Ed FirmageMeanwhile a War Rages
I’m shocked that the previous post got so many responses while a war rages, a president and his cronies defy the Constitution, devastate human rights, and fight with tenacity the right of people to the security of their homes, their communication, their bodies; by denial of habeus corpus, eviscerating the First, Fourth, and Fifth amendments, along with jury trial and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. And then propose that anyone accused of violating the laws of war, committing war crimes, and human rights violations be pardoned for actions during this awful war, upon the decision of this master- maker of criminal war.
But since this lovely state began as a theocratic state with democratic inclinations in some sort of awkward balance, here goes. I believe that the world is hundreds of millions of years old, that Darwin is right and that anyone who believes that we can evolve toward Diety is also a super-Darwinist. I believe in what Christians call the Old Testament and I would call the bible. I also believe that people who wrote and amended and translated this holy book assumed we who read it would possess at least the intellect of a snail darter and would therefor be able to distinguish between clearly metaphorical writing, plain gut fundamental literal truth, and primitive law that was brutal but better than blood feud (an eye for an eye, for example: proportional, and it beats slaughtering a village for an infraction by one person), all intermingled together, in masterful history, human history, sacred history. Genesis is a marvelous creation story, not a how- to- do- it manual.
I believe the New Testament is a magnificent gloss, a historical exegesis of then-current life, with the Bible. Not self-conscious scripture-making, but scripture evolving nonetheless. I believe in rational religion, the subject, by the way, of Benedict Sixteenth’s papal speech in Germany. Absent the Persian quote from the 14th century, a very good read. More erudite, but much like Hugh B. Brown’s Rational Religion, a series of KSL radio addresses delivered in March through December, 1947 and patterned, I believe, on C.S. Lewis’ masterful BBC radio addresses, later published as Mere Christianity; and given during World War Two in London, and heard, I believe, by Hugh B. Brown as he lived in London for ten years, as mission president and then ecclesiastical leader of all Mormon servicemen and servicewomen in Europe. Like Talmage, Widsoe, and B.H. Roberts, and Pope Benedict Sixteenth, I, believe in a rational God who works, in the main, through rational and humane people to do good and avoid evil, evil such as this evil and utterly criminal war, which should be dominating our thoughts as long as Bush the Less continues to murder thousands in our name and in the name of irrational faith and uncomprehending anti-democratic thought.
September 25th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
I can definitely understand your consternation. I would submit that the reaction to Cliff’s post was so strong because remarks which come across as disparaging toward religion or religious belief–even if that is not how the author intended it–challenge the ability of men from different backgrounds and beliefs to work in concert to oppose those catastrophic ills you listed, and to enlist the many potential allies from among the ranks of the religious to our cause.
September 26th, 2006 at 8:46 am
More Professor Firmage!
Ed we need you now more than ever. Why don’t you lead the State Legislature to impeach Bush? Everyone’s doing it! here and here
Just do it!
September 26th, 2006 at 10:02 am
We’re doing so much of this, in our own ways, every day. For some of us it’s very high level, and for others of us, it’s like only now beginning to ‘pull our heads out’. Our part, in this Grand Creation, insofar as it is attempting to remain open and receptive to ways that are other to us, is being complicated by our increasing numbers, and at the same time, by this incredible technological bump in our ability to reach and be reached by others. The ‘mythical’ is becoming recognized as kernal, wrapped in our oh-so-modern ways of relating. Information on all subjects is pressing responsibility upon us as we recognize that we, as bits of the creator itself, like the mythological, are capable, wonderful players in this stunning, sacred ‘Work in Progress’.
I appreciate all of your input. We be bloggin’!