Tag Archives: Jesus

On God and The Universe

18 Jan

By Lanny Morgnanesi

My mind of late is wandering into dangerous places, forcing theories and ideas into my consciousness that lack convention, precedent, and true understanding. I can only off load them by sharing. And so, I write … about God and the universe.

Let’s begin with something simple: monotheism, the belief that God is singular.

I appear somewhat alone in my view that Christianity, especially Catholicism, is not monotheistic. This contention is more about the choice of words than about actual beliefs. If Christians decided they were pantheistic, it wouldn’t change much.

Supporting my argument is, or are, The Trinity – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That’s three, not one. The claim, of course, is they are one. But I see three, and never understood the logic of this division that is not supposed to be a division. Next there is the glorification of Mary, the mother of Jesus. In visions, she has appeared to people and passed along messages from God. Indeed, people pray to her and ask that she intercedes with God. If you can tell God what to do, and God does it, well, you’re pretty much a God yourself, even if a minor one, like the Greek Muses, or Iris or Eros. Next are the 10,000 or so saints believed to have performed miracles, who are prayed to daily and who watch over and guard particular villages, peoples, and professions.

Admittedly, that’s a lot of Gods, and it seems we like lots of Gods, even while insisting there is only one. The Jews haven’t fallen into this trap, especially not the tempting one where God takes on flesh. They only go so far as a burning bush. In early Islam, there was an attempt to deify the pre-Islamic goddesses known as The Three Sisters (Al-Lat, Al-‘Uzza, and Manat). In the so-called Satanic Verses of the Koran, they were said to be daughters of Allah. But these verses were later attributed to the devil and retracted, the sisters were sent packing, and Islamic monotheism was restored.

So it seems the multi-God legacy of ancient pagans, the Greeks, the Romans, and others remain firmly with us, even if we refused to admit it. While I can see the attractiveness of having a host of available entities for helping one navigate life, I accept a single creator, one powerful, governing force. I don’t want to use the terms he, him, or her, in reference to God, because I’m certain it is an entity without sex, nothing like an anthropoid, not someone we will eventually meet and gaze upon, and absolutely well beyond our elemental comprehension. We all would like to know God better, and Christians do through the human-form of Jesus Christ. In fact, they seem much more comfortable, much more absorbed with The Son than The Father, and that’s understandable. We know and understand humans but not an all-encompassing, unseen cosmic power.

I’m different, as I have suggested. I prefer the all-encompassing cosmic power. In my view, Jesus, as his story is told through scripture, limited his God-like self while on Earth. His main mission was to forgive the sins of man, save him, and grant him eternal life. Considering the vastness of the universe, with 2 trillion galaxies, and the mind-bending, unanswered question of why we are part of it, you might think Jesus would have talked a little about this, telling us what are job is, if we are alone among the stars, whether or not he will visit other planets, and what we will do in heaven, aside from worship, which, for all eternity, could get monotonous.  If he chose not to explain such things, why wasn’t he at least asked?

As a God, Jesus could have done so much more to help us understand our purpose, our place, and our incredible surroundings.

As limited as his role on Earth may have been, the teachings of Jesus were enough to build a global religion. And whether it is monotheistic or pantheistic, it really doesn’t matter. For me, the problem with religion does not involve the number of gods, but rather the fact that the tenets and precepts are tightly packaged and handed to us by other men. Those men, for the most part, have done a good job, but I am cursed with the need to use my own brain to establish my own tenants and precept.  I’m willing to borrow, but often I can’t.

In this regard, I may share something with Galileo, the great astronomer often called the father of modern science.. He said, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

And I haven’t.

If I may impose on the reader and indulge myself, I’d like to share the results of my thinking, my so-called religion, which, I fully admit, is not dogma but sheer speculation. It’s the best I can come up with.

I don’t claim truth because my first proposition is that God is 99 percent unknowable. That is where I start. I start, basically, saying we can’t know, we don’t know, we probably were not meant to know, and we don’t have the capacity to understand. The truth, if it were revealed, would make no sense to us, like a complex mathematical equation would make no sense to a chimp. This is what I maintain.

I acknowledge the gifted prophets, who are so tied into the universe that they grasp the one percent know ability of God, and attempt to teach us. I respect scripture and its overarching message, and I believe in one God.

My second major precept is that God is perfect and acts perfectly. My God doesn’t need extra work and doesn’t do extra work. My God gets it right the first time. This is much more controversial than you might imagine. In my thinking, the perfect, unknowable God created the universe – whatever the universe is – in the exact way God wanted it, and that it does exactly what God wants it to do. So … God does not need to watch over us and intervene into our lives, nor does God need to course correct the universe. It’s like a perfect machine, doing what it is designed to do, and doing it perfectly. If you lose your car keys, or get sick, praying to God won’t help. The machine can’t hear you and won’t change for you or anyone. It’s mostly likely unattended

We can learn, grow, and become better human because of the preaching and parables of Jesus, a person in touch with God, but to think of him as God and distinct from The Father is, for me, too difficult. Jesus as God represents a kind of course correction, which I maintain is unnecessary.

I cannot envision a magnificent God creating a man, deliberately marking him with original sin, making him weak and prone to sin, then sitting back – if God can even sit – and watching to see if this creation can overcome its imperfections, as if, within God’s great universe, this was some kind of pastime or preoccupation, as if God did not know the outcome. I don’t think God would send a savior to help the poor souls he himself deliberately set on the wrong path.

God, to me, has better and bigger things to do than test or challenge the human specks inhabiting a small rock in an endless mega-verse. It is true the Greek gods enjoyed the antics and foibles of mortals, and used them as playthings, sheer entertainment. It is doubtful the real God does this. At least this is what I believe.

But let’s speak of the machine, God’s universe. How does it work?

I see two components at work: time and probability.

Time and probability, as established by God, keep the machine, without interference by its creator, on its mission, whatever that might be.

Let’s begin with probability.

We are all familiar with probability. Consider the coin flip. If you flip a coin five times, there is a real possibility it could come up heads – or tails – all five times. But if you flip it 10,000 times, the law of probability will ensure that heads comes up about 5,000 times, as will tails, meaning the probability over many occurrences and over time is 50-50. That’s the law. Established, I propose, by God.

It’s the same with the building of the universe, its functions, and even us, the God specks.

God establishes what the end goal is, sets his probability for that goal, builds in an infinite amount of time, and lets the machine run. Maybe he wanted the dinosaurs to remain on Earth forever, and maybe he didn’t. Well, the machines put them here and probability, in the form of a massive asteroid that hit Mexico 66 million years ago, took them away. That may have been a low probability event (we don’t know), but if the existence of dinosaurs on Earth is a God goal, then over infinite time higher probability events will bring them back.

We are here now because of events whose probability we cannot be sure of, meaning we cannot be sure we are here to stay.

Probability also affects individual behavior. Probability, I propose, is mainly built into our DNA. Our DNA allows for the great majority of us to rise each morning, eat, get some kind of work done, and sleep at night – all while producing a heirs. Most of us will not commit murder. Most of us will not paint the Mona Lisa, or compose a Fifth Symphony, or figure out the speed of light. But some will. The probability exists for that. By my theory, our little world, for some reason, requires all these things, and so we have them. It needs people who are not afraid of heights so we call build towers and expansive bridge. And it needs people who ARE afraid of heights and risks so that we all won’t kill ourselves doing dangerous things. It also appears that, for some reason, at least here and there, we need both a Hitler and a Mother Teresa, and so God creates them, in the proper numbers, through the probability and miracle of DNA.

We are granted a degree of free will that allows us to decide whether or not to call in sick today or to finally clean up the back closet. But the engineer who designed the pyramids did not do so freely. Something within him forced it. God’s hand.

But I don’t envision a God with hands. I envision God as a bell curve. Gods is mathematical, and the universe and all humans operate like a bell curve, with lots of possibilities for common things and only a few possibilities for extreme things. A one end, where there is little room under the curve, is the horrible and disastrous. On the other end, where there is little room under the curve, is the wonderful and the exalted. As the curve rises and falls, the horrible and disastrous and the wonderful and exalted remain but decrease in occurrences. At about the middle to the curve, about 65 percent of the curve, where it is high and with room under it for most of us, are, roughly speaking, Mr. and Mrs. Normal.

And that’s how it all works. God is a bell curve, and his tools are probability and time.

I sort of faulted Jesus for not doing enough on Earth, and now – with respect – I will fault God for doing too much. God really over did it. When we look closely, we see that God incorporates tremendous complexity and beauty into everything – the big, the small, the in-between. God astounds us with our galaxy as well as the appearance of a blade of grass under a microscope. God obviously is not on a budget, has no time constraints, must be able to work quickly, cares about every aspect of the creation, never shirks or simplifies, never favors the tremendous over the nearly invisible, and provides the same rapt attention to everything. There is nothing simple about any of the aspects of the creation.

Bringing the ancient Greeks back for a moment, their logic convinced them that there was a starting point, a primal, singular component to all things. And so they invented the atom. It sounded good, and the best scientists of the modern world embraced it. Now, of course, we know there are a  multitude of sub-atom particles.

The elemental component escapes us.

 I could never out reason a Plato or Aristotle, but I must say my reason tells me something quite different about the primal piece of existence. I don’t believe it exists. Our intellect cannot grasp my idea, but I will share it nonetheless: There is no smallest and there is no largest. Find the largest and keep searching and you will eventually find something larger. Find what you think is the smallest, keep searching and you will find smaller. There will be no end to it. Small will begat smaller, and smaller will begat even smaller – and it will do so infinitely. There will be no end to it. The same for large. There is level after level after level.

The God of creation went in one direction and never stopped. Then he went in the other direction and never stopped.  

Once you accept this idea, it follows logically that our God has a God, and that the second God has a God, and that God has a God … and so on, toward infinity, which we are incapable of understanding but seems to be the core of everything.

It reminds me of football, when there is a penalty close to the goal, you move the ball half the distance to the goal. If there is a second penalty, you again move the ball half the distance to the goal. Theoretically, under this rule, the ball would always get closer to the goal but never, ever reaches it.

Well, I’ve exhausted myself.

***

The great 17th-century philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, would disagree with all I have said about a plan, a machine, and an unknown purpose. He boldly proclaimed,“Nature has no intentions, no mercy, no plan – and calling this God is humanity’s refusal to accept insignificance.”

I accept my insignificance but still say there’s a plan. I just have no idea what it is.

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Muhammad as Solomon: A better story

25 May

solomon1

Time gives and takes. It adds and subtracts. It creates things that didn’t exist and extinguishes things that did. So as a general rule I distrust history.

Take for example the story of King Solomon and the baby. Why would a respected wise man mediate a custody case by offering to executive the child? Who would recognize this as rational? And why would any woman – mother or not –agree to it?

The story doesn’t ring true. I sense something was lost in translation and time.

A better story of wisdom comes from the Muslim world. It could be an additive story, but it nevertheless makes more sense.

This is it:

The shrine at the Kaaba in Mecca existed in pre-Islamic days and even then was considered sacred. It is said to have been built by Abraham. Inside then and now is a rock that fell from heaven. Possibly a meteorite, it is considered a divine gift. A flash flood not uncommon in the Arabian desert destroyed the Kaaba in the seventh century. Leaders of Mecca’s tribes and clans work together and rebuilt it.

All went well until it came time to place the stone back in the temple. Each leader argued for the honor. When the discussion broke down and violence was threatened, someone said, “Let us then agree that the next person to come over that hill will be given the task of deciding.”

Along came young Muhammad, future prophet. Being an orphan who had been raised in poverty by Bedouins, he was of low standing among the tribes. But he was also considered neutral.

Muhammad was told the problem.

He thought about it, then secured a tarp of some sort or a large blanket. He put the stone in the middle and told each clan leader to grasp hold of an edge. Together, they carried the stone into the shrine.

True or not, this is a great story of wisdom and mediation. Perhaps more important from the standpoint of story telling, the stone foreshadows the Quran, which Muhammad used to bring divisive, violent, warring Arab tribes together.

Quran or no Quran, Bible or no Bible, prophet or no prophet, the absence of conflict doesn’t last long. Today, the Judeo-Christian world tends to think it is at war with the Muslim world. It doesn’t realize the larger war is actually within the Muslim world. As Abraham, Moses and Jesus failed to bring peace, so has Muhammad.

Human nature embraces the words of prophets then simultaneously rejects them. It has always been.

Author Leslie Hazelton

Author Leslie Hazelton

My interest in learning more about Muhammad and Islam was recently heightened by a well-written work entitled, “The First Muslim: the story of Muhammad.” Author Lesley Hazelton, a journalist and former psychologist, takes a unique and interesting approach to her narrative. Scholars might object, but the most fascinating thing about her book is the way she fills in the historic blanks with rational speculation based on a keen understanding of the human mind.

Another appealing feature is the way she has put together all the fascinating stories from Islamic history and culture, ones widely known in the Muslim world but mostly unknown to western Christians and Jews.

For the first time I learned that many Islamic rites pre-date Muhammad, including regular pilgrimages to Mecca.  I also learned that Arabs considered all scripture sacred and were respectful of all prophets. Furthermore, in a day when little was written down, Jews were honored as “the people of the book.”  Christians also had great influence, as the Byzantine Empire moved into the area.

Faith and beliefs all seemed to have melded together. That’s enviable.

Practices in Arabia had come close to the monotheism of Abraham. The idea of one powerful, all-knowing god was accepted. But in Arabia this god had secondary, sister deities that also were worshipped. Muhammad, in perhaps his most controversial move, wanted the sisters dethroned.

His truth, as revealed to him by the angel Gabriel, proclaimed that God was neither begotten nor a begetter; that there were no sister gods. In a way, this is purer than Christianity, with its trinity.

For me, the most remarkable aspect of Islam is the Quran, or Koran (Spelled accurately only in Arabic script). Let’s remember that Muhammad could neither read nor write. His revelations came at a time when memory, not books, held the history and literature of one’s culture. In fact, the literal meaning of the word “Quran” is “the recitations.”

Indeed, it was not written down in the prophet’s lifetime.

To allow memory to commit large amounts of information, it usually had to be in verse; poetic and alliterative, like a beautiful song. This is the Quran, passed onto the world by a former camel boy.

In the process of revelation, where does the human take over from the divine? How much wisdom, intellect and creativity is required of the human? How much did Muhammad have? Was it Gabriel’s truth but Muhammad’s poetry? Or did the angel do it all?

If Muhammad had a role, then he was more than a natural poet; he was a self-taught scholar with deep, strong knowledge of the Bible. It is said the Quran was meant to be a continuation or extension of the Bible; that a good portion is biblical tales or re-workings of the tales. Gabriel, of course, would know them. But how did Muhammad?

Like the carpenter’s son, he somehow overcame circumstances and acquired a wide and useful education. Maybe it was easier than we think. Without a system of schools and universities, maybe elders were required to pass along great stores of knowledge to the young. Throughout much of his life, Muhammad was an agent and mediator on long caravans up and down the Arabian peninsula. That’s a lot of time for doing nothing more than talking and absorbing. Learning.

Another interesting things about Muhammad and the Quranic revelations is they did not come all at once but over a period of more than two decades. When he needed something new, he fasted and mediated and went back up the mountain.

Sometimes he had to wait years. Other times inspiration came quickly.

It is said by some and disputed by others than on one occasion the verses he brought back were wrong and had to be recanted. It is alleged that he had been spoken to not by Gabriel but by the devil. These are the so-called Satanic Verses, which for a brief time are said to have re-legitimized the three sister gods.

After I finish with “The First Muslim,” I’m going to read a translation of the Quran. I’m certain to be surprised, and that what I read will be a departure from what I think I know or have heard.

Although purists believe Muhammad’s messages should not be read or spoken in any language other than Arabic, that seems to be changing. I received my English copy from two guys handing them out at the mall, a gift from whyislam.org.

My book was published in Istanbul and translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali.

The name Abdullah, according to Hazelton’s book, means “servant of God.”

If we can get by the hate, the misunderstanding and the ignorance, there is much worthy to be learned about this culture.

Please listen to Ms. Hazelton speak on the Quran.

By Lanny Morgnanesi

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God and Man on a Visit To Russia

8 Sep

I like to think of Jesus as a man so I can marvel at his God-like brilliance and ability to see and express truth.

If you think of him as God, then his acts and works would not necessarily be worthy of attention. Pavarotti, after all, received no praise for humming a pop tune, nor Einstein for giving correct change to the paperboy.

A god can easily transform water to wine; it is much more difficult for a man.

For me, one of Jesus’ greatest moments was when he was approached by spies trying to trick him into sedition. They coyly ask if it was acceptable to pay tribute to Caesar. Jesus, quick on his feet, asked them to produce a coin, which carried Caesar’s image.

Then came the unforgettable, genius response: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

In my last post I mentioned a rabbi named Joseph Krauskopf and his visit to Tolstoy in 1894. Today I’d like to discuss Krauskopf and his response when Tolstoy asked him about Jesus.

The intelligence and poetry of the answer brought to mind the “render” response.

In Russia at that time, Jews knew little of Jesus and those familiar with him cared not much for him. But Krauskopf struck Tolstoy as a different breed. The American rabbi from Philadelphia was an early member of the reformed movement and, among other things, advocated moving the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday as a way to bring Christians and Jews together.  He believed that all religions – including his own — contained good and bad, and that the good should be practiced and the bad eradicated.

Some Jews, I’m sure, refused to consider Krauskopf a Jew.

“What is your belief respecting Jesus?” Tolstoy asked.

Krauskopf told the writer, “I regard the Rabbi of Nazareth as one of the greatest of Israel’s teachers and leaders and reformers, not as a divine being who lived and taught humanly but as a human being who lived and taught divinely.”

Can we safely say that he who lives divinely is divine?

Sometimes we allow words and their interpretation to muddle or even destroy something that in its raw form and on its own is simply and clearly exceptional.

I would love to hear from others, Christians and Jews, on Krauskopf’s statement about Jesus.

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Thoughts on a Christmas morning.

25 Dec

What would our country be like today if the teachings of Jesus were truly part of our cultural life? For a moment, let’s not complicate things with religion and divinity. Just think of the teachings. Would we allow high unemployment and poverty? Would our economy flourish or sink? Would Christian equality fetter the ambitious? Would a refusal to make war result in a stronger nation or a vulnerable, perhaps occupied nation? Would we all be happier and at peace with ourselves, even if we had to live with less? Maybe living with less is the secret to happiness.

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