conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a title for a book about York, James, Professor with the genre: Christian Books & Bibles, Christian Living
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Religious Case Against Belief'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Religious Case Against Belief
  The real danger poets represent lies not in their rejection of belief systems but in their indifference to them. Because they are not focused on disproving belief as such, they do not come with arguments. Poetry, it must be emphasized, does not translate into belief, or into rational thought of any kind. It can be little more than a random insight, or a puzzling oracular declaration. (more irrational, or more poetic, than Freud's theory of the unconscious?) It need not always be verbal; it can just as easily be an action. Though indifferent to boundaries, poets are certainly aware of them. Believers may well be alarmed by an unexpected revelation of possibilities. But there is no hand-to-hand action that can be taken. To attack these revelations or oracles or visions is to stab at smoke. A common strategy for repelling them is the attempt to convert them into a belief system and then reject them. Look again at Charles Darwin. He was a furnace of new ideas, many woefully incomplete and frequently unsupported, but ideas so original and seminal that they have opened countless thinkers to new insights of their own. His were ideas that did not oppose, but goaded and inspired. Believers have long felt themselves threatened by what they thought Darwin was saying and in fact created a kind of "Darwinian" ideology that they then simplified and made suitable for scorn. To be sure, many of his intellectual heirs have themselves staked out exclusive acreage, to make a home for orthodoxy. But the originating ideas have enough poetry in them that they cannot be captured; they persistently wander into other meadows.
  We now leave the relatively tidy terrain of belief systems with their tended walls and delineated enemies for the more complicated, often foggy, sometimes hidden, and increasingly varied geography of religion. It might seem strange to leave belief behind when the discussion of religion itself begins, since religion is popularly thought to be the exclusive precinct of believers. It may appear that what is coming will be an unconventional view of what it means to be religious. That is partly correct, but what I intend to show is that in all of the great religions belief takes a diminished place, if any at all, and is very often a sign that whatever counts for religion has been pushed aside. Therefore the task of offering a definition of religion can no longer be delayed.
  As a work of literature, the New Testament has no unifying style and genre. Not only is it a pastiche of gospel, history, epistle, and vision, but its writers vary in geographical location, intellectual and religious background, theological disposition, and levels of narrative and expository skills. Moreover, the individual parts were written over a period of at least thirty years, approximately from 70 to 100 CE. Not only were none of the writers eyewitnesses of the events reported, most of them could not have known such a witness. Even more, Jesus spoke Aramaic, the evangelists Greek. He was Jewish, they were mostly gentile. His entire ministry takes place within the few miles that extend from Galilee to Jerusalem, not more than a two days' walk. They were dispersed throughout the Middle East and probably never visited Jerusalem. They were members of rival Christian churches, institutions Jesus could not possibly have known, or no doubt could not even have imagined.
  But then we can hardly find a consistent picture of the Jesus of the first three gospels. Some of the textual contradictions are startling. Matthew's Jesus is born in Bethlehem, where he lived to the age of two, when Herod is said to have begun his enraged slaughter of the innocents, alarmed by the oracular announcement of three mysterious visitors that a rival king had been born (1:18ff.). The young family then fled to Egypt, returning only when they learned of Herod's death, settling in Nazareth. The parents of Luke's Jesus, by contrast, lived in Nazareth and shortly before Jesus was born traveled to Bethlehem to register in a census (2:1ff.). There is no mention of the slaughter or the exile in Egypt. One can almost picture the two families passing each other on the road. In the meantime, the older gospel of Mark, like that of John, shows no interest in the birth of Jesus whatsoever. His account opens on the baptism of the adult Jesus by the figure identified only as John the Baptizer. Nothing here about shepherds, a birth among animals, a flight to safety, soothsayers from the East, angelic announcements, or even the virgin birth.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Religious Case Against Belief
  The real danger poets represent lies not in their rejection of belief systems but in their indifference to them. Because they are not focused on disproving belief as such, they do not come with arguments. Poetry, it must be emphasized, does not translate into belief, or into rational thought of any kind. It can be little more than a random insight, or a puzzling oracular declaration. (more irrational, or more poetic, than Freud's theory of the unconscious?) It need not always be verbal; it can just as easily be an action. Though indifferent to boundaries, poets are certainly aware of them. Believers may well be alarmed by an unexpected revelation of possibilities. But there is no hand-to-hand action that can be taken. To attack these revelations or oracles or visions is to stab at smoke. A common strategy for repelling them is the attempt to convert them into a belief system and then reject them. Look again at Charles Darwin. He was a furnace of new ideas, many woefully incomplete and frequently unsupported, but ideas so original and seminal that they have opened countless thinkers to new insights of their own. His were ideas that did not oppose, but goaded and inspired. Believers have long felt themselves threatened by what they thought Darwin was saying and in fact created a kind of "Darwinian" ideology that they then simplified and made suitable for scorn. To be sure, many of his intellectual heirs have themselves staked out exclusive acreage, to make a home for orthodoxy. But the originating ideas have enough poetry in them that they cannot be captured; they persistently wander into other meadows.
  We now leave the relatively tidy terrain of belief systems with their tended walls and delineated enemies for the more complicated, often foggy, sometimes hidden, and increasingly varied geography of religion. It might seem strange to leave belief behind when the discussion of religion itself begins, since religion is popularly thought to be the exclusive precinct of believers. It may appear that what is coming will be an unconventional view of what it means to be religious. That is partly correct, but what I intend to show is that in all of the great religions belief takes a diminished place, if any at all, and is very often a sign that whatever counts for religion has been pushed aside. Therefore the task of offering a definition of religion can no longer be delayed.
  As a work of literature, the New Testament has no unifying style and genre. Not only is it a pastiche of gospel, history, epistle, and vision, but its writers vary in geographical location, intellectual and religious background, theological disposition, and levels of narrative and expository skills. Moreover, the individual parts were written over a period of at least thirty years, approximately from 70 to 100 CE. Not only were none of the writers eyewitnesses of the events reported, most of them could not have known such a witness. Even more, Jesus spoke Aramaic, the evangelists Greek. He was Jewish, they were mostly gentile. His entire ministry takes place within the few miles that extend from Galilee to Jerusalem, not more than a two days' walk. They were dispersed throughout the Middle East and probably never visited Jerusalem. They were members of rival Christian churches, institutions Jesus could not possibly have known, or no doubt could not even have imagined.
  But then we can hardly find a consistent picture of the Jesus of the first three gospels. Some of the textual contradictions are startling. Matthew's Jesus is born in Bethlehem, where he lived to the age of two, when Herod is said to have begun his enraged slaughter of the innocents, alarmed by the oracular announcement of three mysterious visitors that a rival king had been born (1:18ff.). The young family then fled to Egypt, returning only when they learned of Herod's death, settling in Nazareth. The parents of Luke's Jesus, by contrast, lived in Nazareth and shortly before Jesus was born traveled to Bethlehem to register in a census (2:1ff.). There is no mention of the slaughter or the exile in Egypt. One can almost picture the two families passing each other on the road. In the meantime, the older gospel of Mark, like that of John, shows no interest in the birth of Jesus whatsoever. His account opens on the baptism of the adult Jesus by the figure identified only as John the Baptizer.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In this case, the speaker in the poem has come as close as she can to the moment of death, while remaining just inside the terminus of experience. She is in her bedroom, surrounded by persons whose names and their relation to her are not disclosed. The room is airless. Those attending are silent and unmoving; their tears have dried; even their breathing has ceased. The poet has already bequeathed what she can; they will get nothing more from her. God is expected to make an appearance, but so far he is missing. The imminent death has already worked its effects. The attending guests seem lifeless, as if they themselves had died. The only obvious presence of life is the fly, wandering the room without knowing why or where ("uncertain" and "stumbling"). Except for the fly's buzz, there is only silence.
  How did the fly get into this poem, even in its opening words? A vulgar and unwanted household pest, it has no place in the solemn and climactic moment ("that last Onset"). The fly is worse than vulgar. It is absurd, an animal that has no imaginable useful purpose, here or anywhere else, except to be an object of scorn and revulsion. Flies are to be killed and brushed away. But not this fly. Its intrusion seizes our attention, making us aware of the silence and lifelessness of all else. The fly reduces the weight of the moment, trivializes the great event.
  The use of the fly has another effect: it displaces the common image of the winged soul leaving its bodily imprisonment for unbounded spaces, and in doing so it mocks the image. The fly, the poem makes clear, finds no opening for its escape. We imagine it tapping at the closed window, the only source of light in the room, unable to reach the light itself, and stupidly unaware of its confinement. The soul, too, is enclosed, windowed in, doomed to darkness. The soul, also like the fly, has no enduring substance. It has only one faculty: sight. The life of the poet, in whose voice the poem is written, consists now of nothing else. There is only consciousness, but in the famous last line of the poem, that also passes. There is no hint of immortality here. It is neither hoped for nor denied; it simply has no place in the poet's imagination. There is nothing left for her now except, like the fly, to be brushed away and forgotten—a process already begun by those attending and, apparently, by God as well.
  In another of her so-called postmortem poems, "Because I could not stop for Death," Dickinson pictures newly dead believers, whom she calls "meek members of the Resurrection," enclosed in "Alabaster Chambers" where they have surrendered "Soundless as Dots—on a Disc of snow." A bleaker conclusion could scarcely be imagined.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: " A bleaker conclusion could scarcely be imagined..
  In another of her so-called postmortem poems, "Because I could not stop for Death," Dickinson pictures newly dead believers, whom she calls "meek members of the Resurrection," enclosed in "Alabaster Chambers" where they have surrendered "Soundless as Dots—on a Disc of snow. There is nothing left for her now except, like the fly, to be brushed away and forgotten—a process already begun by those attending and, apparently, by God as well. It is neither hoped for nor denied; it simply has no place in the poet's imagination. There is no hint of immortality here. There is only consciousness, but in the famous last line of the poem, that also passes. The life of the poet, in whose voice the poem is written, consists now of nothing else. It has only one faculty: sight. The soul, also like the fly, has no enduring substance. The soul, too, is enclosed, windowed in, doomed to darkness. We imagine it tapping at the closed window, the only source of light in the room, unable to reach the light itself, and stupidly unaware of its confinement. The fly, the poem makes clear, finds no opening for its escape.
  The use of the fly has another effect: it displaces the common image of the winged soul leaving its bodily imprisonment for unbounded spaces, and in doing so it mocks the image. The fly reduces the weight of the moment, trivializes the great event. Its intrusion seizes our attention, making us aware of the silence and lifelessness of all else. But not this fly. Flies are to be killed and brushed away. It is absurd, an animal that has no imaginable useful purpose, here or anywhere else, except to be an object of scorn and revulsion. The fly is worse than vulgar.
  How did the fly get into this poem, even in its opening words? A vulgar and unwanted household pest, it has no place in the solemn and climactic moment ("that last Onset"). Except for the fly's buzz, there is only silence. The only obvious presence of life is the fly, wandering the room without knowing why or where ("uncertain" and "stumbling"). The attending guests seem lifeless, as if they themselves had died. The imminent death has already worked its effects. God is expected to make an appearance, but so far he is missing. The poet has already bequeathed what she can; they will get nothing more from her. Those attending are silent and unmoving; their tears have dried; even their breathing has ceased. The room is airless. She is in her bedroom, surrounded by persons whose names and their relation to her are not disclosed.In this case, the speaker in the poem has come as close as she can to the moment of death, while remaining just inside the terminus of experience
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In sum, what belief systems conspicuously lack is music. They are monotonal. One voice speaks for all others. If it varies, it is only in amplification. Resonance between believers and the world is replaced with repetition. The stone hits the pool with a thin slap; however wide the pool of believers, we find that it is only an inch or two in depth.
  Any answer to this curious fact must be speculative at best. We can at least say that whenever we turn to religion for answers to the questions that press all of us for our simply being human (what happens at death? why is there evil? where did it all come from? how will it end? why is there something rather than nothing?), instead of answers we are offered a deepened expression of the same question. When the dying Buddha assured his grieving friends that his body would decay like any other earthly object, he was asked whether he would live on after death. He answered in effect: we cannot say the Buddha lives on; we cannot say he does not; we cannot say he both lives on and does not; we cannot say he neither lives on nor does not. On the one hand, he emphasizes the reality of his death, on the other, the utter impossibility of understanding it. This open-ended, or what I have called horizonal, way of thinking then penetrates every aspect of Buddhism. It cancels the claim that anyone, even the most accomplished Buddhists, or bodhisattvas, can say what Buddhism is truly about.
  Far from providing false or unverifiable answers to our questions, the religions provide no answers at all. On this basis, one explanation for the proliferation of belief systems at the edges of the great religions is that they provide a shield against this absolute openness, a protection in advance against what might lie just beyond the horizon and so far unseen, or even imaginable. Believers, in short, are terrified by genuine expressions of religion, and respond to them by vigorously ignoring them. They take refuge in agreement, solidarity of membership, and the sense that they belong to something that exists independently of their participation in it. Thus it was when Urban II saw a loss of fervor in Christendom, he initiated in the year 1095 what was to become several centuries of costly, savage, and ultimately failed crusades against the Saracens. It was far more reassuring for medieval Christians to battle Islam than it was for them to inquire unrestrictedly into the learned and thriving Islamic civilization. In the meantime, of course, it was a way of escaping any inquiry into the great uncertainties of Christianity itself. As much as it was a declared war against infidels, it was an undeclared war against their own poets.
  In laying out the religious case against belief, it may seem that I have privileged the former over the latter. It must be said, however, although I can offer no statistical basis for it, that the world is far more attracted to belief systems than to religion as I have described it. Nonetheless, poets will always rise in their midst, even in the most severe, knowing they lack every form of worldly power, hoping only that their singing will outlast them. But if it does, even if it is long remembered, finally there is only oblivion. Why then do they continue to sing? They have no choice. They know they are ignorant.