NUMINOUS AWE

Numinous awe and Paul's letter to the Romans go right to the heart of religion in general and Christianity in particular. According to C. S. Lewis, author of Mere Christianity, religion began thousands of years ago when primitive humans created sky gods as a result of numinous awe, the superstitious idea that powerful beings were the cause of thunder, lightning and other natural phenomena they couldn't explain in any rational, scientific way.

Early humans used numinous awe to believe in Sky Gods. Then the Apostle Paul used it to justify belief in the Christian God. In the first chapter of his epistle [letter] to the Romans, he writes, "...since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

Like the early humans, what he told the Romans is a non sequitur—a fallacious, deductive conclusion that does not follow logically from the premise or the evidence. Paul himself gives us another example of his deductively fallacious conclusions when he repeatedly, in epistle after epistle, preaches that women must sit in the back of the church, mouth shut, chin down, and head covered. Paul is telling women they are inferior to men. His gender-biased prejudice is typical of all three of the world's monotheistic theocracies—Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The opposite side of that coin would be if you told me that all men are stupid, and that since I am a man, I am stupid. Paul was stupid because he misinterpreted his epiphany on the road to Damascus, not because he was a man.

Moreover, Paul contradicts what he wrote in chapter 1 when he writes in chapter 11 that "...faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Paul isn't implying that faith is blind. He's saying it must be blind to the six senses of the real world—sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and common sense. His entire letter to the Romans preaches that salvation is by grace through faith. By grace because we're sin-defiled creatures who don't deserve to be saved from God's wrath. Through faith because the only evidence we're allowed is things not seen.

Paul's things not seen is God's Word, things he supposedly told his prophets. Things they said he said. That means that we only have their word for His Word, so without faith, the Holy Scriptures are just hearsay evidence from a culture that existed thousands of years ago and therefore has little or no relevance for us in the modern world.

In other words, the scriptures are full of holes, not holiness. Both testaments are replete with historical and scientific errors, illogical conclusions, self-contradictions, mythical fairy tales, magic and miracles, and hundreds of redactions to make them appear as if they came from one mind—the mind of god. No, the Bible is the product of many minds all preaching the good news while disagreeing with each other on the essentials of salvation. The result is a jumbled, hodgepodge patchwork of scientific, historical and theological nonsense that led to centuries of priests preaching and practicing the bad news of theocracy.

Today, most theologists agree that we are saved by reading God's Word and allowing those words to segue into faith by believing they are true. If a preacher could condense the Bible down to one sentence, it would be... for God so loved the world he gave [killed] his only begotten son that we [believers] might have life everlasting. My condensation would be... for God so hated the world he killed it that unbelievers will suffer death everlasting.

Paul claimed that we have no excuse for not believing that God exists. We can see the world he created, and that should cause us to take a leap of faith. Then he contradicts himself by claiming that faith must be based on what we cannot see (God's word) but can see (the words of the OT prophets and NT disciples).

Paul saw a bright light and heard a loud voice on the road to Damascus. My guess is that he was like John, the author of Revelation—high on some mind-altering substance. Yes, they used drugs in biblical times—opium, hash and other psychoactive plants like frankincense and myrrh. But I'd have to be high on something to see any logical, sense-oriented, cause-and-effect path between the secular realities of this earthly world and the superstitious irrealities of some heavenly world. Belief in sky gods is a superstitious, fear-based leap of faith. Ditto for the gap between belief and non-belief. If a rational, scientific mindset were one side of a bottomless canyon and an irrational, religious mindset were the other side, people with a religious mindset would have to leap from the real side to the imaginary side.

A beautiful sunrise, stars twinkling in the night sky, a majestic mountain, a frozen waterfall, colorful birds tending their nest, thunder, lightning, great sex... these things should trigger an emotional response that doesn't leap to a superstitious conclusion. Natural phenomena do not imply that a sky god created them and that we should therefore worship him, her or it in fear and awe.

REALITY... WHAT A CONCEPT!

The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. They set up their tent and fell asleep. Several hours later, Tonto woke the Lone Ranger.

"Kemo Sabe, look up. What you see?"

"Uh, millions of stars."

"What that tell you, Kemo Sabe?"

Well, astronomically it tells me there are millions of galaxies in the universe. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Time wise, it tells me it's about a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, it tells me that God is awesome and that we are small and insignificant. And meteorologically it tells me that tomorrow will be a bright sunny day. What does it tell you, Tonto?"

"Kemo Sabe! You dumber than buffalo. It means someone stole our tent!