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Will Once - somewhere and back again
message 251:
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Patti (baconater)
(new)
Sep 27, 2014 05:31PM
Coffee!
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It happens sometimes. If we talk about something else, it might break the thread. Then we can get back to normal business.Or maybe not.
certainly not
I was enjoying the debate.Continue.
I'm gonna shuffle off to Marc's thread and choose a new letter.
Mi casa es su casa. It's all good. Come celebrate a cornucopia of convoluted c-words.
Or read a blog...
Or both.
Ciao!
http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/09...
OrMi caca es su caca
Sorry to be a pain in the arse Will but it's not loading properly for me. :(
Not a problem ...There were a couple of thoughtful comments from friends about yesterday’s blog. Both were arguing that, of course, praying for the lottery won’t work. God isn’t going to answer such a trivial or self-centred request.
So instead of moving on, I thought we’d go back to the subject of prayer.
What do people pray for – and which prayers are answered?
If we go back to the earliest humans, we find ourselves at the time of hunter-gatherers. We’re guessing at this point, but it seems highly likely that they prayed for a successful hunt. Their lives depended on being able to catch enough meat on the hoof to feed everyone.
Fast forward to the first farmers. They have to take a huge leap of faith. If they plant these seeds, and if the rains come, and if winter ends, and if spring comes after winter … then maybe they will get enough veggies to make a stew.
So our early ancestors spent an inordinate amount of time and energy praying that the winter would end and that their crops would grow. From that we get monuments like Stonehenge and a preoccupation with being able to predict the seasons. We get sun gods and rain gods.
The Lord’s Prayer still starts with “give us this day our daily bread”. This is a throwback to the times when we prayed for a good harvest, because it really did mean the difference between life and death.
Then there are the fertility prayers. Our ancestors would dearly want to hear the pitter patter of tiny sandals. So they visit the local shaman for a lurve potion. The shaman tells the man to drink a potion of loganberries and then go home and have sex with his wife.
Or pray to Venus and then go home to have sex with his wife.
Or sacrifice a cockerel to Aphrodite and then go home to have sex with his wife.
And – guess what? – the potion works. Either that or Venus and Aphrodite decided to bless them with a child. Funny that. And it has absolutely nothing to do with all that sex.
If we get sick, we pray to be made healthy again.
If we are going into battle, we pray for victory.
If we are close to death, we pray to go up to the nice place and not down to the hot place.
If our football team is in the relegation zone, we pray for a manager who isn’t a blithering eejit.
The one constant here is the unknown. When we don’t know what is about to happen, we pray for the outcome that we want.
But here’s a funny thing. The subject of our prayers change over time. As we get a better understanding of how the seasons work we stop praying for winter to end and spring to start. As we understand human health a lot better, we stop praying for babies. We cut out the middle bit and head straight for the “having more sex” part of the equation.
If we tend to pray for the unknown, our prayers change as the unknown recedes. Science is leaving religion less and less room in which to operate.
There is something else that is strange. As a species, we are very good at coming up with reasons why a prayer didn’t work. We rationalise that the gods must be angry about something. That they have some mysterious reason for doing what they did. That they are testing us. That we need to sacrifice a bigger animal. That God doesn’t get involved with something as petty as a lottery.
Individually, all of these explanations make a kind of sense. But if you look at all of them at the same time, a pattern emerges…
1. We pray for the unknown
2. Sometimes we get the result we want. Sometimes we don’t.
3. When we do get what we want, it’s proof that God exists.
4. When we don’t, we come up with an excuse. God still exists.
Apart from the placebo effect, we have no evidence of any prayer actually working ever in the history of mankind. To be sure, sometimes a good thing happens after someone prays for that good thing. But equally we have lots of instances of prayers going unheard.
We live in an era of big data. Every time you buy something, drive your car, go on the internet, do anything … you are being counted. Big businesses, scientists and Governments are using this information to understand how we think, to spot trends and to work out how to sell us more stuff.
A celebrity chef uses a particular ingredient in a television show. Within hours, the major supermarkets can see people buying more of this ingredient than ever before. We can track how often people get sick, how long it takes them to recover, and the effectiveness of different drugs.
And what does all this information show us about the power of prayer?
It doesn’t work, other than in the placebo effect. No-one has yet produced a correlation between prayer and some external thing happening. My lottery example may have been a little trivial, but it’s a convenient way of showing a wider point.
Religion shouldn’t feel too bad about this. It turns out that luck doesn’t work either. That rabbit’s foot would do far more good if it was still attached to the bunny .
But before we start blowing the trumpet for Dawkinism, I need to redress the balance. Because that is not the end of the story.
I did say, “apart from the placebo effect”. This is sometimes said a little sniffily. People insert the world “only” as in “only the placebo effect.” I think there is much more to it than that.
One recent event puzzled me. When Pope John Paul II died, Catholics all round the world prayed for him. This was quite possibly the biggest single act of simultaneous prayer in recent times. Given the explosion in human population, it was arguably the most prayed about thing in the history of our planet.
And I couldn’t help wondering why.
Surely they weren’t praying for him to get better? Because that boat had already sailed.
And they can’t have been praying for him to go to heaven. He of all people surely has a reservation for a front row seat.
So why do you need to pray for the passing of the Pope?
The answer, I think, is that they weren’t praying for John Paul II. They were praying for themselves. Their prayers were not an appeal to God to do something. They were a way of providing comfort in a time of sorrow. Praying makes people feel better.
There is something else. Let’s go right back to the Lord’s Prayer. Here it is for anyone who hasn’t said it in a long time:
“Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.”
What does this actually mean? One way to read it is that we are giving God a shopping list. Can you please pop down to the celestial supermarket? We’d like one loaf of bread (preferably sliced). Some forgiveness – better make it a big one. Oh, and don’t forget the protection from temptation. We’re right out of that.
In other words, this is a prayer asking for something.
Another reading is that this is fan mail. We are telling God how wonderful he is. We remind him that he is in heaven. I’m sure he needs to know that. And that he has got power and glory and stuff. Wow.
The third way of looking at this, and the one that makes most sense to me, is that we are not actually talking to God. We are not asking him for anything. He doesn’t need to be told how fantastic he is.
What we are really doing is talking to ourselves. We are saying that we won’t do naughty things (aka trespasses and evil), that we will work hard (we are the ones making the daily bread), we won’t be tempted, we won’t follow other gods.
Some people pray for a lottery win. We know they do. Just as we know that our ancestors prayed for winter to end. If we now know that those things are not affected by prayer, that doesn’t mean that prayer doesn’t have a place.
It simply means that prayer is more about us. If we are asking for anything, it is the strength to do what we believe is right. But we are the ones who have to do the doing.
Tricky oneYou're right up to a point.
I would suggest that 'all believing persons' have stages they can pass through.
The first level is the shopping list religion you're describing. I'd not like to put a figure on it for various different faiths, but I'd say a considerable majority of people who class themselves as being affiliated to one faith or another are at this level. And frankly you can probably drift seamlessly from one to another without too much problem, because your religion isn't too much of a problem to you anyway. (A combination of community association, social club and back-up parachute in case of real emergency)
As you progress beyond this level you also get a choice. To stop it being to tied to one faith or the other I'll use neutral terminology. Effectively you can go to the 'dark side' or the 'light side'
Now this isn't unique to religion, or even anything to do with religion. It is a decision made by people who go into politics, or even teaching (do you inspire or bully, encourage or abuse) or the police (Good cop/bad cop is a cliche). Most will stick on the 'lighter' side of a grey borderland because most people want to be decent.
But it's after they've made this decision that they actually come into the faith proper. If they've gone to the dark side they don't enter the faith, they use it's surface structures and cherry pick quotes, normally out of context, for their own personal gratification.
But the second level of faith/religion is probably where you'll find perhaps 10% of those who profess the faith. They'll have 'read the book.' They've even thought about it. It's at this level you'll see the differences start to emerge. For example within Christian and Jewish teachings it is regarded as perfectly acceptable to argue with God, to rant at him, to be well hacked off with him. (It's all there in the book.)Some other religions regard this as the darkest most unforgivable heresy.
You also get major differences in belief. For example I believe that with Islam, you basically get to heaven by keeping the rules and living a good life.
For Jews, these are important but there is a more personal relationship with God which matters.
In Christianity the rules are boiled down to two, with the certainty that you're going to screw up, but with grace you'll get there, and the personal relationship with God is how you'll do it.
As for prayer, embarrassingly the classic prayers we have in writing come from the second level and are then used by people in the first level who don't bother what the words actually mean. (Some people have described level 1 religion as 'polite ritual magic')
The Lords prayer is not 'shopping list' prayer. The words "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as in heaven" are actually a total abandonment of the shopping list.
Some excellent points there.I actually read "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" a little differently to you.
One of the big fears that most humans have is about death. Existence is such a wonderful thing that we really don't want to be without it.
Hence the religions that have survived the longest have been those which offer some form of afterlife. How you get to that afterlife varies, and what it looks like. But some form of afterlife is fairly constant amongst all religions.
Perhaps that's not surprising. Given the choice, who would choose a religion without an afterlife over one with?
There is a wonderful story in Bede about the conversion of King Edwin of Northumberland. St Paulinas preached to the King, trying to persuade him to convert to Christianity from Paganism.
After hearing the sermon, one of the King's advisers said:
“Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your thegns and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a moment of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing. Therefore, if this new teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it.”
In other words, a religion with an afterlife is far more attractive than one without.
And if we read about the attitudes to faith up to fairly modern times, we see that most people were pre-occupied by the afterlife. Hence the buying and selling of favours which led to the Reformation.
So when I read "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven" - I see a group of people who are very keen that they should get to God's kingdom, either after death or in the second coming.
I do see a shopping list and this is the biggest part of that list: ie the promise of heaven
Yes,but it's 'thy will be done' which takes you one step onward from the shopping listBut the Bede passage is one of the classics.
But even with the promise of heaven you're still only dealing with level 1.
And yes, at level 1 religions are much the same, but at level 2 they start to eat into your own time and force you to think and change your life, so they become a minority interest
How do you interpret "thy will be done"?If you read it in isolation, it sounds as if you are saying: "Whatever you say, Boss, that's what will be done."
Is the person saying the prayer promising to do whatever God asks of him or her? But if so, why does it say "in earth as it is in heaven"? We can only do things here on earth.
I actually think we should read the sentence in its entirety. For me, it means that the Kingdom of God will come during the second coming and at that time God's will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Funnily enough, most religions are a little bit wary about saying too much about the second coming. That seems to be more the preserve of horror and PA fiction.
No it's saying that God's will should be done here, as it is done in HeavenAs for the Kingdom of God coming, Actually in Christianity the Kingdom of God is already here.
This is the main difference between Jewish and Christian eschatology. (Now there's word you don't often see used in everyday conversation)
With Christianity, as far as I can make out, the Kingdom of God arrived on Earth with the Resurrection. At that point, all the rules had changed.
But when you read what Jesus said, effectively (and to use a soundbite,) 'People aren't in the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of God is in people.'
See why those who actually follow a religion get a little irritated when people say all religions are the same really.
As for the Second coming, the Old Testament has a couple of books left in it which are the remains of an extensive Jewish Apocalyptica
Christianity has a little bit that Christ actually taught, a little bit from Paul, and the book of Revelation which starts of comprehensible enough and disappears into a mushroom fuelled dream.
Mainly because it was written in the style of the Jewish Apocalyptica of the same period and used symbolism and symbology that frankly we cannot understand.
But a lot of people have had a lot of fun guessing.
It's like working out the date of the second coming from the Bible. Actually it's impossible. Christ himself said "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
Yet people waste vast amounts of time doing obscure calculations.
Frankly it's a displacement activity like much theology. It's far easier discussing the bits of the book you don't understand than just getting on with living the life that the bits you do understand map out.
As Mark Twain said "It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
That's fascinating. When I research it I find several sources which have the phrase in the future tense - "Your kingdom will come and your will will be done on earth as it is heaven" ...http://biblehub.com/matthew/6-10.htm
And several sources which say that it is written in the present tense - "your will is being done right now".
As you say, the bible is a mish-mash of different sources written by different authors. It is also capable of many different interpretations. In some cases, those interpretations may be driven by what it's followers want or need.
Religions may be ending up in different places, but the way that they got there seems eerily similar.
More on that in tomorrow's blog.
The technical name for that is 'the living word', it's a trendy concept that has been around at least since Justin Martyr in about 150ADAt this point you can get caught up in the concept of the 'Logos'and 'the word made flesh'which takes you to John 1
(The concept has apparently even moved in Islam in Sufism in the 13th cent which I hadn't realised before)
Today's blog. A little ditty about how religions evolve:http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/09...
And for Patti's benefit, I'll post the text next.
God, Maybe – the one after 4 and a halfSometimes we over-categorise things. It’s a way of making sense of a complicated world. We define boxes and we put things, people, ideas into those boxes.
Some people think about the God question in those terms.
They have one neat box over here, labelled religion. And into this box they put belief, heaven, creationism, prayer and big buildings with bells.
Then they have this other box called atheism. In this box they put Richard Dawkins, evolution, science, free will, probability, randomness.
And that’s all very neat and tidy. I suppose. My wife likes boxes. No, really she does. We have an incredible collection of those food boxes that click shut with a satisfying clunk when you pull the plastic tabs down.
I suppose I only need to worry when she buys a box big enough to put me in.
The problem with boxes is that it can all get a bit predictable. Boring. Staid. Stereotypical.
Sometimes I like to take things out of one box and put them in another. Just to see what happens. Admittedly this doesn’t work too well if you put chilli powder into the cornflakes.
But what happens if we start to mix up some of the ideas about God and no-god?
How about this? – religions evolve.
When you first hear that you might be tempted to splutter into your cornflakes. With or without the chilli powder. It sounds like a marriage made in hell – religion and evolution at the same time?
It’s at this point that people can get defensive. My religion doesn’t evolve. My religion doesn’t believe in evolution.
In that case, let’s change our hypothesis. All religions except yours evolve. All the dead religions with the superhero gods. All the religions in other countries that only foreigners believe in. I’m sure yours is the exception.
Here’s my evidence …
We know that many religions have existed in the world, but have since died out. This is a classic example of evolution. Nature has no compunction in booting out the things that don’t make the grade – whether this is dinosaurs, the dodos or fax machines.
A couple of millennia ago, the Greek and Roman gods roamed the earth like horny tyrannosaurs. Until we stopped believing in them, and replaced them with something more nimble and warm-blooded.
There is a wonderful story that I just can’t resist retelling. In 627 AD – somewhere after King Arthur but before Robin Hood, King Edwin of Northumberland converted from Paganism to Christianity.
His conversion came after St. Paulinas preached to the king and his advisers. The King asked his advisers for … well, advice … and one of them said this little speech:
“Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your thegns and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a moment of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing. Therefore, if this new teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it.”
In other words, our current religion doesn’t give us an afterlife. Let’s switch to one that does. It’s a bit like changing your car for one that has air-conditioning.
Or evolution.
Most religions also change within themselves. They adapt to the needs and wishes of their followers. The wrathful and angry god of the Old Testament seemed to have got in touch with his feminine side for the New Testament. The Protestant Reformation decided head off in its own direction to get away from all the “bells and smells” of the Catholic Church. Not to mention all the profiteering inherent in selling first class tickets to the afterlife.
The Church of England was largely created so that Henry VIII could continue on his quest to find a wife who would bear him a son. The unkind amongst us would point out that he might be more successful in that department if he lost a bit of weight.
There can be no question. Most religions change over time. They merge, split, reclassify themselves and break up so all the band members can pursue solo careers.
We often can’t see this change happening, because all we see is the here and now. We don’t see how our ancestors viewed our religion. And we don’t know what is coming next.
But look across the sweep of history and it becomes very clear. Religions evolve. Each generation thinks that it has reached perfection, but in fact it is just the latest in a long line of changes.
This gets us to one of the great questions that faith has to answer. Should we stick or twist? Should a religion stay with its original beliefs or change with the times?
It is certainly a tricky question. A religion that does not change runs the risk of becoming extinct, especially if it no longer does what its followers want.
But as soon as a religion does evolve, it runs into the “word of God” argument. That’s when someone in the religion says “we can’t possibly change because it’s not what God wanted us to do.”
Because as soon as you allow a religion to change, you are casting doubt on what you believe. If you are following the word of God, then he can’t be wrong, therefore you can’t possibly change, because that would suggest that he was wrong.
Cue a massive argument. Some of the religion’s followers will argue that they must not change. Others will argue that they must. The atheists usually sit on the side-lines and smirk.
This is usually resolved by reference to metaphor and interpretation. Eventually, some bright spark will claim that everyone had been reading the Bible wrong. What it really means is … whatever we need it to mean in order to make the change.
And that’s why we are arguing about women bishops. And gay marriage. And contraception. And terrorism. And a host of other things.
We can’t decide whether our religions are allowed to change or have to stay the same. And that, in part, is why were are having such trouble at the moment dealing with the difference between fundamentalism and more liberal religions.
The atheists have been enjoying this section a little too much, so it is time to redress the balance. Let’s talk about the positive side of religious evolution.
Back in the second blog we pointed out that nearly every human civilization has had a religion. That strongly suggests that a religion is actually a very useful thing for a civilization to have. A religion helps to keep law and order. It stops people from eating foods that might be dangerous such as pork or shellfish. It encourages its followers to work hard. To support the community.
A religion might tell you to covet thy neighbour’s ass, whether or not thy neighbour has a nice ass.
A religion reassures its follows to have faith that winter will end and the crops will grow again in the Spring.
Don’t worry about death; there is something nice waiting for you.
In evolutionary terms, the only way that the concept of a religion could be transmitted from one civilization to another was if it worked.
A civilization with a religion is more likely to succeed that one without any gods.
Of course, Dawkins will argue that religion has caused more wars than anything else. He may well be right, although many wars that seem to have been caused by religion were actually more about territory and access to raw materials.
But what seems evident is that religion has also had a very useful part to play in forming and supporting our civilizations …
… even if the gods that they were worshipping at the time are no longer around.
Will wrote: "The Church of England was largely created so that Henry VIII could continue on his quest to find a wife who would bear him a son. The unkind amongst us would point out that he might be more successful in that department if he lost a bit of weight...."
Some have also pointed out that the CofE has been less than consistent over the years with regard to its policy on marrying the divorced
Thanks for posting the text, Will.
Patti - always happy to help.Here's the final instalment, trying to tie all the strands together.
And as before I'll post the full text below this one.
http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/09...
God Maybe – the endLet’s try to draw some conclusions. Let’s tie together all of the loose ends, all of the theories, all of the evidence.
Can we come up with one explanation that encompasses everything we have talked about?
I think we can. You might not like it.
The most obvious thing to say is that we cannot prove definitively that God does or does not exist. I have not yet seen a feat of logic that convinces me. Sorry, Aquinas and Dawkins. Your attempts at knockout blow don’t work.
That’s why the title of this series is “God Maybe”. While there is room for doubt there can be no certainty. We might be 99.9% certain of something, but we ought to have the honesty to admit the presence of the remaining 0.1%.
Now for the difficult bit. If you follow a religion right now, there is a very strong possibility that your religion is wrong on some or all of the details.
We know that mankind invents gods. We know that religions evolve, change and sometimes die out. We know that there are 4,200 active religions on this earth. We know that there is no dominant world religion, and that your religion is mostly a postcode lottery based on where you are born.
It is possible that one religion is right and all the others are wrong. That’s the “maybe” part of our title again. But it seems highly unlikely.
When you look at your religion, you are seeing the narrow perspective of your own culture and the teachings of your religion. If you look across all religions, all countries and all times, it becomes harder and harder to accept the idea that any one religion is right.
If there is a God, we almost certainly don’t understand him.
Then again, how could we? If there is a supernatural being with powers far greater than ourselves, how could we possibly hope to understand him? Does an ant understand a skyscraper, or a car or a computer?
So we look for evidence. And it turns out that evidence of the existence of god is hard to find. It’s hard to find evidence that prayer works. It certainly doesn’t seem to affect the lottery or whether people recover from illness – apart from the placebo effect. Miracles can be explained rationally. Religions’ views of the creation of the world run straight into far better explanations such as evolution.
Except for one thing - the faith elephant in the room. Just about every successful human civilization has believed in gods. Civilizations that never had contact with each other all did the same thing. They invented a deity to pray to. And they kept on praying to that deity – or successor deities – for the majority of the time that mankind has been intelligent enough to bang two rocks together without bashing our fingers.
The pattern is too consistent to be ignored or dismissed as a delusion. Something is happening here. We just don’t know what it is.
Here’s my theory …
Let’s start right back at the dawn of civilization. And, I’m sorry, creationists, but that means the big bang, the formation of stars and evolution.
Homo Sapiens develops a range of skills to make up for our relative physical weaknesses. We grow a bigger brain, we communicate with each other, we invent tools to do things that we can’t do with our bare hands, we try to understand the world around us. We are curious. We ask “why” a lot.
Most of our questions are intensely practical. How do we make fire? Which foods are safe to eat? How do we catch animals? How can we build, make, do?
But some questions are much harder to answer. Why does the weather change? Will my crops grow? Will Winter end? How can we cure the sick? What happens when we die?
This is when man invented gods. Very primitive people invented gods in the shape of animals. As we became more sophisticated, our gods came in human form. What else? Humans are the most powerful creatures on earth, so anything capable of making lightning happen must be a very special kind of human.
Over time, these religions evolved. The bits of the religions that didn’t work were quietly dropped. The bits that did work remained. . It took us a few centuries, but we eventually realised that sacrificing animals or even humans didn’t really achieve anything. So we stopped doing that. Just as we stopped burning witches, barbecuing heretics or preaching hell-fire.
Religions fine-tuned themselves to give their followers what they wanted. The promise of an afterlife. The comfort of prayer. Better designed religions replaced weaker ones.
That’s evolution in action.
Religions became manuals for living well. They taught their followers how to work hard, to follow rules, to avoid dangers, to get on with each other.
Maybe there is a real physical god behind all of this, and each religion is groping its way towards the truth.
Or maybe God is a principle, an idea, a metaphor. God stands for that which is good – the things that we need to do to survive and thrive. That is what god and gods have always stood for.
When we pray we are not really sending an email to an interstellar being. We are talking to ourselves and to the community around us. We are trying to connect with this concept of “good”.
As individuals we ask “What should we do?”…
… and religion answers “this”.
We might even come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter whether god exists or not. If he doesn’t exist, we should still try to define and reach this concept of goodness. It’s what we need. It’s what we have always needed.
If he does exist, we almost certainly don’t understand him. So we have to do what we think is best. And again, we are trying to define and achieve goodness.
Whether god exists or not, the end point is still the same. Mankind needs to survive and better itself. We do this by trying to work out the right things to do. It doesn’t really matter whether those concepts of goodness come from the pulpit, the bible or from ourselves.
But there’s a problem. For most people, it is much easier to believe in God as a physical being than as a concept. Concepts are hard things to understand. They are nebulous, insubstantial, sometimes even pseudo-intellectual. We like the idea of a white bearded bloke sitting amongst the clouds a hurling down thunderbolts. That’s the sort of idea we can relate to.
Science is also a challenge for many people. Richard Dawkins argues that evolution is a better explanation than creationism, so you shouldn’t believe in God. Okay, okay, so I’m paraphrasing a little, but you get the idea. Scientific evidence can make people of faith uncomfortable. If there was a god, surely we would have found at least one bit of evidence by now?
And that means that we have a strange three way split happening.
1. Some people are reacting to this challenge to religion by reaching for fundamentalism. They deny any challenge to their religion and insist on a literal and unchanging interpretation of religious texts. At best this means that we have some slightly off-beat arguments trying (and failing) to knock a hole in evolution. At worst, we have jihad.
2. Other people react by giving up on God altogether. It was – and is – all a delusion. There is nothing there. We can do what we want.
3. Others work within their religions. They might try to change their religions to match what science is telling us, and what some of their followers want, such as women priests, gay marriage and contraception. Or they might to find a way to rationalise science through increasingly convoluted interpretations of scripture. Or choose to believe some parts of their religion, but not others.
I wonder if there is a fourth way?
It doesn’t matter whether God exists as an entity. What certainly exists is the concept of goodness. This might be a wholly selfish definition of goodness, as in “what do I or the human race need to do to survive?”. Or it could be a more altruistic type of goodness – doing the right thing.
Maybe we need to put God to one side. We need to stop worrying about what we think he wants to do. We almost certainly don’t understand that. Let’s focus on what goodness means.
It doesn’t matter how we got here. We are here now. And that means we need to make the best of it.
A conclusion? This series is called “God, Maybe” for a very good reason. I think it is the best we can say about the existence of a physical God. Maybe.
But I could equally have called it: God, Maybe – Good, certainly.
Today's blog post is about the dreaded rejection letter ... http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...
Patti - let me know if you need me to print it out or PM it to you.
Paste it please.I've no idea why your page isn't loading properly anymore.
The iPad update has screwed it up, I expect.
It looks like there's a pop-up advert blocking half the screen.
I'm holding off doing that update to our ipad. For one thing, I haven't got enough space for it. It is quite ridiculous that a 16 GB ipad should have 5.8 GB free storage just to update the operating system.And I've heard nothing but bad things about the update anyway.
Pasted version to follow ...
RejectionOne of the odd things about being a writer is that you have to get used to rejection.
Even if you reach the heady heights of becoming a bestselling author, you still have to face the bad reviews and the smart-arse carping from the critics.
"Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good." Which may or may not have been said by Samuel Johnson.
Lower down the authorly food chain, you will almost certainly have to endure the editor/ publisher/ agent rejection letter.
The process goes a little like this …
First you slave away over a hot keyboard to produce your masterpiece – “Larry Porter and the Lesbian Warrior Princesses from Mars”.
It has everything. Action. Lust. Spaceships a mile long. Chainmail bikinis. Talking rodents. A whole chapter of flatulence jokes.
You can already picture yourself in that cliff-top mansion in Malibu – “Dungloatin”. A brace of red Ferrari on the drive. A private jet. Hot and cold running maids. Enough money in the bank so that the wife can pay George Clooney to be her pool boy.
You’ve already written your acceptance speech for the Man Booker, Nobel and either Oprah or Richard & Judy, depending on which side of the Atlantic you dress.
So you buy a copy of the Artists and Writers Yearbook and you dash off a dozen query letters to the biggest and most prestigious publishers and agents that you can find.
All the while humming Paperback Writer by the Beatles.
Weeks pass, then months. Eventually a letter arrives on through your letterbox. A suspiciously thin letter. Your heart sinks a little as you realise that there isn’t enough room in the envelope for a contract, especially not a fat contract with words like “party of the third part” and “millions”.
Ah well. You rationalise that they might have skipped the middle-man and got straight to the bottom line. There’s room in that envelope for a nice cheque…
“Thank you for sending us a copy of Larry Porter and the Lesbian Warrior Princesses from Mars. We are sorry that our lists are full at the moment. We do not think that your book would make a suitable addition to our range of picture books for the under fives.”
Glump.
Part of you wants revenge. Depending on your genre, this might be a gory blood-soaked dagger to the heart sort of revenge. Or maybe it’s that scene in Pretty Woman where the shop assistant doesn’t recognise Julia Roberts in her lady of the night attire.
You might get a heady aftertaste of self-loathing and doubt. Maybe they didn’t like my book because it was baldly ritten with to menny speeling mistaiks. I’ll never be a writer. Double glump.
Then a rational voice says that you might have simply sent it to the wrong publishers. You have to keep on trying. After all, doesn’t every famous writer have to suffer lots of rejection before their big break? Apart from Lee Child. And Jeffrey Archer.
Being an author is a bit like going to a party. You walk up to a lady or gentlemen who takes your fancy and ask: “Would you like to have sex with me?”
They look you up and down from toenails to toupee and then deliver their response:
“Sorry, I don’t think we would get on. You see, I have a pulse.”
“Honey, I am waaay out of your league.”
“You? With me? You’re joking, right?”
“Have you met my husband, the Mixed Martial Arts champion?”
And you keep on asking until you eventually find someone drunk enough or desperate enough to agree. Either that or you give up. As my Dad used to say, if you’re not in bed by midnight, go home.
What you may not realise is that this is an important part of the writing process. It’s a little bit of evolution in action.
The plain fact is that “Larry Porter and the Lesbian Warrior Princesses from Mars” is almost certainly a rubbish book. Unless you are Lee Child or Jeffrey Archer, your first book is probably not very good.
Actually, I will rephrase that. Unless you are Lee Child, your first book is probably not very good.
The point is that the rejection process weeds out a large number of the wannabes. They give up on writing and try something else.
The ones that remain are the determined individuals who simply won’t be put off. They write another book, then another. And eventually they get better at this craft. People want to read what they have written, because their writing skills have been honed on the whetstone of many rejection letters. And other similar purple metaphors.
Yes, it hurts. It’s meant to hurt. That’s how we get better. Or we give up.
This topic has a particular resonance for me because I had a rejection email the other day. It was nothing too serious (says he, defensively). I had written a short story specifically for a magazine. This is the reply they sent me:
“Humor is very subjective and the comedy in this story just didn't connect with me. I'm going to pass on this story, but I wish you best of luck finding the right market for it. Thanks again for giving me a chance to read it. I hope to see more stories from you in the future.”
As rejections go, this is a nice one. It is positive, encouraging and even offers me a ready-made excuse. There was nothing wrong with my story. It just didn’t connect with one person. I like that.
Letting me down gently.
You might wonder how much of the response was cobbled together from standard sentences, but that would be too quibblesome.
I started to wonder what to do with the story. Should I send it to other magazines to see if it connected with someone else?
It was at this point that a mad thought occurred. This whole business of sending queries to agents and editors is all very well, but it doesn’t feel very … modern, 21st century, now.
Why not give the story away? Or as close to giving it away as Amazon will allow, which means a paltry 99 cents or 75 pence.
Maybe people will enjoy it and go on to buy one of my novels. Or perhaps they will decide that humor/ humour is subjective and the story didn’t connect with them.
I have absolutely no idea.
But it seemed a lot more satisfying than hawking it round editors and publishers.
Hero is the story of what it might be like to be a superhero in a near future world of over-population and intelligent technology.
I hope you enjoy it.
Hero
Today's blog is all about changes. Changes in my life, changes in the way we read, changes in the way that my boy listens to music...http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...
It's all about people and not just about products.The book industry needs to connect with people, and not just shift units - by way of a discussion of Goodreads being taken over by Amazon and spam-and-run authors.
http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...
A meditation on trolling, based on a real life thread here on Goodreads - to troll a mockingbird:http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...
Three to catch up on! Let's hope they load properly!
Yay! They're working!Love what you've said about building relationships. Have you seen the author photo thread?
Love the tongue in cheek sarcasm in the Mockingbird thread.
Hmmm.I know where the book blogger is coming from, from a different point of view. I know I've been tempted to remove myself from the group on several occasions for many reasons.
Thankfully, we've got so many great people in our group that I get over my strops quickly. :)
Hadn't realised just how many of the books I'm seeing the 10 year olds reading are in first person til I read your blog! I'll have to talk with them about that next week. Stephen King not writing series? Jeez. The Dark Tower? Not to mention that most of his books and short stories are entwined with one another in some way.
I did have a chat with the kids about music a couple weeks ago. They take great delight in sharing songs off YouTube when we have a couple minutes spare in class. It's a great way to stimulate discussion.
I asked which albums they had bought most recently. Blank stares.
Okay, which songs have you bought off iTunes? Blank stares.
They see no reason to buy music.
I feel a blog coming on ... hang on to your seat while I scribble.
And here it is ...Why kids don't listen to albums any more. The death of the music album.
http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...
Good one. I need Dave to read it.And instead of handing him my iPad, I will email him the link so he can read read it on the laptop.
Ain't technology grand?
And if he youtubes Queen after reading it, I'll let you know.
He's blasting Dusty Springfield at the minute. A whole album.
After reading that I just had to listen to "son of a preacher man". Utterly wonderful and damned sexy.I'm going through a Kate Bush phase at the moment. Trying to get in to some of the "hard to love" songs on Red Shoes and Sensual World.
Easier to like is Gabrielle Aplin's debut album English Rain. It's a good job that we don't have LPs any more or that one would be worn out by now.
And there I am thinking about albums again.
Dave doesn't know Gabrielle Aplin. Bet he youtubes when he's done reading your blog post.
Or Puts Kate Bush on. Or both.
I've moved on to Cher singing about gypsies, tramps and thieves.It seemed a logical progression from son of a preacher man.
Makes perfect sense to me.So, your blog has made Dave mention something he talks about quite frequently.
The deterioration of music quality. Not the music itself, that's subjective, but the actual sound quality.
Kids these days are quite happy to listen to the crappiest quality recordings on crap tinny speakers at the lowest possible bit rate.
It disgusts him.
Very true. Portability has replaced high fidelity. It is now more important to have our music collection in our pocket than to be able to listen to just one song in excellent quality.Technology has given us bandwidth and we have squandered it on quantity, immediacy and convenience over quality.
Mind you, the television industry has gone in a different direction. They want to push us into increasingly high definition images that mostly make everything look unrealistically detailed.
It's a funny old (new!) world.
Always felt 'Just like Jessie James' was Cher's best track.AND I'm old enough to remember her when she remembered to put clothes on :-)
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Books mentioned in this topic
The Dice Man (other topics)Hero (other topics)
Galápagos (other topics)
PopCo (other topics)
