An Open Letter to the Faithful and Faithless

To all those who believe in God, and those without a faith at all,

Today, I read something online that gave me chills; you might have seen it too, if you were looking. A woman, a  paralysed cyclist, revealed she can now walk after thirteen years. One of her team mates used the word "miracle", and the Internet exploded into a two-sided debate. On one side, the Christians who believed her recovery - previously thought impossible until an accident in a race - to be a miracle and proclaimed that. On the other side, the atheists who provided the majority of the comments. Many claimed the woman's paralyses had been fake, many more began to throw insults at Christians in general - not just those who were commenting, but any person who believes in God.

Let's get some facts straight here: I am Irish, I am Catholic, I believe in God, and I accept the Bible as true. I also love science, accept the truth of evolution and I attempt to understand the gist of quantum theory in as much as it is possible without studying it in any detail. This is not a contradiction of terms.

The atheists who commented, not all atheists, are small minded bullies. They do not justify their words with scientific proof; they only wish to insults anyone with an ounce of faith in their life. One commenter said, and I paraphrase here, that anyone with a brain knows there is no God. Another said to let go of the "sky daddy" and "come back to reality." Another referred to people with faith as cretins.

Is this how society functions today? Is this really how discussions takes place and people communicate? It is not. This is the form of insult that exists only on the Internet, behind anonymous comments. These people do not pay the consequences of insulting someone. They may not even realise how much they might have insulted someone by what they said. Perhaps they did, and they are all the worse for it. Whether they believe in God or not, there are certain standards of ethics we all must adhere to, certain social standards that ought to be followed, if only to make sure we don't cause yet more harm to ourselves and this planet.

There have been religious wars before. This is a fact, we must accept it. But we live in a rational age. Christians Churches are coming together in dialogue, they reach out to people of other faiths - not to convert, but to talk - and they have put aside their differences for the good of their own beliefs and the strength of their own faiths. So why do the atheists in question and those like them start an online war of their own? Are we the fools for talking about faith, for using the language of the article? Are we the ones launching an attack? We're not out to convert, but to express our faith.

I will accept, maybe there were some who commented replying in as equally an insulting manner from a Christian perspective. This is also wrong. This is how people get hurt, and were this to happen on a larger scale the world would face a crisis.

Here are the facts about people: we are free to make our own choices; we are free to voice our own opinions; we are free to have a religion and equally free not to have a religion; our choices and our opinions, our faith or lack thereof, make us neither greater nor worse than those around us. We respect the pope because of his position and insight into religious affairs, just as we respected Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie because of their contributions to computers and technology.

Mindless insults pass back and forth, but the majority of the insults come from those who think that by not believing in God they have a right to insult anyone who does. While I hate to disappoint however many of you there might be, let me make this clear: you have no right to insinuate you are smarter than anyone else because of your own beliefs.

We'll make certain things clear, shall we? Evolution: it happened, it is still happening. Charles Darwin wrote about it. It didn't make him an atheist. What made him an atheist, what began to sway his belief in God, was the death of his daughter. Read Origin of Species before you make any remarks about my faith or the faith of other Christians, and pay particular attention to the closing paragraph. They are not the words of a man who does not believe God exists.

The creation accounts in Genesis: they are true. Does this contradict evolution? Absolutely not. The Bible is not a scientific document. While the Church at one stage may have insisted on the literal interpretation of the Bible, this isn't where she stands now. Of all the genres contained in the Bible, science is not one of them. We respect that, we acknowledge that, we move on.

The truth of Genesis lies in its meaning, not what the facts that might be interpreted out of it - the Earth was not made in 7 days and Adam and Eve were not created as described. The truth of Genesis's creation stories is that God created the world, that God gave us life and that God's creation is good. This does not mean we did not evolve.

We are smart enough to understand our origins. While some people refuse to accept science, this is not true of a majority of people in the world who believe a God exists. No one has the right to insult us on the grounds of that belief, not when we accept the same science as you do.

As to the specifics of what has been said? Let it first be said that God is not the "sky daddy". My image of God, the image of God accepted by the Church, is not that of an old man with a long white beard sitting in the clouds. That image of God creates God in our image, when we believe we were created in His. We will forget that image.

Think instead of the symbol of Christianity. Even the atheists among us know this one: the cross. Who died on the cross? Jesus Christ. Whether you believe he was the Son of God or not, he existed. There are historical documents aside from the Bible that show this.

From a Christian perspective, Christ is God. The Holy Trinity helps us to understand this; it's a message of love, and while it can get complicated, I shall sum it up as I was told. The Trinity consists of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; one to love, one to be loved and one that is love itself. This is why we ought not to fight back on the same grounds as the atheists who insult us.

This Trinity shows Christians that Jesus was God on Earth. He died for us on the cross. This is where the question of "Where was God when...?" is answered, and why the omnipotent God, the all knowing God and the good God exists as we believe: He is there with all those who suffer. It is not for God to rid the world of suffering, not now.

I will accept, this is not a proof for God; I merely stand by the belief in God and rebuke the arguments against Him. No one has the right to say God does not exist simply because they do not believe in Him or because science has shown us so much of the universe. No one.

The reason we have no proof for God is because He is a mystery. For the very same reason, we enter dialogue with the other religions of this world: to understand our own faith better. Just because we believe Jesus is the full being of truth does not mean we understand that truth. The Holy Spirit is not under our control, and so people can understand the world in ways we did not think of before. An openness to new discovery is precisely why the Church hasn't been abandoned by everyone, why I haven't turned my back on what I believe. There is meaning to be found where I have not looked.

It is not in the insults of the arrogant and the attention seeking, the conformist cowards who bully others from the safety of their own homes. Bullying is not okay. Religious persecution is not okay. If you nobody accepted these ideals then the Jewish people would have been eradicated during World War Two and thousands of children would be left to fend for themselves in schools across the world, picked on for being different to the bullies.

It is not okay to pick on people. It is not okay to call them cretins, to mock their beliefs or to belittle them. You don't have to accept what they say as being true. No one will make you. You need only accept that they think about things differently than you do, and let it rest. Or, do what someone with brains would do who still wants to respond: discuss their statement, don't just dismiss them as a person.

The woman who can walk? Her injuries are healed. Is this a miracle? I don't know. I would like to think it is, but that doesn't mean God has chosen to grace her with something other people don't deserve. This simply means she was given something back she once had. We are not to question why, as Christians. We cannot understand God. 

And if you don't accept it was a miracle, we will go for the scientific answer: her second injury may have undone some of the previous damage to her spine. While I wish her all the best in life, two spinal injuries, even if they appear to be healed, will come back to affect her in years to come. For now, though, her spine has twisted back in just the right way that she has feeling in her legs again.

Let us not make a mockery out of this blessing, religious or otherwise. Let us not dismiss how great this must be for her by darkening the situation with arguments that may well insult her too.

Let us not argue over who is right or wrong when there is literally no way of knowing, and let us keep the insults out of the equation. No one deserves the abuse that has been shared today and repeatedly in the past. There is more to this faith than certain atheists give it credit for, just as there are more to atheists than the ignorant fools who insults on dismissing other people openly. I know people, not just friends, who don't believe in God, and the key to us getting along is that we never insist the other person is wrong or stupid. Let us at least do that.

Yours,

Paul,

A believer in God and science.

Soul Friend

During one of my education lectures (I think...) there was a bunch of discussion about relationships and different types of people, and the term 'Anam Cara' came up. This is, pretty literally, the Irish for Soul Friend. The concept is relatively simple, or I'm making it too simple: you have a friend you can tell anything.

I suppose it goes deeper than that. It's a relationship. Not a romantic one, by necessity, but a relationship nonetheless, like every other friendship or business partnership you'll ever have, and as such the implication that you can tell this one person anything also suggests that they, too, can tell you anything. The mutual level of trust is there, even if it becomes shaky at times - my own personal experience of the matter, and not something I wish to try again.

It's not just about trust, though. I mean, we all place a degree of trust in the people we talk to. We trust teachers. We (used to almost always) trust priests. We trust our parents. We just the chaplain at our school/college. But that doesn't mean we tell them everything, and it doesn't mean we feel the same way about them as we do about our Soul Friend.

The term itself suggests a connection that runs deeper than just the talk and the other aspects of a friendship, like drunkenly laying an arm over someone's shoulder. It's something you can't explain, really, no matter how hard you try and no matter how many words you have in your vocabulary. It's a form of love that can't be broken, but not the same as a parent's love for his/her child, or the same as the sort of love you have for someone in a romantic (and sexual) relationship. It's a run-deep kind of love that doesn't get celebrated on Hallmark day.

I believe in the idea of the Soul Friend. I believe in it because sometimes, even for an attendee of God College, believing in God and having faith in God is difficult. I believe in God's existence alright, but more often my faith is placed in my Soul Friend. It's a comfort thing, on one level, having someone there to talk to, but it's also something more basic than that - I have faith that he can do right. It's what we lack in God, sometimes; there's a great expectation that nothing should go wrong, then a tsunami strikes and thousands die, along with the faith of thousands more. Without getting to religious on the matter, I'd say it's because the love for God and the faith in God lacks two-way communication, lacks the certain security that comes with the sound of another human voice telling you everything's going to be okay, even when there's nothing wrong, telling you how to deal with something when you didn't ask, and letting you talk when you need someone to listen. God listens alright, but the problem I reckon lots of people have is that it's like it's all forgotten a second later and nothing ever gets done.

You can't just look for your Soul Friend. It sounds unfair, I know, that some people have them and others don't, but it's not the richest or the happiest, or the poorest or the saddest that find a Soul Friend. It just happens. It happens and you can't escape it, and you don't want to lose it when you find it. I know if I thought I'd like this friendship, nothing would stop me trying to make things right. I suppose that's dangerous, too, because it means I can put myself in some sort of physical danger, firstly, as well as emotional danger if it just can't be fixed, if the pieces don't quite fit back anymore.

That was my worry once, until I found new pieces that held the old ones together, too.

I write this, on a Friday night because really I don't do anything beyond going to the cinema, but specifically on a Friday because that's the day my interviews will be posted when they're done. Friday is my sort of Friendship Appreciation Day, and Hallmark won't ruin that. But for me, friendship isn't just confined to one day on my blog. Every day in my friendships is important. I just make sure not to test things with my Soul Friend on a Tuesday. Long story. I won't be telling it.

Study Time

I have my first exam in a week. I have started study... eventually. I started by reading two of the three texts I ought to cover for my Varieties of Fiction module; books one and ten of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the delightful novella by Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener. I've read something of Melville's before, Billy Budd, and I have to say, he didn't fail to impress a second time. In fact, I loved Bartleby even more than I did Billy Budd. It was a funnier story, with a much more powerful voice behind the story. The narrator was fantastic!

I've also prepared a question for my exam on the Pentateuch (that's the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Number, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.) One of the topics we were told to cover was the creation stories in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis. For those who don't know, that's the stories about the creation of the universe and the Garden of Eden. They are, in fact, two seperate and contradicting stories. Just to show off (well, actually, this also serves as helpful revision...) I'm going to write what I can about the books from memory.

Chapter 1 of Genesis was written by the author known typically by scholars as the Priestly writer, while Chapter 2 was written by the Jahwist writer. There are twelve differences between the two stories, going into detail on the content. For a start, Gen 1 begins with the creation of "heaven and the earth" while Gen 2 begins with "earth and the heavens" being made. The two have subtle differences; heaven is more important in Gen 1, along with the idea of creation, while Gen 2 focuses on the importance of the earth before the heavens, and things being made, such as Man from the earth.

On the subject of Man, there are a number of differences regarding his creation; Gen 1 refers to Man being made in the "image and likeness" of God, while Gen 2 tells of how Man was man from the dust of the earth, with the breath of God being blown into his nostrils. Gen 1 also dictates that Man and Woman were created at the same time, whereas Gen 2 has Woman made last of all God's creatures, from Man (interesting note: Hebrew for Man is ishsh, while Woman is ishshah, meaning "from Man"). Gen 1 tells us that God named all of His creatures, while in Gen 2, it is Man, in this case, Adam (from the Hebrew adam, meaning Earth).

The very name of God is different in both texts; in Gen 1 He is referred to as God, whereas in Gen 2 He is called The Lord God. It is from this point of information that we determine who the author is; "lord" in the Bible is written as LORD when referring to God, which, in Hebrew terms, is displayed as YHWH - this is where we derive the term Yahweh, though the true pronunciation of the term isn't known.

The texts also differ in length; the creation story of Gen 1 ends shortly into chapter 2 (but is generally just referred ot as the creation story in Gen 1), whereas the story in Gen 2 continues into chapter 3, where we meet the Serpent. (side note: at this point, I am now struggling to remember the smaller points - I know there's a larger one, but I want to avoid it for the time being).

Moving on to the creation as a whole, the stories differ on a number of points; Genesis 1 takes place over seven days - 6 days of creation, 1 of rest (the Sabbath) - while Genesis 2 takes place in one day. Over the longer period of time, God's Master Plan is kept, while in Gen 2 the process is more about trial and error. Similaraly, everything in Gen 1 is, at the very least, "good", while something is not right in Gen 2: 'Then the LORD God said, "Is is not good that man should be alone"' - Genesis 2:18.

As a final note (as I've forgotten the 12th point.... I'll check that when I'm done showing off), the order of creation in the stories is different. Genesis 1 portrays creation in this way: Heaven and the earth, and light, on the first day; the dome, Sky, around the earth on the second day (also containing water); dry land and vegetation on the third day; heavenly bodies, such as the sun, the moon and the stars, on the fourth day, though they are not directly named as they are technically, at the time of the story's writing, pagan deities, and therefore not to be mentioned within a then-Jewish text; on the fifth day the fish and all the creatures of the sea; and the creatures of the land on the sixth day, including Man, at the very end of this creation. Genesis 2, on the other hand, tells the story in this order: first earth and the heavens; then Man; Eden and vegetation; water, in the form of rivers; then the creatures of the land and all the birds in the air; and finally, out of Man, he created Woman. It is quite noticeable, the differences between the stories, when the information is presented; much more importance was placed on the world than Man in the first story, whereas the world seemed to have been made for Man in the second story.

As to the forgotten information... the stories present God in two different ways. Genesis 1 tells us of a God being a transcendant being, and therefore without a form for us to worship (as is intended for both Christian and Jewish faiths - there shall be no false idols before the Lord; in other words, no statues). Genesis 2, on the other hand, tells us of an anthropromorphic God, with the shape and form of a human, and the image most used in art.

I hope this hasn't been a boring blog for you all; it's a little unusal, I know, for me to write about religion here, but I think that the topic is the comparison of two stories, regardless of them being from a religious text, is enough to save me from turning completely over to the Christian side; I still very much believe in God, but I'm not a bible-pusher by any means. Each to his own, so long as it is in respect of other people (and everything else too!).

Opinions on the blog post are very much appreciated, but I don't intend on this becoming a religious debate; remember that the Old Testament is largely a metaphorical text to help explain some of the deeper mysteries of the universe, and in the context of the time at which it was written it was an extremely useful text. It wasn't, however, accepted a science; no one truly accepted that the creation stories were absolute truth, but they accepted the hugely important religious messages behind the texts regardless.

days
order of creation
created as intented/trial and error (Master Plan)
Everything good/something not good

Locked up with God

I had a weird experience last night... the Fat Fighters trapped us in the Pastoral Centre (note: Fat Fighters is my immature substitute for Weight Watchers). When I say "trapped" I mean they turned off all the lights but the one in our room, put on the alarm, and locked both locks on the door. When I say "us" I mean myself (obviously), Niamh, Ingrid, Sorcha, Cliodhna and the religious woman... I forgot her name, okay!

Thankfully Niamh knew the code to turn off the alarm when it went off...

Why am I telling you all this? I have a video about it!

Also, keep an eye on my YouTube channel and this blog - I'll be doing giveaways next week!! And they're good giveaways too. One is with a book that the money of which goes to charity and the other is a book you literally can't buy anywhere.

Peace, Love and Potter,
Paul.