods were invented by men to explain things they didn't understand. But we understand a lot more today (though of course the frontiers of science are always speculative). Given that it's impossible to have an explanation for everything (because then that explanation would demand another explanation — "But Mommy, why is it that way?"), why not just take the universe as we find it, rather than positing some incredibly complex cause for which we have no evidence?

Science has shown the stories of creation and the flood to be false. (See the talk.origins FAQs.) I'm aware that many Christians have no problem accepting evolution, but for me it demolishes the most important argument for the existence of God. Not to mention the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible.

Why was "demon-possession" so common in Jesus' time, but hardly mentioned at all in the Old Testament, and apparently non-existent today? Modern medicine seems to have transformed demons into things like epilepsy and schizophrenia.

There is no justification for eternal torture in hell. Unremitting revenge debases those who practice it. (I have no problem with God snuffing people out of existence, but hell as described in the Bible is sadism.)

How can people be happy in heaven with loved ones in hell? Some say that God will take away their memories, but there are at least three problems with this: (1) this would be a huge violation of our rights; (2) by so doing God would tacitly admit that hell is wrong; and (3) in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, everyone's memories were intact.

Christianity asserts that more than 50% of the people in the world will go to hell. ("Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way that leadeth unto salvation, and few there be that find it.") This belief is morally repugnant. Surely an all-powerful God could have set up something different.

In the Old Testament, God ordered the genocide of the Canaanites, including infants. (In some cases he allowed them to keep the young virgin women alive — Numbers 31:17-18.) How can this be reconciled with the idea of a just and merciful God?

The Bible does not plainly and unambiguously tell us the single most important thing we supposedly have to know: how to be saved. As evidence, I submit the many Christian sects which disagree heatedly on this point. In one place it says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." In another, it says, "Faith without works is dead." A few sects believe that if you're not baptized you'll go to hell.

The plan of redemption makes no sense. There are several theories about why Christ had to die, and all of them are unintelligible.

The stories of the resurrection are not consistent.

It is unfair that some people (Thomas, for example) should get convincing physical proof of miracles while the rest of us are supposed to believe on hearsay.

Why did God design the world so that some animals have to eat meat? Why did he create parasites? Why do innocent animals suffer?

Why did God create so many species only to allow most of them to become extinct before man even existed?

Matt. 16:27-28: "For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." Jesus thought the end of the world was coming within one generation.

There is no good reason to believe the canonical books of the Bible while rejecting the apocrypha. The canon was only gradually agreed upon, and finally formalized by a vote. Early church fathers quoted extensively from apocrypha.

Most people believe the religion of their parents. If one and only one religion is true, why did God not make it obvious to all nations alike?

Even if there is a creator of the universe, why does he want to be worshipped? God is an egomaniac?
If God wanted us to have free will, why does he threaten us with hell? It isn't free will if you've got a gun at your head.

Romans 9:15-23 says that God deliberately causes sinners to sin. (For instance, he hardened Pharoah's heart.)

There is evidence inside the Bible itself that much of the Old Testament was not written until the time of Josiah. (II Kings 22:8+, in which the book of the law is conveniently "found" in the temple, and contains some laws that apparently nobody had ever heard of before).

Editor's Note: Richard W. Daniel, former Skeptic in Residence at VCBC, committed suicide in the early fall of 2000 A.D. In his memory, I repost here his critique of Christianity that he sent me from his now defunct website, and with which I profoundly disagree. Here he speaks from his own experience as a former Christian Fundamentalist, and a sufferer from affective (emotional) disorders, which alter the state of one's "soul." See also Rich's: Why I Believe there are no Gods