Week in Review (October 7-13)

Life in Six Square Miles, What Would Tyler Durden Do, Charles Darwin as Your Spiritual Counselor, and Did Vanderbilt Defeating Alabama Prove the Existence of God

It was a big week for Amy and I. We moved from Nampa, Idaho to Thetis Island off British Columbia for a six-month stay. Back in July, after speaking at ORTCON24 (Open and Relational Theology Conference) at the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, we started investigating the possibility of renting our home for six months in order to travel abroad. A Canadian friend at the ORTCON24 conference suggested we consider Canada, and Amy researched and found the perfect spot on Thetis Island. A retired couple who live there were leaving to Hawaii for six months, and it provided the perfect opportunity for us.

Don’t ask me how we managed to pull all this off in a couple months. We got our home ready to rent, purchased a used trailer, loaded it up with six-months of supplies, and after traveling by land and sea, we (Amy, myself, and two dogs) made it to this 6-square-mile island in the Pacific Ocean with 350 people. It took a lot of coffee, bungee cords and a few mental breakdowns… but we made it! This is my first Substack “Week in Review” from Thetis Island, where we are celebrating the Canadian Thanksgiving tomorrow.

Perhaps this sounds a bit impulsive, but Amy and I have been discussing for some time our feelings of weariness from the frenetic American way of life we let ourselves get sucked into. In our time away, we hope to achieve a defining life reset. We have significant writing projects we have earmarked to complete during this six-month stay. I have two books I’ve been nursing along and Amy has a doctoral dissertation to complete.

I should acknowledge best-selling author and acclaimed columnist

Kirsten Powers

who helped confirm through her writing that maybe we weren’t crazy for making this move. We read her article, The way we live in the United States is not normal: Why we are buying land in Italy and have followed her pilgrimage from the US to Italy, which she most recently discussed in her article, Italians Are Teaching Me About Rest: What many Americans call 'rest' is actually 'recovery'.

Practically speaking, island life is much different, which includes:

• Ferry rides to the main island for grocery shopping

• Managing a wood fireplace as the primary heating source

• Using a compost system for food waste (no garbage disposal)

• Maintaining a minimal ecological footprint

But I don’t want to imply this is like living on Gilligan’s Island. There’s an awesome island coffee shop, eating pub, small library, scenic hiking trails, sea kayaking and a farm market. We have loved living here so far. Everyone is kind, helpful and neighborly. Island folk meet at the Community Center every Wednesday for a soup lunch. We plan to join an island Canadian Thanksgiving meal tomorrow. The below picture is from our back deck:

Obviously, history is filled with people who left their daily life and routine to rethink the trajectory of their lives.

Henry David Thoreau wrote:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

There are several things worth noting about these words:

1. The requisite to go “to the woods”

It was necessary for Thoreau to let go of his attachments to the life he was living in order to investigate and discover that another life was possible. Most people are so thoroughly vested in the scripts, expectations, and demands of the status quo that they are blind to the possibility of living life differently. It's not necessary to move to the woods, but you must step out of the inertia of business as usual to gain new perspective.

2. The challenge to “live deliberately”

Most people are living by default, droning along in accordance with beliefs, mindsets, attitudes, scripts, expectations and narratives that have been programmed into their head. In contrast, we have the capacity to live deliberately - that is, to live consciously and intentionally. One doesn't drift into a life true peace, meaning and happiness. We must choose and cultivate this path deliberately.

3. The need to “front the essential facts of life”

Most people buy into all kinds of fantasies and illusions in order to deny, escape or distract oneself from the essential facts of life and the true nature of reality. For example, many people adopt a victim mentality or blame others for their unhappiness, rather than take personal responsibility for the reality of their lives. Fronting the essential facts of life also involves being brutally honest with yourself about your chronic unhappiness and disharmony, and your misplaced dependencies, schemes and attachments to alleviate it.

4. The regret of discovering “I had not lived”

Hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades fly by, and suddenly we find ourselves nearing the end of our life's journey. This is not the time to discover you had not embraced the gift of life fully, wholly, courageously and spartanly. Knowing the fragility and impermanence of our mind-body lived human experience, we are challenged to recommit each day to living life wholly, and realize our fullest potentialities and possibilities.

As Tyler Durden said, “We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.”

As a reminder:

Your life won’t last forever.

No one knows how much more life they have to live.

You can’t get it back.

Don’t make the mistake of saying “one day”.

Swing for the fences and courageously live the life you imagine.

It won’t be easy.

It will be worth it.

Start today.

Begin right now.

This Week in Writing

My first published article of the week was: Is eternal life real? Why Jesus and Christianity disagree on what happens when you die.

In the past I have written about the afterlife, including articles about the Christian doctrines of Heaven and Hell:

Is Hell Real? Can a Christian NOT believe in Hell?

Does Heaven Exist? Did religion get Heaven wrong?

In my view, traditional Christian teachings about the afterlife are problematic because they rest on a flawed foundation of a misconstrued understanding of “eternal life”. Some of the themes in my eternal life article include:

• How “eternal life” according to Jesus and Christianity are two totally different things

• Why a Christian and Atheist can both have eternal life

• How traditional Christian theology backed itself into a corner with its convoluted explanation of eternal life

• An alternative biblical understanding of “eternal life” that doesn't require traditional Christian theism

This week I also continued my series, “The Case for Unifying Science and Religion”. So far, I have published:

Part One: WWSD? What Would (Carl) Sagan Do?

Part Two: Can you believe in Darwin and Jesus?

This week I published, Part Three: Did Science Discover the Immortal Gene? The title is based upon something Richard Dawkins said in an interview about his best-selling book, The Selfish Gene.

Here are some questions I am addressing in this series:

• Can a basis for morality be found within science?

• Does science establish absolutes worthy of basing our lives upon?

• Is meaning and purpose an innate component of a scientific understanding of life and the universe?

• Does science provide the necessary mindsets and tools to cultivate a life of meaning, well-being and liberation?

• Are there scientific explanations for what happens when you die that are satisfying?

• Does science offer a unitive and inspiring understanding of all things?

• Can a meaningful felt-relationship with life and the universe be experienced through the findings of science?

My aim in this series is to make a case for science and religion to be allies, which likely requires some people to understand religion better and others to understand science better. I’ve spent much of my life seeking to better understand both. I wish every religious person would read Darwin’s The Origin of Species, and every scientist would read The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

I thought I understood “religion” properly with my theological degree and career in Christian ministry. For many years, tens of thousands of people looked to me as the religious expert. The best thing I ever did to better understand religion was to leave it. My deconstruction process took me into fields such as philosophy, biblical criticism, philosophy of religion and psychology of religion, which reshaped how I thought of religion with much more depth and nuance. Meanwhile, my investigation of the natural sciences, and social sciences became a new passion of mine, which has never waned.

Here are a few books worth reading if you are interested in exploring Darwinian evolution and its implications for cultivating a life of deep meaning:

• On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

• Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life by Daniel Dennett

• The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity by

  Bobby Azarian

• A Universal Learning Process (The Evolution of Meaning) by

  Brendan Graham Dempsey

• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

I’ll be publishing Part Four this upcoming week, which will be exploring the following question:

Does the search for knowledge and truth in science lead to religion, and does the search for knowledge and truth in religion lead to science, and when they meet, then what?

This Week in Pictures

Yes, that’s a goalpost - the one that Vanderbilt students tore down, carried down Broadway Avenue in Nashville and tossed in the Cumberland River after their historic victory last Saturday, knocking off #1 Alabama. Having lived for over 25 years in Nashville, I know how difficult it has been for the Commodores in the SEC. They deserved a shout-out.

Thanks David Hayward for another compelling cartoon. In my view, Jesus would not have endorsed and likely be horrified by the bulk of traditional Christian theology. As I mention in my book Inner Anarchy, contrary to popular belief, Jesus did NOT:

• Believe in the God of religion

• Start Christianity

• Ask people to worship him

• Subscribe to the doctrine of original sin

• Believe in the existence of eternal Hell

• Create a theological orthodoxy

• Teach that women are subservient to men

• Believe that humankind was separated from God

Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris greets a child during a campaign event at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin. These days I keep up with what’s unfolding in the US presidential election through the Substack pages of:

Heather Cox Richardson

,

Dan Rather

,

Robert Reich

and

The Bulwark

.

The Callanish Standing Stones, cut from three-billion-year-old rocks, rise from the Earth on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. According to one myth or tradition, the Callanish Stones were petrified giants who would not convert to Christianity. Those missionaries to Scotland weren’t playing around!

Worth the Read

This week I found the following Substack articles intriguing and worth the read. I feel like I was a better human being for having read them.

• In Defense of Spirituality by

  Ulysses
  /
  Andrew Cote
  caught my eye as I’ve recently been writing about the relationship between science and religion. He writes, “For thousands of years spirituality played a major role in peoples lives. Today we live in a scientific age and most discard spirituality as superstitious. Can it be saved?”

• Pilgrims in the Machine
  published a worthwhile piece, The Search for Stillness in a Mad, Mad World. The article points out, “Cultivating quiet is difficult, not just because we need to disrupt our usual routines, but because the experience of quiet itself can be uncomfortable. Research suggests that people would prefer not to sit in quiet and think, even for as briefly as 6 to 15 minutes.”

• Cadell Last
  continues to write on the subjects of “Christian Atheism” and “death of God theology”. I sat down with Cadell on his Philosophy Portal Podcast to discuss these topics. I realize the terms “Christian Atheism” and “death of God theology” (sometimes called “radical theology”) may sound a bit absurd or extreme, but they have long-standing theological traditions, which interpret the significance of Jesus in significantly different ways than traditional Christian theology. If you want to explore these topics further, a few articles I have published are: The Death of God in Jesus; A New Theology: 10 Failings of Theological Scholarship in the Modern World; and The Perfect Murder. Also, my friends Cadell Last, Peter Rollins and others will be teaching a course on Christian Atheism, which you can learn more about here. I'll keep you posted on an upcoming event in Belfast (Wake Festival) at which I'll be joining Cadell Last, Peter Rollins and others to discuss these topics.

• My friend and theologian

  Thomas Jay Oord
  who suffered a church trial and excommunication for his published theological LGBTQ+ views wrote a compelling Substack article, Six Ideas that Helped My Queer Trial. Tom is the founder of the Center for Open and Relational Theology, which offers alternative ways of understanding God outside of traditional Christian theology.

• Author and friend

  Julie Ferwerda
  wrote a piece titled, The Biggest Fear During Religious Deconstruction in which she discusses the leaving-religion fear going off the deep end. She writes:

What they’re really saying is, “I am not used to thinking for myself, or figuring out what I feel or believe, or what I want to create in this world without the clear guidance and intense peer pressure of my old tribe and worldview. All these years—these decades—I’ve been trained, contained, and domesticated by rules, expectations, statements of faith, dogmas, certainties, guilt, shame, mind control techniques, and fear-mongering. What if I can’t hack all this freedom? What if I come unhinged and end up in a toga-wearing, pot-smoking, free-love, hippy-swinging commune somewhere in Utah, reciting mantras under a lotus tree? What if I become…gulp…a New Ager, or an atheist? What if I self-destruct?”

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In Summary

• From what I’ve heard the only recent “crime” on Thetis Island was some guy who took someone’s axe. But it turns out he only temporarily borrowed the axe because he was broke and he returned it after use. He still asked for forgiveness because the folks were not at home when he took it.

• Both Henry David Thoreau and Tyler Durden wanted to live life more fully, but going to the woods may be a much better way of seeking it than starting a fight club.

• My aim in the science and religion series is to make the case for science and religion to be allies, which likely requires some people to understand religion better and others to understand science better.

• The most convincing argument for the existence of God has now become Vanderbilt defeating Alabama.

“Only one man ever understood me, and he didn't understand me.”

- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel