Faith

Odin’s Eye – My Faith as It Stands Today

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

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This will normally appear on Thursday; that is Thor’s Day but this opening week of The Grey Wayfarer it will be Friday; that is Freya’s Day. Odin’s Eye, as a post, is about faith, religion, theology and spirituality. Mostly is all of those things as they stand in my life and how I relate to these things. My struggles with religion and faith are pretty much a constant. For most of my life I have struggled with them. My faith as a Christian literally has teetered on the brink several times in my life and only recently have I decided to be truly honest about it and walk away from the religion known as Christianity. For the last few months I have been what I truly am, which is a Deist, a Humanist and a Pagan. More on all three of these as Odin’s Eye continues in the weeks ahead, but for now know that I am no longer a Christian and it has very little to do with recent events.

My Walking Away From Christianity

I want to change people’s perception here about what happened about my faith, because I have been accused of walking away from Christianity because of what Christians have done toward me recently and my observations of Christians. Well, I would be the first to say that has something to do with it, but it was not where the struggle began and one should not look at the followers of a religion to assess whether or not a religion is true. The truth of a religion should be tested in its claims and whether or not such claims can be rationally verified. Experience is no good here because I can tell you every religion has people experience something that ‘verifies’ the religion to the one who had the experience. History is no test either. History will show you that religions all make historical claims but are they verified by outside sources and multiple witnesses? Also, just because something is historical, does not mean that it automatically reveals who God, the gods or the divine reality truly is. Nope we are left with one tool to assess truth and that is reason. There are few things that sets humanity above the rest of the animal kingdom and one of those is the use of reason to assess truth.

I have spent a long time as a Christian trying to mesh its claims with rational investigation and I now can say that some of the claims of Christianity have no rational proof for their claims of truth. Because of this, you take a lot in Christianity hoping it is true, but not really knowing if it is true. Over time through various studies I developed four major objections to the theology of Christianity, for which I could not rationally come to good conclusions. It was these that caused me to walk away from faith, nothing more and nothing less.

Now recent events where Christians have acted toward me in very non-Christian manners may have caused me to walk away faster, but in truth I was already showing my backside to the Christian faith long before then. Not trying to be insulting there, just facing facts. My leaving the faith is my own decision and I am blaming no one for it. There really isn’t ‘blame’ here; just a decision to be honest where I stood. I don’t perceive of my walking away from Christianity as a tragedy from my point of view, although I am sure many Christians would see it as such. To me, I simply became more honest and truly myself. I stopped hiding my failures behind notions of sinfulness and started facing them honestly as a man should face them in this world. I didn’t change, so much as I found my true self. I am a rational human being and there are four things that I cannot reconcile with being rational human being and being a Christian.

My Four Theological Objections:

  1. The Bible cannot be rationally verified to be God inspired. The Bible makes a claim to be inspired but it never proves it and there is no empirical proof that the Bible is any different from any other book in the world. If you believe the Bible is divinely inspired, you have no evidence for it, you just believe it to be true.
  2. Sin is a completely man-made made up concept. There is nothing in the world that tells you are a sinner. Some preacher came along and told you that you were a sinner and then offered you a cure. But let’s be honest there is no person alive who hasn’t done something they regret or was ‘bad’, so any snake oil salesman can play into that and say you are a sinner and then sell you the cure. They really don’t prove sin as a concept really exists or that it is the problem you actually have. They just reinforce your assumptions. They don’t prove those assumptions are true, they just play on them.
  3. God’s answer to sin is to torture his only son and kill him, this is an answer that doesn’t make a bit of rational sense as God could easily just forgive us without all this. Either the God of the Bible is a sadistic fuck or not too smart if this is the best he could come up with to solve the ‘sin problem’. There is the additional problem of how much of a sacrifice and torture is it, if you know with certainty that you are going to be healed from all injuries and rise from the dead in the end?
  4. The Bible presents God’s justice as a little suspect, especially when you consider the doctrine of Hell. I mean you get all eternity roasting in a fire because you did a few bad things. I mean we might understand with people like Stalin and Hitler, but grandma who never hurt a fly but never accepted the gospel of Christ because she didn’t buy it, gets the same punishment as them? Even the Bible’s own standard of justice makes this suspect – ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ I mean making God mad is such a high crime that I must spend eternity in hell for it? How is that the punishment fitting the crime? Yeah, I could go all day. If you don’t consider this a problem, you never have really considered the doctrine of Hell or it’s implications for those you love that have not accepted the gospel.

I spent many years trying to reconcile these things and couldn’t. Now either this speaks to my lack of ability to do so, or they are just not reconcilable because the whole thing is made up by humans for whatever reasons. I am not saying I am infallible but I have asked my questions of some of the smartest people in Christianity I know and you know what their answer is? The same as I can get from any preacher – ‘you just have to take some things on faith.’ Yeah, so you’re saying faith is a cop-out to any question too hard for you to answer? Sorry, that is no longer acceptable to me. If Christianity is genuine and true, it should be able to answer my questions. That is something I have maintained since I was twelve.

Personal Stuff

Yeah, there is personal stuff too. But that isn’t my main reasons – they are listed above. So where I stand each week will be reflected on in Odin’s Eye. It was not however all the personal stuff that cause this ‘crisis’ of faith. Rather the personal stuff was probably caused by my struggles in finding and accepting the truth about myself and where I really was because of these four things. Uncertainty breeds uncertainty and in that uncertainty shit happens.

Faith:

I believe in something out there. I am a deist, not an atheist. I think atheism and deism actually can get along because we’re both saying ‘ we can’t really know’. The difference is, I think it’s just as bold a claim to say ‘there is no God’ as there is to say ‘there is one and we have him (or her) all figured out and here is our religion for you’. Sorry mankind is a little too ignorant to make such universal claims either way.

Religion:

Yeah, it’s all man’s attempt to understand God. But like all things man does, it is prone to mistakes and error. Can you find truth in religion? Yep, but I don’t think any of them are The Truth or give us THE Truth. For that we need to turn to reason as our way of finding the truth.

Theology:

If we are going to understand God, I think revealed religion is more of a problem than a cure. We have to conclude that if we are going to understand the Creator, we are going to have to look at his creation including mankind to figure him out. Not the specifics of what certain men have written that says He, She or They are a certain way. The Creator gave us reason, not religion. Perhaps we should use it.

Spirituality:

I still meditate on these things and think about them. I just haven’t made a lot of ‘progress’ by not writing about them. Time to change that by doing so each week in Odin’s Eye.

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!

A Skald’s Life – Self Virtues – Selfishness is Good for Everyone

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

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“You’re being selfish” is an expression people might hear often when they are trying to do something for themselves.  When I look at the virtues of Discipline, Perseverance and Fidelity though its selfishness with a purpose.  All the virtues have an individual independence flavor to them but these three seem to be more inward focused with outward fruit if you understand me.  The Foundational Virtues are about all things.  The Business Virtues are outward focused with inward benefit but Self Virtues are inward focused with outward benefit.

Being focused on yourself is not necessarily selfish but if even if it is, as Ayn Rand points out in her book The Virtue of Selfishness, being selfish has a lot more benefits to others than you first realize. Those who accuse people of being selfish are often selfish themselves trying to get someone else to do something for them that benefits them.  A person who is self-reliant and focused on self does do one thing for everyone else – he is not a burden to them and their efforts.  By being self-focused, you at least don’t drag others down by being a leach on their prosperity or stealing people’s’ time, efforts or money.  There is a right kind of selfishness and it involves the Nine Noble Virtues and in particular Discipline, Perseverance and Fidelity.

These are Self Virtues in my mind because there is only one person who can engage them fully – self (aka me).  I am the only one who can be disciplined.  I am the only one who can get back up after every failure.  I am the one who must be faithful.  All these virtues depend on my decisions but the ones that have the most effect by realizing this is these three.

Discipline:

“Discipline is the willingness to be hard on oneself first and then if needed help with the development with others, so that greater purposes may be achieved.”

Discipline dots my life personally a lot.  I have my morning routine – get up, stretch, breakfast, pills and supplements, shower, shave, get dressed. I have my daily stuff – write a post, study, read, relax.  I have my marriage stuff – talk and cuddle for at least a half hour a day. Some discipline in my life isn’t every day – I go to work when I am scheduled, I go to class, I hit the gym to lift four days a week,  My diet is a discipline that hits me several times a day.  The point is discipline for me is pretty high and all of it is where I push myself a little further than the time before.  Without this continual being hard on myself and making myself do the right things, I become less.  With it I become more.

If I have a goal here it is to find all aspects of life where I can be disciplined, I do it.  If I ever get into a position of leadership again, discipline for whoever I am leading will be a center piece of my leadership.

Perseverance:

“Perseverance is the ability to stand up and return from defeat and failure”

I do this pretty naturally but there are times I want to quit. Everyone has their limits but; in the end, you have to stand back up and keep moving forward.  It’s not how hard you can hit life, it how hard of a hit you can take from life, get back up and keep moving forward.  I am paraphrasing Rocky Balboa, but he is right.

Goal – Keep getting up after every failure or defeat.  It is that easy to say.

Fidelity: 

“Fidelity is the will to be loyal to one’s Gods and Goddesses, to one’s Folk, to one’s self, and loyalty to one’s friends was as valued as highly as loyalty to one’s family.”

Fidelity is a struggle for me.  But not where most people think.  My marriage – yes.  I am working on that.  Family – no, not so much as I am loyal to all my kids, grand kids and my mother.  Faith – that’s a deeper question of who I should be loyal to.  The virtue says I should stay loyal to them, which I agree, I just want to make sure I am loyal to something that is actually there.  Friends – Yep, the one’s I still have left absolutely.  My country – yeah, the country of The Constitution of the United States – yep.  The bastard nation that people in power have created these days – nope.

No, those are not the real struggle: the real problem is staying loyal to myself and what I need and want for myself.  It’s hard with all these other things pulling at you, but it if you don’t handle the stuff you want and need, and guide that by reason and wisdom you are going to burn yourself out to the point you won’t be able to be loyal to others.  I can speak from experience on this one.

You really choose what you are loyal to in the end,  But once you choose, you stick with it unless the other side shows itself disloyal.

Goal – Place my fidelity in things I trust because they have shown to be loyal to me. Yep, I believe fidelity is a response as well as an action.

Summary: 

I plan on part of my life being the good kind of selfish. I plan on disciplining myself to be a better person.  I will keep getting up and I will be loyal to that I have chosen to be loyal to as long as it shows loyalty to me.

The last line actually is pretty true for all the virtues.  I mean there is great discussion about whether one needs to be truthful with someone who has shown themselves to be deceptive.  I don’t think so.  I also don’t think I should have to show hospitality to those who have not shown me hospitality in return. Virtues are only truly valuable if they are freely given and received at the same time. Otherwise those who choose to live outside of virtue and live rather in the realm of dishonor do not have to be honored in return.

Goal List:

  1. Be positive about my future
  2. Act with courage at the right time
  3. Pursue knowledge, wisdom and truth at all times
  4. Work to be self-reliant by finishing school and building my career
  5. Work with enjoyment of work itself both in school and my job.
  6. Be ready to be hospitable to those who truly need it.
  7. Apply discipline to every aspect of life that it can be applied.
  8. Keep getting up after every defeat or failure.
  9. Be loyal to those who have been loyal to me,

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!