Byron Carrier – Page 23 – Earthly Religion

God’s Goods and the So-called Goods and Evils

January 24, 2012
Byron Carrier

God’s Goods is not primarily about God. God’s Goods is about the goods “God” “created” and called “good,” and it is about the violation of those goods by the three theistic religions. God’s Goods is not a Christian religion, nor even primarily theistic. It is a humanistic, naturalistic, deistic religious perspective that seeks to reconnect humanity to its natural origin, home, responsibilities, and possibilities. God, for Better or Worse Cultures generate god-images which then orient and guide those cultures. Humans may be seen as the…

January 24, 2012
Byron Carrier

Faith in the Larger Liberty: American Deism Picture this: Our president in the White House takes scissors to Bible, cutting out of the New Testament all that makes Jesus more God than human. Out goes the virgin birth story, the miracles, even the resurrection. When preachers object, he calls them “soothsayers and necromancers.” To top it off, he is having an extended affair with his half-black servant, fathering children with her. Such a scandal would leave Fox News sputtering, unsure how to begin the spin…

January 24, 2012
Byron Carrier

First off, let’s admit we all need to eat something. All living things take something in and let something out. Whether through a cell membrane or a mouth and anus, we need to eat and expel to live. There is no shame in that. Even the sun eats and expels to exist. We are made of the cooled matter of an old star explosion. We are lighted, warmed, and powered by our current star, and we will be eaten by it farther in the…

January 24, 2012
Byron Carrier

January 24, 2012
Byron Carrier

It ain’t necessarily so, no it ain’t necessarily so. The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible It ain’t necessarily so. Mathusala lived nine hundred years, yea, Mathusala lived nine hundred years. But who calls that livin’ when no gal will give in to No man what’s nine hundred years. I’m glad to be in a religious tradition where both aspects of this naughty song can be sung in church: the Bible might not be true, and a sex joke. Both…

January 24, 2012
Byron Carrier

Hunting for religion that relates well with Reality.

December 27, 2011
Byron Carrier

America the Beautiful Because of Liberals and Conservatives An eagle soars high only on two wings. If such a grand bird were to use one of its wings against the other, it would be only crippled and crazy. America is a bird divided against itself. Instead of having a higher view, it flops and flounders on the ground. Such a bird needs psychiatric help or prophetic warning. That is my intent here today: I want to help America soar again. I see my beloved…

December 27, 2011
Byron Carrier

Minor Mind Mending An outgoing, uplifting stage personality killed herself recently. Who would have suspected such a powerhouse of positivity would have such a dark side as to tragically die too early because of it? Everyone was shocked. Towards six hundred people attended her memorial service at our university in Ashland. I wanted to put her loss to the community’s gain and so joined an ad-hoc group. We wanted somehow to help prevent suicides. Quickly, we entered the difficult and overwhelming world of mental…

December 7, 2011
Byron Carrier

Two weeks ago this Thursday I heard the “click of no return” during Stephen Mansfield’s answer to whether a sense of faith is necessarily a good thing, Columbus being an example of deluded faith. He replied that Columbus did things “contrary” to his own faith. Not so. My point was he did those atrocities because of his faith - a god-ordained, self-righteous pillaging, raping, and murdering. Because I couldn’t differ with his first pious fiction he then went into a worse second one: that Bush was in Iraq to “eradicate the militant wing of Islam.” Not so. Iraq was one of the only secular states in the Muslim world.

August 30, 2011
Byron Carrier

[Intro to this post.] Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” is offensive. It starts dreary and goes gory. The brave honesty and loving kindness of Jesus is absent. Undeserved agony is the only story. Then, in the end, poof! He’s all cleaned up and fresh again, miraculously. It offends as Christianity does, making Jesus fit its scheme: An inscrutable God sends his own son to suffer and die for the sins we do in order to save us from the even more hideous hell…

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The dream of an Earthly Religion…

Earthly: our precious natural earth which allows us our bodies, lives, cultures and future.

Religion: from the old root words religare and religio, meaning “to bind back to the root and be whole again.” This does not assume we need to believe in God or the Bible. Rather, we should be well-related with our own bodies, each other, natural life, and natural existence as it actually is. If there is connection with divinity or God, it is in and through our bodies and beings that we relate primarily, not via scriptures, traditions, rituals, or supposed religious authorities. In short, by religion we mean “relating well with reality.”

The emphasis here is on the earthly. It is not an afterlife or an instead-of-life that interests us. Living well here on earth together does.

While we take our religious perspective and work seriously, we don’t want it to be stuffy. Too often, religions can be alien to the human condition rather than affirming of it. They can be demeaning and demoralizing, dull and bossy, ponderously pretentious. We lean more towards the fun and sexy, natural and lively, human and humane, thoughtful and pertinent.

Reality: the obvious and inescapable stuff of physical existence. We intend to enjoy and tend our lives in these bodies, for our time, in our cultures, for our singular and interrelated ecosystem. There may be more, but there is AT LEAST THIS of which we are born, in which we live, and into which we will die.

God or no-God is not the point; Earth is. Both believers and non-believers are welcome here, for we all share a common source, opportunity, and responsibility: life as it is and could be. This ranges from simply improving one’s own life to your helping save and restore Eden’s, not just to “sustain” it, but veering it to thrive as never before. If you value your life, each other’s, and Earth’s – welcome!

Learn more…

God’s Goods and the So-called Goods and Evils

American Deism

Eat Well

Eat Well

From Dysfunctional to Funfunctional

Autobiography of the Founder of God’s Goods

America the Beautiful Because of Liberals and Conservatives

Minor Mind Mending

Faith and Foolishness

“The Passion of the Christ” Confounds Compassion with Cruelty