Gnostic Christian Testimony

From: "Christine S."
Hello Mr. Babinski:
From your website, I understand that you were a Fundamentalist Christian, went to university and took Science/Biology, and became disillusioned with religion and God. That is what I see in a nutshell, please correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe you were disillusioned before you went to university? Either way, I see you're either an agnostic or athiest.

ED: You can read my full testimony online, plug it into a search box by title: "If it wasn't for agnosticism, I wouldn't know what to believe." I explain that I remained a young-earth creationist during my entire four years in college. I think I explained that as well in my other online testimony concerning my loss of faith in young-earth creationism. I evangelized teachers and fellow students the entire time. It was years after college and after reading criticisms of young-earth arguments that I grew disillusioned about creationism. And it was years after that before I became disillusioned about Christianity in general.

I am a university graduate too, used to be an agnostic, too. Have you ever heard from a Roman Catholic turned agnostic, turned
kinda-Christian, turned Gnostic Christian?

ED: Cool. New Agey sort of Christian?

Truth be told, like you, I've always loved science. I was baptised into Roman Catholicism as a baby. From the age of 6 or 7, the most exciting thing for me was to bring home books from the library on cosmology, astronomy, geology, gemology, paleontology, archeology, paleoanthropology (nothing enthralled me more than paleoanthropology and astronomy however). So as you can see, I was a big lover of the natural sciences from very young, and I've read everything I could ever get my hands on about it my entire life. My specialist knowledge, such as required for a Bachelor of Biology, is just not there, however, I do have a great general knowledge of many types of physical and natural science just borne of reading of a natural curiousity.

Having been born a Roman Catholic, I know they have the spiritual truth. The Roman Catholic Church has accepted science and evolution, which was a boon to me at my age that I didn't come from a denomination that insisted solely on literal interpretation of the Bible. I could never accept an entirely literal interpretation as all I saw were contradictions as well. Even with the blessing of science by my church however, for the longest time, I still saw contradictions, much like you. I couldn't appreciate the Bible nor its spiritual teaching as the Roman Catholic Church says it is the sole disseminator of truth and there is no personal interpretation. Well, in sanctifying that I could think for myself in science but not in spiritual matters, those tenets basically killed my spirituality and I became agnostic in high school through my 20s. In my 20s, I prayed to God sometimes, and He always took care of me, but I was just that, a kinda-Christian.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago when I had a spiritual incident that set me wondering, but not searching. Then another nudge later last year to start searching, and my searching finally led me to the place I should have started, the Bible, more importantly, the New Testament. As a Roman Catholic they never tell you to read the Bible on your own, which I finally did for the first time in my late 20s, innocent as a child and with spiritual eyes as directed by Jesus Christ. As I read and came to the end of the New Testament, I could not stop the shaking in my hands and heart as I finally realized that there are NO contradictions between God and Science.

ED: I'm glad it was easy for you. It was however, a bit more difficult for Christian civilization and Christian theologians and scholars as a whole to come to terms with such advances in knowledge as heliocentricity, the age of the earth, and evolution.

I found the spiritual truth of the Bible and Jesus Christ for myself. I now see that God created the Earth and Universe, and all the natural laws and mathematical principles that rule over it all. Science and mathematics are so perfect that only the perfect God could have created them. You can't have such perfect order and logic and beauty in the Universe without there being a God! Impossible.

ED: I agree there's beauty and life in this deadly cosmos, but I also see that everything dies, life is fleeting, and everything is not beautiful. Have you read my online piece, "Why We Believe in a Designer" Also, some kinds of life simply go extinct. Nobody really realized the fact of extinction until after the 1700s. Even in Thomas Jefferson's day, when faced with some of the early discoveries of large boned mammals in the earth, like mammoth bones in North America, Jefferson and other deists simply assumed that such creatures still roamed the earth some where because the Creator had an "equal" eye on everything, and created it for various purposes. Jefferson is quoted as saying, "Oh yes, I heard from an Indian in the north that they still see such creatures roaming about (mammoths)." But he was wrong. And in fact, most species go extinct never to be seen again. We know of 16 species of ancient elephantine species that did so, even before human beings began forming civilizations. The question of the purpose of such massive extinctions, as well as the problem of the deaths of a very high percentage of all of the young produced in each generation by any and all species, remains a question for deists, gnostics, etc.

He also created a world that wonderously enough, provided the clues that would present themselves millions and billions of years later, when a species arose (out of that miraculous process that God created, called evolution) that was capable of receiving the Spirit and Intelligence of God, which is Humankind, who are His children, created in His image and likeness. Humankind, in God's image, is Spiritual and Intelligent enough, having been gifted from God Himself, that we can ponder who we are, where we come from, where we are going, what we can create, what we can achieve. We are the only ones who can dicipher the message that God so wonderously ensured through evolution, fossilization, mathematics, astronomy, etc. that would be waiting for us to discover and tell the story of the Earth, Universe, and how we came to be physically, and spiritually.

That is the truth of God, and that's how I know God exists. Once I realized the above, 18 hours later, as a thief in the night as said by Jesus Christ, I was baptised of the Holy Spirit, in God's presence where time and space did not exist (God is eternal and unchanging, the One True God of All in All that always was and will always be, communing with Him, I have never known such Love, Compassion, Eternity, I still cannot fully comprehend it in my normal consciousness) and renewed in Life, Light, Spirit, Wisdom and Love of God, and the Kingdom of God that came to be within me, again as said by Jesus Christ. I now know I was given this gift precisely because I understood the spiritual truth of the Bible and God for myself. I know myself, and I know everyone has a spark of the divine within them, they just have to realize that, and trust me, war would end immediately. Now I know that Science and God do not contradict each other, and that there are NO contradictions in the Bible once you can see the spiritual truth, that we are God's children, on the Way described and personified by Jesus Christ, back the Light, back to God our Father, whence we came. Every scientific discovery is in fact, an ultimate glory of God and His creation, and the immensely amazing, completely incomprehensible wonder of the order and beauty of it all.

ED: I was baptized in the holy spirit as well, if you want to call it that. The precise description of what I experienced is found in my testimony, "If it wasn't for agnosticism, I wouldn't know what to believe." But being "baptized in the holy spirit" doesn't mean my questions have been answered as you seem to imply they have been for you.

That is why God and Science can, and in fact do, live together in harmony, and complement each other. It's not Evolution vs. Creation, but Evolution AND Creation, that's how it always was, and that's how it always will be. The sad thing that people don't realize, is that Science is a proof that God exists, and God is a proof of the validity of Science. This is the truth, from a fellow science-nut, and also now, a God-nut, since truly, in spiritual truth, there are no contradictions when you understand the Bible and the use of allegory in uncovering that truth. Literal intrepretation doesn't give the whole story, literal and figurative interpretation in spiritual truth, as promoted by the Roman Catholic Church, and Gnostic Christianity, do.
Sincerely,
Christine S.

ED: We are both sincere. And I don't think it matters too much whether we are right or wrong on such metaphysical matters. I doubt either of us can see as clearly behind the metaphysical curtain as we'd both like to be able to do. And I doubt that any infinite intelligent being is going to condemn people to eternities of hell for not agreeing on what lies behind that curtain.

Society, Science and Evolution

LAURIE APPLETON QUESTIONS ED BABINSKI'S ARTICLE:

"Do You Fear What Might Happen If The World Believed In Evolution?"

QUESTION #1

LAURIE: Ed, you began your article by stating:

"Some conservative religious believers fear that teaching evolution breeds immorality and also invites 'God's judgment' to fall upon society as a whole. But what were the morals of society like in the 'good old days' before Darwin? And did the Creator refrain from smiting believers in creationism with horrific diseases? The answer in both cases is, 'No.'"

But isn't it a matter of the relative LEVEL of immorality? After all, Cain murdered his brother Abel, didn't he, and with a small population at that time.

ED: I am happy to discuss different levels of immorality in different cultures and different nations over time. But before we go there, let's point out a few similarities between us that neither of us should take for granted in any discusssion of "immorality." Neither you, nor I, is a barbarian. We each have a philosophy and/or theology, prize reason, and support the benefits that civilization holds over barbarism. Most of the folks who go to church or who belong to freethought organizations are highly interested in ethics and education on a worldwide scale, and do not join such groups in order to become criminals. (In fact self-declared "atheists" apparently comprise a smaller proportion of the American prison populations than they do in society at large.) Our common interests being pointed out, here are a few things worth pondering...

Compared with the rest of the world, America has a very high percentage of regular churchgoers, Protestant, Catholic and Pentecostal evangelists, Christian cable shows, Christians in government, etc. Yet America also continues to suffer relatively higher crime rates and higher numbers of people in prisons, per capita, than any other nation on earth. We also have the highest rate of obesity, and relatively higher rates of teenage pregnancy, and relatively lower average test scores, compared with several other industrialized nations. So what has Christiantiy truly done for America? Maybe we are spending too much time and money on building more churches when we ought to be spending it on children's health (vitamins, minerals, protein), and children's education, during the crucial early years, or on other social programs, such as those other nations do?

Even some heathen nations like Japan (50% of whose populace doesn't even believe in a higher spirit, and the remainder are mostly gentlemanly Buddhists and Shintoists) have lower rates of crime and obesity than the U.S.

And Check out the Czechs:

Atheism in the Czech Republic May 03, 2004 as reported at about.com The Czech Republic appears to be one of the most disbelieving nations in Europe. According to one poll, only 33.6% of Czechs belong to a religion and only 11.7% attend services once a month or more. That's the lowest rate for any country in Europe aside from Estonia. So how does the Czech Republic compare in terms of things like crime to other, more religious nations? Someone at alt.atheism was kind enough to collect some data using NationMaster, posting comparisons between the Czech Republic, Poland (95% Catholic) and America:

Crime: Murder

Czech Republic 0.01 per 1000 people

Poland 0.05 per 1000 people

United States 0.04 per 1000 people

Crime: Rape

Czech Republic 0.04 per 1000 people

Poland 0.06 per 1000 people

United States 0.30 per 1000 people

Crime: Robbery

Czech Republic 0.39 per 1000 people

Poland 1.38 per 1000 people

United States 1.41 per 1000 people

Health: HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate

Czech Republic less than 0.1% (2001 est.)

United States 0.6% (2001 est.)

Poland 0.1% - note: no country specific models provided (2001 est.)

Health: Infant mortality rate

Czech Republic 5.46

Poland 9.17

United States 6.69

Education: Scientific literacy

Czech Republic 511

United States 499

Poland 483

You can visit NationMaster to create your own graphs to compare a variety of things.

And what about Christianity in America? It's just as secular and kitschy as American society in general, with Christian t-shirts, books, records, stadium-filled rallies, Christian theme parks, and apologetics cruises, not to mention bestselling books about promises of growing rich (Prayer of Jabez), as well as Christians voting to divert increasing funds to the military industrial establishment, while Jesus warned that "All who take up the sword shall die by the sword."

Jim Wallis, the Christian editor of Sojourner's magazine and author of God's Politics, asks, "How did the faith of Jesus come to be known as pro-rich, pro-American and pro-war?"

See also the book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience by Ron Sider who details further evidence of Christian worldliness. Sider admits, "Poll after poll by Gallup and Barna show that evangelicals live just like the world... Evangelical Christians and born-again Christians get divorced just as often, if not a little more, than the general population. And Barna has discovered that 90 percent of the born-again Christians who are divorced got divorced after they accepted Christ [The Barna Group, The Barna Update, 'Born Again Adults Less Likely to Co-Habit, Just As Likely to Divorce,' August 6, 2001, http://www.barna.org]... Or take the issue of racism. A Gallup study discovered that when they asked the question. 'Do you object if a black neighbor moves in next door?' the least prejudiced were Catholics and non-evangelicals. The next group, in terms of prejudice, was mainline Protestants. Evangelicals and Southern Baptists were the worst." [Ron Sider speaking in Christianity Today, April, 2005, Vol. 49 Issue 4, "The Evangelical Scandal"]

And what about the BIG picture of "moral and immoral" human behavior over the eons? One scholar has tried to measure that picture after studying archeologist sites from all over the world. See Lawrence H. Keeley's, War Before Civilization (Oxford University Press; 1996), in which Keeley cites archeological evidence to argue that human beings used to kill each other more often in the past than today, percentage-wise.

Keeley's charts of relative mobilization rates and casualty rates among tribes and modern nations are fascinating. He suggests that the terrible Twentieth Century wars would have had a death-rate twenty times higher "if the world's population were still organized into bands, tribes, and chiefdoms": the typical tribal combat casualty rate of .5 percent per year, during the course of the century would translate to "more than 2 billion war deaths."

www.troynovant.com

Keeley also pointed out that a higher percentage of the populace of Europe was killed in the 17th century (during religious-related warfare, when everybody was a creationist and believer in the Apostle's Creed) than during World War 2.

I also read elsewhere that evidence of cannibalism in the human past continues to surface in ancient archeological digs and even has been discovered inside human genes.

So if you take the long view, and agree with Keeley (though I have read some scholars uncertainties concerning Keeley's conclusions), deaths due to intertribal warfare and murder were more prominent in the past than in the present, i.e., percentage-wise per total population. So if "Adam fell," and Keeley's hypothesis is correct, that "fall" may have been "upward" over time, not downward.

QUESTION #2

LAURIE: Ed, You stated in your article:

"Simply rent the DVD, The Gangs of New York, or read the books, Moll Flanders, Tom Jones, Les Miserables, Candide, or just about anything by Charles Dickens to get a taste of the immorality and diseases that ran amuck in the 'good old days.'"

Are you really trying to say that believing in evolutionism might bring about some sort of improvement or are you saying that it will not make ANY change one way or the other?

ED: I am certainly not saying that believing in evolution is as detrimental to society as some young-earth creationists claim it is, laying the blame for nearly every harmful "--ism" they can name, on "evolution." And I also point out that immense wars erupted in Europe in the 17th century, long before Darwin, when everyone was a Bible believing Protestant or Catholic creationist. The problem appears to be humanity's temptation toward getting caught up following alpha male leaders with narrow aggressive ideologies. See my article, "Religion is Not the Problem"

QUESTION #3

LA: Can I ask if you are aware that it was the BELIEF in a Creator that was the underpinning of the "Golden Era of Science?"

An evolutionist of all people has pointed this out. i.e.: "Although we may recognize the frailties of Christian dogma and deplore the unconscionable persecution of thought which is one of the less appetizing aspects of medieval history, we must also observe that in one of those strange permutations of which history yields occasional rare examples, it is the Christian world which finally gave birth in a clear articulate fashion to the experimental method of science itself. Many things undoubtedly went into the amalgam: Greek logic and philosophy, the experimental methods of craftsmen in the arts as opposed to the aristocratic thinker - all these things have been debated. But perhaps the most curious element of them all is the factor dwelt upon by Whitehead - THE SHEER ACT OF FAITH THAT THE UNIVERSE POSSESSED ORDER AND COULD BE INTERPRETED BY RATIONAL MINDS. For Whitehead rightly observes, the philosophy of experimental science was not impressive. It began its discoveries and made use of its method in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a Creator who did not act upon whim nor interfere with the forces He has set in operation. The experimental method succeeded beyond men's wildest dreams but the faith that brought it into being owes something to the Christian concept of the nature of God. It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origin to an act of faith that the Universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption."

(Darwin's Century, Dr. Loren Eiseley, 1959, p.62) (A.N. Whitehead, "Science and the Modern World, Mentor Book., 1948, pp 4-17)

ED: The question of "the origin of science" was not what my original paper was focused upon. The question was whether the teaching of evolution necessarily must make mankind more criminal, murderous and war-like. There are even Christian evolutionists whom I cited at the end of my article who answered "no" to that question.

Also, science poses its own peculiar dangers to humanity and the planet, and if in the end we die of too many dangerous and/or polluting inventions that owe their creation to scientific knowledge, what will people say of the invention of science then? It appears to be a double-edged sword. (Not that either of us would relinquish the incredibly interesting knowledge of the cosmos that science has provided, nor relinquish its beneficial aspects in agriculture and medicine, not to mention plumbing and sewer systems. Speaking of plumbing, most agree it was more important than medical science in eliminating huge outbreaks of disease since with plumbing you need not live near a body of water where disease and mosquitoes may breed, nor do you have to go down to that body of water to fill your jug each day, but can receive clean water from the tap.)

But to directly answer your question, above, there are authorities in history other than Loren Eiseley and Whitehead. And such authorities do not agree that science owes its rebirth in the Western world primarily to theism.

One recent book, Aristotle's Children, argues that only after Western man gave up on Platonism and it's "ideal world" concepts, and re-discovered the works of Aristotle's more practical and earthy philosophy, was scientific investigation reborn in Europe. Another new book tells the tale of how the heretical Nestorian church had preserved writings of ancient Hellenic alchemy that were revived and became popular at the time when science was reborn in the West. Newton wrote thousands of pages on alchemy, and many scientists were fascinated by it, since it involved certain formulas, and an emphasis on different types of matter. And so modern day chemistry apparently owes a lot to alchemical ideas that stretch back to Hellenistic days. Other historians have pointed out that farming practices had improved in Europe, and outbreaks of plague were diminishing, and the population of Europe was increasing along with the rise of a prosperous Middle Class, and printing had also been invented. Men were joining and forming societies and had lesiure time and wealth to pursue scientific interests, and publicize such knowledge in mass produced literature.

Moreover, Christianity alone did not create science. Scientific ideas and investigations preceded Christianity and Judaism, and began in ancient Babylonia, Egypt and Greece, and also taught in academies of the Hellenistic world. However, after Christian Roman Emperors ruled Rome, and began battling paganism, Christians closed such academies.

See the works of one of the premier historians of the later half of the Roman Empire, Ramsay MacMullen, Dunham Professor Emeritus of History and Classics at Yale University. He is the author of Christianizing the Roman Empire: A.D. 100-400, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries Corruption and the Decline of Rome (Christianizing Rome didn't keep the corruption out--E.T.B.), all published by Yale University Press.

"MacMullen discusses the shifiting attitude from the rational world view of Pliny, Seneca and Plotinus and the increase in credulity throughout the third and fourth centuries. MacMullen argues that this was a result of changes in the elite as more vulgar and less literate people increased their predominance (and Christianity spread). Whatever the merits of this thesis, MacMullen points out the contempt prominent Christians such as Tertullian, Augustine, Lactantius, Ambrose and John Chrysostom had for ancient philosophy. They denounced Plato and Aristotle by name, and mocked the idea of skeptical study and the scientific attitude. Nor did they stop there. They told stories about appartitions over the battlefield, miraculous cures, the everpresent existence of demons, people raised to life by Christians, and dragons turned to dust by the sign of the cross." pnotley@hotmail.com Amazon.com reviewer

QUOTATIONS FROM

Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries

In the century opened by the Peace of the Church, more Christians died for their faith at the hands of fellow Christians than had died before in all the persecutions.

Institutions of higher learning had been largely destroyed. The [Christian] emperors' attacks had centered on the chief of them, Athens and Alexandria, in the late fourth century and were turned against them again toward the end of the fifth and in 529. ["529 A.D." was the year that the School of Athens was closed by the decree of the Christian Roman Emperor Justinian, the same Justinian who also outlawed sodomy, because, "It is well known that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited."--E.T.B.]. As to the initiators of the persecution, the [Christian] emperors themselves, a steady decline in their level of cultivation has been noticed. Thus books and philosophy were bound to fade from sight.

After Constantine there existed an empire-wide instrument of education: the church. What bishops, even emperors, made plain, and what could be heard in broader terms from every pulpit, was an agreed upon teaching. Every witness, every listener should know the great danger to his soul in Plato's books, in Aristotle's, in any of the philosophical corpus handed down from the past. The same danger threatened anyone using his mind according to their manner, with analytical intent, ranging widely for the materials of understanding, and independent of divine imparted teachings.

Another factor that arose specifically out of the ongoing conversion of the empire was the doctrine of demonic causation. The belief in the operation of maleficent forces on a large scale had to await Christianity; and it was of course Christianity that was to form the medieval and Byzantine world. Satanic agents were to be seen as the cause not only of wars and rebellions, persecution and heresy, storms at sea and earthquakes on land, but of a host of minor or major personal afflictions. So, in consequence, Christians were forever crossing themselves, whatever new action they set about, and painted crosses on their foreheads too, responding to their leaders' urging them to do so. It would protect them against all evil.

Lastly, No matter what the religious views were of the culture in which scientific investigation first blossomed most heavily, today the pursuit of scientific research is not limited by one's religious beliefs or lack thereof. Scientific research is now a truly universal pursuit, one of the few such universal pursuits in the realm of knowledge that mankind has ever developed.

Ed

Perfect World

I once wrote a short story about someone who made a wish that magically came true. He wanted all the physical dangers and death in the cosmos to vanish. Presto! It did. The earth was henceforth eternal and immortal and ecologically perfect, and everyone could have as many children as they wanted because the planet expanded magnanimously at will to accommodate them. When you gazed up into the sky you didn't see stars, you saw beyond the clouds a reflection of the same earth you were on, because the whole universe curved back in on itself, and when you pointed a telescope overheard and looked up you could even see yourself looking down at yourself through a telescope, because that's how tightly curved the space of the entire cosmos now was. No danger of asteroids or outer space rubble slamming into the planet and destroying life. And you could eat all you wanted and your body would take whatever you ate and produce tiny white pellets that smelled like flowers and came out your anus. When the pellets dropped on soil they fertilized it, but when they were eaten by any species, it ensured that organism's perfect health. So nothing at all could possibly go wrong. Death wasn't an option because someone was always there to feed you a little white pill whenever you broke an arm or got burned. And nobody ever wanted to die, they were all so happy, so nobody tried to destroy themselves irreparably and everyone took care in their mellow environment, which lacked harsh winds and temperatures such that planes never failed in their duty to stay on course and never fell out of the sky.

Then one day the person whose wish had created this world made another wish, he wanted to avoid even verbal arguments and wished everyone believed as he did, and presto! Everyone did. They believed as he did about EVERYTHING--from philosophy and theology, right down to which fashions were the most stylish. In fact, as the days passed he noticed everyone in this perfect cosmos was growing to look more like him. His world truly was perfect, it was HIS world through and through.

But that's when he grew to loathe absolute safety, absolute agreement, absolute perfection, seeing his own reflection in the faces of billions peering at him from the sky above as he peered up at them from his telescope below, hearing his own thoughts constantly echoed back at him, on all sides, forever. Now that he was right, finally, utterly correct, there was no point in discussing new topics with anyone, since everyone lived similar lives, heard the same news, and thought what he thought about every matter. Nor did he encounter in the world of philosophy, art, fashion or song, anything of which he didn't already approve, so, there were no differences, discords, diversity or dangers in the cosmos, nor any surprises. All wishes for health, happiness and eternal life had been fulfilled. Yet he never felt deader inside, and never wanted to live less than at that moment. And naturally everyone else on the planet felt exactly the same way.

He tried wishing away his first and second wishes: 1) to abolish all death and dangers, and 2) to make everyone agree. But nothing changed. Apparently he had only been granted two magical wishes, not three. Soon afterwards, the human beings in that perfect little cosmos all decided to do away with themselves at approximately the same time and by the same suicidal means, leaving no one behind to feed them the little white pills that could have revived them.

E.T.B.

____________________________

Perhaps God or the gods got omni-bored with their omniscience, omnipotence, eternal perfection and power, and decided to take a rest from eternal boredom, and we are the result? We are the part of God that is currently "on vacation," or, "gods on vacation." We are risking, discovering, being SURPRISED, as well as suffering pains and challenges, which is exactly what an omni-bored God or gods would want to experience when they're on vacation.

—Lance E. Lawyer