St Michael's Uniting Church in Australia - Events - Upcoming Events

Date:

Sunday 7 March 2010

Time:

10:00am

Location:

St Michael's Uniting Church

Do you believe? or Do you have faith?

There are people highly educated, widely read in areas of their interest, but in matters of religion, and in their conception of "God", they choose to close off to intelligent analytic enquiry.

They say "I didn't believe in God"

"I've never been interested in church or religion."

 There could be several factors involved:-

 (i) They could have never bothered to get informed. It was irrelevant, or what was written seemed like nonsense. (ii) They had a bad experience with church and religion and the religious practitioners. It was incomprehensible, insulting to intelligence or to their identity. (iii) It looked a bit woosy to be going to church, and whenever they were in a church service (funeral, wedding) it seemed ridiculous to talk the way they did, and sing hymns that made no sense, or they were fit for junior school or even small children. It seemed that the church had never "grown up". (iv) Religion was of such low importance that most people have never bothered to upgrade their knowledge, and when they did make a few moves, they could see that the "local church" was still fixated on "fairy tales". (v) Attending church services made them feel inferior, and this was not a feeling they wished to value. (vi) There were more interesting, enhancing ways of passing the time. (vii) Some of the current books on atheism confirmed their "position".

 Alongside of these factors, the western world is being confronted by a new technology of communication that brings religion in one form or another into the evening living room. In this global explosion we are aware as never before of religion and its contributions to a better humanity and in some places its apparent determination to destroy large sections of humanity. In the current climate we are outraged by the aggressive violence of some who act in the name of religion. There is the tendency to focus on Muslim fundamentalism while conveniently ignoring the appalling violence of Christianity at various times across the last 2000 years.

 Religions are not the only practitioners of genocide and violence.

 In most religious fundamentalist expressions there is an intolerance, a fear, a refusal to acknowledge the evolution of knowledge and the changing understanding of faith as an energy that enhances the human being and human communities in the here-and-now.

 Many religious practitioners have insisted on an external God imposing behavioural requirements of people who were always subject to rewards and punishments after death. This literal interpretation of religion has visited much suffering on humanity before the perpetrators realized it was wrong.

 The ‘God' is not "up there" in some mythic heaven; the real religious presence is to be found in the hearts and minds of people, and in their relationship with each other and in the context in which they live.

 Rather than dogmatically claiming a "revealed knowledge" from above, people of religion might settle into the complex task of understanding the so-called human heart and mind, the complexity of their relationships and the different contexts of life.

 It is in the heart and mind, interpersonal relationship and the contexts of life that the religious influence, religious experience and the religious growth will bring a transformation to all humanity and greater happiness and health to individuals. There is much learning to be done in a searching unfolding way, as distinct from claiming a downward dogmatic imposition of knowledge of beliefs with no real place of openness of an evolving understanding.

 The Power of Positive Atheism

 Every day people come to see me. Most of them do not ever talk about God. They don't believe in God. They have no place for religion and they have given up going to church. Many have never been to church in their life.

 All of them are searching for the best way to live. Many of them read widely. Some don't read anything except the glossy magazines.

 None of them heard anything about the Parliament of Worlds Religions that met here in Melbourne recently, but all of them are already aware of the Atheism convention which was also in Melbourne.

 They all are searching for the best way to live and they don't need God, nor religion, nor the church. (Religion and the Church will be the subject of my next address. Today I focus on God)

 Simply put, if you believe in God, you are a theist. If you don't believe in God, you are an atheist.

 Many books have been written in recent times on the Atheist phenomenon that has swept substantial sums of money into the pockets of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and to a less extent, of Michel Onfray: and the popular media has had several field days as they have given these people huge slabs of viewing time and published space. As if their story was new!

 The fellow who wrote Psalm 14 was obviously well aware that there were plenty of people who said there is no God.

 Yet people have gone on believing in God. Some scientific journals have written about the God gene stating that God and religion have a place in our genetics. Nicholas Wade wrote a large book on "The Faith Instinct".

 But the atheists, or a colloquium of them, have said religion (and the God-religion) is something from a by-gone age, something for people who have surrendered their intelligence , something for people who want to take control of other people by force or by fear, be stealth or by slaughter. We in the 21stcentury, are being confronted by a strong challenge;

 Do you believe God exists?

 Where is He? What kind of a God do you believe in? What kind of religion does that God endorse?

 And then we realize; do these questions really matter? We all live without God anyway!

 For the last 50,000 years at least, people have taken hold of some form of religion

 1. Out of fear of a God somewhere in the heavens 2. As a need for protection from evil enemies 3. As a comfort for their injuries, injustice and pain 4. As a search for some meaning in the chaos and catastrophe of life 5. As a way of living together 6. As a reassurance of a reward in heaven when life was over.

 When someone asks, "Do you believe in God?" you could say "Yes", but them some explanation is required.

 You might say, you believe in God of the scriptures. But the image of God in the Scriptures changes;

 The God who walks and talks in the Garden of Eden.

 The God who orders the slaughter of thousands,

 The God who sets out the ground rules of moral behaviour and the punishment for breaches thereof.

 The God who is a presence, even to Moses; "A pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night".

 The God of Jesus, described in St John's gospel; "God is a spirit, and they that worship him will worship him in spirit". Or to the final chapters in John's gospel when Jesus does not ask Simon Peter if he believes in God; rather he asks him in he believes in LOVE.

 There are plenty of negative atheists who say "Grow up. You don't need a religion. It is a mental illness. It is a destructive force. It is an expression of immaturity. It worships a God idea that has brought untold suffering to all of humanity. "

 So throw it out. Are the alternatives as we have witnessed any better?

 A godless society tried to wipe out the Jews from all over Europe.

 A godless nation saw the destruction of untold millions of Russians in the salt mines of Siberia.

 A godless society has not claimed the gateway to universal happiness.

 In matters of faith and religion in the 21st century, we see that the God of our parents and our ancestors, and the God of so much of the scriptures cannot be our God.

 God is not a supernatural being "up there" sitting in judgement, holding the keys of rewards after we die.

 In this way I am an atheist.

 We now need to bring our intelligence, maturity and analytic thought to bear and ask; "then what will we believe in God?"

 We know this; the 2nd World War and the confrontation with the death camps suddenly confronted us, perhaps as never before;

 with our own intelligent appraisal,

 with our own discovery of our humanity,

 with our own realization of our terrible responsibility towards our fellow human beings.

 We saw that the God we thought was up there, was not there.

 The God we thought would answer our prayer did not answer.

 The God we thought was in control was not in control.

 The God we thought would compassionately intervene in human suffering did not intervene.

 The God we thought would go with us in our suffering and suffer with our suffering, was of no cheer when a red hot poker was being pushed into our body or our teeth were pulled out without anaesthetic, or electric wires were fastened to our genitals.

 Human beings in the name of their God, doing their worst.

 In the recent Meanjin Quarterly (Autumn '10) Jeff Sparrow endorses that "God has shifted over from the side of civilization to the side of barbarism. Precisely because in the West, the enfeebled mainstream church do not present a credible alternative to anything much at all, the old rhetoric works better if Christianity appears in the deficit column of the ledger, an example of backwardness, rather than an instance of progress.

 It would be easy to say, "Give up any idea of God. Let's all be atheists."

 But ultimately we give up on compassion.

 We give up on pursuing the best in our humanity

 We give up our searching for the greatest inspiration in art, in poetry, and music.

 In science, and archaeology, in ancient myths and symbols

 We give up on the heights and the depths of the human spirit:

 We give up on that inner urge to find out what human beings can become when they explore a new faith beyond all the old faiths.

 A positive atheism means that we see religion as an important part of life but our conception of God has changed; God is not what people have painted him to be.

 A positive atheism sees our religion without that punitive patriarchal personal God and it searches for an intelligent, emotionally mature, meaningful religious influence, focussed on an evolving understanding of a humanity that embraces the growth of all we can mean by a Good Spiri: affirming life, courage, beauty, goodness.

 The power of a positive atheism is to discover something awesome in the evolution of all things. The power of a positive atheism is to honour the mystery of life itself and celebrate a constant reincarnation of what we could call God.

 I was in my dentist's surgery the other day and there I read those words of Albert Einstein:

 "We all like curious children standing in awe before the great mystery into which we have been born."

 He said in another place;

 "I am a deeply religious non-believer. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. "

 We could similarly pick up the words of William James when he said;

 "the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe, and our harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end."

 The people who come to see me, week by week -

 are searching for something to relieve stress and strain,

  are searching for an inner resilience to rise up from their down-time and refind the vitality of hope,

 are searching for something to help regulate their turbulent mind and emotions

 are searching for something to redirect their life into a better pathway

 are searching for something to restore that harmony in themselves, with others and with life which is always bigger and beyond where they were.

 Christianity can exist without that old theistic view of God - patriarchal, punitive and powerful. We evolve to a Christianity where Spirit becomes the experience vital to life.

 If we suffer, we need a strength of spirit.

 If we flatten-out, we need a new spirit to inspire us.

 If we want to be our best humanity, the spirit of compassion takes hold of us.

 In our flight from the old God, we have neglected to study and strengthen the human spirit.

 Without it, we fall apart, we become dispirited, there is an inner flatness or deadness, an inner hostility or resentment. So we renew a belief in a Good Spirit.

 You will say, "If we give up our old God, our father God, our God in heaven, our God and judge, our God of the old ways, who will we pray to?"

 We pray to the Good Spirit of life.

 that the Good Spirit will be part of our life

  We will pray

 That we will be carriers of the Good Spirit and that by the Good Spirit we will care better for each other, for the planet our home, and for the future or our generations to come.

 That positive atheism is liberating, it is intelligent, it is mature, it is immensely constructive and profoundly inspirational.

 

Date:

Sunday 7 March 2010

Time:

10:00am

Location:

St Michaels Uniting Church

Our wonderful international organist Rhys Boak plays exquisitely for your listening pleasure during the service and also brings to us a visiting artist.

The St Michael's Singers

The St Michael's singers are a group of professional and semi-professional choral vocalists formed to enrich services at St Michael's. 

 

 

 

Date:

Sunday 7 March 2010

Time:

10:00am

Location:

St Michael's Uniting Church

The Power of Positive Atheism

Dr Francis Macnab

Music-
The St Michaels Singers

Date:

Sunday 7 March 2010

Time:

11:45am

Duration:

1 hour approx

Location:

Waratah Room Level 1

Dr George Galanis and Dr Len Halprin will lead a presentation on man's place in the universe. 
Join us in the Waratah room for a fascinating and exciting view on the world.