What is true?

So a responder to "Reason" (below) had this to say and ask: "You ask why God didn't communicate the truth of His interactions with ancient people. If He had, how would it be any more verifiable than the accounts that we have recorded in the Bible today? In other words, how would we know that it was historically accurate?"

I responded in the comment but had intended on writing a bit more about the historical inaccuracies in the bible so I thought I'd include her question.

The question is not an uncommon argument for those who take the historicity of the bible as "gospel" :)-- after all, they have been told over and over again that the bible is true, that god may not have left evidence but nevertheless it is Truth. (Well, the whole argument is far more complex and convoluted than that, but that is essentially the point.)

In "The fiction of the bible" I point out that the creation story as written in the bible is clearly not how the earth was created. For instance we KNOW that there were humans at least 4.4 million years ago. (see full story at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ardi-hominid-human-ancestor.) This immediately contradicts the biblical account that god created man and woman in his image. The human that we see in the picture (above and also taken from Scientific American) is not at all what people should have looked like if god made people the way you might make a cake or a craft project. And most evangelical christians patently reject the notion that there is a link between humans and chimpanzees.

Yet here it is. We have the skull.

Now if you reject science (except when you're sick and want the doctor to make you well-- especially those christians who see god's miraculous hand working through technology and modern medicine for healing. Then science it great!!!) then, no problem. This means nothing. But if you do understand that we can find out a great deal about the earth and ourselves through science, then this early ancestor of ours should raise a lot of questions.

He (or she) doesn't look like Adam (or Eve) to me.

But there's lots more of those kind of things to talk about so stick around...

Christmas blog today!

See my post at : http://yuletides.blogspot.com/

extra! extra!

Richard Dawkins, best known for his book 'The God Delusion' has a new book that is on display at Barnes and Noble. It's titled 'The Greatest Show on Earth'. Having given it a glimpse while browsing at my local bookstore, it appears to be another bestseller for one of the most pubblic faces of atheism and a collaborator on 'The Reason Project' (http://www.reasonproject.org/). His website http://richarddawkins.net is also worth visiting and if you click on the book title you will find a brief video posted there as well.

Traditionally

Traditions and ritual have great significance in life. That is one of the reasons that I began a blog on Christmas traditions-- because in the fast paced world that we live in, we often fail to include ritual in our lives. This is one purpose that religions serve (if you can call it serve) but even many churches have less and less of an understanding of how deeply people need ceremony and rites.

Sam Harris, in his book 'The end of faith' writes about the need for atheists to acknowledge this and goes on to state that meditation and solitude are also important for the spirit. The increase of wicken ceremonies and the study of ancient women's religions reflects this need for ritual, I believe. A book "Mother, daughter, sister, bride: rituals of womanhood' which I spotted on Amazon appears to contains many of these and Sue Monk Kidd also writes about rituals that she and many of her friends engage in in 'Dance of the dissident daughter'. The rituals that represent a passage from one stage of life to another are particularly powerful. Other rituals that simply note a new season or a special day add a uniqueness to life that differentiates one day from another.

As an example: a friend told me she grew up doing a snow dance. On the morning of the first snow, her family would jump out of bed, strip their clothes off and dance around the living room. I have no idea if they had special music, but it seems to me that adding a special song would make the ceremony stronger.

It's easier to use ceremonies that others have developed and nurtured but when a family creates it's own traditions that occur year after year, one generation to the next, the meaning becomes deeper and more meaninful.